Engage to sell: How data creates personalised website experiences

Let’s start at the very beginning: It’s about how people see your business that determines whether they will spend their time with you. And funny enough, the way they see you, is never really about you. As hurtful as this may sound, they don’t care about you. But they will care for your offer if it comes with a great value or provides a solution to their problem. Match their expectations and you're in the game! 

Keeping that in mind, it is absolutely crucial to choose the right approach. You have to be as relevant as possible if you want your offer to be attractive. And it’s not only about the price point. It’s just as much about customer recognition: your tone needs to be familiar and your arguments need to be convincing. It’s really pretty simple, you’ve done it thousands of times. And, oh boy, don’t they love to be recognised?
 

(Just to make it a bit more personal,) Let me bring up an example: 

When you see people coming to your venue (shop, restaurant, attraction park - the principle is always the same), you immediately start “scanning” them and looking for clues. Anything you can use to engage with them better and give them the experience they’re looking for.

Surely enough, you will treat a family of five with a different kind of attention than a couple of young people enjoying their romantic date. Even though your offer is still the same, you will use different angles when you talk to different people. Recognising individual differences between your customers and responding to them with custom solutions is an integral part of your daily business. Most of the times you probably don’t even notice these little efforts.

I’m only stating the obvious here, I get that. So let’s move on and take the same example online:

A person comes to your website.
What happens then?

Is your online appearance reflecting the same level of excitement as your offline experience? Or do you serve everyone with the same basic information? 

And if you think that online user experience doesn’t really concern your business, you couldn’t be more wrong.Implementing smart engagement tools on your website is not an optional choice anymore.

According to HubSpot’s report, only 29% of people want to talk to a salesperson to learn more about a product, while 62% will consult a search engine.  

And 90% of your online traffic will leave the website within 15 seconds.
That’s all the time you have to make them change their mind.

Ready? (Set.) Go!

Did you succeed? Congratulations! You’re nailing your online engagement and this post is not for you. 
If you didn’t, keep reading. There is plenty you can do to win the online crowd and grow your revenue.

What is this personalised user experience all about?

Just so we’re clear, I’m not talking about Hi John from Amsterdam. Sure, it’s a nice touch, but it’s not going to do the trick and drive your sales.

What then?

Pretty much the same thing you’re doing offline - using what you know about your visitors to customise their experience. With the clues you can gather online, you are able to engage with your visitors in a smart and therefore effective way. Be it the message you send or the value you offer - the point is to make it catchy and difficult to resist. 

Smart online engagement execution will grow your brand loyalty and ultimately also your revenue.

But there’s more to it (than money). Even if you don’t make a sale - and you won’t make one every single time, let’s be realistic -  you still win. You get the data.

Wait. What?

What’s data got to do with it?

Well, pretty much everything. Data collection is essential for all aspects of your business, that’s a status quo. In the end, no one makes business decisions based on their general mood. Not good ones anyway.

So how much of your focus goes to the online data you can collect from each user session? A user session is the sum of all the interactions a person will have on your website. Every click, every hover, the browser they’re using, their location... and the list goes on. It’s a lot.

Having enough data is essential for marketing personalisation but knowing what to look at and how to use it is just as important.

Related post: How personalization helps companies to boost online sales

Did you also get lost in all this chaos? That’s ok. All you need to understand from it is actually very simple: data is a single fact (or a representation of that fact). It doesn’t give you much on its own. But if you take several of these single facts and process them along with their correlations in a given context - you will have a meaningful information.

Information is everything

In his 2015 Law Day speech, Sheldon Whitehouse,  a U.S. Senator said: In the Internet economy, information is everything: The more a company knows about a consumer, the more carefully it can tailor its advertising to that customer, and the more revenue it can generate in return.

And if a politician understands the importance and value of data-driven decisions, there is really no excuse why you wouldn’t.

The good news is: you don’t have to do it on your own. 

There’s a lot of online tools that will help you connect and engage with the 90% of online visitors before they leave your website.  Just to name some examples:

INTENT-DRIVEN MESSAGES

• WOW them, surprise them, seduce them→ catch their attention

• Make them smile, gasp or shiver → get them to react

• Be relevant, customise their experience → don’t let them refuse

PROOF MESSAGES

• Establish your credibility and build trust with user opinions

• Facilitate the decision-making process with a real-time stock and demand  information

• Be social and set trends: share initiatives and products

TRIGGER  BUTTONS

• Be prepared. Drive conversion from any display placement  

• Be bold. Make your message stand out

• Be specific. Help them navigate through your sales funnel 

Get in touch to find out more. We will show you the full capacity of our smart engagement tools and help you choose the best solution for your website.

#EngageToSell