Great customer journeys are made up of great experiences. Today, we’re releasing a new way to help you deliver them on your website. Introducing… Banners.
Banners sit flush against the top, bottom or side of the screen. With a strategically placed Banner, you can influence purchase decisions at critical moments. Use them to encourage browsers to sign up to your newsletter, highlight flash sales to returning customers or cross-sell to customers with items in their cart.
Deliver content that converts when it matter most
Bring your Banners to life using Yieldify’s extensive range of powerful content types: encourage urgency with a countdown clock, create FOMO with Dynamic Social Proof or drive up order value with Dynamic Promotions – and serve that message to the right customer based on their unique behaviour.
From Overlays and Notifications to our recently launched Floating buttons, the Yieldify Conversion Platform gives you access to a range of tools that helps you to optimise the customer journey. With Yieldify’s flexible range of on-site formats, you can maximise relevant and personal engagement with every customer to take your conversion strategy to the next level.
Health-focused food box company Mindful Chef knows that building trust is key for food and drink brands in the e-commerce space. To encourage new users to try its service, the brand combined social proof with a special offer to recapture the attention of abandoning visitors.
Using Yieldify, Mindful Chef showcased its excellent Trustpilot score to first-time visitors about to abandon the website. By highlighting this message, Mindful Chef demonstrated to browsing customers how other health-conscious foodies were fans of the service to give them confidence to convert. To ensure no duplicate submission, they campaign only showed to visitors that had not submitted their email address through a Yieldify campaign previously.
From #chefmode to the ubiquitous #avocadotoast, social media has become one of the most important channels for food and drinks brands online as consumers are #eatingfortheinsta. But how do you keep the journey going once they land on your website?
Recipe subscription box service Simply Cook tailors messages depending on where visitors have arrived from using referral source targeting. In the example below, visitors from Facebook were served an overlay offering them a discount in exchange for their email address, providing an extra reason to convert and take-up the trial box offer. This campaign alone generated over 7,000 new leads for Simply Cook.
Building on the success of this campaign, the brand is now working with Yieldify to deliver personalised offers to other visitor segments arriving on site from different traffic sources targeting, for example, those arriving from vegetarian or gluten-free content on Facebook.
We caught up with Ella Tsang, Digital Specialist at Maybelline New York Canada to understand how the iconic brand is navigating the challenges and changes within beauty eCommerce. Read on to get the scoop on leveraging influencers, working with Amazon, and building loyalty.
Ella Tsang, Digital Specialist at Maybelline New York
Yieldify: Social media has been credited with the democratization of the beauty industry, helping independent brands like Glossier reach audiences previously unheard of. As a more established player, Maybelline is considered somewhat of a master when it comes to social media. Can you tell us more about where influencers fit in when it comes to engaging your eCommerce visitors?
Ella: We work with a lot of social media influencers to have an always-on presence, it’s not just for campaigns but really trying to seed our products in advance to influencers to create a buzz.
Usually, we start with the influencer at the beginning of a campaign to build awareness and to help capture our audience’s attention. Then after that, we’ll follow up with a retargeting phase with a very specific conversion type call to action.
We’ll drive visitors to our site for purchase as we have an integration called Shoppable, which allows us to handle transactions on our site, even though those transactions are fulfilled by our e-retailers such as Walmart.
Maybelline New York has worked with influencers worldwide, turning them into brand ambassadors. Makeupshayla and MannyMUA generated over 8.3m views on YouTube (Econsultancy, 2017)
Yieldify:Speaking of Amazon, can you tell us a bit more about how as a mass brand you work with different retailers, and if there are any challenges or benefits associated with that?
Ella: We’re testing lots of different campaigns and initiatives directly with our retailers, especially on Amazon as they’ve now launched Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) in Canada. So for example, bidding on certain keywords, so that when people are on Amazon searching for a keyword like “mascara”, we’re there front and center.
We’re really trying to understand the types of campaigns that Amazon can run for us, and the success these can generate. They know their audience and their customers very well, so this is a big opportunity and part of the reason why we’re testing these different types of campaigns with them.
Yieldify:It sounds like you’re working quite closely with Amazon, can you tell us more?
Ella: Sure, so we’ve got an upcoming launch where we’re testing different ad types, working directly with them to drive to the product page on Amazon.
This will enable us to see what the impact is. In the future it’s this type of collaborative approach that I see us moving toward as it’s mutually beneficial – it’s not only a partnership just for us to make the sale, but it’s really about how do we as a brand elevate websites like Amazon as a beauty eCommerce retailer, as a lot of people don’t necessarily think about going there to purchase their make-up.
Yieldify: What are the challenges associated with selling via other retailers, and what have you found works well?
Ella: In terms of the customer journey, sometimes we drive to our site for purchases, but we also need to look at driving directly to e-retailers, like Walmart.ca and Amazon.ca to make it as smooth of a journey for our consumer as possible.
There are many things that we’re testing and learning from along the way. What we have found is that by sequencing our messaging, first exposing the audience to a more generic product awareness type ad, involving influencers, more generic product benefits and then re-targeting them with more specific messaging to purchase, this works well.
One of the challenges when trying to do this is being able to access customer data and really understand which digital campaigns specifically led to the sale. With our retailers, we have limited information and that’s one of the key drawbacks of not being in e-commerce ourselves. We don’t necessarily have a clear tracking of the entire journey. But as much as possible we’re trying to test and see how do we get as clear of an ROI number as we can get to.
Yieldify: So far, we’ve talked about the customer journey leading up to the conversion, what about after that, how does Maybelline go about creating loyalty?
Ella: Loyalty is something that we’re still working towards. It’s difficult, again linked to the idea of not really owning all the data. Historically all the purchases that are happening online have been directly through the e-retailer site, but this is something we are trying to address. For example, we’re working with Shoppable, a checkout technology, so that visitors are able to add to cart on our site and complete the purchase, but the order itself is fulfilled by the e-retailer.
From there we’re actually able to keep the data relating to every single conversion and this is a huge step for us as we really have the full picture of our consumer. This gives us a lot of opportunity from a customer loyalty perspective, as we can work on things like following up via email, asking the consumer, “How was your purchasing experience?” Really trying to keep up that conversation with her after her purchase on our site.
Also, because we now know what a customer has actually purchased we can start thinking about how do we then continue to personalize her experience? Something such as another product that might be complementary, building her basket outside those things we already know that she likes. That’s the direction that we’re moving in. It’s really about having that knowledge of people who purchase online and being able to personalize their experience better.
2017 saw e-commerce sales surge by more than 10% in April thanks to the Easter effect. To find out more we’ve analyzed data from more than 200 websites to bring you the stats you need to know, and ideas you can action to make the most of the spring season.
First, let’s start with the numbers
We analysed traffic, conversions and average order values across April 2017 from over 200 e-commerce websites. Here’s what we discovered…
Desktop vs. mobile
Desktop traffic was down by between 11% on Easter weekend versus the previous weekend, suggesting consumers were browsing in the lead up to the holiday via this device. They were also buying – peaking on Sunday 9th April, with an average conversion rate of 4.21%.
When it came to Easter weekend traffic, mobile was king, up by 5% versus the weekend before, and up 7.41% versus a non-holiday weekend in May. However conversions did not tell the same story – they were less than half that of desktop at 1.83%.
What can we learn from this?
Launch desktop campaigns ahead of time to capture these browsers and turn them into buyers. This is something that the e-commerce sites we looked at seemed to be doing a good job of, achieving a conversion rate nearly double the oft-cited 2% ‘industry standard’.
Great, but what about lagging mobile conversion rates?
With the news that Instagram has now launched shoppable posts in 8 new countries, and the fact that the top 10 most popular apps on mobile are all social networks, it’s pretty clear that social media plays a critical role in e-commerce and product discovery on mobile.
What can we learn from this?
Think about how you can make it easy for customers browsing on mobile to navigate your site and discover what they’re looking for quickly and easily to improve the chances they’ll convert (hint: see idea no. 4 in our Easter e-commerce handbook for more!)
And what about for specific industries?
Knowing that optimising the customer journey is never one-size fits all, we took a look at how different types of e-commerce websites performed, specifically focusing on Retail and Travel.
Unexpectedly perhaps, Travel websites saw lower traffic across the Easter period, perhaps indicating that consumers browsing had already found what they were looking for further in advance of the time period we examined.
There were still a few last minute bookers around though, with conversion rates for Travel peaking on the Monday before Easter, at 4.48%. Another peak in conversion rate occurred just after the Easter break, as the back to work blues began to set in, with conversions up to 4.63% versus the average of 3.69% for the month as a whole.
What can we learn from this?
While traffic didn’t see a huge increase the jump in conversions indicates there are still bookings up for grabs ahead of Easter so use the natural deadline of the holiday to drive urgency. Take a look at some tactics to do that here, or sign up for our upcoming masterclass, where we’ll be covering this topic in more depth!
And what about Retail?
Traffic to Retail websites saw the biggest increase during the weekend leading up to the Easter holiday but was also up versus an average weekend on Easter itself.
The average conversion rate for Retail was actually lower than Travel for April overall, at 3.09% versus 3.69%. And while conversion rates did spike on Easter Monday, this was not as significant as seen for Travel.
Average order values were also slightly lower for Retail compared to an average weekend, with baskets coming in at an average of £93, perhaps impacted by the mid-season sales many retailers were running during this period.
What can we learn from this?
Retailers should ensure they are using discounts carefully, so as not to impact average order values too much. From our sample it looks like most were getting this right, balancing offering discounts with other tactics such as free delivery, or highlighting their USPs to get the conversion. See how skincare brand Kiehl’s did this in our case study.
What next?
Based on this analysis and our experience of running over 50,000 campaigns across 500 websites, we’ve put together 5 examples of campaigns you can run over the spring period to drive more revenue and improve the customer journey. Hop on over here to get your copy, and Happy Easter!
As one of the biggest forces in global luxury spending e-commerce brands need to ensure they are catering to Chinese consumers. French beauty brand Lancôme achieved this by creating a tailored lead gen campaign to serve different audiences based on language.
Using Yieldify’s flexible targeting capability the brand was able to serve an overlay welcoming visitors using a Chinese language browser with a message that would resonate with them. For more on catering to global e-commerce audiences check out our guide, How to win in global e-commerce.
Highlighting special offers with Mpix
Photography printing service Mpix wanted to highlight its 50% off large prints offer to visitors as they moved throughout the site. Working with Yieldify the brand implemented a floating button to subtly remind users of the offer. When clicked, this expanded to an overlay providing more information about the offer, and directed them toward the offer landing page.
Making the most of referral traffic with AHLT
Home fragrance and accessories brand A House Like This (AHLT) wanted to make the most of referral traffic from online publishers. After being featured in the SheerLuxe Mothers Day gift guide AHLT worked with Yieldify to launch a lead generation campaign to welcome visitors arriving from SheerLuxe.
An overlay mirroring the SheerLuxe brand offered free delivery in exchange for the visitor’s email address and was a clear indicator to visitors that they were in the right place to get their Mother’s Day gifts.
Looking to create customer journeys that convert? Come and get inspired by some of our favourite client work this month.
Discovering the perfect Valentine’s gift with Fyndiq
Swedish e-commerce marketplace Fyndiq wanted to help visitors discover the perfect gift from its wide selection of products this Valentine’s Day. To do this, the team created a corner notification to highlight that Fyndiq could help visitors find gifts for different recipients. Visitors could choose to see products for best friends, for him, for her or even for themselves! After selecting their chosen recipient visitors were shown a curated selection of gifts, helping them discover relevant items for their Valentine.
Fragrance and cosmetics retailer Perfumania wanted to ensure it was making the most of the Valentine’s Day opportunity as online stores typically see an increase in traffic in the lead up to this $19.7 billion holiday. Taking advantage of natural deadlines is an effective way to inspire urgency, and countdown clocks perform particularly well in this context. With this in mind, Perfumania showed visitors a helpful reminder of the big day via a countdown notification, driving urgency to purchase. For more on mastering the art of urgency check out our guide here.
How do you keep customers engaged on site? With difficulty. Considering that customers bouncing is a perennial challenge and 69% abandon without checking out, it’s never been more important to have quick and creative ways to interact with your customers, to keep them on track to purchase or encourage them to perform other actions that support your objectives.
From subtle messages delivered by Double Notifications to FOMO-inducing Dynamic Social Proof, the Yieldify Conversion Platform helps you deliver a range of approaches to keep those visitors engaged. Today, we’re pleased to launch another format to help you take your conversion strategy even further: the floating button format.
A powerful new way to interact with customers
The floating button format helps you engage customers on desktop as well as mobile. By providing this simple interaction, customers can expand a passive onsite message into an engaging overlay.
You might, for example, catch a customer’s attention with a subtle Notification and then, if they chose to engage, give them the option to share their email to unlock a promotion. Check out how major cosmetics brand Essie used a floating button format to achieve just that here.
Built to enhance the on-site journey
Keeping your offers in sight and in mind throughout the onsite journey can prevent code-hunters from straying off-site to compare offers and reassure them that an offer just for them can be accessed at the moment of their choosing. Until interacted with, the floating button is a persistent fixture on the page, meaning you can easily follow customers along their journey, keeping the offer front and centre.
The perfect way to interact on mobile
The floating button format is designed with mobile shoppers in mind. With it, you can easily encourage conversions and capture leads from on-the-go shoppers. You can also use the format to drive app downloads, growing loyalty and increasing the opportunity for return purchases.
European and US-based e-commerce brands are increasingly turning their attention to how they can win in high-growth, developing markets like China, the Middle East and Africa.
Last week saw luxury fashion unicorn Farfetch announce a partnership in the Middle East, after signing a deal with JD.com, China’s second-largest e-commerce company, in 2017. It’s not just luxury brands either. Interest in British institutions like Dyson, Clarks, and Lipton has seen growth of 100% YoY on JD.com, leading the company to announce plans to sell 2bn worth of UK goods to Chinese consumers over the next few years.
So as one of the biggest holidays in the APAC region, Chinese New Year, approaches, we decided to take a look at how e-commerce brands are already engaging with consumers in this market and the lessons to be learned.
Creating capsule collections
Each year, luxury brands are increasingly cashing in on the demand for holiday gifts traditionally given to family and friends during Chinese New Year by producing capsule collections themed around the holiday.
With 2018 marking the year of the dog, commemorative products show no signs of slowing down. However, as Chinese luxury buyers become more sophisticated, and tastes evolve, brands who choose this route need to carefully consider the products they produce.
Consumers have been vocal in the past few years when they feel misrepresented or misunderstood by designers referencing Chinese culture, with overuse of the colors gold, red and zodiac symbols as a particular bugbear. Brands should ensure chosen references fit with consumer perceptions, and be realistic – is adding authentic Chinese elements possible or even relevant within their brand aesthetic?
Gucci manages to combine the holiday with the personality of the brand, namely its creative director Alessandro Michele. By utilizing personal portraits of the designer’s Boston Terriers, Bosco, and Osco, as the inspiration, Gucci comes across as authentic and legitimate with its year of the dog capsule collection.
The lesson?
Don’t be lazy. Do your research and localise beyond messaging, looking at things like demographic differences and shopping habits. Then bring a little bit of personality into the mix to demonstrate a genuine connection between your brand and the local holiday.
Win on WeChat
As one of the most popular messaging apps in Asia, WeChat (Chinese name: Weixin 微信) is a crucial platform for brands in the region. With more than 697 million monthly active users Western brands like Burberry, Chanel and BMW have been running campaigns on there for a few years now, but December 2017 saw Tencent, the company that owns WeChat, step it up a gear with the launch of WeChat Brand Zone.
Previously a closed network, the new feature allows brands to display their official accounts, online stores and other custom content to users who don’t subscribe, capturing new audiences searching for them.
Brands already on board include Longchamp, Gucci, Cartier and Louis Vuitton, hoping that along with the billions of virtual red packets WeChat users will send this year, they might have time for some e-commerce too.
The lesson?
Keep up to date on local social networks: WeChat has 616.5 million users and is moving into e-commerce and payments, so brands need to make sure they’re staying on top of the opportunities in this fast-moving space.
Celebrity and KOL endorsements
One way to grab attention on networks like Weibo and WeChat is through partnerships with Chinese celebrities and Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). For the 2018 New Year fast fashion chain H&M enlisted the stars of the smash hit drama Eternal Love, actors Yang Mi and Mark Chao. Yang Mi, who has previously worked with brands such as Michael Kors, can generate comments and likes in the millions per post, invaluable exposure for brands wanting to make a splash.
While shopping and gifting is a big feature of Chinese New Year, it’s also one of the busiest times for travel – something not lost on Airbnb as they try to break into the region. Enlisting the help of KOLs who invited their parents to travel overseas with them, the campaign touches on many cultural challenges Chinese millennials face with their parents, such as working away from home, or explaining why they might not want to settle down at a young age.
The lesson?
Get to know the local celebrities, KOLs and micro-influencers. Having a strategy for digital influencers in China is more than a nice-to-have – it’s critical to tap into the millennial market.
User-generated content
According to Kantar, content creation like the examples above is no longer just for celebrities and KOLs, with consumers seeking to take on this role as they crave more in-depth relationships with brands. This can be a quick win for brands if done correctly. For example, NARS simply asked Weibo users to rename one of their iconic products for China, quickly going viral on the platform.
The lesson?
It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, the easier it is for consumers to participate the better. Timing is also key – post this type of content in the run-up to a big holiday to give fans time to respond.
Gamification
China has embraced mobile payments faster than other markets, with e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Alipay service clocking up 520 million users. Every day these users scan QR codes to pay for things, so for Chinese New Year, the provider has partnered with Coca-Cola to use this functionality to inspire some holiday fun.
Similar to the Christmas polar bears we’ve come to know in the west, Coca-Cola has clay doll characters that are synonymous with Chinese New Year. Using augmented reality (AR), consumers can scan these characters anywhere they find them, unlocking AR animations. After watching, consumers receive a red envelope with a surprise discount.
The lesson?
Be aware of the adoption rates of new technologies – just because a market is still growing doesn’t mean it’s behind. In fact, the lower the internet penetration rate of a country, the more likely the users are young, affluent and educated. Augmented reality is a case in point, with consumer adoption rates of this technology in China among the highest in the world.
If you’d like to learn more about how to approach global e-commerce in China, the Middle East and beyond then read more in our guide which covers everything from data collection to business regulations. And if you happen to be based in London don’t miss #Journey2018, where Marks and Spencer will be talking about their international e-commerce efforts as just one of the hot topics covered by our speakers and panels.
Premium dog food brand Happy Dog was looking to motivate customers to check out with a higher-value basket. To do this, the team took advantage of one of the newest smart content types available through the Yieldify Conversion Platform, progress bars. A neat way to add to the customer journey, the progress bar subtly shows how far away Happy Dog customers are from achieving free delivery, providing a clear visual encouragement to increase their order value.
Luxury fashion consignment site HEWI London makes buying and selling pre-worn items easy, but with limited inventory ensuring customers can discover the brands and products they’re looking for is key. To help customers discover everything HEWI London has to offer, the team implemented three campaigns using the Yieldify Conversion Platform.
When a visitor arrives on site, a sidebar curating the hottest products directs them to page showcasing the favourites of the month. Then when they click through to a product, visitors are invited to discover more from that brand with a corner notification, offering another way to browse the site based on their preferences. Finally, if a user motions to exit without purchasing, they are shown an overlay prompting them to sign up to stay updated with new arrivals, and given a promo code to tempt them to stay on-site and make their first purchase.
Great onsite experiences keep your customers engaged and on track to checkout. Today, we’ve launched a new way to help you do just that.
Your customers are always on the look out for the best deal. In fact, a big reason why 69.23% of online shoppers abandon their cart is because they’re hunting for the best deal on the same or a similar product elsewhere.
So how do you fight this? There’s a lot you can do to your website to curb bounce rate, but if you’re going to consistently keep your customers from straying offsite, you’re going to need the right tools to engage them throughout their user journey.
A powerful new way to do this is to show a progress bar delivered by the Yieldify Conversion Platform.
Progress bars visualise how close a customer is to unlocking your onsite offers. The latest in a series of new smart content types available from Yieldify, it’s an inventive tactic you can use to optimise the customer journey.
Check out this video to see progress bars in action:
Encourage higher order value
Youcan motivate customers to check out with a higher-value basket by showing them a persistent visual of their progress towards unlocking an onsite offer. This is particularly effective when combined with a Dynamic Promotion which shows how much more a customer would need to spend to qualify for your onsite deal. It’s a great way to potentially increase average order value.
Visualise progress to offers to curb abandonment
Failure to show costs transparently leads customers to ditch websites – 24% abandon their check out because they can’t calculate order value in advance – but increasing the visibility of your onsite offers can boost conversions. We’ve seen higher conversion rates and order values when customers see multi-offer progress bars that shows all the available discounts and their required thresholds.
Enrich the customer journey
A progress bar can be a neat way to add to the customer journey, optimising it for conversion. By showing a subtle bottom bar or corner notification, you can engage customers with a relevant message without interrupting their shopping experience.
British Ceramic Tile, the largest manufacturer of its kind in the UK, wanted to improve the customer onsite journey during the Black Friday rush of Nov 24th.
With Black Friday enthusiasm being more of a challenge in the Europe, BCT used this opportunity to highlight its current discount to abandoning visitors whilst creating excitement using a countdown clock.
In this campaign, BCT highlighted its USP of ‘up to 70% off’ in an overlay to customers who had come in search of Black Friday deals but were abandoning site. The eye-catching design had a clear call-to-action which took customers to a specific landing page with discounted items.
How ECCO UK used countdown timers to encourage spend during the ‘Cyber Weekend’
With site traffic remaining above average during Cyber Monday, there’s still an opportunity to encourage spend and increase conversions. With the Yieldify Conversion Platform, ECCO UK was able to encourage spend with its customers still browsing for discounts after Black Friday.
Featuring a countdown clock and triggering when a customer abandoned site or had been inactive for over 20 seconds, this bespoke campaign created a sense of urgency by showing in real-time how many days, minutes and seconds were left of the Cyber Weekend before the deals on offer would no longer be available.
We’ve been listed as one of the UK’s top 25 technology companies!
We’re delighted to share that we’ve been placed 24th on the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 in recognition of our 1,144% growth. The Fast 50 result comes hot on the heels of our appearance in the 2017 Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100 – also in a top 25 position!
For the past 20 years, the Deloitte Fast 50 has been a leading award programme, showcasing the fastest growing companies in UK tech. Previous winners include Skyscanner and Farfetch and we’re proud to rub shoulders with the likes of Deliveroo and GoCardless on this year’s shortlist.
You need precise ways to connect with your customers. With Flexible targeting for The Yieldify Conversion Platform, you can now optimize the customer journey using the data on every page of your website.
71% of consumers prefer ads tailored to interests and shopping habits. In truth, people don’t hate marketing, they just hate bad marketing. And that’s just as true when visitors are browsing your website. With Flexible targeting, you can draw from the rich data on every page of your website to power your customer journeys. It makes it easy for you to give every customer a relevant, personal experience.
Deliver personal customer journeys fast
Improving your conversion rates doesn’t have to be a prolonged and painful process. Forget heavy-duty personalization – which 79% of 800 digital marketers surveyed say it is not easy to implement. Flexible targeting is powered by page-level data so there’s no need for lengthy and complex data integrations or linking up your data sources.
The freedom to write your own rules
How does it work? Flexible targeting allows you to target based on any datapoint you can see on a web page.
Let’s say you wanted to increase ticket purchases on specific journeys. You could use Flexible targeting to show your message to visitors browsing only certain routes, combined with Dynamic Social Proof to inspire FOMO (fear of missing out) and urgency in them.
Or why not drive account sign-ups by using Flexible targeting to identify logged-out visitors and give them a reason to sign up now:
Or you could determine which offer to show to abandoning website visitors based on the options they choose on a quote form:
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg – with Flexible targeting, the possibilities are almost endless. What’s more, you can use Flexible targeting rules on any campaign delivered by the Yieldify Conversion Platform. You can also combine it with an extensive range of other targeting and triggering rules to deliver unique website experiences that sell.
Expert advice and set up support
Yieldify’s Customer Success team is here to ensure that you get every last drop of value from this capability. The team will analyse your website customer journeys and recommend valuable use cases to support your objectives. Then, our Technical Solutions team will map your website and capture data points to get you set up with Flexible targeting rules at speed – you won’t need to lift a finger.
Want to know which creatives increase conversions or how to make customers aware of your latest seasonal products? Check out our favorite client work this month!
How Fyndiq shaped customer journeys to increase awareness of its seasonal range
Swedish online marketplace Fyndiq wanted to increase awareness of its seasonal products. Its campaign, which triggered on exit, encouraged customers towards its Hallowe’en items and led to a page displaying the stock available.
With the seasonal period being an important time for increasing sales, Fyndiq ran the campaign throughout the month of October to increase awareness for those who were making preparations at the start of the month to those making last-minute purchases nearer the end.
How Treatwell increased lead generation by using animation to highlight USP messages
One key objective for beauty and wellness booking site Treatwell is lead generation, supporting its sophisticated email marketing programmes in encouraging subscribers to return and book treatments.
The team wanted to test whether the introduction of an animated creative in its overlays would increase engagement in comparison to a static overlay displaying the same message. This overlay, which triggered after 10 seconds of inactivity, encouraged first-time customers to sign up to the Treatwell newsletter.
Yieldify gathered data from 400 e-commerce websites across the world in order to show you the latest industry trends in Q3 2017. Here’s what we found…
How have conversion rates changed this quarter?
Conversion rates in retail grew consistently over the summer, with travel also taking a leap towards the end of the quarter. Finance, on the other hand, saw a decline…
Finance suffers the highest bounce rate
While each vertical loses half of its visitors immediately, finance websites struggle the most with getting their traffic to linger.
Customers researched holidays in August, but purchased in September
New visitor traffic to travel e-commerce sites peaked at 65% in August – however, conversion rates only rose from 5% to 7% in September.
This could mean customers are waiting for more affordable travel packages. Are you highlighting your best deals?
The 5-minute mark
The likelihood of retail e-commerce customers converting increases up to 14% after 5 minutes. As you’d expect, the trend continues the longer a customer stays on site – does your site’s CR trend reflect this?
Q3’s retail AOV grew
Average retail order value grew 9% from its level in Q2, with AOV peaking at £117.80 in August. Those summer sales were popular…
Desktop is still king for conversions
Mobile might be the device to watch when it comes to traffic, but desktop still wins when it comes to conversion rates.
Does your e-commerce store match up to what you see here? If not, we can help. Get in touch with us and we’ll help you turn your traffic into sales.
What should an e-commerce site expect this Black Friday? We crunched last year’s data to find out…
Black Friday: despite what some naysayers may say and new entrants like Amazon’s Prime Day, it’s still one of the biggest events in the e-commerce calendar. It’s even evolved in recent years to be ‘less a discounting event, more a marketing event‘ as retailers increasing look to deliver loyalty-driving value as much as acquisition-driving discounts.
The question remains: what should an e-commerce business expect to see on the big day? To answer the dilemma, we dug deep into our benchmarking data from over 400 websites and what they saw on last year’s Black Friday. Here’s what we found…
What is influencer marketing – and is it worth your time? We’re about to find out.
As marketing continues to evolve, the way we interact with customers has to change with it. One of the latest shifts in practice is using influencer marketing. With its frenzied addition to the arimpasenal of engagement tactics, it’s easy to mistake this sudden trend as a flash in the pan, but the right influencer marketing strategy can truly set your brand apart.
What is influencer marketing?
The trend is a shift in focus away from marketing directly to a specific group of consumers, to using an influential person – relevant to that group – who can provide marketers access to them. So, instead using of marketing methods like display or social media to raise awareness of your product, an influencer – using their platform – does this for you.
Who counts as an influencer?
An influencer can be anyone, but they need to be trusted and recognized for their thought leadership and expertise on a given topic. They resonate strongly with those who follow them and have a far-reaching impact on social media.
Why use influencers?
With 88% of consumers trusting reviews from strangers as much as they would their peers, social proof tactics such as reviews become markers of a trustworthy and worthwhile purchase. By the same token, the value of a recommendation from a public figure who resonates with consumers creates a clear use case for influencer marketing.
Marketers are already aware of the benefits of this, with 84% planning to launch at least one campaign featuring an influencer. Meanwhile, 60% of beauty and fashion brands already have an influencer in place.
Crucially, influencers are a major component in reaching a particular burgeoning consumer group: Gen Z. With the oldest of this generation currently finishing university, they’re true digital natives. 70% of teenagers who subscribe to Youtube say they relate to influencers on the channel more than traditional celebrities such as actors and models. A further 63% note they prefer to see “real people” they can relate to in ads.
Who’s using influencers?
There are already plenty of success stories when it comes to influencer marketing. Here are two:
PrettyLittleThing
The fast-fashion brand ships out 20,000 orders a day. How did they achieve this? In part, an influencer partnership with Kylie Jenner.
Using the celebrity-socialite to model its products, PLT appealed to Jenner’s fans – members of the elusive and unreceptive-to-marketing Gen Z. Shoppers who wanted to emulate her fashion sense and lifestyle were able to do so wearing items modeled by the influencer herself.
PLT’s Instagram, with over 2 million followers, continues to work with influencers and appeal to the aesthetics favored by their now-loyal Gen Z audience.
Dollar Beard Club
Another brand that has seen a positive impact following a partnership with influencers is the Dollar Beard Club.
The subscription-model company used the self-proclaimed ‘King of Instagram’ Dan Bilzerian, amongst others, in its ‘The Truth about Beards’ Youtube short. This funny video, capitalizing on ‘No shave November’ increased subscriber numbers to its channel and has racked up over 130m views, creating a niche following online.
Do influencers only appeal to Gen Z?
No, influencers are not just a Gen Z phenomenon. With 71% of Baby Boomers and Gen X happy to repost shared content, they’re actually more likely to share on social media than any other generation.
So, how can I market to other generations using influencers?
By using micro-influencers. It may be better to create a campaign in partnership with an individual who has a niche – but engaged – following to market your product.
Gen X bloggers like ‘Style me Sunday’ – who notes her site as being for “curvy, over 30s and mums” – appeals to specific demographic who frequently comment on or re-post her content. Other micro-influencers such as ‘The Roaming Boomers’ with their select following of retired baby-boomers looking to travel, could also be partnered with:
Where do I look for influencers?
Predictive trend tools like Trendspottr, traackr and Sysomos locate photos, influencers, tags and topics which frequently have high engagement. Using these tools you can pick a topic and influencer that you want to use.
However, though these tools can point you in the right direction, 84% of influencers are still found via manual searches on social media – as only you can know if an influencer is truly the right fit for you brand.
How do I pick the right influencer?
An influencer needs to have three things: reach, resonance and relevance.
Reach: does your influencer have a sufficient audience?
Influencers have follower counts averaging from 100,000 upwards. Those with followers that are less than 100,000 but over 10,000 are called ‘micro-influencers’. Micro-influencers, despite their relatively small reach, tend to have higher engagement with their following.
Resonance: will your influencer resonate with your intended audience?
Your influencer may have far-reaching engagement, but are they credible? If you partner with an influencer who is not seen by consumers as being trustworthy, knowledgeable or personally involved with the content, this will also reflect badly on your brand.
Relevance: is your content and influencer relevant?
It may be tempting to opt for a big name as they’ll likely have reached, but this doesn’t always mean that they’re relevant. The influencer you chose must not only be relevant to your brand image and messaging but have relevance socially so that the partnership does not feel dated.
How much can I expect to pay an influencer?
This depends on the influencer. Some influencers have a flat fee which they expect to cover the duration of the partnership. Others are paid for every interaction with their sponsored post or compensated with ‘freebies’ from your brand.
As influencer marketing continues to cement its place within modern marketing, 19% of marketers note that they have seen influencer fees increase by up to 50%. At the extreme, brands have splashed upwards of £50,000 for a sponsored post on Snapchat and £75,000 for Facebook.
As fees continue to skyrocket, a shift in focus towards the more budget-friendly micro-influencer has intensified, with more than 55% of agencies incorporating them into their future strategies.
How do I measure its success?
As the impact of influencer marketing continues to increase, so does the need for measurable ROI. The debate is still rife regarding whether sales or engagement should be the deciding metric for success.
79% of marketers currently use engagement to measure ROI, as many influencer partnerships aim to increase awareness and cement brand positioning, prioritizing this over sales.
However, a need for a more measurable ROI has been noted by Rakuten as a top priority for marketers working with influencers, as budgeting for campaigns without measurable ROI also continues to contribute to the attribution challenge.
Will this bubble burst?
Regulations for working with influencers are getting tougher. The FTC has recently made examples of prominent influencers and brands by fining those who weren’t transparent with its marketing partnerships. Sponsored posts now require explicit signposting that they have been paid for.
This could become the Achilles’ heel of the influencer marketing trend. It’s possible that this turns off consumers from engaging with influencers’ posts, especially members of Gen Z who are particularly averse to having their social channels infiltrated and being sold to.
Conclusion: what does the future hold?
While influencer marketing as we know it may eventually wane due to increasing fees, a limited pool of influencers and new regulations, this latest trend is revolutionizing marketing.
The methods marketers use to increase brand awareness and the eventual purchase of products online will continue to change. As more influencers work directly with brands to devise marketing strategies, brand awareness will evolve to become less about disrupting a social space and more about increasing transparency by seamlessly blending in with content that is already being produced and consumed, integrating organically to be an accepted part of it.
Influencer Marketing FAQs
? What is influencer marketing and how does it work?
Influencer marketing is a collaboration between an online influencer and a brand. The influencer will agree to market the products or services of the brand to their audience.
? What are the benefits of influencer marketing?
There are many benefits to influencer marketing, which include: 1) Quickly builds trust with your target audience 2) Improve brands awareness and recognition 3) Provide you with great content opportunities 4) Effectively reaches and engages with your target audience
? What is an influencer marketing campaign?
An influencer marketing campaign will involve a brand forming a partnership with a chosen influencer whereby the influencer agrees to promote the brand to their audience. This could be across social media channels or during live events. The campaign will lay out all of this.
At Yieldify, we help you build customer journeys that convert. One simple way we do this is by letting you connect Yieldify with your email technology of choice.
It’s more than likely that you have a system in place to deliver emails to customers – 82% of B2B and B2C companies rely on these tools to nurture customer relationships.
Warm leads convert better
With the Yieldify Conversion Platform, you have the tools to encourage website visitors to share their email address on your website. But once that email has been collected, it’s important you take steps to keep that visitor engaged, especially if they leave the website without making a purchase.
The moment a visitor shares their email address, that lead is warm – and cooling fast; the sooner you send them a relevant email, the better.
Simple, powerful automation
As soon as you’ve collected a customer email in a Yieldify campaign, you can automatically send that email directly into a list in your Email Service Provider. It saves you downloading leads from the Yieldify Conversion Platform only to have to re-upload them to another tool and it means there’s not a minute wasted so your customer gets a seamless brand experience from onsite to email.
Here are just some of the ESP integrations available to Yieldify customers:
We’re adding more ESP integrations all the time – if you’re interested in a integration that is not listed above, please get in touch.
Website overlays, pop-ups, lightboxes, modals – when done right, onsite remarketing is a great way to increase conversions.
But beware of making the wrong choice of solution and being too aggressive with your website overlays.
In a world where acquiring traffic seems to cost more every day, a fast and simple answer to converting that traffic sounds like every marketer’s dream.
Onsite remarketing, otherwise known as overlays, notifications, pop-ups (you name it, we’ve heard it all) – is often positioned as a CRO panacea that takes that traffic and converts it like a dream.
In many cases, that can be true – we’ve seen it ourselves with brands as diverse as Domino’s Pizza, HMV and Virgin Trains:
But with onsite remarketing (as with most things), you get what you pay for.
The problem is that there are plenty of cheap-and-cheerful solutions – also known as ‘overlay shops’ – entering the market promising shortcuts and silver bullets when the reality can be a very different picture.
Why? It’s because this is your website – the importance of the quality of the experience here can never be overstated. Do a good job on your site and you have the opportunity to see your acquisition investments pay off – but attempt to cut corners and your acquisition efforts can go down the drain faster than you can say “leaving so soon?”
At Yieldify, we believe that the customer journey you deliver on your website demands rigorous strategy, attention to detail, and optimization pathways. Without this, you could end up doing more harm than good to your CRO.
The cheap-and-cheerful website overlay software on the market might let you launch overlay campaigns easily, but won’t necessarily help you launch effective overlays that convert visitors.
Types Of Website Overlays
There are many different types of website overlays that you can use to encourage visitors to take action. Below are some of the most common website overlays used.
Behavioural Website Overlays
These types of overlays use behavioural segmentation and on site behaviour to trigger specific overlays. These aim to encourage visitors to move forward in their journey with attention grabbing offers tailored to their browsing behaviour.
A good example of this website overlay would be monitoring time on site, basket value and products viewed. If the visitors looks like a high value customer you could set up an overlay to entice them to checkout. Either with an offer or limited time time based on the products in their basket.
Sales Website Overlays
eCommerce websites can use sale overlays to promote current offers and deals to website visitors. These types of website overlays can help push broad messages and or can ve very targeting depending on what the offer is.
Exit Overlay
An Exit overlay can be used as a last attempt to convince visitors to purchase. These can be used on product pages, basket pages and more. If a user is showing signs of making a purchase but then goes to leave the website you can show an exit overlay, potentially with an offer or social proof to try and convince them to purchase.
Gamified Website Overlays
Gamified website overlays provide an opportunity to get visitors engaged easily. The example below from yoga brand Loony Legs offers new visitors the chance to get specific offers in exchange for their email. This is a great way to build your mailing lists and a more “fun” option for visitors.
Social Proof Website Overlays
If you don’t like to offer discounts on products social proof overlays could be a nice alternative. You can use this type of website overlay to remind potential customers about your company and display reviews or endorsements to boost sales.
5 Effective Website Overlay Examples
1. Pipeline
The above website overlay example from Pipeline works well as it targets a specific product category and provides a discount with a limited time duration to give a sense of urgency. A clear call to action directly below the timer also works well.
2. Ruroc
Ruroc uses website overlays to quickly engage with returning visitors who previously added items to their shopping baskets. This gives visitors the opportunity to quickly pick up where they left off without having to go through finding the products they were interested in again.
3. Tommy Hilfiger
The below example from Tommy Hilfiger is one of the most common you will see across eCommerce websites. Offering a discount for first time visitors to make their first purchase in exchange for signing up to their email lists.
The above overlay sticks to brand colours, blocks out background content and clearly displays the benefits of joining other email subscribers. Whilst this type of website overlay can work just be careful with the timing, having this pop up straight away can be annoying.
4. Cosmetics Capital
Cosmetics Captial uses a social proof overlay to help encourage visitors to purchase. As we mentioned earlier if you don’t like discounting products this is a great way to entice some FOMO and urgency.
5. SwissWatchExpo
For high value products you can expect basket abandonment to be slightly higher, and time to purchase slightly longer as consumers research and decide if they really want to purchase.
SwissWatchExpo sells high value watches and utilises basket abandonment or exit overlay to try and convince visitors to purchase. The offer of $100 off plus free shipping is sure to tempt most potential customers. Combined with a countdown timer you have the urgency to hopefully spur the user into action.
7 Website Overlay Best Practices
1: Don’t compromise your brand
Consider how much time, effort, and resource you put into the design of your website. Everything from the color and shape of the CTAs, responsiveness and imagery – you’re probably even running plenty of tests to keep iterating on what’s working well.
Why should your website overlays and notifications be any different? They should deliver an experience that’s completely aligned with your brand guidelines, upholding the quality of imagery that you have elsewhere on your site.
The problem is that many overlay shops will restrict you to some pretty rigid templates, where you can change some colors and text, but not much more. For small businesses who want to launch overlays themselves but without design resources in-house, this is great – for a more mature e-commerce business, this can be a jarring experience for the user.
2: Don’t annoy your customers
Campaigns can trigger based on website visitor behavior – but what that behavior is is up to you. The problem here is that if you choose the wrong trigger setting, you can disrupt the customer journey of visitors and potentially annoy them, doing more harm than good.
The usual suspect here is ‘trigger on entry’, which is often used on a first time visitor with lead generation overlays to ask the user to sign-up to a newsletter.
While this might seem a great idea for your brand, it’s the website equivalent of asking for someone’s number before you’ve even said ‘hi’, which never seems to work out well.
You may wish to A/B test this website overlay to see what type of result you get. Most users may simply close the popup and carry on with their journey.
First time visitors are very important to websites so you want to make sure they have a good and smooth experience and hopefully become new customers.
3: Too Broad Targeting
In deciding who’s going to see your campaign, you need to make sure your targeting is on point, or you risk sending irrelevant messages. While you may be tempted to just get something with the basics covered, some of the most effective forms of targeting are based on your shopper’s in-session behavior – such as the value of their basket.
This is hugely valuable because it means that you can safeguard offers such as free delivery only for those shoppers for whom their purchase value will ensure you protect your margins. Domino’s Pizza used it to huge success in engaging the right type of visitor with the right discount incentive:
The problem with basket-value targeting is that this requires an extra level of site mapping – something that not all website overlay solutions will rely on you to do (if they offer the functionality at all).
With this in mind, it’s really worthwhile digging deep into what targeting is actually available to you, as you’ll often find that the valuable stuff relies on a more technical set-up from your side.
4: Respecting the user journey
There’s huge value in having different campaigns set up for different customer journeys – but what if a single customer ends up in several different target segments across the course of their journey?
With some simple onsite remarketing vendors you run the risk of having a visitor trigger multiple campaigns in the course of their session, which is a sure-fire way to get them to abandon your site.
The solution to this is smart frequency capping, which takes into account the fact that some interventions (little notifications in the corner of the screen) are fine to be seen multiple times on the user journey but more disruptive messages (like overlays) are a one-time thing.
It’s not as simple as ‘one message per session’ just as your visitor’s journey isn’t as simple as ‘click-click-buy’, so you need a solution and targeting that reflects that subtlety. You want to make their decision making process easier, not interrupt it.
5: Continuous Testing
There’s a reason that Yieldify has a Consultant team who spend their days poring over pivot tables: if you want good performance, you need to run smart tests and learn from them.
A big part of this is the ability to A/B test your messaging and creatives – this isn’t something that all website overlay technology will provide you with. Without this ability, you’ll never know if you’re getting the best possible performance from your campaigns.
Should your target new visitors? Should you put a website overlay on your blog post? Do pop-ups that match a product category perform better? What call to action is best?
6: Focus on driving value
Having great-looking overlay and notification campaigns is important (as we’ve said earlier) but beware of being distracted by cosmetic features that may not necessarily drive value.
The most important elements of your campaign are: a compelling message and careful targeting and triggering – all of which should be refined and optimized through testing.
Funky animations are all well and good, but they’re usually ‘nice to have’s’ – make sure that the core functionality and capabilities we’ve listed elsewhere in this article are there first.
7: Tracking the impact
Everyone knows what they’re here for: making more sales. The problem is that the ability to track the impact that your campaigns are making depends on two things: being able to track sales and run incrementality tests. The bad news is that very few overlay shops provide such functionality.
The reason for this is that tracking sales involves more website mapping – every e-commerce site’s set-up is a little different, so the ability to track sales requires a slightly different approach every time.
If you’ve got a provider who can track sales for you, then the other thing you’ll need is the ability to run an incrementality test (essentially a split-test where half your target group sees no campaign).
Through running these tests to statistical significance for a limited period of time, you’ll be able to see definitively whether or not your campaign is making an impact on your sales.
All of this is essential if you want to ensure that your investment and work is paying off – without it, you’ll never know if it’s worth it.
In conclusion
Onsite remarketing is great because of course it’s an easier way to increase your conversion rate (check out how banners can help increase conversions, too) than starting from scratch or running a labour-intensive programme of A/B/n testing. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that this means that all solutions are the same. As with all things in life, you get what you pay for.
If you’re looking for a smart solution that comes with an even smarter team to ensure your campaigns are on-point and fully-optimized, check out Yieldify’s free Customer Journey Optimisation consultations.
Get your free guide to making the busiest time in the e-commerce calendar your most successful yet
Halloween. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Bounceback Tuesday. Throwback Thursday. Super Saturday. Free Shipping Day.
Q4 in e-commerce means you’ve got your work cut out for you.
It’s a make-or-break season for the retailer and with that comes an ever-growing calendar of key shopping days and events that seems to change rapidly from year-to-year.
Help is at hand.
We crunched the numbers (thousands of them) in order to draw out some data-driven tactics to make your holiday season its best yet, and have whipped up a simple (and rather pretty) planning checklist that will keep your Q4 on the straight and narrow until 2018 rolls around.
Of course, these aren’t just cut-and-paste ‘tips and tricks’, but real insights backed up by patterns on e-commerce websites around the world. So grab your copy today and find out: when your Black Friday traffic should start arriving (hint: it’s not Black Friday), what’s so special about December 21st and when you can go to bed on Black Friday.
Prefer your tips in video form? Not a problem – check out our Black Friday masterclass with Conversant, which draws on the same data to call out five key secrets to making the start of Q4 go off with a bang:
Need some more help getting Q4-ready?
Fair enough – every site’s a little different.
Yieldify offers free Customer Journey Optimisation (CJO) consultations – simply sign up here to learn how to get the best holiday season your website has ever seen.
Visualise progress to offers to curb abandonment
Recent Comments