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As marketers, we strive to design customer experiences that leave lasting impressions, drive conversions and keep our customers coming back for more. But do we rely too heavily on big data instead of honing in on the specific actions that drive customer engagements?

A recent report from Forrester commissioned by customer insights software firm FocusVision surveyed over 500 U.S. consumers to describe what they thought and felt was a truly memorable customer experience and the specific elements of the component that made it memorable. Forrester also surveyed over 200 B2C marketing decision-makers, including 54 CMOs, to gain insight into what methodologies they use to understand their customers.

The report defines big data as a “combination of structured and unstructured data, including log files, transaction information, internet of things, social media metrics, etc.” It defines small data as “a combination of VOC data, customer journey data, user focus groups, surveys, behavioral user experience data, etc.”

Small data unlocks the “why” behind customers’ actions

Over-reliance on big data is a common trend, according to the report findings. When asked if their customer experience strategy and execution was informed more by big data or by small data, nearly a third (29%) of the respondents said they rely “completely” on big data when making decisions.

Looking only at big data often leads digital marketers to convoluted customer insights and challenges in terms of understanding the drivers behind customer actions. More than half of the brands surveyed agreed or agreed strongly that small data is critical to unlocking the thoughts and emotions behind the actions customers take.

Forty-one percent of brands using small data strongly agreed they know why a customer chooses to purchase from them versus those who don’t. For brands not using small data, this number drops ten points to only 31%.

Digital marketing and business intelligence teams operate in silos

Additionally, the report found that marketing and business intelligence teams are communicating, but not effectively. The two groups are often siloed despite their heavy reliance on one another for day-to-day operations. These disparities in communication can lead to a breakdown across marketing strategies — when marketing is not adequately equipped with detailed insights, optimizing campaigns to meet customer needs will continue to be challenging.

Having a contextual background for your customer data — big or small — is a crucial success factor for digital marketers leveraging data to drive business decisions and further invest in martech. The context of your customers’ actions that is provided by the business intelligence group will tell you more about a customer’s decision-making process than merely looking at the big picture of whether or not a customer made a purchase.

Deeper insights deliver improved customer engagement

To eliminate the silo-factor between teams, marketers should meet regularly with their business intelligence team to review data findings and gain a deeper understand behind the insights they are given. Understanding these insights on the engagement level will help digital marketers better understand how to engage with customers effectively and drive bigger returns.

Big data will continue to be important, and business leaders and organizational stakeholders will continue to depend on it for broad-level insights into business outcomes and trends. But, marketers need to prioritize small data for day-to-day marketing decisions. By working closely with customer insights or business intelligence teams, digital marketers can gain a holistic, detailed view of their customers that delivers increased customer engagement and, ultimately, more conversions.

Whether you’re an SEO, PR or a website owner, it’s highly likely you’ve come across DA (Domain Authority). The metric, created by industry-leading platform Moz, was designed to help search marketers understand the value of a domain, at a glance and compare it with others in the same industry or niche.

This was important for SEO, third party links have long been used to understand how “trustworthy” a website is and form part of Google’s “ranking criteria” (although their importance and how this works is a hot talking point in SEO).

Moz uses their index (or understanding of the web), to map out these links between sites and, alongside other factors, try to assign a “competition” score to each website they encounter. This can then be used as a proxy to determine the value of a said site.

Note: I have nothing against Moz. This piece isn’t in any way designed to be a slight on them or their work, but further insight and context into how to use the data they provide.

The eye-opener to follower deception

Last year, Social Chain opened marketers’ eyes to the murky world of follower deception. Many brands understand the importance of influencers to the digital ecosystem, but measuring the value that someone can bring prior to working with them is difficult and time-consuming. As such, often companies rely on metrics that symbolizes “reputation”, followers, engagement, and other similar indicators. However, as Social Chain asserted, the typical signposts do not always depict a true picture and if not completely understood or manipulated, can lead to large amounts of spend being wasted.

This is a common theme with SEO. Although it’s less a question of manipulation and more a question of understanding. In 2012, Penguin, Google’s “webspam” filter was rolled-out and assigned a positive or negative value to third party links. Prior to this, “trust” was judged on an arguably simpler set of volume-based criteria, but as the flaws in the system were exploited. It soon became clear that a more complex solution was required, to ensure the integrity of search results was maintained. Trust continued to be an important factor in success, but SEO’s had to start thinking more carefully about how they generated these. Here the connection between SEO and PR became more important as links could not be artificially built they had to be earned, naturally.

The two teams started to collaborate more closely, with SEOs providing PRs extra resource to contact a “lower”, but still valuable tier of influencer and PRs helping SEOs reach the higher, more widely trusted publications that they could not access before. Over time, the lines between SEO and other channels have started to blur – and as teams were pushed to operate across remits, PRs started to use SEO metrics, with DA taking precedence (as it was arguably the simplest to use), to understand more about the people they were contacting. With investment from brands increasing, more influencers started to appear, and from this grew an industry in its own right.

Fast forward to the present day

An influencer marketer will likely sit across content, Social, PR, and SEO, with the goal of engaging personalities to improve performance across all the channels they are connected to (based on the goals of the organization/campaign). For social and PR, engagement and reach can be more easily measured. But SEO has always been complicated. This is because “good SEO” has never been about links alone and the idea of a “link value” is entirely subjective, based on factors that change between industries, counties, and even search results. As such, the idea of using a single, links-based metric to determine the value a domain can provide for SEO is inherently floored – and yet, many marketers, influencers and PR teams still continue to use DA for this purpose.

To make matters more complex, the whole link-building ecosystem has been flooded with misinformation. I discussed this in a recent webinar with SEMRush, but it’s often been the case that the wider industry’s understanding of the link building practice has come through commentators on the practice and not the experts conducting the work themselves. This means, the influencers and PR teams, and not the SEO community themselves.

Why is this the case?

There’s really no simple answer, although, for a long time before the collaboration was mainstream, it would be a frequent occurrence for SEOs and PRs to clash over remit cross-over. In the agency world, this could have led to reduced budgets – why pay two agencies to do the work of one, although (from my experience), clients were very much open to creating a joined-up approach between both teams.

While conflict happened behind the scenes, uncertainty, and misinformation filtered out to the influencer market, with PRs and SEOs trying to show that they “knew enough” about the other to make a wider judgment on influencer selection for projects. This led to followers and domain authority becoming key metrics in this process which, although not unhelpful, rarely offered the truest picture of a website’s worth. In turn, this led to transactional relationships with websites, where links and shares were bought for a price that, once this became a commodity only ever increased. Instead of paying for the time and expertise of the people that were being engaged, their value became intrinsically tied to their reach or their link-equity (perceived through domain authority), two metrics that could be easily manipulated.

Now, the growing rumble of discontent within the influencer landscape has finally hit the headlines with a theatrical flourish. Unfortunately for many, this has come too late, with brands realizing the cost of investing in reach over expertise, most famously with the Fyre festival scandal. But, this doesn’t mean that influencer marketing isn’t valuable, as I wrote at the time, but that how and most importantly – the reasons as to why marketers engage with content creators need to change. We’ve seen publicly how using followers to measure reach can be folly. But there’s still time to take these learnings and apply them to domain authority too before something as equally damaging to the industry happens.

Latest developments

Recent legislation in the UK has started to pave the way for change in this field. It’s certainly made working with influencers harder, in large part to the ambiguity around the specifics of how the changes should be interpreted, I personally apply the principle of “better safe than sorry”, even from a search perspective. Every brand interaction should now be declared as an advert, including event invites and even in cases where the only “payment” has been a reimbursing of travel costs. With Google’s hardline view on manipulative link building, the practice of engaging “high authority” SEO influencers is slowly ending or at least, becoming incredibly risky.

Instead, we should look to engage influencers for their subject matter expertise and credibility they can lend to a story or campaign. In practice, this means killing the transactional “I give you X and you give me Y” type of relationships and seeing content creators as partners in getting your message out to the world. For SEO, this may mean using “no-follow” links (which, in basic terms, tell crawlers that they should not consider them for search benefit), but this shouldn’t be an issue. Sure, their direct value on search may be limited, but to think that the search algorithm considers the web in as simple terms as this would be myopic. There are some brilliant studies around the power of brand on search, which are worth noting in this context. Moreover, at its heart, a link is there to carry users from A to B. Adding a “no-follow” tag doesn’t stop this from happening and in this case, using domain authority as a metric often would lead to discounting a valuable traffic driving part of this ecosystem.

With this shift in the industry and better collaboration than ever between search and the wider marketing mix, the opportunity for content, search and marketing communication teams to unite is stronger than ever. So too, is the need for it, as achieving cut-through in the wall of digital noise is harder than it’s ever been. Campaigns, to be successful on all fronts, must genuinely inspire, engage or provide value to users and older-school tactics, such as product reviews and content seeding, have all but lost their ability to drive results. On this point, we simply must move away from using domain authority and followers as a metric in isolation, as neither is an effective gauge of how useful a site might be to its users.

Closing notes

I’d like to speak directly to influencers because without a universal change in mindset, we’ll continue to see the same practices continue and the channel will continue to be under-utilized. I’d impress upon them the need to keep an open mind and focus on becoming the best subject matter experts that they can. I’d encourage the end of any agonizing over “vanity metrics”, which are often taken out of context, and in place look to whether their users are genuinely engaging with their content, and how this impacts their value as creators. Importantly, I’d implore everyone, PRs and SEOs included, to have a little more fun, harness the incredible creativity that brand communications teams, content creators, and influencer marketers can yield and build something great together.

Ric Rodriguez is an SEO Director and winner of the 2018 Drum Search Award. He can be found on Twitter @RicRodriguez_UK.

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Mary Meeker has released her annual internet report, giving marketers a glimpse of where we are globally in terms of social media use and online ad spend, among other trends. While overall internet usage keeps growing, social media usage is flattening — but that’s not slowing down online ad spend.

More than 50% of global population is now online. Between 2009 and 2018, the percent of global internet users has grown from 24% to 51% — more than doubling in just under ten years time. According to the report, there are now 3.8 billion global internet users, up 6% year-over-year.

Of all the people going online, more than a quarter (26%) of internet users fit into the “constantly online” category, up from 21% in 2015. Not surprisingly, 63% of adults say they are trying to limit their personal smartphone use.

Social media growth is slowing. The number of those people logging into social media networks daily is decelerating. As recently as 2016 and 2017, social platforms saw as much as 6% growth year-over-year. In the past year, that growth has slowed with social media usage up just 1% between 2018 and 2019.

Instagram and YouTube growing fastest. Facebook has the highest percentage of internet users who are logging on to a social platform at least once a day — but that number actually dropped from 31% in 2017 to 30% last year. YouTube, however, saw daily site usage increase to 27% of internet users in 2018, and increase from 22% in 2017.

Instagram grew daily site usage from 13% of internet users in 2017 to 19% last year. And while the number of internet users signing on daily to WhatsApp has grown only slightly between 2017 and 2018 (23% to 25%), the Facebook-owned messaging app ranks third among social platforms being accessed by daily.

Internet ad spend continues to grow. The report did not breakdown ad spend by platform, instead offering a generalized overview of year-over-year internet ad spend growth on desktop and mobile. At 22%, growth is strong, but what is most clear is how quickly mobile advertising has skyrocketed in the past five years compared to desktop ad spend.

While ad spend is growing, global internet ad revenue among six major platforms is decelerating. The report looked at revenue figures for Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Snapchat and Pinterest. Looking year-over-year, growth has slowed fairly significantly.

In terms of ad revenue share among online ad platforms, Mary Meeker’s report confirms eMarketer’s findings published in February: Google leads followed by Facebook, with platforms like Amazon, Twitter, Snapchat and Pinterest well behind but gaining momentum.

Why we should care. There is not a lot of granular data to be gleaned from the report as far as market intelligence, but it does offer marketers a high level overview of what’s happening online from a global perspective. The number of people finding their way online keeps going up, but social media usage is stagnant. This could translate to marketers paying more attention to owned channels like email marketing.

There is no reason for marketers to have any knee-jerk reactions as far as social media strategy. But, knowing that future outcomes may not render the growth and ROI social once offered could help marketers better plan for the future.

In May, Google announced the launch of a new website aimed at explaining how they serve and address news across Google properties and platforms.

The site, How News Works, states Google’s mission as it relates to disseminating news in a non-biased manner. The site aggregates a variety of information about how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks news stories as well as how news can be personalized for the end user.

How News Works provides links to various resources within the Google news ecosystem all in one place and is part of The Google News Initiative.

What is The Google News Initiative?

The Google News Initiative (GNI) is Google’s effort to work with news industry professionals to “help journalism thrive in the digital age.” The GNI is driven and summarized by the GNI website which provides information about a variety of initiatives and approaches within Google including:

• How to work with Google (e.g., partnership opportunities, training tools, funding opportunities)
• A list of current partnerships and case studies
• A collection of programs and funding opportunities for journalists and news organizations
• A catalog of Google products relevant to journalists

Google attempts to work with the news industry in a variety of ways. For example, it provides funding opportunities to help journalists from around the world.

Google is now accepting applications (through mid-July) from North American and Latin American applicants to help fund projects that “drive digital innovation and develop new business models.” Applicants who meet Google’s specified criteria (and are selected) will be awarded up to $300,000 in funding (for U.S. applicants) or $250,000 (for Latin American applicants) with an additional award of up to 70% of the total project cost.

The GNI website also provides users with a variety of training resources and tools. Journalists can learn how to partner with Google to test and deploy new technologies such as the Washington Post’s participation in Google’s AMP Program (accelerated mobile pages).

AMP is an open source initiative that Google launched in February 2016 with the goal of making mobile web pages faster.

AMP mirrors content on traditional web pages, but uses AMP HTML, an open source format architected in an ultra-light way to reduce latency for readers.

News transparency and accountability

The GNI’s How It Works website reinforces Google’s mission to “elevate trustworthy information.” The site explains how the news algorithm works and links to Google’s news content policies.

The content policy covers Google’s approach to accountability and transparency, its requirements for paid or promotional material, copyright, restricted content, privacy/personalization and more.

This new GNI resource, a subsection of the main GNI website, acts as a starting point for journalists and news organizations to delve into Google’s vast news infrastructure including video news on YouTube.

Since it can be difficult to ascertain if news is trustworthy and accurate, this latest initiative by Google is one way that journalists (and the general public) can gain an understanding of how news is elevated and indexed on Google properties.

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Facebook has rolled out a new Study from Facebook marketing research program that involves users downloading an app to collect data from their phone. The company said the the information it collects will go toward product development initiatives.

“Market research helps companies build better products for people. We believe this work is important to help us improve our products for the people who use Facebook,” wrote Facebook product manager Sagee Ben-Zedeff.

In January, Facebook removed its Research app from the iOS app store after being accused of paying teenagers for access to their mobile activity via a VPN app that gave Facebook nearly unlimited access to user data and phone activity.

How Facebook’s latest research program works. Facebook is promoting the program by running ads asking people to participate. If someone clicks on an ad, they’ll will be asked to register — and if they qualify — will be asked to download the Study with Facebook app from the Google Play Store.

Participants must be 18 years old, and currently it is only available to people in the U.S. and India.

Facebook is compensating users for participating in the market research program, but did not give details on how much money users would earn. (Facebook’s previous research program paid users $20 a month to have the app installed on their phone.)

What information is Facebook collecting? Once the app has been downloaded, it collects and analyzes the following information:

• The apps a user has installed on their phone.
• How much time a user spends on each app.
• App activity names and the app features users are taking advantage of.
• The user’s country, device and network type.

Facebook said it is not collecting user IDs, passwords or any content like photos, videos or messaging. The company also said it will not sell any information it collects via the app to third parties or use it to target ads. Also, the data collected will not be added to the person’s Facebook account information if they are a Facebook user.

Why we should care. Facebook’s mismanagement of user data has been a thorny issue for marketers. Advertisers have reaped the benefits of the company’s ad targeting capabilities, but marketers want safe platforms — and channels — where their messaging can be heard without the risk of people’s data being misused, or worse, stolen.

Facebook said the information it collects via its Study with Facebook program will not be used for ad targeting, and that the research is going toward building “better products” for its users. As Facebook shifts to become more of a messaging platform focused on privacy, better products will benefit marketers wanting to more ways to engage with their audiences on Facebook’s family of apps (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp).

But, the catch for the research participants — and by extension, marketers — is whether or not Facebook can be trusted and that the information it is collecting will not be mishandled or result in another user privacy crisis.

Online reviews and SEO have been closely tied together for a long time. That’s common knowledge at this point. According to Moz, online reviews are estimated to make up 10% of the criteria for how Google displays search results.

That’s a hefty chunk!

The importance of online reviews in today’s business world is undeniable. However, thanks to the famously secretive Google algorithms, knowing exactly how to leverage them to achieve stellar rankings is still somewhat of an ambiguous task.

Over the years, there have been all kinds of studies and strategic advice given on how to work customer reviews into SEO plans. While the precise details will vary from company-to-company (and industry-to-industry), there are several commonalities that can be applied across the board.

Let’s talk about a few of the big ones in making online reviews one of the strongest weapons in your SEO arsenal.

Develop a strategy to collect in numbers

First and foremost, online reviews aren’t doing your SEO strategy any good if you aren’t getting them!

Google and other search engines like to see that people are choosing your business and taking the time to leave their opinion on it. Unfortunately, most people won’t take the time to write a review on their own, unless the experience was exceptionally bad. In fact, studies have found that more than 30% of consumers will leave a negative review following a subpar experience!

That being said, you need to make a conscious effort to collect reviews from as many customers as you can. The good news is that 70% of consumers will leave a review if asked – per a BrightLocal study.

Plain and simple, you need a plan to follow up with customers after their experience to gauge their thoughts. Now, this is a task you need to handle carefully.

Step one deals with timeliness

Regardless of whether your review follow-ups are done through email campaigns, SMS messages, review landing pages, or anything else of that nature, the timing needs to be impeccable. Give it a day or two before you send out your request for a review. Generally speaking, it’s typically ideal to send these requests in the mornings for the best response rates.

Step two is the approach

Asking people to leave reviews is a game of happy mediums. On one hand, you want to develop the form to get the most genuine and detailed responses as possible. However, you don’t want to ask questions that are so complex that you turn people away.

Keep it simple. A short form asking for the pros, cons, and overview is nice and short, yet encourages in-depth responses.

Source

Always remember, a detailed, honest review is worth way more than a short review with a simple star rating and a quick sentence.

Step three is persistence

If people don’t respond to your review request, you definitely want to give them a nudge. But, you don’t want to overstep. Keep your follow-ups to no more than two, and space them a few days apart.

Quantity of reviews plays a big role in how the search engines rank businesses on the web. That said, you can’t rely on people to review your company on their own. Do yourself a favor and nail down a rock-solid strategy early on!

Know how to respond properly to both good and bad reviews

These days, responding to reviews is just as important as gathering reviews. Many would argue it’s even more important!

To reference the BrightLocal study again, most customers read review responses when looking at a new business.

Source

Earlier this year, Google actually confirmed that responding to reviews plays a role in SEO.

Here is what Google had to say on the matter:

Responding to reviews shows that you value your customers and the feedback they leave about your business.

This action ideally works to build trust between a business and its customers. So, when you receive a review (whether it be good or bad), you need to have a plan in place to address it properly.

Most importantly, when responding to a review, let it air out. You never, never, never want to respond to a review when you are emotionally charged. For example, let’s say you have a customer from hell who wrote a scathing review, even though they weren’t completely right.

Chances are, you read this review and had a million things you’d like to say to them. However, you need to remember that your responses are public! Regardless of the context behind the review, you need to approach it with a level head. Give it at least a couple hours before you respond. But no more than a couple days.

Here is a great example of how not to respond to a bad review.

Source

When you are responding to negative reviews, there are a few key components to remember. However, you may choose to use these according to what would suit your brand the best.

Address the reviewer by name.

1. Thank them for taking the time to leave a review.
2. Try to personalize your response with context from their individual experience.
3. Look at the review as objectively as possible. Were there any internal shortcomings that caused this review?
4. Apologize and empathize.
5. Accept responsibility where it is due.
6. Take the conversation offline.
7. Offer actionable solutions.
8. Once resolved, ask the customer if they would be willing to change their review.

Here is a fantastic example of how to handle a negative review like a champion

Source

Not only does the responder do a great job at empathizing with the issue, but they also provide a great deal of actionable information, as well as an avenue to take the conversation offline. This one hits the nail on the head!

In regards to responding to positive reviews, the rules to live by are quite a bit less volatile.

1. Thank the customer for their review.
2. Be personal with the response. Don’t come off as cookie cutter.
3. Encourage them to come back.

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Always remember, the way you respond to reviews says WAY more about your business than the review itself. If you’re smart and collected about it, you can potentially turn negative sentiment into brand loyalty, and of course, excellent rankings on Google!

Choose review platforms wisely

There are all kinds of online review platforms out there these days. Some are more general, while others are niche-focused. When you choose which platforms you want to be gathering reviews on, there is a lot that should go into your decision.

In addition to getting registered on the major ones like Google Reviews, Facebook Reviews, Yelp, and the others, you need to take your industry into account. For instance, if you are a SaaS company, gathering reviews on sites like Capterra and G2 Crowd is vastly important. If you are a restaurant, consider sites like Zomato and OpenTable.

In terms of SEO value, it’s important to note that not all review platforms are equal in the eyes of Google. Even though a platform is a verified Google Review Partner, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best of the bunch.

When you are looking at review platforms for SEO, there are a few key factors that should come into play.

1. How many total reviews are written on this platform every month?
2. How many businesses are registered on this platform?
3. Are you able to qualify for Rich Snippet Stars with this platform?
4. How does this platform work to combat fake reviews?

To give you an idea, here is how SEMrush ranks several review platforms in regards to SEO value:

Source

Take your time in doing research here. You need every single review to maximize your potential of ranking on the SERPs.

Let reviews guide your customer experience

When push comes to shove, the common denominator in using reviews to boost SEO value is getting people to leave good, honest feedback.

The best way to do this is to provide an exceptional customer experience (obviously). But, customers and search engine robots also want to see that you are using the customer reviews you get to improve the user experience (UX) for the best.

When people leave reviews, you need to look at the words as objectively as possible. In other words, reviews need to be seen as constructive criticism.

Make it a point to take inventory of your new and existing reviews every month. Try to spot patterns that shed light on bigger issues.

For instance, let’s say you are in the SaaS industry and provide an email marketing program. If you got a bunch of new reviews in the past month and a decent amount of them address a similar issue related to client support, this is a clear-cut sign you need to re-evaluate (and maybe step up) this area of the UX. Perhaps incorporating a live chat or chatbot feature to the website dashboard might be a solution.

The bottom line is that reviews serve the monumental purpose of spotlighting weak areas within a business. If you are able to use them to improve the lives of your customers, you will be rewarded – both in terms of SEO and revenue.

The wrap

Online reviews are an SEO weapon with a massive amount of firepower. The tricky part is truly understanding how to use them properly.

Ultimately, it all comes down to your ability to gather them on the right platform, respond appropriately, and of course, use them to better your company in the big picture. This is all easier said than done. Hopefully, this article has given you a good idea of where to start.

Manish Dudharejia is the President and Founder of E2M Solutions Inc.

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Steve Jobs put it well when he said, “Simple can be harder than complex…but it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

This mantra has worked for Apple for decades, and it certainly holds true for digital design as well. Particularly when you’re talking about e-commerce websites. Simplicity has been proven to routinely yield higher conversion rates, deliver a more positive experience, and even build trust among visitors. Why? In short, calls to action become more prominent, users aren’t overwhelmed or frustrated, and there are often fewer site issues.

We’re logging more hours online than ever before, so naturally, we crave digital experiences that are intuitive, visually calming and straightforward. But creating simplicity on the frontend doesn’t necessarily mean the backend infrastructure of the website is uncomplicated. Simplicity often requires greater behind-the-scenes complexity.

The devil’s in the details and so is simplicity.

If your website isn’t clear cut and easy to navigate, there’s not enough attention to detail going on behind the scenes. The road to attaining a minimalistic website that delivers a streamlined user experience is paved with important design considerations.

First impressions are just as important on the web

The reality facing any website owner is they have less than 15 seconds to capture the attention of a visitor –– and that’s being generous. Your website’s bounce rate is contingent on how your website looks to the visitor. According to The State of Content report conducted by Adobe, 38% of people [pdf] will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive.

Unsurprisingly, 94% of negative website feedback can be attributed to bad design. But the key to successful web design is still all about paying close attention to detail and ensuring your visitors not only have the information they need but that it’s easy and quick to access.

Clutter does not spark joy

Eye-tracking technologies are already highlighting how digital distractions and clutter can dramatically affect the conversion rates of website users. Tobii Pro, a Swedish company that develops and sells products for eye control and eye tracking, turned this challenge into an opportunity by using eye tracking to help KLM Royal Dutch Airlines redesign their online travel ticket system. By tracking overall flow through the buying process and comprehension of the individual steps, they were able to design a ticket-buying tool around behavior and user need that increased conversions by 30%.

Clutter also directly impacts loading times, which is extremely important when it comes to the user experience. In fact, according to the aforementioned Adobe report, 39% of people will stop engaging with a website if the images won’t load or take too long to load. Which seems par for the course when considering 53% of mobile users will leave any web page that takes longer than three seconds to load.

Slow load times are a direct result of having too much on one page and are one of the key indicators of bad decision making and sloppy backend work.

The importance of having a clear call to action

It is no accident that many of the highest-performing e-commerce sites feature a clear call to action. CTAs, if done correctly, can dramatically increase conversion rates. But they must be visible, clear and compelling. Don’t make visitors work for the desired next action.

One quick and simple way to increase site conversion is to put CTAs “above the fold” so that visitors don’t have to scroll down to see it. In fact, one study revealed content placed above the fold was seen by visitors 102% more times than anything placed below it. And when a software company that produces landing pages experimented with this theory and moved its CTA above the fold, conversions spiked 41%.

To realize an even bigger boost from your CTAs, personalize them. When visitors are met with tastefully done personalizations and specific product recommendations, it demonstrates you understand them, which helps build loyalty.

Make it easy for customers to reach out

One of the top complaints most site visitors have is not being able to locate the company’s contact information easily. If you rely on local foot traffic, your name, address and phone (NAP) should be on every page. Nothing will frustrate a visitor more than having to hunt for contact information.

Even if you are an e-commerce seller, drop shipper or wholesaler, it is imperative you have your NAP information strategically placed in plain view – in many cases above the fold to eliminate the need for your buyers to scroll down or jump through virtual hoops to find it. Having a clearly labeled NAP validates your store’s legitimacy and eases the minds of shoppers who always have the option to hunt for a similar product on Amazon, Target or other online retailers if they find your website’s information too confusing.

Empower your customers

It goes without saying that a happy customer will be a returning customer. And to keep them happy, your website should be well-equipped with a variety of self-service tools to help them identify the answers to their questions – and fast. Today’s customers expect a website to have a self-service application and now, many prefer self-service over human contact.

Self-service tools can take the form of on-site calculators, downloadable guides and checklists, and even quizzes. Having these in place can also significantly cut down on inbound customer service requests by proactively answering questions before they become an issue. For instance, we recently worked with a skincare product retailer that operates exclusively online. One challenge they routinely dealt with was customers wanting guidance on which products were best for their skin type. The retailer wanted to empower its customers to get this information instantaneously while also reducing demands on their customer support team. By simply developing a quiz, they helped customers identify the product best-suited for their needs, cut down the number of customer service calls and help build confidence and trust between the company and the customer.

Keep in mind, these tools are only effective if they are simple and straightforward. That requires time spent behind the scenes thinking through the customer’s path, the desired goal or outcome and how it will match your brand’s look, feel and tone.

Complexity always precedes simplicity – and simplicity is what today’s consumer craves. Take a look at your online presence through that lens. Will it move mountains or has it inadvertently become a barrier?

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

Challenges between sales and marketing, stemming from broader organizational issues, are not uncommon. From miscommunication to mismatched data, there are plenty of frustrating problems that hinder alignment across siloed teams. A recent report (registration required) from Aragon Research found that customer revenue optimization helps organizations increase sales volume, improve win rates and deal sizes while delivering increased customer value. The research also showed that marketers tend to grade their relationship with sales higher than their counterparts on the sales team — indicative of just how disconnected these teams can be.

Co-founder and executive vice president of enterprise software firm Altify, Áine Denn, recognized these challenges when she co-founded the firm in 2005. “Sales and marketing aren’t speaking the same language,” said Denn. “Buyers have elevated expectations, but many brands’ sales and marketing teams are disconnected.”

Revenue optimization teams can reframe conversations

As businesses increasingly shift toward subscription-based models, brands apply an account-based marketing strategy to support the sales process. According to Altify’s chief marketing officer Patrick Morrisey, it’s time for a fundamental shift in our sales and marketing efforts, and even our larger organizational structures. “We need to shift the conversation from ‘what are we trying to sell’ to ‘what problems are we trying to solve?’”, said Morrisey. “That’s where the revenue optimization team comes in.”  He also noted that by creating a revenue optimization team, brands can increase transparency into sales campaigns and provide better insights into their digital marketing efforts.

“As marketers, our roles are changing as the buying cycle continues to shift,” said Allie Hughes, founder of Hughes & Co., a digital marketing agency with a strategic focus on profitability and revenue generation. “We need a better picture of the sales process to get better at what we do.”

One step towards solving the challenges of accessibility, insights and transparency across teams is to establish deal review meetings with the internal stakeholders involved in an account’s sales process. “It’s not the ‘old-world’, tech-driven center of excellence,” says Morrisey. “It’s establishing cross-functional resources grounded in account plans and driven by processes and metrics bringing internal stakeholders to the table.”

Cross-functional teams can lead to more effective campaigns

By establishing a cross-functional revenue optimization team and involving stakeholders from across sales and marketing in the process from beginning to end, digital marketers can set the tone for the entire sales process. Building rapport with your counterparts in sales — from business development to customer success managers — will provide valuable insights your team can act on to drive conversions. Partnering with the product marketing team and involving them in the process is also critical for ensuring that sales is well-equipped to manage customers’ expectations and solve challenges.

“Buyers can be extremely well-informed. Sales need to be equipped with accurate information from business development, product marketing team to deliver the right message — and solutions — to the customer during the sales process,” said Morrisey. “The tangible value that marketers are delivering to customers is actually equipping the sales team to understand the customer and products that will best solve the customer’s problems.”

Alignment can lead to competitive advantage

The view into accounts that marketing receives from sales generally doesn’t extend much further than the information put in the organizations’ CRM. This makes it challenging for marketers to understand the customer’s expectations and needs. “Sales very inadequately supports marketing with the information and insights that they need to understand how to shift marketing campaigns,” said Denn.

“Marketing is a sales-enabling activity, with more access to information about the entire sales process our efforts are more informed, our data-based decision making has a stronger foundation and ultimately our marketing efforts and products will scale up in quality as these teams are implemented in companies,” said Hughes. “We see clients shifting in this direction and our capacity to help generate strong ROI is improving.”

The importance of alignment cannot be understated; our sales and marketing teams should be as well-informed as the customers we are trying to reach.