Great Digital Experiences Are Good for Your Business and Customers

There are good marketers and there are obsolete marketers. Which are you?

CMSWire’s Loni Kao Stark nails it when she identifies the problems with short-sighted marketers and their limited expertise: a good marketer prioritizes customer experiences while “the obsolete marketer is unable to bridge creative content, data and technology with an eye toward impacting human behavior."

From bad copywriting to confusing site navigation, the consequences all add up to poor customer experiences, she said.

Recognizing that good customer experiences lead to better business results, enterprise organizations are turning to digital platforms that use behavioral data to inform online experiences. This involves telling a great story, analyzing data, testing, thinking about what is most visually appealing and coding websites so they work on mobile devices. And, as Stark notes, this means companies need to be flexible—to be able to readily upgrade and stay modern.

Good marketers realize that personalization is an essential part of engaging customers and providing an effective web experience. The best marketing efforts utilize targeted, personalized content and localization to make sure the organization is catering to the customer in every way possible.

The importance of mobile

Econsultancy contributor Graham Charlton wrote that a recent report found businesses still don't fully understand how important mobile content management solutions are. Although 77% of companies reported wanting to increase investments in mobile, only 18% said they have an excellent understanding of mobile customer experience.

In addition to its appeal for a growing number of consumers, mobile marketing offers rich analysis opportunities. Web experience platforms with native mobile support can use a variety of data types to personalize the overall mobile experience. For example, ego-location data can be leveraged to customize offers based on where a customer is.

With greater insight into interactions and behavior, marketers can build and maintain lasting customer relationships, said Stark.

"To excel, marketers need skills that reflect the greater complexity of customer relationships, and a demand for deeper engagement," she wrote. "Delivering relevant and remarkable customer experiences takes creativity, daring, communication and a firm but flexible grasp on technology."

But despite the clear potential of today’s experience-oriented marketing and its personalization and mobile capabilities, many organizations are missing out on these opportunities. Charlton said 85% of companies don't measure different conversion rates between websites and how clients arrived. That valuable data could be used to test and analyze personalization that could drastically improve customer experiences.