Category: Digital Transformation

There are five website characteristics, which can provide a good user experience. These are:

1. Coherence: the site must make sense to the user and have a simplistic but creative design as well as be easy to read and not have an information overload, adequate font, and readable sizes.
2. Complexity: the site must have different categories of text on different pages, so the user is not overwhelmed by the amount of info on one webpage. The different pages should be clearly named with what they contain so the user can find them easily and fast.
3. Legibility: there should be a home menu link on every page of the site and it will let the user move back and forward to different pages easily and they will not get lost and frustrated when using the webpage.
4. Site personality and style: This means that the site should be clear to the user through the colors and the images as well as the content contained within the webpage. It lets the user know if the webpage is a fun social one or a more serious business one.
5. Visual design: the user experience also depends on how well the webpage works like the downloading speed as well as the resolution of the screen of the computer and the type of web browser that is used and what device the user is accessing the webpage on.

There are two types of User Experience (UX).

One type of UX is called tactical or technical UX: this represents the core principles of good user interaction and design are applied. A good interaction design makes sure that every user interaction is well thought through and that it serves the user in the simplest and most effective way possible. Conversion optimization focuses on ensuring that the user finds their way to the end of their goal of going on the page without dropping out of the conversion funnel. This type of UX uses the conversion rate as well as the method of split A/B testing

The other type of UX is Strategic or human UX: For this type of UX, the company gets into the realm of user insights and brand. the role of UX at this point is to find out about the needs of people and to design an experience that meets those needs in a way that fits the brand. The whole point of using this type of UX can be many different reasons. It can be used to create a fun place for people to hang out. It can be used to create a no-nonsense solution-based experience. It can be used to create a content-heavy deep site or a place where people can chat and discuss topics or make an exclusive and members-only site.

The following tools are very useful for your User Experience (UX) Research

• Heatmap software. This is a tool that shows researchers where the users move around the website with their mouse and where they hover their mouse and for how long. It gives the researchers an indication of where the appeal for most users comes from and what are elements of the page the users are more interested in. The following image is an example of heatmap software used on the Scales4research.com website. The Blue dots provide an indication of where the appeal for most users comes from and what are elements of the page the users are more interested in.

• Usability testing. This is when the researcher and the users are together while the users use the website, and the user will test the UX and will let the researcher know of any improvements needed and what are the strengths and weaknesses of the UX, and what can be improved.
• Eyeball tracking. This is when the users’ eyes are tracked to see where they are looking on the screen. It lets the researcher know what more appealing aspects of the page are and what users are more attracted to.
• Split A/B testing. This is useful when two different versions of the same webpage are running simultaneously to see which one is the better performer and is more suitable for the UX.
• Web analytics. This is used across all websites to provide detailed numbers of visitors to the site and how long they spent on it and how they got there and where.

The definition of UX is the overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or an app, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use.

Companies can no longer assume that if they have built a great and easy-to-use website that it will still satisfy all users. Users on a mobile phone will have a different view and experience as they will interact with the website through touch rather than a keyboard. Users on a mobile phone can also be interrupted by calls and are more likely to be looking to absorb on the website than actually make a purchase compared to a desktop user. These differences are a very important factor for the company to keep in mind.

Search Engine Marketing
This consists of enhancing the visibility of a website when someone searches something using a keyword/term on a search engine like Google. It consists of two main methods: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Advertising (SEA).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is the process of bringing traffic to a website through organic search engine results. It has 2 factors of ranking: Content and Backlinks. An SEO has 3 elements: Title Tag, URL, and meta-description.
Search Engine Results on google
-How to configure these 3 elements?
• Title tag
• 50-70 characters
• Company name is specified.
• Attractive to click.
Domain Name is not the URL. A domain should be made up of keywords and be easy to read.
• The Domain name should be as short as possible in order to make it memorable and understandable. It should be pertinent catchy and should be a description of the activity.
• Meta description should be a short eye-catching description of the website.
• Content that is more engaged with will be more successful i.e. if someone cites or links your website it will go to a higher position on google.
• Back-links or entering links are separate links to your website for different sectors.
The popularity of a Website:
Three elements are used to measure the popularity/ rating of a website:

1)The number of links

2)Quality of website

3)Context of the link.

Social media do not have a direct impact on SEO. However, there is an indirect impact on SEO.

Search Engine Advertising (SEA)
SEA stands for Search Engine Advertising, which is also referred to as PPC or Pay-Per-Click. It is advertising directly on a search engine. It shows ad results (sponsored) at the top.
Quality Ads
• Define the reason you are doing the ad.
• Make an attractive description.
• Adapt your landing page according to your advertisement.

Brand-owned Touchpoints

• These are the interactions of customers with an organization that are solely controlled by the organization,
• Examples of these are all brand-owned media platforms, also brand-controlled elements of the marketing mix for example the packaging or the attributes of the product itself.

Partner-owned Touchpoints

• The touchpoints are the customer interactions that involve an experience that is created by the firm itself and one or more partners of said firm.
• The partners involved can be marketing agencies and communication channel partners.
• An example would be apps developed by a firm but are available on the Apple App Store.

Customer-owned Touchpoints

• These customer interactions refer to ones which the brand or partners or others have no control over it is purely based on customers’ own experience.
• Customers decide on what their own needs are during the need recognition phase of the buying process.
• The customer’s choice of payment is a good example of a customer-owned touchpoint.
• The time at which customer touchpoints are most recognizable is during the post-purchase stage of the buying process. Here they are able to figure out for themselves if they are happy or disappointed with their purchases.

Social/External and Independent Touchpoints

• These touchpoints recognize the important roles of others in the customer experience.
• There are many external touchpoints that can influence a customer during their buying process, for example, other customers, peer reviews, independent information sources such as TripAdvisor, or social media influencers.

We also need to understand the consumer journey to understand the impact of different touchpoints on our digital marketing strategy.

The Customer Journey consists of three stages:

1. Pre-Purchase
2. Purchase
3. Post-Purchase

Each touchpoint mentioned above is prevalent in each stage of the customer journey. It is important for companies to get information from these touchpoints and then feed it back into previous experiences of each part of the customer journey this information can then be combined to help predict what the future experience of the customers will be in regard to your brand and can also help with the development of strategies to help ensure that these future experiences are greater than ones previous.

3 Things to Consider to Plan your Digital Marketing Strategy

1. Where are we now? – (A) this can be understood by doing some research about your company through data collection or viewing insights.
2. Where do we want to get to? (B)-this can be understood from your mission statements and vision statements.
3. How do we get there? – This is where strategy comes into place to get from A-B. you first chose a desirable goal/outcome for your organization.

This goal is then broken down into further objectives or milestones which can be shaped around a model like SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based). Each objective then requires a strategy to be implemented in order to complete the said objective. The chosen strategy needs an action plan to help break down the strategy into smaller more detailed individual tasks which in turn will lead to the implementation of the strategy.

The following barriers, and considerations you need to consider for your digital marketing strategies:

Technology:

• You can buy technology and it does not have to be built (outsourcing)
• Every program that you roll out needs a rollback plan

Skills:

• People can be brought into the company via recruitment to do tasks that require certain skills that the recruited employees will possess.
• Instead of recruiting new people to do jobs try to upskill current employees by training as these people understand aspects of the business such as organizational culture.

Budget and Resources

• Restrictions on expenditure such as salary caps can cause growth to become somewhat stagnant.
• The external environment may give rise to poor economic conditions which hamper the improvement of the Digital Marketing section of a business as this requires lots of funding.
• Trying to impose a new method of work into the organization can be very time-consuming and causes stress on employees, leading to poor productivity (time=money).

Business Priorities:

• A new competitor enters the market
• New rules and regulations put into place
• An Economic crisis
• New top management employed with a different style
• All of these factors can mean that the business has to move focus and thus resources to the new priority which then takes away from the expansion of the Digital Marketing strategy