Digital Engagement To Enhance The Customer Experience
Every online interaction a consumer has with your brand is part of your digital engagement strategy. It begins with the first point of contact and continues all the way through the customer's journey. It’s critical to ensure that each step of the user experience is a positive one – that’s why it’s important to pay close attention to every detail, even the things that seem the most minuscule such as where to place copy or the color of a hyperlink.
When done right, a sound customer engagement strategy will lead to an increase in sales and customer loyalty.
Provide A Seamless User Experience
Think about the primary reason customers will visit your site, and ensure that goal is met quickly and easily. This means a well organized website, a clear path to all the important pages a potential customer wants to visit, and minimal number of clicks necessary to get them there.
Focus groups are a great idea in order to evaluate user experience. Hearing from users and tapping into their thought process gleans more insight than simply monitoring user behavior on a website. For example, you may analyze your website statistics and notice that majority of customers are landing on a certain page, but that doesn’t tell you if they were in fact looking for that specific page, or if they ended up there as a result of an ongoing marketing campaign. Asking them details about their user experience can give you a better understanding.
Simulate In-Store Experiences
If you can remember the days of hanging out in malls for hours on end, you know that the in-person shopping experience was fun and engaging. That social aspect of shopping, even if you weren’t actually looking to buy anything in particular, is what we need to recreate online. That desire to hang out, share favorite finds with friends, and peruse just to see what’s new. This is why personalization and creating unique experiences are key to digital engagement. With the absence of human touch, personalization can give customers a more welcoming feeling and pique their interest.
Personalization is no longer a nice-to-have, customers have come to expect it – whether that be tailored recommendations for a more relevant online experience or anticipating the customer’s wants and needs.
With all the recent advancements in artificial intelligence and chatbot technology, it’s possible to use these technologies for automation and personalization that enhances the customer’s experience. But it’s critical to utilize these tools well and not create a source of frustration with chatbots that don’t work well or don’t answer a potential consumer’s concerns.
Engage Through Videos
In today’s video-centric world, videos go a long way. 87% of video marketers reported that video gives them a positive ROI. And that’s no surprise considering that video is the number one source of information for 66% of people. Furthermore, mobile is leading the way with more than 75% of all video views taking place on mobile devices.
With a phone in almost everyone’s pockets that can quickly and easily create professional-looking videos, more video content gets uploaded in 30 days than what has been broadcast on three major US television networks in thirty years.
Focus On An Omnichannel Experience
Today, the customer journey starts in one place, whether that be in-store or on a mobile device and continues on other channels. It’s critical for companies to effectively engage customers across various digital devices and allow customers to pick up where they left off seamlessly across any device. Continually enhance the user experience no matter how or where they choose to interact with your brand.
Streamlined customer communication across websites, mobile apps, social media, and in-store are crucial to engage potential customers and provide a personalized experience.
This consistent and positive experience across all touch-points is key to an effective customer engagement strategy. And when this multi-channel engagement strategy is done right, it can build brand awareness, increase customer satisfaction, and increase sales.
