The score was established through surveys of over 1,000 companies, including 500 companies with fewer than 100 employees in more than a dozen countries, including the U.S. and Canada. Relevant questions focused on the training of service and support employees, ability to respond to customer feedback, and metrics, KPIs and technology.

Read more about the importance of customer feedback.

Comparing businesses with six or more key capabilities with place against those with three or less, the report found 9.2 times the likelihood of signifcant growth in customer spend, and 3.6 times the likelihood of growing customer base. Mid-size to enterprise businesses were 8.7 times more likely to have seen significant growth in customer spend, and were 3.3 times more likely to have grown their customer base.

However, less than half (47%) of small businesses have moved beyond the lowest level of CX maturity. The report finds less ambition in the CX sphere among smaller businesses: while organizations with 100 or more
employees were more likely to be working to boost customer interaction, and also more likely to be focused on use of customer data (33% against 20% of small businesses).

Also, small businesses showing high levels of CX maturity were 7.8 times more likely to have been successful in switching to remote working during the pandemic than those with the lowest levels.

Why we care. CX, rather than product, service and price, is where businesses can compete. The experience extends from brand awareness and top-of-funnel messaging, right through to post-sale service. Small businesses can benefit even more than the enterprise, this report suggests, but may be lagging in ability to invest in CX.

This story first appeared on MarTech Today.

https://martechtoday.com/cx-maturity-can-lead-to-business-success-244414

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Read a complimentary copy of the latest Forrester Wave: Mobile Engagement Automation, Q3 2020 report and understand the vendor landscape.

The mobile-first consumer is different. They are tech-savvy and are aware that brands collect a ton of data about their tastes, preferences, likes, and more. They expect marketers to use these insights and then engage them with personalized and relevant communication across channels.

The challenge for marketers. Unfortunately, marketing and product teams often struggle to meet these expectations. A typical marketing department is usually stuck with a complicated network of tools for campaign management, automation, analytics, and more. These tools are siloed and provide an incomplete view of the consumer journey and behavior. Instead of leading with consumer insights, marketers often end up running campaigns first and then rely on reporting tools to see if it worked. 

New tools to solve this challenge. Customer-obsessed brands are adopting new-age tools such as MoEngage, which allows marketers to gain insights into consumer behavior and then engage them with personalized messages across mobile, email, and the web.

Download a free copy of the Forrester report here

Raviteja Dodda, Co-founder & CEO, MoEngage said, “In the last couple of years, MoEngage’s platform has been adopted by top brands such as Ally Financial, Hearst, Samsung, McAfee, CIMB Bank, Deutsche Telekom [T-Mobile], Travelodge, Flipkart, OYO and more. This is a powerful validation of MoEngage’s insights-led engagement solution for the customer-obsessed growth teams who like to deep dive into customer behavior data and then engage them across channels”

Reputed analysts such as Forrester echo these sentiments. In The Forrester Wave: Mobile Engagement Automation, Q3 2020 report, they recommend that brands “look for vendors that can factor in customers’ past engagement and behaviors to improve personalization in the form of featured products, message content, message format, and channel.”

Dodda added, “I am pleased that we are recognized as a strong performer in the Forrester report. Processing over 60bn customer interactions and delivering over 50bn messages to 500m customers every month, MoEngage is one of the fastest-growing companies in this space and is one of the highest-rated by customers on websites such as Gartner Peer Insights and G2.com.”

About The Author

MoEngage is an intelligent customer engagement platform, built for the customer obsessed marketers and product owners. 1000+ customer obsessed brands across 35 countries use MoEngage to send 50 billion messages to 500 million end consumers every month. With offices in 9 countries, MoEngage is backed by marquee investors such as Eight Roads, F-Prime Capital, Matrix Partners, Helion Ventures, Exfinity Ventures, and Venture East. In the recent G2’s summer reports, MoEngage was also named as leader in the Mobile Marketing and Marketing Automation categories.

The post Report: Insights-led engagement for the mobile-first consumer appeared first on Marketing Discover.

While there’s been steady growth in the use of voice and virtual assistants since Siri was introduced more than a decade ago, the market hasn’t been transformed. Smart speakers are even a better case-in-point: widely adopted, they’ve failed to become the revolutionary product many had expected.

Now survey data from Perficient Digital suggests voice may have hit a plateau of sorts. This is the fourth year the agency has asked over 1,000 U.S. adults about their use of voice, voice search and virtual assistants. Last year, the survey found voice was second only to the mobile browser as the “first choice” entry point for mobile search (with all answers combined, it ranked fourth).

The current survey didn’t replicate this “first choice” segmentation. And overall, voice search remained in fourth position. The question was: “how are you most likely to ask questions on your smart phone?” Manually entering text into a search app, browser or search bar on the phone all captured more total votes. Usage thus appears to be flat.

Beyond this, voice usage appears to be down for people at all education levels, although it’s positively correlated with education. College graduates and those with more education use voice more than those with less education.

The survey also asked respondents how often they use smart speakers to search for information. The responses “never” and “less than twice per week” constituted a majority (56%); 44% used them at least twice per week, while 20% of the 44% used them six to nine (or more) times per week. This argues smart speakers are not a search substitute for other devices, although overall “search” volume may be expanding as a result.

The survey goes on to explore what factors might explain the results. It asserts that user frustration with virtual assistants not understanding commands or questions (or delivering wrong answers) may partly explain this flat-to-declining usage. By the same token, improved accuracy and better comprehension would potentially generate additional usage frequency.

Why we care. As with so many compelling technologies, early hype has given way to slow, incremental growth. In one sense voice is just an alternative input mechanism for text. But in another it represents a fundamentally different user experience. And voice technology behind the scenes is becoming increasingly sophisticated, almost imperceptibly to the public.

As the survey discussion points out, voice is central for the majority of non-traditional connected devices: “77% of all Internet-connected devices are something other than a tablet, PC or smartphone.” Indeed voice is the UI for the next generation of devices and virtual assistants are the logical successor to “search.” It’s just going to take longer than expected.

This story first appeared on Search Engine Land. For more on search marketing and SEO, click here.

About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

The post Usage of voice has plateaued — for now appeared first on Marketing Discover.

The study was issued in conjunction with a number of Google mobile app campaign announcements and the upgrade of the company’s Test My Site tool to include Web Vitals reporting.

Mobile ‘dominant digital touchpoint.’ Given that we live in a mobile-first world — Deloitte calls it the “dominant digital touchpoint” — the mobile user experience is increasingly synonymous with brand experience. The firm cites an eMarketer forecast that asserts m-commerce “will double from 2019–2023, ultimately accounting for three-quarters of total e-commerce sales.” Today, however, mobile accounts for more site traffic but fewer conversions than on the desktop. Speed is a factor.

For the study, Deloitte created an elaborate methodology to measure mobile site performance. It approached 70 brands, 37 were eventually selected “after passing analytics, technical and qualitative audits.” It developed a KPI framework and mapped conversion journeys. It identified four key speed metrics and developed a statistical model to measure their impact. Site speed data was measured using Google Lighthouse “and aggregated with brands’ web analytics data.”

Analysis of four verticals. The company looked at four verticals: retail, travel, luxury (apparel) and lead-generation. It measured conversions in each case, here defined as the number of users who transacted, “added to basket,” clicked “contact us” or completed a form, in the case of lead generation.

The study found that page speed was directly correlated with higher engagement and “improved funnel progression.” Faster mobile sites resulted in more page views, higher conversions and greater average order value per customer across each of the verticals measured. More concretely, a 0.1 second improvement in site speed resulted in:

• Retail conversions increases of 8.4% and average order value increases of 9.2%.
• Travel conversions increase of 10.1% and average order value increase of 1.9%.
• Luxury brand page views per session increase of 8.6%.
• Lead-gen pages bounce rate improvement of 8.3%

There’s a detailed discussion and case studies for each vertical. For example, Deloitte observed that for retail sites it’s more important to focus on the speed of product pages vs. the retailer’s homepage, “because many people visiting your homepage are already loyal to your brand while those going straight to the product page might be coming from an ad” and they will potentially bounce if the page doesn’t load fast enough.

Mobile speed still lags far behind desktop. A separate study using Google page speed metrics, conducted in April by Milestone, examined thousands of sites across 11 verticals. It found that “mobile speed still lags far behind desktop speed at 2.6 times slower, 2.9 seconds to 7.9 seconds.” It also discovered that speed varied significantly by industry: financial services and technology were the fastest and construction had the slowest mobile load times.

The study concluded that “most mobile sites tested are very slow with an average mobile speed score of 40.1 and an average Speed Index of 7.9 seconds.” A subsequent Milestone analysis of AMP pages concluded they were positively correlated with improved rankings and visibility in search results, finding that “non-AMP pages are 108% slower loading” than AMP pages.

Google recently announced that AMP will no longer be required to appear in the Top Stories section of search results. This may cause widespread abandonment of AMP. But the speed boost and improved visibility of AMP pages may give publishers reasons to stick with it.

Why we care. Marketers need to make culture and operational changes to further prioritize mobile experiences and site speed. As Deloitte points out in its report, “the competitive gap will widen between brands who provide great mobile experience and those who don’t.” The firm also argues that it’s not enough to be the fastest in your vertical or category, brands and retailers are now competing “with the best digital experience a consumer has ever had.”

This story first appeared on Search Engine Land. For more on search marketing and SEO, click here.

The need for (mobile) speed: Small improvements have a big conversion impact

The post The need for (mobile) speed: Small improvements have a big conversion impact appeared first on Marketing Discover.

Neura, which describes itself as “a leader in real-world customer intelligence,” announced it’s available as an app for Salesforce Marketing Cloud. I spoke with Amit Hammer, CEO of Neura, about the practical mechanics of what the company announced.

Converting location into consumer attention. Neura promises brand marketers that they will be able to use its Salesforce app to create customized audience segments and then market to them when they’re most receptive (via app notification, email or text) based on real-world activities and movement patterns. Neura’s data, which extends beyond location to other data sets, can also be combined with other insights in Salesforce to launch fully automated, personalized campaigns from within Marketing Cloud.

This sounds like the familiar “right message, right time, right place” refrain that has annoyingly appeared in so many mobile marketing presentations. But Hammer convincingly unpacked it for me.

Customer-journey builder incorporating behavioral “triggers” for personalized messaging

Hammer argued that app engagement is generally poor – Neura says notifications have average engagement rates below 8% – because messages are delivered at the wrong time, when users’ attention is not available (e.g., at work, sleeping, working out). He says that behavioral insights from offline movement patterns (and related customer inferences) are a much more reliable guide to customer openness to marketing messages.

This is the alchemical transformation of location data into attention-availability (i.e., time).

Agencies or in-house marketers handle all the creative. Neura’s system identifies when each person in each audience segment may be most open to the marketing message. Two “business travelers,” for example, may still have very different work-leisure schedules and corresponding attention patterns. Neura’s system can accommodate those differences. Users may receive the same messaging creative but potentially at very different times of day or days of the week.

SDK integration into enterprise mobile app. Neura works predominantly with mobile-first brands that have app-based audiences. If users don’t have the brand’s app it’s much tougher to gain these insights and the system doesn’t work as well — although there can be some lookalike modeling.

Neura’s enterprise/brand customers install the company’s SDK in their app. Then Neura starts building behavioral profiles of the brand’s audience from scratch.

Privacy is much less of an issue (or perhaps not an issue) here because this is permission-based first-party data. Neura is analyzing data on behalf of the brand, which has a direct relationship with its consumers. In addition, users must affirmatively opt-in to allow use of location.

The system doesn’t rely on pre-defined personas (e.g., working parent, business traveler) and then seek to find those people in the world, but creates customer personas and profiles based on their individual behaviors. As indicated, there is some lookalike modeling but Neura is more often delivering deterministic data.

Why marketers should care. Location is a critical source of data signals about customers. In many cases, offline activities are much more reliable indicators or predictors of preferences, identity, and intent than online signals. However, all of this must be handled transparently.

But when location is ethically and reliably sourced, it can be the cornerstone of relevance and personalized marketing efforts. And the combination of this data with machine learning technology does bring us much closer to – dare I say it – one-to-one marketing.

About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

The post Neura converts mobile-location data into time and consumer attention appeared first on Marketing Discover.

Having incorporated
mobile applications into our daily lives, it’s extremely difficult to imagine a
world without them. This is also why statistics such as those reporting that the
average smartphone owner uses about 30 apps per month come as no surprise to
anyone. At the same time, knowing that an ordinary retail customer is active in
six or seven loyalty programs, we can reasonably assume that those 30
applications must include at least one loyalty app – though we should
definitely expect more. Why is that information relevant? Because it shows that
using loyalty apps has become a common element of our day-to-day lives.

In fact, some
retailers consider their loyalty applications to be the best channel of
communication for driving business. The prospect of benefits in the form of
discounts and rewards helps companies convince their clients to download the
apps and share their personal data – information which can later be used for
creating personalized customer journeys and product offers that are more likely
to hit the spot.   

Yet,
considering that we are living in a time where attention spans are becoming
alarmingly shorter, companies cannot expect their clients to be highly engaged
with their loyalty applications at all times. That is, unless they keep making
them even more attractive and, in some ways, more addictive.

The important question is — how?

UI design

Nobody wants
to use an app if the interface is poorly designed. An app should be user-friendly
from the moment it’s launched. Of course, this does not change the fact that
its visuals need to be attention-grabbing and in line with current trends;
every entrepreneur knows that we all buy with our eyes. Nonetheless,
companies still need to focus on keeping things practical.

To help retailers find that the right balance, today’s technology providers are now incorporating the latest artificial intelligence/machine learning algorithms into their loyalty management systems. Thanks to those technological innovations, companies can find patterns in their customers’ behavior, analyze them, and use their findings to design a UI that meets their clients’ needs or allows users to adjust its layout without any IT expertise.

In-store shopping experience

Apart from
being practical in terms of design, a modern loyalty app needs to be of use in
the real world, meaning it has to serve a particular purpose (or several) in
the shopping environment, such as providing customers with personalized,
location-dependent product offers.

To do that, you
can turn your app into a virtual guide that directs clients to designated store
areas (indoor navigation), or one that presents them with new product offers
using push messages whenever a customer goes by a given stand or any
product-related object (proximity marketing).

Neither should we forget about mobile payments, which allow customers to buy products using discount coupons, loyalty points, or their stored credit cards. Today’s clients can also save a lot of time by placing their orders in advance, paying for products ahead of their arrival in the store. This functionality was perfected by Starbucks, whose application was recently found to be the most popular loyalty rewards app (48%) on its market. The app allows users to buy a cup of coffee while on their way to a selected Starbucks Café and pick up their order as soon as they get there – helping them to avoid waiting in line.

Out-of-store engagement

Don’t be under the impression that indoor experience is the only area in which an app can drive customer loyalty effectively. To make apps more popular among their target clients, companies have to find a way to engage them outside of retail stores. Here’s where gamification comes in. Badges, leaderboards, quizzes, mini-games – all of these can help form an emotional connection between a client and the app. Gamification elements also happen to be essential for introducing special offers that are exclusive to the most dedicated mobile app users. The list of possibilities goes on, and they’re all worth a try.

Customer service

Last but not least, it is vital to provide the right customer support at any given moment. Whenever a customer is looking for a solution to a problem, the app should offer some valid options for self-service (FAQ or knowledge base, for example), and a means of interacting with a company representative either through a contact form or via live chat. Customers should also have the opportunity to rate the app and its services, so that a company can fix and improve it over time.

Loyalty apps are still evolving, becoming ever more technologically advanced solutions. Therefore, in order to become successful at driving better loyalty results, each company needs to begin by working with a well-known and trusted technology provider that can cover all of the abovementioned ground. Although choosing a provider may be easier said than done, the important thing is to find the one that meets your company’s needs and requirements.

About The Author

Comarch is a global provider of advanced IT services and software for business management, including AI-powered platforms designed to help enterprises of any size drive brand loyalty and improve customer satisfaction. It supports companies from all industries – retail, travel, manufacturing, telecommunications, finance, and many others – by providing them with technologically advanced, award-winning solutions, highly recognized by various non-profit organizations and respected professionals. Having worked with JetBlue Airways, Heathrow Airport, BP, Carrefour, Heineken, Goodyear, Pepsi, and Vodafone, Comarch has over 25 years of experience in creating and implementing innovative ERP & CRM systems all over the world.

The post A story of a loyalty app: How mobile applications can keep improving your customer experience appeared first on Marketing Discover.

Nearly 30 million units shipped in Q3. The third quarter saw shipments of 28.6 million smart speakers and displays overall, compared with 26.1 in Q2 2019 and 19.7 million in Q3 2018 according to Canalys. Privacy concerns don’t seem to have weakened consumer demand.

Canalys attributes Amazon’s success to the strength of the e-commerce giant’s direct channel, Prime Day sales and other promotions, as well as company’s Echo trade-in program. Google sells directly, through traditional retailers and other channel partners but its direct sales have proven no match for Amazon.

Display category grew 500%. Canalys pointed out that the “smart display category grew 500% globally to reach 6.3 million units in Q3 2019.” The firm said that the Echo Show 5 (smart display) “contributed significantly” to Amazon’s Q3 success. The overall share of smart displays in Q3 was 20% for the first time, indicating increasing traction for the devices.

Google has been seeking to use smart displays, especially the Nest Hub Max, as a competitive advantage vs. Amazon. So far it doesn’t seem to be working.

There are numerous estimates circulating in the market about the total number of smart speakers. Research firms put the number of devices in U.S. homes above 100 million. Canalys projected that there would be 225 million smart speaker/display devices globally by 2020.

Why we should care. Given the Q3 numbers, we can expect a pretty robust holiday quarter for these smart devices. Though so far smart speakers/displays have yet to yield many benefits to marketers, they likely will over time and become an important channel. That’s especially true with smart displays, which have the benefit of touch screens, giving brands and retailers more marketing and advertising options than smart speakers.

About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

The post Amazon tops Google in Q3 smart speaker market report appeared first on Marketing Discover.

First-party data is your most important advantage in today’s highly regulated marketing environment. And customer conversations have become your ultimate first-party data source. In fact, for marketers who work in industries that rely on phone calls to close sales, they’ve become a holy grail.

But extracting value from first party data hasn’t been easy — until now. Artificial intelligence (AI) is now delivering smarter customer insights, resulting in more effective search, social and display ad campaigns. 

Join our data analytics experts as they show you how to use AI to analyze customer conversations, and scale those insights to boost conversion rates, optimize buying experiences and drive more revenue-generating calls. You’ll learn how to comb through the conversations you’re already having with your customers and discover more of what they are trying to tell you. 

Register today for “Get More Value Out of Your First-Party Data: Using AI to Connect the Online-to-Offline Buying Experience,” sponsored by Invoca.

About The Author

Digital Marketing Depot is a resource center for digital marketing strategies and tactics. We feature hosted white papers and E-Books, original research, and webcasts on digital marketing topics — from advertising to analytics, SEO and PPC campaign management tools to social media management software, e-commerce to e-mail marketing, and much more about internet marketing. Digital Marketing Depot is a division of Third Door Media, publisher of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, and producer of the conference series Search Marketing Expo and MarTech. Visit us at http://digitalmarketingdepot.com.

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Mobile
= 59% of search

Way back in 2015, Google announced that mobile search had surpassed search query volumes on the desktop. But it never said anything more precise and hasn’t updated the figure. Hitwise, in 2016 and again in 2019, found that mobile search volumes in the aggregate were about 59% of the total, with some verticals considerably higher (e.g., food/restaurants 68%) and others lower (e.g., retail 47%).

This isn’t a voice stat, but it’s important because the bulk of voice-based queries and commands occur on mobile devices rather than the desktop.

Voice on cusp of being first choice for mobile search

According to early 2019 survey data (1,700 U.S. adults) from Perficient Digital, voice is now the number two choice for mobile search, after the mobile browser:

1. Mobile browser
2. Voice search
3. Phone’s search box/window
4. Search app
5. Text a friend

However between 2018 to 2019, voice grew as a favored entry point for mobile search at the apparent expense of the browser. Thus it could overtake text input as the primary mobile search UI in 2020.

Nearly 50% using voice for web search

Adobe released survey data in July that found 48% of consumers are using voice for “general web searches.” This is not the debunked “50% of searches will be mobile in 2020,” data point incorrectly attributed to comScore.

The vast majority of respondents (85%) reported using voice to control their smartphones; 39% were using voice on smart speakers, which is a proxy figure for device ownership.

Here are the top use cases for voice usage, predominantly on smartphones:

1. Directions while driving — 52%
2. Making a phone call — 51%
3. Sending a text — 50%
4. Checking the weather — 49%
5. Playing music — 49%

Directions a top voice use case

Consistent with the Adobe survey, an April Microsoft report found a more specific hierarchy of “search” use cases on smartphones and smart speakers. Again, however, this is a primarily smartphone-based list:

1. Searching for a quick fact — 68 percent
2. Asking for directions — 65 percent
3. Searching for a business — 47 percent
4. Researching a product or service — 44 percent
5. Making a shopping list — 39 percent

Crossing the 100 million smart speaker threshold

During 2019 there were multiple reports and estimates that sought to quantify the overall number of smart speakers in the U.S. and global markets. In early 2019, Edison research projected that there were roughly 118 million smart speakers in U.S. homes. However, other analyst firms and surveys found different numbers, typically somewhat lower.

Because people often own more than one smart speaker, the number of actual individual owners of smart speakers is considerably lower than 100 million: 65 million or 58 million, depending on the survey.

Amazon dominating Google in smart speaker market

Amazon, with its low-priced and aggressively marketed Echo Dot, controls roughly 70% to 75% of the U.S. smart speaker market according to analyst reports. In Q3 2019, for example, Amazon shipped 3X as many smart speaker and smart display units as Google.

Analyst firm Canalys argues Amazon’s success is a byproduct of its market-leading direct channel and discounting. Google’s direct and channel sales have so far not been able to keep pace with Amazon’s efforts.

Virtual assistant usage: Siri and Google lead

In contrast to the smart speaker market share figures, virtual assistant usage is a different story. This is because most virtual assistant usage is on smartphones and Amazon doesn’t have one.

A Microsoft report (in April) found a different market share distribution, with the Google Assistant and Siri tied at 36%, followed by Alexa.

There are other surveys that suggest Google Assistant’s usage is greater than Siri’s.

58% use voice to find local business information

The connection between mobile and local search is direct. While Google has in the past said that 30% of mobile searches are related to location, there are plenty of indications that the figure is actually higher. Google itself said the number was “a third” of search queries in September, 2010 (Eric Schmidt), 40% in May, 2011 (Marissa Mayer) and, possibly, 46% in October 2018.

Asking for driving directions is not always an indication of a commercial intent to go somewhere and buy something. But as the Adobe and Microsoft surveys indicate, it’s a primary virtual assistant/voice search use case. A voice search survey conducted in 2018 by BrightLocal also found:

• 58% of U.S. consumers had done a local business search by voice on a smartphone
• 74% of voice search users (the 58%) use voice to search for local businesses at least weekly
• 76% of voice search users search on smart speakers for local businesses at least once a week, with the majority doing so daily

79% concerned about privacy with smart speakers

Multiple surveys indicate high satisfaction levels with voice search and virtual assistants. But, as with other digital media experiences, there are growing privacy concerns that may materially impact the development of the market.

A 2019 survey by Path Interactive found that “79% of survey respondents are at least somewhat concerned about the privacy implications of using voice search devices. Only 17% are not concerned.” That’s consistent with a 2018 survey of 1,000 U.S. adults by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which found that 66% of those who hadn’t bought a smart speaker/display said they were concerned about privacy or data security.

Edison Research also found that concerns about hacking, government eavesdropping and that the devices were “always listening” was impacting smart speaker demand and potential future growth.

Conclusion: Hooked on voice

Even though voice search and voice commands are not utilized by everyone, what might be called the “voice habit” is already established. That doesn’t solve the smart speaker business model problem or suggest that these devices will ultimately fulfill their promise. But consumers will increasingly use voice to control their smartphones, connected devices in their homes and functions in their cars. That’s because the technology is already good and it’s only getting better. Marketers should be paying attention to how their listings render across these devices when voice is the search activator.

This story first appeared on Search Engine Land. For more on search marketing and SEO, click here.

About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

The post Nine voice search stats to close out 2019 appeared first on Marketing Discover.

Contributor and SMX speaker, Duane Brown, explains in this video why 2020 is the year to get a handle on your mobile experience as well as find the platforms your customers are on and experiment if they’re new to you.

Below is the video transcript:

Hey, my name’s Duane Brown. I run an agency up in Montreal, Canada. We focus on kind of two areas, paid ads, PPC, Google, Facebook, stuff like that. We also do CRO for clients, we’ll often have to figure out how do their websites convert more. And a lot of our clients are in e-commerce.

There’s a lot of trends I think happening for next year. I think there are two areas we all need to focus on. One is that more people are going to spend time on like Pinterest and Snapchat and even Tik Tok. And so figuring out, do you have customers on those platforms? And does it make sense to test those out in 2020? You know Google, Bing, Microsoft,  Facebook – those are all great places to be. But I think spending more time on those other platforms makes sense if your customers are there.

I think the bigger issue for next year is we still don’t have a great mobile experience, especially your on e-commerce. You see people with pop-ups, people with experiences that don’t match the desktop, and with more and more traffic being on mobile, I think it makes sense to look at 2020 as the year to go through your website and figure out if this is the experience we want customers to have, especially on a mobile device. Is this the experience we want customers to have, and does this match your desktop?

If we go into a recession and people spend less money next year, you need to make sure you maintain all your customers. Or if the opportunity presents itself, grow your customer base in market share. Mobile is a great way to do that because the mobile experience is still not where it needs to be and 2020 can be the year to make mobile even better.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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