Digital marketing is much harder than five short years ago: the competition is tougher across all industries, and consumers are harder to engage.
Technology is disrupting the way consumers are interacting with online businesses.
Only a few years ago, everything was much simpler: consumers used online search to find products they knew they needed.
These days, the buyer journeys are much more complicated. Consumers discover products through social media ads or artificial-intelligence-driven product recommendations. They know the tools to use to compare and track prices. They expect immediate interaction with brands on social media. They know how to do product research and where to ask for help.
From discovery (organic search, social media ads, etc.) to interaction with your site, digital marketing is being defined and refined by fast-evolving technology and, consequently, fast-evolving consumers’ expectations and demands.
To stay competitive, marketers need to stay on top of the key technologies and innovations that are driving change in the marketing industry.
Here are a few ways to better understand your on-site customers’ journeys and improve your conversions:
1. Keep an Eye on Popular Buying Paths
One of the easiest ways to dive into your on-site buying journeys is to look into your Google Analytics reports. Google Analytics offers some conversion optimization tools inside their “Behavior” section. To access it:
- Log in to your Google Analytics account
- Click “Behavior” in the left-hand sidebar
- Select “Behavior flow”
There you can see your site users’ paths throughout your site, visualized:
It’s somewhat basic but it’s a solid first step to understanding your site visitors’ behavior and:
- What is the most common next step after people land on your site
- Which landing page performs best in terms of directing people through the correct path (How can this success be applies to other landing page?)
- How many people each landing page tends to lose (Is there a way to fix that?)
You can play with the settings to:
- Show more or less details
- Create segments to better understand your customers. For example, I usually monitor branded search referrals (those who typed any variation of my brand name) separately.
2. Implement Smart on-Site Search
On-site search is considered one of the most important elements of the site, for two reasons:
- People do use it a lot to locate products or pages they need: on average, one third of web visitors perform an on-site search. And it’s actually a conversion booster. Consumers who use search, know exactly what they want and if they can locate the search box fast enough, they will be ready to buy right away!
- Internal site search is the goldmine for information: Search puts users in control of their own actions, so you can sit back and monitor what they do want and how to best serve them next time.
People who perform a site-search are twice as likely to convert
That being said, if your on-site search is not performing well, you may be missing out on a lot of conversions and lots of data.
AddSearch is a tool that allows you to add a smart internal search functionality to your site. The tool includes a powerful new personalization feature, allowing you to guide users through your site based on their previous interactions with your pages.
With personalized search, each website visitor is shown search results depending on their previous behavior and personal settings.
Personalization can be influenced by anything from a certain page view or a click up to preferred search settings, account information or purchase history.
The tool also collects all of your search query data into handy reports, allowing you to gain superior levels of understanding of what your customers are looking for:
3. Use Advanced Retargeting and Conversion Funnel Building Tools
Finteza is the smart conversion optimization platform offering a variety of useful features, including:
- Traffic evaluation allowing you to identify risky traffic sources or weird patterns
- Event tracking allowing you to keep a close eye on important links and buttons on your key landing pages
- Conversion analytics allowing you to identify which step of the funnel is losing your customers
- On-site advertising feature allowing you to schedule on-site advertising campaigns targeting a particular holiday or season
All of those features above become really powerful when you add Finteza’s retargeting feature allowing you to customize users’ experience based on previous on-site behavior.
For example:
- Serve special offers to your customers based on previous purchases
- Use upsells that compliment what they bought previously
- Advertise products that compliment article or guides a user read or downloaded
The possibilities here are actually limitless. You can play with settings and discover more personalization marketing opportunities as you move along.
On the bright side, while this process may be somewhat time-consuming, it will help you understand your target customer better.