Digital Strategy

Three reasons why customers abandon your site and how to make them stay

In the classic late 80s film “Field of Dreams,” Kevin Costner is inspired to turn his cornfield into a baseball field after hearing a mysterious voice whisper the famous line, “If you build it, he will come.”

Indeed, the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson soon shows up, followed closely by the Chicago Black Sox and half of the town.

Unfortunately, many marketers believe that if they only build an ‘awesome’ website, the customers will start pouring in. But what happens when visitors show up and, instead of playing ball and inviting all their friends, turn right around and leave? 

Building a ‘site of dreams’ requires a whole lot more than a pretty hero image and scrollspy navigation. To truly capture and engage today’s consumers, brands must focus on creating an immersive, interactive user experience that spans channels and devices.

Here are three UX pitfalls causing your customers to abandon your site, and how to make them stay.

Southeast Asia could be the next big ecommerce opportunity: report

China’s booming ecommerce sales tend to grab most of the attention when we talk about businesses opportunities in APAC, and it’s understandable that foreign companies are drawn to more mature markets.

However a new report from Econsultancy and Hybris reveals that businesses shouldn’t overlook the emergence of South-East Asia’s rapidly evolving online space and the myriad opportunities that swift ecommerce adoption is starting to foster. 

ASEAN nations currently account for 9.6% of the APAC online population, a figure which is obviously dwarfed by China (54%) but at 62m people it’s not an insignificant market.

There are also strong indicators that ecommerce usage is reaching a tipping point. For example, just under three-quarters (73%) of Singapore’s population is presently connected to the internet, one of the highest in the region. 

How SEO helps Tesco to dominate the online grocery market

Tesco is the clear winner in the online grocery market, in fact it takes almost 50p of every £1 spent on food shopping on the internet. 

This virtual monopoly is set to continue not just because of spending on fulfilment, dark stores, distribution, stock and offline marketing but due to its online visibility through organic search and a very visible well-structured website. 

11 Econsultancy blog posts that marketers can use every day

Many of these ‘greatest hits’ don’t need flagging up as they are shared a lot and have probably been seen by some of you.

However, I wanted to group together a list of posts that are of considerable value, so you can bookmark, pocket, etc. and then use to impress your friends and win business.

Simple as that. Just click the pictures to see the original posts.

I’ve tried to include posts that won’t date, so I’ve left out Chris Lake’s web design trends post (which is proving our most popular this year) because it’s billed as ‘2014’. However I think it will remain useful past the end of the year, so check that out, too.

Social data: don’t miss the boat

In the movie Mallrats, there’s a clip where one character, William, stares into a Magic Eye image, waiting to see a sailboat hidden in the picture.

Packed lunch in hand, he’s determined to stare until he finds it. Yet William’s frustration only grows as many passerby and children see the boat while he only sees the ‘white noise.’

For me, the conversations at Econsultancy’s recent Social Media Roundtable in New York highlighted the challenge for the enterprise to see the sailboat, camouflaged by the white noise of vast digital data.

Ecommerce in China: Why are Western brands flocking to Alibaba’s Tmall?

Western ecommerce brands seeking to expand into China cannot ignore the 500lb gorilla that is Tmall.

Even ASOS was recently forced to admit that its best chance of cracking China was to establish a presence on Tmall, while Burberry became the latest UK fashion brand to open a Tmall storefront in April.

In fact the Alibaba-owned marketplace currently has around 2,000 foreign brands among its 70,000 sellers.

So what’s so important about Tmall that it can make the likes of Apple, Uniqlo, Reebok, and ASOS create a store within someone else’s domain rather than rely on their own website?

The B2C marketplace was spun out of Taobao in 2010, which is itself a C2C marketplace that’s similar to eBay. Tmall allows brands and retailers to establish a digital storefront, which is again similar to the new model offered by eBay.

24 resources and tools to inspire digital marketing beginners

There are lots of posts on the internet detailing free tools for marketers.

In this one, though, I thought I’d throw in some that aren’t necessarily for marketers, but which I use regularly.

I’ve called this post ‘tools for beginners’ but in reality the tools aren’t for beginners, they’re for everyone. It’s just that if you’re a beginner you might not have found your set ways of working yet, and you might want to pick something up before you’ve ground your way into the groove.

From meme makers to some in-depth analytics, here’s what I find useful.

The last few inches of marketing is about relationship building

A different digital world is on the horizon: one of sensors and beacons ready to pinpoint our location to within a few inches.

And marketers are eager to take advantage of this new opportunity.

Only these last few inches of marketing aren’t about sales opportunities and customer conversions. They are about trust and relationships.

Is Baidu pay per click advertising the only way into China?

It has been said that, “great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people.” But any discussion about doing business in China cannot help but talk about people.

According to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) by the end of 2013 there were 618m internet users in China. This is around 46% of the population. 500m people use mobile devices to connect to the internet and 302m people are e-shoppers.

But I don’t want to focus on discussing people, although it is quite clear that is a barometer of business in China. I want to discuss some ideas as to how to connect with these people.

What ways can brands from outside China reach these people?

Joining up online and offline data: seven predictions for the next six months

A few weeks ago I attended my first Digital Cream London event, sitting in on a rountable about joining up data across online and offline channels.

The three sessions with over 30 digital marketing professionals unveiled some interesting insights that I think are worth sharing.

This roundtable was, in my opinion, one of the more relevant ones as the customer journey becomes increasingly complex. 

Detailed findings are included in our free-to-access trends briefing, sponsored by BlueKai, but in this post I’m going to focus on predictions for the next six months that were provided by the delegates.

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