Delivering an excellent online experience to both customers and employees is an important part of marketing your brand. But with users demanding more interactive dynamic services putting increasing pressure on marketing teams, maintaining an always online and available service can sometimes be a challenge. Owen Garrett, e-tail specialist, Zeus Technology offers 5 key ways for marketers to keep their digital customers coming back for more.
Below are some top tips for marketers looking to optimise their organisation’s web performance without having to roll-out extra servers during busy periods such as promotions or seasonal peaks.
1. Update content regularly – the allure of new and engaging content is a major driver for repeat online visitors. One of the reasons social networks are so popular, for example, is because of regular content updates. For media sites this is obvious – failing to deliver breaking news stories will discourage traffic to the site – but, similarly, a retail site that fails to excite prospects with new content will also struggle to compete. Retail sites that offer daily promotions and media sites that include blogs, for instance, are particularly popular. Marketers need to work with IT to ensure that automation and web traffic solutions are in sync so that when content is updated, the site can cope with high numbers of visitors.
2. Speak with IT – technology continues to play an important role supporting promotions. To ensure customers and prospects always receive an excellent online experience, it’s crucial that marketing and IT work together so IT infrastructure can handle the peaks in demand marketing helps to generate. Marketers should meet once a month with IT teams to keep them aware of upcoming promotions, while marketing professionals need to avoid planning campaigns during IT maintenance work.
3. Fast page load times – with high speed broadband now more prevalent across the UK, prospects and customers now demand instant online access. Amazon estimates that for every 0.1 seconds a customer has to wait for a web page to load, the company loses 1 per cent of sales. There are many explanations for slow page load times from slow network connections, to peaks in traffic or the complexity of delivering rich multi-media web services. Marketers need to make sure IT teams are prioritising traffic according to customer profiles and caching rich content, so pages load quickly without comprising the online experience.
4. Device functionality – IMRG estimates that up to 18% of online purchases are now made from a mobile device. The rapid adoption of tablet devices also has analysts predicting a sharp increase in browsing and purchasing from mobile devices. To cater for the mobile boon, marketers again need to work closely with IT to ensure that customers can gain access from any mobile device, either from an optimised mobile site or a device-specific application. Marketers need to look carefully at how they can adapt sites to automatically identify mobile device customers to deliver content appropriately. Mobile traffic needs to be handled in the same way as online traffic with visitors managed and prioritised appropriately.
5. Personalisation – personalisation is a powerful way to optimise online visitors. E-tailers are undoubtedly leading the pack with tools like ‘recommendations’ and ‘share with your network’ using customer profiles. Media sites are also using personalisation to suggest similar news stories customers might like based on real-time online behaviours and customers with similar profiles to differentiate their sites in a competitive market. Regardless of the industry, highly tailored content that quickly guides customers to what they are looking for gives them a more individual experience and leads to higher sales conversions.
As the online environment becomes increasingly complex and customers demand faster, more personalised online services, marketers need to deliver. It’s especially crucial that marketers can give customers the same good online experience during promotions and peak periods in demand. While e-tailers tend to be trail-blazers in this area, media and travel sites are catching-up quickly. But for any company with a website, these best practice tips are sure to give your business a competitive edge.
By Owen Garrett
e-tail specialist
Zeus Technology
www.zeus.com
