The ultimate checklist for a successful websites launch: Marketer’s edition

It’s the 11th hour and the launch of the new website is imminent. Prospects and customers are primed and colleagues and senior management are stood in the wings, waiting in anticipation for this all-singing, all-dancing new website – god forbid that once it goes live something catastrophic happens. Every T should be crossed and each lowercase I dotted.

Marketers put complete faith in web designers and developers, but it’s worth knowing things to look out for –...

9 May 2018 | Branding

How to use visual analytics to optimise your retargeting strategy

Visual analytics, the ability to visually analyse data with software that allows you to ask and answer endless questions, helps marketers to decode the complex world of consumer retargeting. It allows them to understand who their customers are and why they behave the way they do. With data visualisation technology, consumer behaviour can be tracked in real time and analysed to predict future trends, allowing companies to keep their retargeting strategies relevant and up to...

2 May 2018 | Advertising

Who won the Oscars Twitter battle?

As well as the usually hotly-contested battles for best director and actors, the Oscars in recent years has become a competition for social media dominance as well. Social analytics provide a good indicator of where the public interest lies, and whether this diverges with the industry narrative.

The news coverage of the annual awards bonanza was dominated by the ongoing scandal enveloping Hollywood. Two studies of social media on Twitter both in the run up to, and during the ceremony...

6 March 2018 | Social Media Marketing

Emotions: The key to great UX

The success of marketing often depends on how effectively you can tap into the emotions of your target audience. A well-designed website, good navigation, intuitive UX and easy to understand copy make things simple and give your visitors a sense of control.

This can be a strong and positive emotion, which builds trust and helps customers or leads see value from your content and see your brand in a positive light.

This article looks at the value that UX brings to your customers...

6 March 2018 | Customer Experience

Journey analytics show the customer experience through a different lens

Marketing directors can’t make decisions in a vacuum. They need information about their customers, their channels and all the touchpoints that help them to connect with each other. How can they deliver what the customer wants unless they can see through the customer’s lens?

Customer interactions with a brand are now defined as their ‘journey’ and it is insight into that journey that helps organisations to plan product roadmaps or launch new services. McKinsey...

26 February 2018 | Customer Experience

How testing can harm sales

Testing is important in marketing. An ongoing cycle of testing, optimising and retesting helps to ensure that you’re always improving, and A/B and multivariate testing are incredibly popular for websites. Identifying the factors or combination of factors that deliver the best results is extremely valuable.

But one thing that is commonly overlooked is the impact of testing on websites – or specifically, on page load times.

Not everyone realises that third-party...

20 February 2018 | Best Practice

Analyse, report, repeat: Here’s what you need to be tracking

When your boss asks you how the online marketing efforts are doing, what do you say? “We’ve increased impressions by 30% and traffic is up 15%.” Do you know what that means for business growth? Does your boss?

Digital marketing is great for equipping businesses and marketers with the data to define their success and find unending opportunities for growth. Unfortunately, this also makes it incredibly difficult for marketing leaders to determine what truly matters to...

10 August 2017 | Attribution

Product pages: make them perfect

As ecommerce continues its explosive growth, consumers are buying more than ever before.  Dollars are shifting to digital, with online sales projected to exceed $523 billion by 2020.

That’s a big deal.

At the same time, the landscape has also grown fiercely competitive and consumer-dominated.

More connected and empowered than ever before, today’s shoppers don’t just expect, they demand immersive, engaging digital experiences.

It’s...

7 June 2017 | E-Commerce

Four ways user data can inspire Google-relevant redesigns

It’s not just SEO hype — search is becoming more data-driven, and metrics like goal conversions and user engagement are more important than ever.

All signs point to a shift in how we use search engines to navigate the internet. Google’s Knowledge Graph, Knowledge Vault, and Accelerated Mobile Pages projects, for example, are clearly designed to provide snippets of data to mobile users. This is significant, as Google’s continued existence relies on its dominance...

1 June 2017 | Data-driven marketing

Don’t leave your social media data trapped in walled gardens

Opinion A few years ago it seemed the rise of apps was unstoppable. With smartphones and tablets attached to everyone’s palm, the implications for marketers seemed clear: As consumers spend more time in apps and social media on their mobile devices, this is where marketers’ ad spend should be concentrated.

When the main apps competing for our attention are the social media giants, many then began directing spend in this direction, which explains why the IAB’s latest...

14 March 2017 | Data-driven marketing