Before social media, the beauty industry was almost entirely shop-based. Consumers would head out to the high street to top up on their make-up, try out swatches, and speak to beauty experts in-person about the latest products and trends.
Now, this experience has shifted online; with the rise of social media influencers, online reviews, and visual content taking over, more people than ever before are shopping online for their beauty buys.
This article explores the importance of digital marketing for those in the beauty industry and which strategies you can deploy for a successful online presence.
The first step in building an online presence is to create a website. Your website is your online gateway, where all your business’ information can be found, such as products, services, contact details, and information about your company. You will direct all traffic to your site from search engine results, social media, newsletters, and physical forms of marketing such as posters and business cards. In essence, it is the central point of your digital marketing strategy.
Whether promoting skincare products, or cosmetic surgery, ensuring your website design is successful is vital. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to website design, so creating it around your brand and vision is essential for a successful launch. Your website must be modern and user-friendly, allowing visitors to navigate around it with ease. It should consider user experience by having clear navigation, a clean layout and fast-loading pages, which also helps your SEO marketing, and utilise tools such as video.
Social media is now much more than a place to share photographs and thoughts with friends; it is an empire for e-commerce and a valuable platform for businesses to promote their brands.
Whether through influencers, organic social or paid media, implementing a well-thought-out social media marketing strategy is vital. This is particularly important for those in the beauty industry, as at least 96% of beauty businesses use this avenue of digital marketing. Although having a voice on each major platform is essential (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok), visual social channels are much more effective for the beauty sector.
For example, as a primarily visual platform, growing your business on Instagram will help your beauty and cosmetics company improve engagement and traffic to your website. Although we have shifted from in-person shopping, consumers still want to see the products and services available by watching tutorials, viewing cosmetic treatments taking place, and seeing before and after imagery. In addition, this type of content builds trust in your customers, which is vital for success in the beauty industry.
Building a brand is essential for any business, and it’s another way to gain the trust of potential customers. Make sure your tone of voice is consistent throughout all media, including social platforms and blog content creation. Not only this, but your brand colours, logo, and typography should also be consistent. This allows your clients and customers to recognise you immediately and choose you as a respected and trusted business.
For example, our digital marketing campaign for The Aesthetic Skin Clinic ensures that the branding and tone remain consistent. We understand the importance of a strong social media presence for those in the beauty industry, so we take the time to develop its content and cover a broad spectrum of in-demand themes to target the right traffic to their social channels and website. We also keep its branding consistent, using its brand guidelines, colours, logo, and a range of templates to deliver unified marketing channels.
One of the many benefits of social media for SMEs is the ability to increase your online audience's trust in your brand, which is especially important in the beauty industry. For example, whereas at one stage, a consumer would visit a salon or clinic in-person to discuss their treatments, now, they are turning to online stores and social channels to learn about a business's services and what others think of them.
Testimonials are a crucial part of your online presence. Often, the treatments that clinics offer help those with highly personal body and skin issues and those enquiring are experiencing insecurities surrounding these issues. Clients want to ensure that the company they are approaching are trustworthy and reputable, so they turn to testimonials and reviews to learn about others’ experiences with the company.
Positive and helpful testimonials should be posted on social platforms and have a dedicated page on your website, so all potential clients can find and read these easily, allowing them to gain trust in your company.
Develop a clear vision for your brand and establish key points about who you are, what you stand for and what you value. Once you have the foundations, you can develop goals and KPIs for your online marketing.
At SQ Digital, we offer brand snapshots to help our customers understand and develop their brands as the first step in their marketing journey.
Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you want any help with your beauty or cosmetic business’s marketing efforts.
The retail industry is competitive, with thousands of online retailers to choose from and millions of products on offer. Savvy consumers expect to be able to find exactly what they want when they put a search term into Google, and their expectations are only set to increase as people become more and more comfortable shopping online. You may be looking to encourage footfall in your physical store or boost sales through your online shop. Regardless, getting your brand in front of the right people online is crucial to any retail business looking to thrive in today’s increasingly digital marketplace. Digital Marketing gives you the power to be seen and heard by thousands of people interested in your product or service.
If you’re a small, medium-sized or independent retailer, competing for visibility online with retail giants like Amazon can seem like an impossible task. That’s why having a solid digital marketing plan in place is so essential for helping you get your retail business in front of the right people.
Every year, the number of consumers choosing to shop online grows, and it’s never been more critical for retailers, even those who rely on physical footfall, to have a digital presence on the internet and incorporate digital marketing into their retail business strategies. It’s not about trying to outcompete international corporations but rather targeting the right audiences to get the most out of your marketing. Your target audience could be local people who live within a certain radius of your store or people searching specifically for products you offer.
By fine-tuning your digital presence through a combination of SEO, content marketing, PPC and social media activity, you’ll be putting your business in the best possible position to thrive both on and offline. Of course, if that sounds like a lot of time and effort, you can always enlist the help of a digital marketing agency. Whether you decide to keep your marketing in-house or outsource it, make sure you’re working towards the right goals. It’s all about creating a seamless experience between your online presence and your bricks-and-mortar store.
Did you know 25% of the world’s population shop online? That’s almost two billion people! Of them, almost two-thirds begin their shopping journey online, even when they end up visiting a physical store. That’s a huge number of people, so how do you make sure you attract the right ones?
Understanding your target audience and what makes them tick is the first step to digital marketing success. You need quantifiable and qualifiable information on your ideal customers to gear your marketing efforts toward them. This information includes:
An experienced digital marketing agency can help you gather this information and build an accurate snapshot of your brand’s ideal target audience. You can use this information to guide your SME digital marketing strategy.
Once you’ve identified your target audience, you’ll need to work out how best to reach them within the digital ecosystem. This will be determined in part by your target demographics and business goals and may include a combination of any or all the services listed below.
Serving up ads through Google is an excellent way to get your brand and products in front of potential customers. Whether you want to encourage e-commerce sales or drive footfall to your physical store, the type of campaign you’ll run will differ.
If you’re running a traditional e-commerce website and want your audience to convert into paying customers by buying directly from your website, Google Shopping campaigns are likely the best for you. These ads appear right at the top of the search results and shopping tab, promoting the products on your site visually with a picture and including the price. By running a fine-tuned Google Shopping campaign, you can make sure your products only appear when people search for specific terms.
Of course, if your main goal is to encourage people to visit your store, a Google Search campaign may be a better choice. These ads are displayed at the top of the Google search results page and can be used to target people searching for products like yours in your local area.
However, there’s more to it than simply telling Google you want to run an ad. You’ll need to decide on the best type of advert, specify the target audience, write ad copy, provide images, create a bidding strategy for your business, set budgets, monitor your campaigns, and make tweaks based on the number of clicks and conversions you get.
If that sounds like a lot of work and time, it could be time to ask a PPC agency for assistance.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is vital to helping your retail website climb up Google’s organic search results, which appear right below the paid search result. The higher up the search result page your website is, the more prominent your business will be, which can help drive traffic to your site.
SEO is beneficial to both retail businesses looking to convert visitors into paying customers through their online store and those who want to encourage local consumers to visit a shop in person. It’s all about making sure your website contains the keywords your target audience is searching for (these will likely be the names of your key products) as well as keeping your site healthy, running smoothly and error-free, as Google will penalise unresponsive or slow websites with broken links.
SEO can be highly competitive and is an ongoing process that requires much care and attention. Therefore, it may be beneficial to get help from an SEO marketing agency if you don’t feel you have the time to dedicate to it yourself.
People want to buy from retailers they trust, and content marketing is a perfect way to build that trust. Content marketing involves writing blogs, newsletters, opinion pieces and other customer-facing content. You can use content marketing to target longtail keywords and terms that people search for. These online searches could be questions about products you sell, how to use them or how they can solve a particular problem.
By creating fresh, unique content regularly for your website, you’ll not only satisfy Google’s algorithm, which rewards consistently updated, relevant content, but you’ll establish yourself as an expert in your industry.
An example of a great retail blog would be one that showcases a mixture of how-to guides for your products, informational pieces that delve a little deeper into your industry, and data-driven articles specifically targeting the questions and terms your audience is searching for.
Much like SEO, content is a long-term investment that needs ongoing attention. It will require someone who’s got the time to write engaging content in a consistent tone of voice with your specific customers’ best interests in mind.
If you struggle with time, you can use a freelancer or a content marketing agency. You can have a professional writer take care of your online content, so you can focus on running your business.
It’s no secret that people spend a tremendous amount of time on social media, and you can tap into those markets with both organic social media and paid social media. When we say organic, we’re referring to any activity your business makes on social media platforms that you haven’t paid money to have placed in front of people. These posts reach wider audiences through engagement, shares and reactions. On the other hand, paid social media works a little bit like Google Advertising, where you choose a demographic, budget, and other metrics that help get your social ads in front of relevant audiences.
We’ve written a lot about social media, from how to grow your business on Instagram to creating the perfect Facebook advert – two great articles for retailers. When considering your overall retail digital marketing strategy, the important thing to know is which social media platforms your audiences are using most regularly. Be most active on those platforms. Make sure all your organic and paid social media branding aligns with your website and physical branding, contributing to that seamless experience across social media, your website, and your physical store.
Strong digital marketing for retail businesses will require a combination of the above. It’s a balancing act, and knowing where to invest your time, effort, and money will depend on your business goals and target audiences.
As a digital marketing agency that specialises in SME digital marketing, we help retailers both local and nationwide build and maintain an online presence and turn that visibility into actual, tangible sales. If you’re interested in knowing more about what we do here at SQ Digital, have a read of our case studies to understand the types of retailers we’ve had success with, in recent years. When you’re ready, contact us to find out more about how we can help your retail business succeed online.
When used effectively, Instagram can be an invaluable marketing platform, particularly for small businesses that don't have a dedicated marketing team or a significant budget to play with. All you need to get your business up and running on Instagram and start building a loyal fan base is a smartphone with a good quality camera and a little bit of know-how.
You can choose to manage your Instagram business page yourself, have an employee look after it or use a digital marketing agency. In any case, it's important to understand why the platform is so influential and how you can use it to grow your business and reach new customers.
With over 1 billion active monthly users as of 2022, Instagram is on par with Facebook as one of the most effective social media marketing platforms. However, the one thing that sets Instagram apart, aside from being the most visual platform, is that Instagram users are actively interested in connecting with and following brands.
The vast majority of Instagram users follow at least one brand, and over half of those people have purchased a product or service after seeing it on Instagram. Users' willingness to seek out brands that create engaging visual content and the high conversation rate make Instagram a must-have for small businesses looking to grow their brands.
Success on Instagram isn't limited to specific industries either. As long as you're producing engaging content that people want to see, and you know how to optimise your posts to make sure the right people see them, you could be onto a winner.
You can read more about the reasons to use Instagram here.
Before you start investing time into your business's Instagram page, you'll want to research and find if there is a crossover in demographic between your ideal customers and Instagram's userbase. There are a couple of ways to do this:
1. Compare Target Audiences
Different people gravitate toward different social media platforms. Age, income, gender, location, personality types, and personal values influence people's social media preferences, so it's important to pick the platform your target audience frequently uses.
Instagram's largest user age bracket is 25-34 year olds, who, as of 2022, make up 31.5% of the active user base. The millennials are followed closely by 18-24 year olds (30.1% of active users), making nearly two-thirds of Instagram users under 35. The gender slip is almost 50/50, with 49.3% of users identifying as female and 50.7% male.
If your business's target audience overlaps with Instagram's biggest demographics, you're in an excellent position to see success by using the platform for your social media marketing. However, if you have an older customer base (35-44), don't rule out Instagram completely - 16.1% of their users fall into this age bracket, which is still a large audience.
If you're unsure how to use demographics to inform your social media marketing strategy, it may be worth getting advice from a social media agency.
2. Do Some Competitor Research
By taking some time to scope out your competitors on Instagram, you'll be able to find out if the platform works for your industry. For example, suppose you find businesses similar to yours on Instagram and see that they receive engagement. Your target audience is likely to use the platform and look to interact with companies like yours.
If you can't find your competitors on Instagram, or you can find them but see that they're not receiving much engagement, this could be a sign that the platform isn't suitable for your company.
Understanding social media marketing is also knowing when something isn't right for a specific business.
3. Ask Your Customers
One of the quickest ways to figure out if your audience uses Instagram is to ask them. You can send out a survey via your email marketing and ask your existing customer base which social media platforms they prefer.
If Instagram features highly on your customers' list, it will give you the confidence to set up a profile and start posting; even if your competitors aren't utilising the platform – you could be the first!
Once you've decided that Instagram is the right platform for your business, it's time to plan a social media marketing strategy and set some goals of what you want to achieve by investing time into the platform.
If you're just getting started on Instagram, pick one or two realistic and measurable goals and focus on creating content that helps achieve those goals.
Sticking to your selected set themes for your Instagram will help guide your content and keep your posts on brand and working towards your goals. The type of business you're running will most likely influence the theme you decide to adopt.
For example, an SEO Agency offering services that help people improve their business's online visibility in search engines will focus on informative and educational posts. These post types demonstrate that the company is an expert in its field and willing to share knowledge with its audience. They will also include regular posts that show culture-focused or behind the scenes content that showcases day to day life within the business or how the company is involved in the local community. These informal posts help to humanise the business and build trust with followers.
On the flip side, a business offering a physical product would benefit from posting aspirational content showcasing its products in high-quality photographs. They might structure these around giveaway posts, product demos and new product launches.
Once you've set your goals and chosen a theme, you're ready to start posting content to Instagram. There are five different types of Instagram posts to choose from:
1. Standard Instagram Posts - These are typical, evergreen posts that stay on your page unless you manually delete them. They will show up on your follower's feeds.
2. Instagram Stories - Posts that are 15 seconds long and disappear automatically after 24 hours. They are best suited to reactive, informal content.
3. Instagram Reels - Videos up to 60 seconds long, which you can edit within the Instagram app to add music, sound effects, and visual effects, much like TikTok.
4. Instagram Live - Live videos that your followers can interact with in real-time. This type of post will appear in your follower's Stories feed.
5. IGTV - Longer form, pre-recorded videos suited to product demos or short Q&As.
You can use a combination of all or just some of the different types of Instagram posts, whichever works best for your goals, theme and business.
There's more to Instagram than just your posts. Make sure your profile is up to date, in line with your business branding and contains all the relevant information potential customers need to know about your business.
Use the following best practices to set yourself up for success:
So, you've got your profile up to scratch, and you're posting relevant content that aligns with your brand and themes. It's now time to start engaging with your followers, which will help build brand awareness and loyalty.
You can build brand awareness and loyalty by following people, liking their posts and starting conversations by responding to comments on your posts. The more you interact with your audience, the more likely they will engage with your brand and convert into paying customers.
Raise awareness that your business has an Instagram account by adding your Instagram handle to the bottom of your emails and other physical or digital marketing material you use. Getting your existing customers to follow you is the first step to building your audience on Instagram.
No matter how tempting, don't be lured into buying Instagram followers. Business growth on Instagram is best done organically by attracting the right people genuinely interested in your brand; they're more than just numbers that will make your metrics look good.
Hashtags in your post captions are a great way to make sure your posts are getting seen by people interested in what your business has to offer. It's a good idea to brainstorm relevant hashtags as part of your strategy to make sure you're using tags that your target audience is searching for.
Searching for a hashtag on Instagram will show you how many posts have used it and allow you to decide whether it's right for your posts. It's also a bit of a balancing act, as choosing hashtags with millions of posts associated with them means your post is less likely to be seen. You want a healthy middle ground where you're using popular hashtags that aren't too competitive for your industry.
Consistency is the key to gaining traction on Instagram and keeping your posts appearing in people's feeds. Post regularly, and the algorithm will reward you by placing your content at the top of your follower's feeds.
Remember, it's not just about the number of followers you have, but whether they see your posts and engage with your business. A consistent posting schedule will help your audience understand when they can expect new content from you and is more likely to be seen.
Developing an Instagram marketing strategy and posting regularly may seem daunting, especially if you're an SME. Building a following on Instagram takes time, so be patient and keep at it.
If you want to grow your business on Instagram but feel like you lack the time and knowledge to do it justice, SQ Digital can help. We can manage your social media campaign as part of your broader SME marketing strategy.
If you'd like to know more about how we can help, get in touch by filling out our online enquiry form today.
Many components make up a successful Facebook advert, like the right objective, relevant targeting, engaging content, and great visual assets. In this blog, we share some elements that discuss what makes a Facebook advert successful, including testing ideas beyond your adverts to drive the best results.
Aligning content and images will benefit your campaign in multiple ways. Firstly, your target audience will feel your advert is personalised to them, increasing their chance of converting or engaging. Secondly, if your target audience is better engaged with your advert, this will positively affect quality ranking, engagement rate ranking, and conversion rate ranking.
Your adverts need to have a clear goal. Your CTA button should encourage your target audience, whether you design your adverts to increase brand awareness or drive a specific action like a sale or app install or generate leads.
For example, a conversions campaign should focus on CTAs that lead to revenue like “Shop Now”, “Order Now”, “Download”, and “Sign Up”. Whereas a traffic campaign could prompt users to ‘Learn More’ or ‘Subscribe’.
Make it clear to users in your target audience why they should click on your adverts or buy your products during your sale period rather than shopping with other advertisers when the competition is heavy.
No matter how long or short your sale is, state how long your sale is running to create urgency. Include a countdown, the percentage off, and how much people can save by shopping with your business. Adding social proof like testimonials can further encourage success for the products or services you’re promoting.
Your advert design and landing page should share similarities for a smooth transition from Facebook to your website.
By keeping elements like colours, fonts, logos, characters, and the structure of these elements the same as your landing page, users will feel like your landing page is an extension of your Facebook advert. The content in your advert should also match up, including CTAs, offers, prices, etc.
This continuity means you can avoid high bounce rates and achieve your overall objective better.
According to Ad Espresso, in 2020, 79% of Facebook users accessed the platform via their mobile, highlighting it’s essential to think mobile-first.
Consider designing images or videos for vertical placements, so it’s a full phone screen experience for your target audience. As a best practice, adverts should be created and optimised for each placement but on a lesser scale, consider prioritising mobile-first creatives then desktop.
Now we’ve covered advert elements and landing pages, consider how relevant your text and images are to your target audience. If your adverts don’t resonate with users, they will likely keep scrolling through their feed and not engage.
For example, suppose you are running a dynamic retargeting campaign on Facebook. In that case, your adverts will automatically show the most relevant products to your audience based on user behaviour, acknowledge that you know the user has visited your website and not yet taken the desired action.
For instance, a retargeting campaign that serves adverts to people who have added to their cart but not purchased. In this scenario, consider headlines like:
Whereas if you are running a prospecting campaign for an audience who hasn’t visited your website, the language you use will be very different. People in this audience will need to find out more about your business, service or products and be provided with a ‘hook’ before you can introduce specific retargeting phrases.
Carrying out continual testing is the only method of building the ‘perfect’ advert. Essentially you are trying to determine key information about your audience to deliver results.
You can easily categorise the elements of an advert to test and use the Facebook A/B testing tool. Without testing, it’s not possible to determine which adverts will give you better results.
Once you have established a method of testing and gathering data for your advert elements, you can also try testing other parts of your overall campaign.
Campaign structure:
Audience targeting:
Our tips can help you create the foundation for the perfect advert, so you can build upon this to find the best formula for your business.
Successful Facebook adverts also require considerations around targeting, audiences, objectives etc., that feed into your overall advertising strategy, which is why we’ve highlighted the importance of testing to drive results.
If you feel like you need further assistance to perfect your paid social media adverts, please do not hesitate to get in touch with our expert digital marketing team at SQ Digital. We have over 20 years of experience in digital marketing, and we are happy to hear from all businesses looking to improve their online presence.
In the UK alone, revenue from online retailers is growing significantly each year. In September 2021, a value of £1.99 billion was attributed to UK online retail sales – a huge value demonstrating the need for retailers to be present online. However, simply having a website isn’t enough anymore to increase customer reach; with growing demand, the competition is fiercer than ever.
The biggest hurdle for the success of an e-commerce website is user experience. If an e-commerce website design lacks a ‘good’ user experience, additional online marketing efforts are likely to fail. As digital marketing experts, we often identify the website as the limiting factor of potential marketing campaigns.
User experience is being used in the e-commerce industry more than ever and represents more than you might think. To define a user's experience, we must consider their physical, auditory, and visual interaction with a website, in addition to their emotions, perceptions, psychological responses and the context of its use, as well as much more. And that is before, during and after their interaction with your website’s interface.
That sounds like a lot to consider, and it is! There’s no hiding the fact that when it comes to understanding people's needs, there is no one size fits all approach, especially when different industries and audiences are thrown in the mix. Fortunately, there are some constants we can focus on to help provide a good user experience for retail websites. These centre around usability (how easily the customer interacts with the website interface) and understanding customer expectations.
The customer expectations we refer to are the top-level needs that transcend product and industry. A report by Nielsen Normal Group (world leaders in research-based user experience) outlined convenience, speed, assurance, accuracy, options and experience as the main expectations for online e-commerce customers. You can start to see how these expectations are met when you look at the websites' of the most successful UK online retailers.
The UK leading online retailer for 2021 was Amazon. When you look at the website, you can see it meets present-day customer expectations very well through its usability. It's worth pointing out that these large companies are successful due to well-thought-out business models that meet customer expectations in parallel with their websites. This includes in-store pickup, easy returns, downloadable apps etc., all of which require extensive and complex infrastructure, time and money. However, when it comes to their e-commerce websites' there are many lessons to be learnt that are relevant to all online e-commerce businesses, from the very small to the very large.
If you have fast-loading web pages it will stop people from leaving your website in frustration. Users expect immediate information and page loading. Unfortunately, the people who view your website may well have experienced other websites with faster page loading speeds. This previous experience will reduce patience and increase the necessity for you to also improve page speed. On top of that, there is increased focus, not just on speed but also on the loading experience. As SEO experts, we would refer to these elements as Core Web Vitals, but it simply means how smooth does the page load?
Think about buttons moving during the loading time and accidental clicks or images loading after you've started reading text, making you scroll back to where you were. These are all examples of bad usability and page experience.
Mega menus are large menus organised in one view with categories and products shown together in logical groups. The below example from Asos shows an excellent example of a rectangular mega menu that allows the user to see all their options in a top-level category they are interested in.
Mega menus are an excellent choice for e-commerce websites because they give the users the information about the largest number of options efficiently.
Important considerations are that the menu should never drop below the fold (that is no matter which screen size the user is on, they shouldn't have to scroll). It's also important to ensure that the mega menu appears no quicker than 0.5 seconds once hovered over. If the user is heading for the search bar but briefly passes their cursor over the main navigation, they don't want a rapid succession of large menu dropdowns to interfere with their intentions.
Using a search bar with excellent predictability, speed of suggestion, the forgiveness of spelling mistakes and other intelligent features is another must for an e-commerce website. Below you can see the search menu for Amazon. Even with one letter, the search function makes suggestions to show the best-matched options as the user types.
This speeds up the time from the user looking for the required product or category to finding it. Similar to the mega menu, it is important that the suggestions dropdown does not disappear below the bottom of the current screen for the user to avoid unnecessary scrolling.
Nothing will put your online customers off more than missing or inaccurate information. Finding out an item is unavailable after trying to purchase through the cart is a huge inconvenience and a waste of their time. The in-store equivalent would be a shop assistant asking a customer to wait 10 minutes while they retrieve the product for them, only for them to return after 10 minutes without it and not apologising (your website can't soften the blow as a person can). The same goes for delivery details, which is why successful e-commerce websites encourage location detection before the user starts adding items to the cart. Argos.co.uk does this well, encouraging the user to select their preferred delivery time and store, in the case of in-store collection:
If you have any product detail errors, we would recommend you prioritise addressing them. The worst example of inaccurate information would be incorrect product dimensions or descriptions. There is no excuse for these kinds of errors, and it would be no surprise if an e-commerce business failed because of it.
Making sure your website is accessible to all users not only means you capture the largest possible audience, but it is an ethical must as well. It is essential you don't exclude any users from being able to experience and interact with your website. This doesn't just apply to people with sensory or physical impairments but also users on different devices, internet connections and so on. So on top of ensuring your website design is accessible, it must also be responsive under a wide range of conditions. Knowing if your website meets these requirements can be tricky but your website design and development team can give you this information.
Our web design team created the responsive web design that you can see above for one of our retail clients, Roccia. Making sure your website works on all devices, for all users, is vital.
The checkout stage is crucial to get right because your website has already done all the leg work. Losing people at this stage is like running a marathon and then stopping before the line. On the flip side, it is the easiest stage to develop to see the most significant customer retention and sales improvements.
Offering sign-up options can help return customers speed up purchasing, and it can be used to increase your email marketing list. However, you should always provide guest check out options to cater to all audiences. The stage you present these options is also crucial. You can do this before the purchase stage or after, where sign-up at the end is optional (and the sign-in option is ever-present in the navigation). Both can work; however, the latter will reduce the purchase process by one step and can be preferred by customers.
In addition, if you use an external payment site, make sure you have wording on the page to explain what will happen to the user. They need to trust the website at every moment. Other tips for a well-thought-out checkout process include making the product details (especially price) visible at all times, so the user has no doubts about what they are buying, and ensuring any errors in filling out fields are clearly displayed.
Use high-quality images to attract and engage your audience. Use them as a wow factor, with many different angles and zoom options. Show images with the item in use vs not in use etc. The product image is the only way the user can interact with an item before purchasing. Having a high-resolution photo that is flattering (you might need to consider improving how the images are taken in some cases) with a very detailed alternative description for those relying on auditory descriptions, is a must.
You can see the image and image carousel available at Banks Lyon above. There are images of the front and back of the watch and a third image that lets the customer see its packaging. The images also have a zoom function on hover, increasing the visible detail shown. It is essential to use high-quality images that don't impede page load speed and experience.
There is a reason everyone says content is king in online marketing. Content is your narrative with the user, it is how you walk customers through your website, pointing them in the right direction. For an e-commerce website, its purpose is multifold. Product description information must be detailed and answer all of the user's questions. Include things such as size, material, weight and functional metrics. For more technical products having downloadable data sheets and specifications are all very helpful. For online clothing retailers, the content should include size guidance (even if a link to a size guide on another page) and information on where items are produced. There is no such thing as too much information with a good layout and structure.
Through website traffic monitoring tools, such as Google Analytics, you will see the volume of traffic coming to your website and whether the proportion who purchase is low. Identifying industry-relevant benchmarks, such as average checkout abandonment rates and conversion rates, and then cross-referencing with your own data, can help you know if something is wrong. Once you know there is something wrong, the hard part is working out the sticking points.
We use a user behaviour tracking tool called Microsoft Clarity and A/B testing to improve website user experience. If you need any help improving your e-commerce website, please don't hesitate to get in touch with our web design experts. We are well versed in building WordPress websites designed with the end-user in mind.
User experience (commonly referred to as UX) transcends all marketing channels from SEO to PPC. It is a fundamental part of any digital marketing strategy as it is completely entwined with the user journey from site visitor to customer. In this article, we look at one of the tools we use here at SQ Digital to audit website UX.
If you need more insight when it comes to the marketing data you collect, there are plenty of options available. The Internet is awash with analytics tools designed to make it easier for you to work out precisely what your customers are doing – or, in some cases, not doing.
One very insightful tool, appropriately named Microsoft Clarity, helps marketers worldwide get a clearer idea of their position with user behaviour data. Let's take a closer look!
Launched in 2020, Clarity is a relatively new offering from Microsoft and is already proving useful for marketers and webmasters. It provides easy to understand data capture and analytics in a simple dashboard format. The tool contains several key features for a marketer to use; for example, session recording, which shows how users navigate pages on your website in reasonably granular detail.
This is a handy tool if you’re looking for more in-depth information on user behaviour throughout your website. Using screen recordings and heatmaps, you can see the most popular links on a page or what users are doing when they land on the page.
These heatmaps refer to the places where people clicked and scrolled when visiting your site, so you can more easily see what they’re doing. As for the sessions replays, you’re able to record how visitors are interacting with the pages.
The tool is GDPR-compliant, as you can also turn off the recording for places where sensitive information is gathered, like log-in pages.
Microsoft Clarity can be used alongside other tools, like Google Analytics, to give you a more detailed picture of how your site performs. For example, if a page isn’t converting, Microsoft Clarity can highlight further information and help you understand why.
In the example below, certain elements of our homepage are highlighted through the heatmaps, showcasing where users are clicking most often. This helps us to see what draws their attention and the pages they’re interested in.
People are engaging heavily with the navigation bar, which is understandable because it’s where they can find the links to other pages on the site, including more information on the digital marketing services we provide.
Microsoft Clarity can also provide a wide range of simple data tools for businesses. It can, for example, organise the pages on your website in order of how popular they are – helping you to understand what content is most attractive to your visitors. It might not go as deep into the numbers as Google Analytics, but it does give you a good starting point for future investigation.
Most PPC Agencies know that Google Analytics has long since been a big name in this field. It’s by far the most popular data analytics tool for digital marketers, and its association with the Google brand means that it’s likely to stay that way.
The general industry perspective on Microsoft Clarity is that it’s not – and probably never will be – a replacement for Google Analytics, as some of Google’s basic product features, such as bounce rates, don’t feature in Microsoft Clarity.
But rather than Clarity and Analytics competing with each other, we believe that the real benefit comes from using both platforms to build a complete picture of your site’s performance. Marketers who analyse and measure several factors simultaneously – such as several distinct campaigns at once or multiple conversion aims – can gather much more data than before, helping to better inform their decisions.
You can connect Clarity with Google Analytics by adding a link to Analytics sessions that helps you to identify areas where information is scarce. When you go back to Clarity, you’ll be able to see what visitors to your site saw and how they interacted with it.
To achieve this, Clarity creates a dimension called “Clarity Playback URL” that sends data to your Analytics account. Microsoft Clarity offers some metrics that Google Analytics doesn’t – or which Google Analytics doesn’t name in such a user-friendly way. This is why both Clarity and Analytics should be used together since they can complement each other well.
A marketer logging in to the Clarity dashboard will find, for example, ‘rage clicks’, a metric that works out how many website sessions featured negative user behaviour. The feature offers a simple way to investigate which pages of your website might be due for a redesign – and, unlike on the more complex Google Analytics, it can be done in seconds thanks to the centralised dashboard feature.
Both tools are free and simple to set up, requiring the addition of a script with tracking code to your website pages. As mentioned, Clarity provides actual recordings of visits, including where people place their cursor on a page and where they’re scrolling down to, which Analytics does not.
These are invaluable metrics if you want to improve your website, as well as the UX. For example, if users are leaving your site halfway down a page, you can figure out where the problem lies – it could be that the rest of the content on the page is not informative enough or that the layout is a little confusing.
This means you get the opportunity to look more critically at your site and analyse the users’ pain points. Why are they clicking on one link above another? Which pages are not performing as well as they should? How is the page rendering?
Clarity gives the answer to these and many more questions, so it’s fair to say it’s already a comprehensive tool despite being relatively new to the game. And it’s also clear that using just one of these tools could result in incomplete information – by combining Clarity with Analytics, you get access to more data than ever before!
But while we recommend using both analytics tools to get a more comprehensive view of your site’s performance, Microsoft Clarity is more straightforward to use than Google Analytics for those less confident with these types of tools.
And, given that the tools can integrate, investing time and effort in learning to use Clarity could give you more options, depending on the type of data you need and how quickly you need it. Clarity’s user-friendly dashboard is arranged so that the information required can be accessed and selected in just a few clicks, whereas Google Analytics might need more of a deep dive.
Ultimately, this goes to show that there’s no such thing as a perfect marketing analytics tool. A marketer with one set of conversion goals might need basic information, while a marketer with a different set of goals and requirements will need more sophisticated information.
Overall, Clarity is no better or worse than other tools on the market: it just caters to a particular need, and that need is simplicity and accessibility of information. Contact us today to find out how we can help your website reach its potential – or why not check how your website currently performs with our free SEO audit tool.
