The company had assembled a list of proof points they could showcase on their homepage: years in business, number of integrations, customer counts, implementation guarantees, security certifications, industry awards, analyst recognition, and more. But they only had space to highlight four of these benefits prominently below their hero section. They faced the classic messaging dilemma: which trust signals would actually move the needle with prospects evaluating B2B software?

This is where MaxDiff analysis becomes valuable. Instead of relying on stakeholder opinions or generic best practices, we could let their target buyers vote with data on what mattered most.

What makes MaxDiff analysis different from other survey methods

MaxDiff analysis (short for Maximum Difference Scaling) is a research methodology that forces trade-offs. Rather than asking people to rate items individually on a scale, MaxDiff presents sets of options and asks participants to identify the most and least important items in each set. This forced-choice format reveals true preferences because people can’t rate everything as “very important.”

Here’s why this matters: traditional rating scales often produce compressed results where everything scores high. When you ask customers, “How important is X on a scale of 1-10?” most people will hover around 7 or 8 for anything remotely relevant. You end up with a spreadsheet full of similar numbers and no clear direction.

MaxDiff cuts through that noise. By repeatedly asking “which of these five options matters most to you, and which matters least?” across different combinations, you build a statistical picture of relative importance. The math behind MaxDiff generates a best-worst score for each item, showing not just which options are preferred, but by how much.

For digital experience optimization, this methodology is particularly useful when you need to prioritize limited real estate on a website, determine which features to build first, or figure out which messaging will actually differentiate your brand.

How we structured the MaxDiff study for maximum insight

In the project for our client, we started by defining the target audience precisely. The company was a B2B SaaS platform serving mid-market operations teams, so we recruited 60 participants who matched their customer profile: director-level or above at companies with 50-500 employees, working in operations or supply chain roles, currently using at least two SaaS tools in their workflow, and actively evaluating solutions within the past six months.

From the initial audit and stakeholder interviews, we identified 11 potential trust signals the company could emphasize on its homepage. These included things like:

• Concrete numbers (customer counts, uptime percentages, integrations available)
• Credentials (security certifications, enterprise clients)
• Promises (implementation timelines, support response times, money-back guarantees)
• And more

Each represented something the company could truthfully claim, but we needed to know which ones would build the most trust with prospects evaluating the platform.

The survey design was straightforward. Each participant saw these 11 benefits randomized into multiple sets of five items. For each set, they selected the most important factor and the least important factor when considering whether to adopt this type of software. Participants completed several rounds of these comparisons, seeing different combinations each time.

This approach gave us enough data points to calculate a robust best-worst score for each benefit: the number of times it was selected as “most important” minus the number of times it was selected as “least important.” Positive scores indicate a strong preference, negative scores indicate a low importance, and the magnitude of the scores shows the strength of feeling.

The results revealed a clear hierarchy of trust signals

When we analyzed the MaxDiff results, the pattern was striking. The top-scoring benefits shared a common theme: they provided concrete evidence of proven reliability and satisfied users. The bottom-scoring benefits? They emphasized company scale and marketing visibility.

The four highest-scoring trust signals were clear winners. G2 or Capterra ratings scored 38 points (the highest possible), indicating this was nearly universal in its importance. The number of active customers scored 30 points. An implementation guarantee (“live in 30 days or your money back”) scored 25 points. And SOC 2 Type II certification scored 16 points.

These weren’t arbitrary marketing metrics. They were the specific signals that would make someone think, “this platform delivers real value and other companies trust them.”

The middle tier included operational details that registered as minor positives but weren’t decisive: the number of successful implementations (7 points), availability of 24/7 support (6 points). These signals suggested competence but didn’t particularly move the needle on trust.

Then came the surprises. Years in business scored -5 points, indicating it was slightly more often selected as “least important” than “most important.” The number of integrations available scored -11 points. AI-powered features claimed scored -15 points. Employee headcount scored -36 points. And recognition as a Gartner Cool Vendor scored -55 points, the lowest possible score.

Think about what prospects were telling us: “I don’t care that you have 200 employees or that Gartner mentioned you. Show me that real companies like mine trust you and that you’ll actually deliver on your promises.”

Why customers rejected company-focused metrics

The findings revealed an insight into trust-building that extends beyond this single company. B2B buyers weigh social proof and reliability guarantees far more heavily than they weigh indicators of company scale or industry recognition.

When a business talks about its employee headcount or analyst mentions, prospects interpret this as the company talking about itself. These metrics answer the question “How big is your business?” but not “Will this solve my problem?” From the buyer’s perspective, a larger team or Gartner mention doesn’t necessarily correlate with better software or smoother implementation.

By contrast, user reviews and customer counts answer the implicit question every prospect has: “Did this work for companies like mine?” A guarantee directly addresses risk: “What happens if implementation fails?” Security certifications address legitimacy: “Is this platform secure enough for our data?”

The AI-powered features claim scored poorly, likely because it felt trendy rather than practical. Prospects for this specific business weren’t primarily concerned about cutting-edge technology; they wanted a platform that would reliably solve their workflow problems. Leading with an AI angle, while possibly true, didn’t address the core decision-making criteria.

Years in business scored negatively for similar reasons. While longevity can signal stability, in this context, it didn’t address the prospect’s immediate concerns about implementation speed and user adoption. A company could be around for years while providing clunky software with poor support.

From insight to implementation: turning research into revenue

The MaxDiff analysis gave the company a clear action plan. We recommended implementing a four-part trust signal section directly below their homepage hero, featuring the top four scoring benefits in order of importance.

This meant reworking their existing homepage structure. Previously, they had emphasized their implementation guarantee in the hero area while burying customer counts and ratings further down the page. The research showed this approach had it backward. Prospects needed to see evidence of customer satisfaction first, then the implementation guarantee as additional reassurance.

We also recommended removing or de-emphasizing several elements they had been proud of. The employee headcount mention, the Gartner recognition, and several other low-scoring items were either removed entirely or moved to less prominent positions on the site. The goal was to prevent low-value signals from crowding out high-value ones.

The broader lesson here extends beyond this single homepage optimization. The MaxDiff results provided a messaging hierarchy that the company could apply across its entire go-to-market strategy. Email campaigns, landing pages, sales conversations, demo decks, and even their LinkedIn company page could now emphasize the trust signals that actually mattered to prospects.

When MaxDiff analysis makes sense for your business

MaxDiff is particularly valuable when you’re facing a prioritization problem with limited data. It works best in these scenarios:

• You have more options than you can implement. Whether that’s features to build, benefits to highlight, or messages to test, MaxDiff helps you choose wisely when you can’t do everything at once.
• Stakeholder opinions are conflicting. When internal debates about priorities can’t be resolved through argument, customer data settles the question. MaxDiff provides quantitative evidence for decision-making.
• You need to differentiate in a crowded market. If competitors are all saying similar things, MaxDiff reveals which specific claims will break through. Often, the winning messages are ones companies overlook because they seem “obvious” or “not unique enough.”
• You’re optimizing for a specific audience segment. Generic research about “customers in general” often produces generic insights. MaxDiff works best when you recruit participants who precisely match your target customer profile.

The methodology has limitations worth noting. It requires careful setup, and you need to know which options to test before you start.

If you don’t include the right benefits in your initial list, you won’t discover them through MaxDiff.

It also works best with a reasonably sized set of options (typically 5-15 items).

And the results tell you about relative importance, not absolute importance; everything could theoretically matter, but MaxDiff reveals the hierarchy.

How to use MaxDiff findings in your optimization strategy

Once you have MaxDiff results, the application extends beyond simply reordering homepage elements. The insights should inform your entire digital experience.

Your messaging architecture should reflect the importance hierarchy. High-scoring benefits deserve prominent placement, repetition across pages, and detailed explanation. Low-scoring benefits can either be removed or repositioned as supporting rather than leading messages.

Your testing roadmap should prioritize changes based on MaxDiff findings. If customer reviews scored highest in your study, test different ways of showcasing reviews before you test other elements. Let the data guide your experimentation priorities.

Your content strategy should emphasize what customers care about. If service guarantees scored highly, create content that explains the guarantee in detail, shares stories of when it was honored, and addresses common concerns. Build your editorial calendar around the topics MaxDiff revealed as important.

Your sales enablement should align with customer priorities. If the research showed that prospects value licensing credentials, make sure your sales team knows to emphasize this early in conversations. Create collateral that highlights the trust signals that matter most.

The most effective companies use MaxDiff as one tool in a broader research program. They combine it with qualitative research to understand why certain benefits matter, behavioral analytics to see how users interact with different messages, and continuous testing to validate that the predicted preferences translate into actual conversion improvements.

Turning guesswork into growth

The SaaS company we worked with started with a dozen possible messages and no clear sense of which would build trust most effectively with B2B buyers. After the MaxDiff analysis, they had a data-backed hierarchy that let them confidently restructure their homepage and broader messaging strategy.

This is the power of asking prospects the right questions in the right way. Not “do you like this?” which produces inflated scores for everything. Not “rank these 11 items,” which overwhelms participants and produces unreliable data. But rather, through repeated forced choices, revealing the true importance of each element.

If you’re struggling with similar prioritization challenges (too many options, limited space, stakeholder disagreement about what matters), MaxDiff analysis might be the tool that breaks through the noise. It transforms subjective opinion into statistical evidence, letting your prospects vote on what will actually convince them to choose your platform.

Ready to discover which messages actually resonate with your customers? The Good’s Digital Experience Optimization Program includes research methodologies like MaxDiff analysis to help you prioritize changes based on real customer preferences, not guesswork.

The post MaxDiff Analysis: A Case Study On How to Identify Which Benefits Actually Build Customer Trust appeared first on The Good.

While 89% of product teams are conducting user interviews according to recent industry data, there’s a critical gap between gathering user input and uncovering the insights that actually drive business results.

We see this all the time in our client work. Teams building features that competitors have without competitor data, or developing features based on the loudest customers without checking the significance of those friction points.

So what’s the solution?

The companies consistently shipping features that move the needle know the difference between asking users what they want and understanding what they actually need. It starts with discovery research.

What is discovery research in UX?

Discovery research in UX is the foundational phase of user research that focuses on understanding user problems, needs, and contexts before any solutions are designed.

Unlike evaluative research methods that test existing designs or prototypes, discovery research explores the unknown territory of user behavior to uncover opportunities and define problems worth solving.

Discovery research helps you understand use cases and user needs. It can ground you in what problems to solve and what is going on in the market.

This grounding is essential for product teams who want to build features that users actually need and will drive growth.

Discovery research typically involves methods like user interviews, field studies, diary studies, and market analysis. These approaches help teams understand the broader context of user goals and challenges before jumping into design solutions. The insights gathered during this phase become the strategic foundation for all subsequent product decisions.

Discovery research versus UX discovery

While these terms are often used interchangeably, there’s an important distinction that affects how product teams approach their research strategy.

Discovery research specifically refers to the research methods and activities used to understand user needs and identify problems. It’s the “how” of gathering insights through interviews, observations, and analysis. This includes techniques like ethnographic studies, user interviews, and competitive analysis.

UX discovery, on the other hand, is the broader strategic phase that encompasses discovery research, but also includes other activities such as technical feasibility assessments, business viability analysis, and stakeholder alignment. UX discovery is the “what and why” that frames the entire early-stage product exploration.

Think of discovery research as the tactical execution within the strategic framework of UX discovery. A comprehensive UX discovery process will include multiple types of discovery research methods. It also considers business constraints, technical limitations, and market opportunities.

For SaaS product teams, this distinction matters because it clarifies roles and expectations. UX researchers lead discovery research activities, while product managers typically orchestrate the broader UX discovery process that incorporates research findings into strategic decisions.

Understanding this difference helps teams avoid the common mistake of treating research as a checkbox activity rather than a strategic input that informs product direction.

Benefits of discovery research

Discovery research delivers tangible benefits that extend far beyond the research team, directly impacting product success and business outcomes.

Reduces development risk and waste

The most immediate benefit of discovery research is risk reduction. By understanding user needs and the specific problems before development begins, teams avoid building features that miss the mark. This is particularly critical for SaaS teams where failed features mean ongoing maintenance costs and technical debt that compound over time.

Enables data-driven product decisions

Discovery research transforms product decisions from opinion-based to evidence-based. Instead of stakeholder preferences driving priorities, user insights guide development resources toward the highest-potential impact opportunities.

Uncover hidden opportunities

Discovery research often reveals unmet user needs that aren’t obvious from analytics or existing feedback channels. These insights can become the foundation for innovative features that differentiate your product in the market.

Improves cross-team alignment

When discovery research findings are shared across product, design, and development teams, everyone gains a shared understanding of user priorities. This alignment reduces conflicting opinions and streamlines the development process.

Accelerates time-to-market for successful features

While discovery research requires upfront time investment, it actually accelerates the development of successful features by ensuring teams build the right things from the start.

Enhances user satisfaction and retention

Products built on solid discovery research foundations better meet user expectations, leading to higher satisfaction scores and improved retention rates. Users feel heard and understood when products solve their actual problems rather than perceived problems.

This is essential for SaaS businesses where discovery research can identify the difference between features that drive daily engagement versus one-time usage, directly impacting churn rates.

When to use discovery research

Discovery research is best leveraged as part of a continuous research strategy.

Teresa Torres, expert and author of Continuous Discovery Habits, recommends weekly conversations with customers. “Continuous discovery means weekly touchpoints with customers by the team building the product, where they conduct small research activities in pursuit of a desired outcome.”

The goal is to take research from something you pause to do, into something you always do.

Many leaders will have experimentation rituals that allow quick and consistent feedback on ideas/products, but it’s rarer to see teams prioritize discovery on a frequent cadence.

When you manage discovery in batches or isolated sprints, it can mean you miss out on opportunities or delay solving urgent problems for customers.

Common discovery activities in UX

Effective discovery research employs multiple methods to build an understanding of the problem landscape and market conditions. Not all are required, but a combination will give a better picture to work off.

Diary studies

For understanding user behavior over time, diary studies ask participants to record their experiences, thoughts, and interactions over days or weeks. This method is particularly valuable for SaaS products where user needs evolve or vary based on different use cases and timeframes.

User interviews

One-on-one conversations with users can be a great pillar of discovery research. The key to successful interviews in discovery is asking open-ended questions that help explore user motivations, frustrations, and workflows. A good foundation is to conduct 6-8 interviews per user segment to get a picture of current challenges and behaviors.

Field studies and contextual inquiry

Observing users in their natural environment provides insights that interviews alone can’t capture. Field studies reveal the environmental, social, and technical factors that influence user behavior, uncovering needs that users might not articulate in interviews.

Competitive analysis and market research

Understanding the competitive landscape helps identify opportunities for differentiation. It also uncovers whether user problems are being adequately solved by existing solutions. This desk research complements user-facing research methods.

Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) research framework

JTBD research helps frame what job users are “hiring” your product to do. It can help you think beyond features to understand the fundamental progress users are trying to make in their lives or work.

Card sorting

This method helps teams understand how users categorize information and conceptualize problem spaces. Card sorting is particularly useful for discovering how users naturally group features or content areas.

Survey research

While qualitative methods provide depth, surveys can help uncover findings across larger user populations. Use surveys to quantify the prevalence of problems discovered through qualitative research.

Leveraging discovery research for better outcomes

In an era where 83% of designers, product managers, and researchers agree that research should be conducted at every stage of product development, it’s critical to understand discovery research in UX.

Discovery research is a tool that helps you dig into current user needs and prioritize the problems worth solving. It provides the user insights needed to build theme-based roadmaps, prioritize high-impact features, and avoid costly development mistakes. Most importantly, it ensures that every dollar spent on product development addresses real user needs rather than perceived problems.

Ready to make discovery research work for your product team? The Good specializes in helping SaaS companies uncover the user insights that drive product success. Our team combines deep research expertise with practical product strategy to ensure your research translates into features that drive growth.

Get in touch with The Good to discuss how discovery research can accelerate your product development and improve user satisfaction. Let’s turn your user insights into your competitive advantage.

The post What Is Discovery Research in UX? appeared first on The Good.

During this era of augmented realities and machine automation, businesses are concerned with connectivity, data, analytics, intelligence, and so much more. This new digital transformation, ushered in by the fourth industrial revolution, sees companies gearing up to be digital-first.

In fact, according to a report by Foundry, 89% of companies have already implemented a digital-first strategy or are planning to do so. Gartner also shared that digitalization is a top priority for 87% of senior business leaders. But even companies that are keeping up with the trends of the digital age can find themselves failing.

Why?

Because most companies don’t understand that with this digital revolution, there was also a paradigm shift from the traditional product-centric approach to one that focuses on the customer.

Now, more than ever, brands need to be able to cater to customer needs and preferences. Taking this customer-centric approach creates a satisfying customer experience that becomes the key to crafting winning digital experiences that will, in turn, create loyal customers.

For years, brands have utilized personalization as a means of offering a customized experience for customers. While personalization is still relevant, the shift in the digital age calls for more tailored offerings.

Brands can harness data and leverage technology to create these tailored offerings, improve communications, and increase engagements, but only if they remember to focus on the needs and preferences of their customers.

In this article, we discuss the shift from product-centricity to customer-centricity. We’ll also explore the role of customer orchestration in customer-centric digital experiences, practical ways to make your brand more customer-centric, and winning examples that can inspire you.

The Digital Era: The Need to Shift from Product-Centricity to Customer-Centricity

Gone are the days when brands could differentiate themselves from their competitors solely through their products.

According to a Forbes article, approximately 1.1 million new small businesses open in a year. With saturated markets across different industries and the addition of new players, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stand out simply through the superiority of your products or services – especially if other brands are also claiming to do it better, faster, or cheaper than you. However, there are still companies who prefer this product-centric approach regardless of the demand and the customers.

While product-centric companies focus on selling the best new products, customer-centric companies make the effort to analyze customer needs through data, tools, and feedback to create the best solutions for them.

Companies also measure success very differently depending on which approach they use. When the focus is on the product, success is mostly measured through sales and how well the product sells. On the other hand, the customer-centric approach views success through customer satisfaction and customer relationships. When the focus is on the customer, success is based on customer loyalty, retention, average order value, and similar indicators.

The two strategies are very different because they are defined by different goals. The product-centric approach helps companies achieve goals relating to product quality. Meanwhile, the customer-centric approach allows brands to create the best customer experience by satisfying customer expectations.

It’s crazy to think that customer-centricity has been talked about since 1954.

The concept was born when Peter Drucker said, “It is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper.”

Still, the approach only became earnestly mentioned in marketing literature around the late 1990’s. Even then, production efficiencies held the highest priorities for companies. When the digital transformation took place, companies saw an opportunity to leverage information technology to increase interactions with customers by creating various touchpoints that would allow them to create personalized treatments for loyal customers. Now, companies are still struggling to apply the customer-centric approach despite claiming that they are, in fact, focused on their customers.

However, with the recent emergence of customer orchestration, there is a bigger opportunity to implement seamless touchpoints throughout the customer journey that elevate the experience and support personalization.

The Role of Customer Orchestration in Creating a Customer-Centric Digital Experience

When brands successfully find a balance between their use of technology and their understanding of their customer’s behavior, there is no stopping them. This all begins by looking at the customer journey from the perspective of the customer.

Let’s start with the basics.

A customer journey map is a visualization of the steps or actions that a company believes a customer will take when they engage with the brand. A customer journey map is neither linear nor simple. The flow can branch out in different ways and in different directions depending on the options and possible outcomes that are available to the customer.

Now, where does customer orchestration fit into this?

The equation is simple: you can’t implement a customer-centric approach without a customer journey map, and you can’t create a customer journey map without customer orchestration.

Customer orchestration takes the data you have available and applies that data to map out personalized experiences that will engage your customers. It’s like the interactive film that Netflix released, where viewers decide what the main character will do, and the narrative changes based on the decision.

All of this hinges on a company’s ability to connect with customers at certain touchpoints and gather data accordingly. The problem is not all companies may be knowledgeable, aware, or even motivated to do research or utilize tools and validation techniques to know what to do with their data. As we discussed in a previous article, there is a distinction between being data-backed and data-driven.

However, brands that are willing to invest in optimizing their digital experience and working on customer journey orchestration will be able to see the benefits. These benefits include:

• High Customer Engagement.

  Through customer orchestration, you’ll be able to segment your audience better, which then leads to better personalization and customization. Customers who come across relevant content are more likely to stay engaged with your brand and move further along the journey map.

• Increased Average Order Value

  With the data from customer journey orchestration, you will be able to create a personalized journey for your customers. Knowing what’s relevant to your customers gives you more opportunities to cross-sell and upsell products. In the long run, this can improve the average order value for your business.

• Enhanced Customer Service Delivery

  The customer research involved in journey orchestration doesn’t just tell you what your customers like but also what they don’t like. You’ll be able to identify customer service complaints and familiarize yourself with the struggles that customers encounter throughout their buying journey. This allows you to train your customer service representative accordingly and solve the root pains that your customers experience.

Now that we’ve established the role of customer orchestration in implementing a customer-centric approach, let’s dive into what that actually looks like.

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Five Practical Ways to Make Your Brand More Customer-Centric

1. Research Your Audience and Audit Your Website

The first step in creating a customer-centric online experience is through extensive user research. Collecting insights from every platform your customers use to interact with your brand will help identify friction points and uncover latent needs.

You won’t be able to meet the specific needs of your customers until you know what those needs are.

User research has a variety of different inputs to consider. Typical user research will include customer surveys, focus groups, and user testing. To get a fuller picture of how your customers feel about your brand, we recommend you analyze every outlet your customers use to talk about you.

Start broad by conducting surveys with your users, then narrow your focus with in-depth user testing sessions. The more data you gather from your customers, the better experience you’ll be able to provide for them.

If you want a more holistic approach, you can also do a website audit. This way, you can gather data about your users and find out what to improve on your website. A website audit will give you data and a roadmap that makes use of the data.

2. Utilize a multichannel marketing strategy

The more places your customers can reach you and engage with your brand, the better. Multichannel marketing focuses on engaging with the user through every outlet they use, whether that be through social media, print, email, etc. This approach puts the decision of how to connect with your brand in the consumer’s hands.

• Reach your customers on social media

  Social media has become one of the most effective methods for reaching your customers and is a relatively versatile tool that allows you to respond to customer service issues, conduct customer research, and promote your brand.With over 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has quickly grown to be one of the best sources of user-generated content for brands. It ranks as the most effective and impactful social media platform to develop your brand or promote a product. Many brands have started to utilize customer-created Instagram content for their product detail pages and even on homepages.

• Continue utilizing email

  Despite more dynamic and personal methods of marketing emerging in recent years, email is yet to be beaten in terms of visibility and efficiency. In fact, post-purchase emails are more powerful than your typical promotional emails, yet very few brands are taking advantage of them. You have a unique opportunity to convert a new customer into a recurring customer, and once that opportunity passes, you have to work doubly hard to get it again.

3. Provide a personalized experience

Personalization is one of the most effective and simple ways to improve your business’s retention rate and become more customer-centric. If your customers can’t develop a connection with your brand, it’s very unlikely that they’ll be motivated to continue purchasing from you. Here are a few tactics we recommend you try on your site to improve customer personalization:

• Use cookies to remember website visitors

  Being able to cookie visitors on your site opens up various opportunities for personalization. If you can store basic information about a user (product preferences, time on site, page views), it’ll help you cater to each individual user’s needs.

• Create Product Recommendation Quizzes for Your Customers

  Product recommendation quizzes work towards building a better personalized and 1:1 customer experience. Think of it as a guidebook for customers on what to buy from your site.Product recommendation quizzes show customers how your product will solve their specific problems and make the purchasing journey an efficient and pleasant experience.

4. Tell a Story through Your Brand

Despite “storytelling” becoming a marketing buzzword over the last several years, there’s an undeniable value in telling a compelling story to your customers to build a personal connection. Many successful ecommerce brands that emerged in the last few years have had a compelling story associated with them that consumers have latched onto.

You can leverage the StoryBrand framework in developing your marketing message. StoryBrand has an incredibly simple and wildly effective seven-step framework for developing your marketing plan or marketing message. Humans are innately drawn to stories over a list of accolades, testimonials, and facts.

5. Define your customer experience strategy

Improving your business’s customer experience can seem like a daunting task if you don’t have a clear strategy outlining your approach. Developing a customer experience (CX) strategy will help you take the insight you gained from user research and turn it into an actionable plan for improving your site experience. Your CX strategy should be constructed with a variety of factors in mind, including:

• Market research
• User research
• Mission and vision statement
• User testing

There’s no “right way” to develop a CX strategy, but not creating one for your business would be a serious mistake. Defining a clear strategy early on will help align your team around a singular vision and goal and will inform how you continue to develop and improve your website.

Five Brands that Leverage Customer-Centric Strategies to Create Satisfying Digital Experiences

Shifting to a customer-centric approach is not easy, but it’s possible. We’ve reviewed the top 100 customer-centric brands from Forbes and picked out five brands with winning digital experiences.

1. Depop

Depop has quickly climbed in popularity, and it’s no surprise why. The social shopping platform, which targets Gen Z and Millennials, recently received $62 million dollars in funding and is on top of the Forbes list for its masterful use of social networking and omnichannel commerce.

There has been an evolution in how people consume fashion. Talented individuals create beautiful pieces that they can sell from anywhere. You don’t have to be a well-known fashion brand or have a store at the mall. Depop simply gave them a platform because they understood that, “social apps are not a choice, but simply the basis and source of all their online engagement.” 

Part of its popularity is that it allows for instant feedback when shopping and has improved interactions between sellers and buyers. 

2. Starbucks

Starbucks is on the list for many reasons.

Firstly, they have an unparalleled understanding of customer perspective, which allowed them to create one of the best customer journey experiences. They were willing to reinvent themselves by modifying their inter-departmental workflows.

Starbucks also has a superb customer loyalty program that keeps people coming back. They’ve built a brand outside of the coffee that they serve. People come to the store for the ambiance and the experience more than just the drinks.

But what really changed things for them was when they pivoted away from in-store purchases by creating a great digital experience with their delivery and pick-up options. Customers can skip long lines and wait times by ordering online. They still have full customization options, and they don’t even have to leave the house for their favorite cup of coffee.

3. Amazon

Amazon is another favorite that makes its way onto many of the lists online, and for good reason.

It’s no secret that Jeff Bezos aims to make Amazon the “most customer-centric company on Earth,” and they’ve certainly taken huge strides to accomplish this. The company is constantly innovating and finding ways to improve the customer experience and provide better service. They’re a huge fan of using personalized product recommendations and made one-click ordering a possibility.

4. Ikea

Ikea offers a winning customer experience both on and offline.

Customers are free to shop, relax, and eat at their brick-and-mortar stores. However, it’s their online experience that they’ve leveled up. Imagine being able to use your camera to place detailed, life-sized 3D Holograms of furniture in your house. That’s what Ikea offers.

Because of its wide range of product offerings, Ikea also knows that the right website navigation is essential for customers shopping online. Their use of different categories in the navigation is something we’ve seen in winning tests for our clients countless times.

5. Ulta Beauty

Similar to Ikea, Ulta Beauty prioritized the needs of their customers. When the pandemic hit and people couldn’t try out products by going to the store, Ulta launched their GLAMlab experience. It gave customers a way to try on products virtually, and Ulta kept improving the tool. They later added a skin analysis tool and updated the products that customers could try on. It’s like a product recommendation quiz, but better!

Put Customers at the Center of Your Digital Experience

These winning examples are proof that the best way to optimize your digital experience is to put your customers at the center of everything. From doing research and mapping the customer journey, to designing your website and creating marketing strategies, you have to keep your customers in mind.

You will always hear me saying, “You can’t read the label from inside the jar.” You have to change your perspective and put yourself in your customers’ shoes. With this new wave of digital revolution, you can do so much more to elevate and personalize the experience of your customers.

Things might be constantly changing in the digital landscape, but one thing remains constant: it’s always crucial to listen to your customers.

Start creating a customer-centric digital experience with The Good. Contact us.

The post The Importance of a Customer-Centric Approach in Creating Digital Experiences appeared first on The Good.

Now, looking at this through the lens of an ecommerce website, the bucket is your conversion funnel, and the water is the traffic you bring to your site. To fully leverage the potential that your ecommerce store has, you first have to conduct a conversion funnel analysis and fix the “holes” in it.

In this Insight, we’ll be focusing on how to conduct a conversion funnel analysis of your ecommerce website. 

Here’s what we’ll be covering: 

• What is a conversion funnel?
• Advantages of using funnel analysis
• How do you conduct a funnel analysis?
• How do you optimize the ecommerce conversion funnel?

What is a conversion funnel?

A conversion funnel is the journey a customer takes moving through different stages while navigating an ecommerce website. The number of users that visit your ecommerce store is not the same as the number of customers that make it to the end of the journey. Moving through phases (like browsing through products, adding a product to the cart, finalizing the checkout process, and paying for the product), at each step there is usually a dropoff in the number of people who move on to the next step.

That’s why visualizing the path to purchase looks like a funnel: The further the customer moves down the funnel, the narrower the funnel gets. Your job is to discover the weak points in the process and optimize as much as you can, thus increasing the number of conversions.

Looking at the ecommerce conversion funnel, we can divide it into five separate stages:

1. Awareness: The first stage is the moment your prospects become aware of your product, and they visit your ecommerce store. Most often, this is a result of a social media ad, email marketing, recommendation from a friend, Google search result, or any other medium that brings visitors to your website.

2. Consideration: After navigating through the home page, visitors turn to browse and visit multiple product pages. This is the moment when they are considering whether they should buy something from your store.

3. Preference: The moment when they find something interesting and click the add to cart button is the moment they experience a desire to get your product. However, adding products to the cart while just browsing is now a normal part of the ecommerce shopping culture. You have to pave the way to more conversions.

4. Intent: Visitors that reach the checkout page and start filling in information are those who are genuinely interested in buying a product. Dropping at this point can be caused by various reasons: high shipping costs, long checkout process, no guest checkout, distraction, etc.

5. Action: The final stage of the ecommerce conversion funnel is when customers take action and buy your product. This is the stage where all the effort pays off, and your end goal should be bringing as many people as possible to this stage.

Advantages of using funnel analysis

Conducting a funnel analysis will pay dividends in the long run because by using this method to study the flow and behaviors of visitors, ecommerce merchants can gather key insights and identify essential areas for improvement. 

Here’s how:   

Identify performance & discover leaks

One of the biggest advantages of performing a funnel analysis is the ability to measure success and discover dropoffs. The first step towards fixing any bottlenecks is having the right knowledge of what works and what needs to be fixed. Companies that are aware of the leaks in the funnel are in a much better position as they know what are the improvement areas that they need to prioritize.  

Improve conversion rates

The ultimate goal of every ecommerce business is to increase the conversion rate. Even though you can make many minor adjustments based on benchmarks and best practices, having real-time data about the performance of your online store is a great way to identify the most effective tactics to improve your conversion rate. 

Create best practices for the future

Customer behavior is different across product categories. That’s why being able to create your own best practices to measure against is a great way to simplify future decisions. Using proven methodology from your home page and your product pages all the way to the end of the checkout process, will save you time, money, and resources.

Make data-driven decisions

When businesses have such advanced tools at hand, making decisions based on gut-feeling can put your company at risk. If you understand why visitors drop off at every stage of the buyer journey, you’ll be able to make funnel optimization based on data. This will also empower you to measure incremental improvements and observe how numbers change as you make tweaks in the ecommerce sales funnel.  

How do you conduct a funnel analysis?

Now that you’re aware of the benefits of ecommerce funnel analysis, let’s next talk about the step by step process itself. 

1. Map the ideal buying process

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Not having a clear direction and a goal in mind will lead you…well, nowhere. That’s why the first step of conducting a funnel analysis is mapping the ideal buying process. When you know how you like the best case scenario to look like, it will be much easier to understand what are the areas of improvement you need to focus on. Start by defining goals.

2. Monitor the right KPIs

One of the most common pitfalls when it comes to funnel analysis is focusing on the wrong metrics. Instead of wasting your time on numbers that don’t have a direct impact on your conversion rate, make sure to look up to indicators that make a real difference. 

Many businesses find themselves trapped by analyzing so many irrelevant metrics that they end up missing the big picture. Don’t get distracted by vanity metrics like site traffic and time on site, but rather focus on KPIs that matter like bounce rate, cart abandonment rate, and conversion rate.

3. Understand user behavior

Understanding customers’ behavior is at the core of every successful ecommerce business. To do so, companies should rely on historical data and customer surveys. The tools that can help you build knowledge for your prospects and clients include two main categories: user behavior analysis and user experience testing.

Analytics analysis

The easiest way is to start with what you already have. Before testing different scenarios, you should be looking at the way your customers behave at the moment. User behavior analysis means scrutinizing data to get more in-depth knowledge of the reasons behind high drop-offs. This includes tools like:

• Heatmaps: Heatmaps are a data visualization technique that lets you monitor clicks, movements, and scrolls of your visitors on the website. Using heatmaps, you can spot unusual behavior, how far your visitors scroll, and what they ignore. The name itself tells you that with this tool, you can identify hot and cold elements of your ecommerce website and decide on further steps.  

• Session recordings: Another user behavior analysis tool that companies have at disposal is browsing through unique user sessions of real website visitors. Remote-monitored session recordings let you capture visitors’ behavior and later analyze their buyer journey. This is a great opportunity to understand what roadblock visitors face on your high-exit pages. 

User experience testing

Besides analyzing user behavior, companies can test different aspects and optimize the journey based on the results. Unlike heatmaps and session recordings where you analyze previous sessions, the following three tools rely on getting real-time data or testing different scenarios.

• Surveys: Another great way to collect qualitative information is by using surveys and simply asking users about their opinion and what’s stopping them from buying your product. There’s a whole science behind asking the right survey questions, but when done right, the answers can be an excellent base for future improvements.

• Card sorting: One of the most popular UX testing methods is using cards to evaluate and design the information flow of a website. Allowing users to organize content in rows and columns will help you understand how they think and how they navigate through pages. Looking through the user’s eyes will give you answers on how to organize elements and create a site hierarchy that resonates with users.

• A/B testing: Probably one of the most frequently used UX testing tools for measuring the impact of UX design changes on the ecommerce conversion funnel is A/B testing. Instead of overwhelming with too many experiments, making small improvements over-time as a result of A/B tests is the easiest way to make changes that have a positive impact on your online store.

4. Identify bottlenecks at each step of the funnel

One of the key aspects of a successful funnel analysis is an end-to-end identification of drop-offs and bottlenecks. If you want to create a healthy ecommerce funnel, you have to be aware that you should make improvements at each stage of the journey. Doing an overall analysis will show red flags and areas in the user experience that have the biggest room for improvement. 

5. Use funnel comparison for in-depth analysis

Context is everything in website analysis. There’s a huge difference in user behavior depending on demographic data. Being able to make conclusions on a more analytical level is crucial for your further growth. Besides this, you will notice significant discrepancies in the path to purchase between new and returning visitors. Having all these aspects in mind will give you a different perspective and help you make better optimization decisions. 

How do you optimize the ecommerce conversion funnel?

The actions that a business should take based on an ecommerce conversion funnel analysis vary a lot. However, these seven best practices can help you get started:    

• Bring relevant traffic: First things first. If you want a properly working funnel, you have to make sure that you’re bringing relevant traffic to your website. Make sure to use social media targeting, clean your mailing lists, and focus on the right SEO keywords to reach the customers that will be interested in your products. Otherwise, you’re only wasting time and money.

• Make sure your pages are easy to navigate: The average page visit lasts less than one minute, most typically between 10 and 20 seconds. If visitors are confused by your website’s navigation structure, they’ll go to your competitor’s site to find what they need. 

• Create engaging product pages: The best way to get your visitors’ attention is to create an engaging user experience with high-quality product images, 360-degree spins, in-context imagery, videos, product recommendations, reviews, and user-generated content. In today’s attention economy, focusing on rich merchandising features can give you a significant competitive advantage.  

• Decrease cart abandonment with exit-intent triggers: According to Statista, in March 2020, 88% of online shopping orders were abandoned. Using exit-intent pop-ups, you can get another chance to pursue customers to finish the purchasing process. Alternatively, you can capture their email addresses, which opens a great opportunity for abandonment cart emails. 

• Optimize the checkout process: Two out of the top five reasons for cart abandonment are related to the checkout process, shows data from Statista. Not having a guest checkout option (28%) and too long and complicated checkout process (21%) are the two biggest pain points, right after high shipping costs (50%). Designing a short and straightforward checkout process can significantly increase your conversion rate. Make sure to offer a guest checkout option but, at the same time, offer an incentive or a personalized experience to motivate customers to create an account. 

• Include multiple payment options: Another reason for drop off is not having enough payment options. Customers nowadays expect convenience and flexibility. Not being able to make an online purchase because of the payment method can lead to frustration and negative user experience. Adding multiple options will encourage visitors to go all the way to the end of your conversion funnel. 

• Get feedback, optimize, repeat: Solving user experience issues is not a one-time battle. It’s rather a journey that requires commitment and incremental improvement. Tracking your performance over time is essential for growth. So instead of making funnel optimization once and call it a day, commit to getting feedback, optimizing, and doing it all over again. Continually improving ecommerce sales and conversion rates will help you move the needle.

Conversion funnels = ecommerce growth

Conducting a conversion funnel analysis requires a lot of preparation and knowledge. However, it doesn’t need to be daunting. With the help of experts, you’ll be able to focus on the right indicators and unveil the biggest pain points. That way, you’ll set the foundation for future growth. 

Ready to make the first step towards fixing your conversion funnel? Get your free landing page teardown and discover the top conversion blockers costing you ecommerce sales.

The post Conducting a Conversion Funnel Analysis of Your Ecommerce Website appeared first on The Good.

As you consider your options, the idea of offering discounts crosses your mind. It’s a common tactic for boosting ecommerce sales and generating additional revenue. Maybe running a sale will give your business the shot in the arm that it needs. 

Probably not. 

While it’s true that offering sales and discounts can provide a temporary lift in revenue, it’s ultimately not a sustainable strategy and will only provide you with short-term success. A better solution is needed. 

In this Insight, we’ll be providing you with 10 proven tactics to increase ecommerce sales without discounting. Here’s what we’re covering:

1. Why shouldn’t you be utilizing discounts? 
2. What are your options besides offering a discount?

Why shouldn’t you be utilizing discounts? 

On the surface, offering discounts seems like a perfectly fine idea. Many successful online companies have been using the strategy for decades, and it appears to be working for them, right? There’s an entire economy built around helping customers find the lowest prices. Honey, a discount-finding tool, was recently purchased by PayPal for a staggering $4 billion.  

So why are they such a problem? 

Three reasons. 

1. Discounting leads customers to think that you’re a discount brand. Instead of being known for quality products or outstanding service, customers associate your company with the lowest price. You become the ecommerce version of Dollar General, attracting those searching for bargains. When a customer receives a discount on their first purchase, you can be pretty confident that they’re going to try to get the same discount with every subsequent purchase. 

Do you really want to join other discount brands in a race to the bottom? Probably not. 

2. If you want to turn a profit, shoppers with a “no discount, no purchase” mentality are likely not your ideal customers. Discounts cannibalize your profits, leaving you with razor thin margins. If you want a healthy bottom line, you probably don’t want your primary customers to be bargain hunters. 

3. Discounting is a short-term solution to a larger problem. Ultimately, you need to figure out why your sales are slumping. In other words, where are the holes in your sales funnel? Is your website confusing? Are your landing pages or Google Ads ineffective? 

Leaning on discounting to help your business make it through a tough time is like putting a bucket under a leaky pipe instead of taking the time to repair the pipe. 

Clearly, you need strategies for increasing ecommerce sales without discounting. 

What are your options to drive ecommerce sales without discounting? (10 Tactics)

To increase ecommerce sales without discounting, utilize tactics like promotions, exclusivity, scarcity, and guarantees. These strategies enable you to boost sales without eroding your profits. 

Promotions 

While discounts seek to attract customers with lower prices, promotions focus primarily on offering something extra. Promotions create similar feelings in customers as discounts without the downsides. Discounting is simply reducing the price, and possibly devaluing your product in hopes of making up revenue through increased sales volume. 

Here are five examples of promotions you can implement:

1. Buy one, get one: If you have excess inventory, BOGO (free or half-off) is an effective way to increase customer engagement and generate sales. You can even stack the offer so that they get more when they buy more, like Beloved Shirts does:

2. Free gift with purchase: Offering a free gift with purchase can be a powerful incentive, giving customers the nudge they need to buy. And if the gift is a sample of one of your products, it gives customers yet another reason to buy from you in the future. Sephora knows this and often includes product samples for free with orders:

3. Free shipping: Ecommerce conversion rates are always higher when free shipping is included. No surprise there. There’s a reason it’s the cornerstone of the Amazon Prime program. If you want to see your ecommerce sales increase, give free shipping to customers, just like Bonobos does for customers in the United States:

4. Free returns: Offering free returns sets customers minds at ease and incentivises them to purchase. They know that they can easily return products if they have any issues. Yes, it will probably increase your return rate, but it will also increase customer loyalty.

5. Discount price threshold: Offering some form of discount or other perk for orders over a threshold amount can motivate shoppers to add more items to their cart, increasing key metrics like Average Order Value (AOV) and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Athleta offers free shipping on all orders over $50:

Exclusivity and Scarcity

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a big consumer purchase motivator, and you can take advantage of it by utilizing both exclusivity and scarcity. With exclusivity, you offer bonuses to customers that they can’t get anywhere else, while scarcity highlights the limited availability of particular products. 

6. Loyalty programs: A loyalty program allows you to reward customers who are particularly faithful to your brand. Whether through special discounts on high-demand items or exclusive access to particular products, loyalty programs keep customers coming back again and again. Keenly aware of this reality, Amazon offers all sorts of perks to Prime members:

7. Displaying “limited quantities available”: Showing that you have a limited number of something in stock can create a sense of urgency in customers. They don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to buy. Etsy does a great job of increasing urgency on their product pages by showing how many items are in stock, as well as alerting customers if an item is already in someone’s cart. 

8. Show sold out items: Highlighting sold out items shows how popular they are, which can cause even more people to want them. Just be sure to give customers the option of being notified when the product is back in stock. Otherwise they may forget about it. Black Milk Clothing uses this technique with out of stock items:

Guarantees

Even though online shopping is ubiquitous at this point, customers still deeply appreciate guarantees. Almost everyone has had at least one bad online shopping experience, and guarantees go a long way in assuring customers that they’ll have a good experience with your company. 

9. Money-back guarantee: The greatest fear of most online shoppers is buying something, not liking it, and not being able to easily get a refund. Offering a rock-solid money-back guarantee can ease this fear and compel the customer to purchase. Fly-fishing company Orvis offers what they call a “Great Catch Guarantee”:

10. Service guarantee: Even broader than a money-back guarantee, a service guarantee assures your customers that you will do whatever is necessary to assure their satisfaction. Companies who offer outstanding customer service create customers for life, reducing churn rate and increasing Customer Lifetime Value. Bombas offers a happiness guarantee that gives customers every reason to purchase from them:

Play the long game and boost ecommerce sales without discounting

Constantly relying on discounts to boost sales is a losing game in the long run. Yes, revenue increases, but profits take a hit. What’s more, you label yourself as a discount brand in the eyes of many customers, and once you’re on that path it’s hard to escape. 

There are effective ways to increase ecommerce sales without discounting. By strategically leveraging promotions, exclusivity and scarcity, and guarantees, you can compel customers to purchase while still maintaining healthy profit margins. 

The strategies listed above are just one part of the Conversion Rate Optimization process. If you would like help optimizing your website for maximum ecommerce sales, request a free landing page teardown. 

A member of our strategy team will provide you with a base-level assessment of your website and identify potential areas that could be optimized to elevate your website experience.

The post 10 Tactics to Drive Ecommerce Sales Without Discounting appeared first on The Good.

Here’s the thing: we see a lot of ecommerce businesses that are eager to launch their cross-border sales efforts, but want to ensure that they’re on firm footing before making a deeper commitment. 

In this article, we’ll highlight the benefits of cross-border ecommerce and outline the steps you should take to capture your share of the international market. We’ve created a checklist to help develop your strategy by determining which countries or regions best fit the target audience for your products, then reaching those new prospects with offers that will turn them into your newest customers.

Why is Cross-Border Ecommerce is Essential for Your Business

According to a study conducted by Visa, 90 percent of ecommerce leaders queried said an international ecommerce presence will be essential to their company’s success by 2024. 

Two-thirds of those not yet selling in foreign markets are planning to launch an international sales effort “in the near future.” Surprisingly, only about one-third of respondents said that they feel fully prepared to handle international transactions today.

These are all indicators that the opportunity for growth in international selling is vast, but underserved. There’s still time for savvy ecommerce sellers to carve out a piece of the global ecommerce pie before their competitors are even at the table. If you aren’t already looking to start selling in foreign markets, now is the time.

Here are three economic indicators that seem to confirm Visa’s predictions:

1. Ecommerce spending in foreign countries is on the rise 

The United States isn’t the only country experiencing a boom in ecommerce sales. Forrester Research estimates ecommerce retail sales in APAC (Asia-Pacific) countries will hit $2.5 trillion by 2023. In contrast, U.S. online retail sales totaled under $600 billion in 2019 and are not expected to exceed $7.5 billion in 2023. That means companies selling only to consumers in the U.S. are missing out on the lion’s share of the market.

Why are consumers in foreign countries outspending the United States? Here are a few of the reasons for the rapid expansion of foreign markets:

1. The access to and demand for internet-enabled devices is immense 
2. The middle class is expanding in APAC countries and incomes are rising 
3. Many foreign governments are encouraging globalization and international trade 

More people are becoming able—both technologically and financially—to shop online, and the ability to secure fair prices on items that may not even be available locally is attracting those new shoppers in growing numbers. Areas where options were once severely limited are now seeing choices open up to an unprecedented degree.

2. Rising income in foreign countries has increased demand for imported goods

Shoppers aren’t just going online to find the same things available to them already. They’re seeking out imported goods previously available only to a fortunate few. In 2018, 93 percent of consumers in the U.S. purchased a product online. During the same period, though, fewer than 74 percent of Chinese consumers engaged in an ecommerce transaction. When you consider that the Chinese population is more than four times greater than the United States, the implications are impressive. Statista projects Chinese ecommerce sales to surpass one trillion dollars in 2022.

China isn’t the only expanding market for ecommerce, though. The chart below from eShopWorld identifies opportunities in areas not yet “saturated by international retail players.” The display is sorted by the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of ecommerce sales. Note that India leads the pack for emerging markets. In 2018, the active ecommerce penetration in that market stood at just 28 percent of the almost 1.4 billion population.

3. Buy now pay later options are helping people finance purchases

Coresight Research stated that buy now pay later (BNPL) services are “poised to disrupt the ecommerce market.” Companies like Afterpay, Affirm, and Laybuy are making it even simpler for consumers to take part in cross-border ecommerce by providing alternative payment methods to consumers. Shoppers can make several payments on goods instead of needing to pay the total amount at the time of purchase.

A 2018 study by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) found that BNPL purchases in their country and grown from about 400,000 during 2015 to over two million by the end of 2018. When Australian consumers were asked about their reasons for using BNPL, 81 percent said BNPL allows them to purchase items they normally couldn’t afford to buy in one payment, 70 percent said BNPL allows them to be more spontaneous in their spending, and 55% said BNPL allows them to spend less by taking advantage of lower prices.

Demographic data from ASIC (see the graph below) put the 34 years and younger group as especially attracted to the BNPL option. That data was also confirmed by the Coresight study, where members of the Millenial and Gen Z cohort are at the top of the list in terms of usage of BNPL services.

Ecommerce sellers concerned about the added cost of providing BNPL options generally find that the boost in both conversion rate and average order value more than make up for the fees charged by the payment platforms.

Steps to Succeeding in Cross-Border Ecommerce 

Given the considerable opportunity cross-border ecommerce already provides online sellers and the forecast data saying the global market will continue to skyrocket upwards, what’s stopping more companies from participating in international expansion? 

Caution is certainly a factor holding many back, but the number one excuse we hear is “I’m not sure how to get started.” There’s no doubt that engaging in cross-border ecommerce takes specialized information and insight that can be difficult to collect and confusing to understand, but not acting on it could mean you miss out on an opportunity that will position your business for exponential growth.

To kickstart the cross-border ecommerce conversation and get your team thinking about the possibilities, we’ve prepared the following list of steps to follow. Use them as a framework to draft your own international ecommerce strategy.

Now is the time. Here’s how we recommend you get your company started with venturing into cross-border ecommerce:

1. Identify and sort potential markets for your products

Begin by searching for emerging markets abroad that fit your products and audience. List the countries you think would be the best fit. It’s wiser to expand country-by-country or region-by-region than to try to sell everywhere at once. 

A good place to begin is by examining the country commercial guides on export.gov. Once you’ve located areas with a proven demand for your product, assess the culture, climate, and competition in those particular markets. 

Export.gov also provides exceptional information on how to find new overseas buyers or discover new markets by examining your current trade patterns. It’s a source no ecommerce company should overlook.

2. Check for product restrictions in the foreign markets you’re interested in

An important, yet often overlooked, aspect of cross-border ecommerce is how to identify and comply with the various restrictions placed on the selling and distribution of certain products in foreign markets.

You’ll need to determine what can and cannot be sold in the countries you’re interested in expanded into. There may be a huge market for your goods, but if regulations forbid or restrict those products from being sold, you’ll need to consider your options. Note that there’s a difference between a “prohibited product” (no sales allowed) and product restrictions (certain criteria must be met).

Guidelines on products like weapons, drugs, and foods seem evident, but some countries place restrictions on items like batteries, fur, helmets, seeds, and tobacco products. Remember, there are two ends to every transaction: the company the products are shipped from (export) and the country the products are shipped to (import). 

3. Determine a pricing and tax strategy that fits the market you want to reach

Regardless of where you choose to expand your business internationally, you’ll have to deal with regional tax regulations. Taxes on cross-border ecommerce operations can be intricate and cumbersome, so it’s important to take tax requirements and potential effects on your business into account as you prepare your expansion strategy.  

There’ll be more considerations for pricing than just tax, though. You’ll need to factor in freight costs, in-country distribution costs, insurance, sales commissions, and more. The primary elements affecting the price you set are the total costs that you’ll incur getting the product sold and delivered, the market demand in the country you’re selling to, and the going price your competitors are setting for similar products. Also remember, you’ll need to display the cost of each item in local currency. Make sure your website is capable of providing that information automatically for foreign users.

4. Consider partnering with a third-party logistics service

Managing fulfillment for international orders can quickly get complicated and steal the focus away from your domestic business. Third-party logistics (3PL) services can relieve much of the stress and maybe even save you some money. How cost-effective would it be, for example, to import products from China to your storage facility in the United States, then export those goods to India? Partnering with a 3PL provider can enable you to concentrate on attracting buyers and getting them through check-out. 

Once you’ve envisioned how your ecommerce website can leverage the internet to attract buyers overseas, the fulfillment picture changes. It’s one thing to deliver an order to a customer in San Francisco, but quite another to get your goods quickly and efficiently to a buyer in Singapore. Working with a third-party fulfillment company can help simplify your shipping operations. 

Look for differences in features like volume shipping discounts, delivery timeframes, and the possibility of inventory reception and storage when you compare your options. A qualified third-party shipper can also provide accurate answers to questions about taxes, tariffs, and product restrictions. 

5. Outsource your support services as needed 

When scaling your business into the international market, it’s crucial that you have a qualified customer support team to meet the increased demand for support from your prospects and customers. 

Your own experience proves how important it is to feel the person on the other end of the phone understands your problem or question and will work with you to create a solution or provide the correct answer. 

When you call customer service and discover there’s a language barrier or other confusing situation (unusual background noise, for instance), your level of trust quickly diminishes and you’re prone to doubt the agent can help you at all. Frustrated customers can get your business off to a horrible start and maybe even torpedo your expansion effort.

Outsourcing customer service work can help reduce overhead expenses for your business and allow you to stay lean while continuing to expand into foreign markets. By providing customer support in the languages of the people you serve, you’ll remove a primary barrier to customer satisfaction immediately.

6. Conduct user testing and user experience research in your desired market

Never assume the same user experience that works well in your home country will make sense to foreign users. Before launching your brand in a foreign market, it’s essential that you perform user testing with your target segment in that country. You want to understand how they use your site and how they react to your site. Your aim is to provide straightforward navigation to help them find, compare, and buy your products. 

Amazon is a great example of why it’s vital to research your target market before moving forward with a launch. Amazon quietly entered the Chinese market in the early 2000’s and operated in fierce competition alongside APAC ecommerce giants Alibaba, and JD. In early 2019, Amazon had to shutter operations in China simply because they couldn’t compete with the rising popularity of competing ecommerce marketplaces that the Chinese population was more familiar with. 

An ecommerce website that makes perfect sense to you and your team may be unnecessarily confusing to others. Conducting usability testing as early-on in the process as possible will help illuminate the issues that otherwise may not have been caught by your in-house designers. 

7. Create a repeatable rollout strategy

When launching your business in a foreign market, you can save time and money by following a repeatable rollout strategy. Every region you target will require much of the same effort. There’s no reason to have to reinvent the wheel for each market you want to move into. The particulars will change, but the fundamentals stay the same. 

The steps we’ve suggested here are the foundation of that launch template, and the lessons you learn along the way will fill it in. Make sure to document your efforts in a cohesive and coherent manner. You can use this information repeatedly as you find new opportunities internationally that you’d like to explore.

Your rollout plan will include detailed guidance on third-party help availability, how to devise a pricing strategy, complying with local government restrictions and laws, finding in-country partners, and much more. Everything involved in getting your business launched cross-border should be included in this rollout plan. It will go a long way towards making future expansions easier. 

Cross-Border Ecommerce: Now’s the Time to Act

Cross-border ecommerce can be a tricky but highly lucrative business pursuit if executed properly. If you’re convinced of the opportunities provided by the growing global desire for international goods, use the guidelines we’ve suggested above to kickstart the development of your business expansion strategy. 

Here’s the thing: if you’re seriously considering a shift into cross-border ecommerce, you’ll need to make some critical considerations about the overall user experience of your online store. Should you modify your site to meet the needs of consumers in foreign markets, or should you create a separate site that acts independently from your current one? At the core of this decision, you should always make sure your site is optimized to provide users a frictionless experience.

At The Good, we strive to improve conversion rates for ecommerce businesses by developing user-focused shopping experiences. The principles of ecommerce conversion rate optimization work in every country, though the way those principles are applied can vary widely. Fitting your ecommerce presence to the needs and expectations of prospects⁠—wherever they are⁠—is essential to cross-border ecommerce success. 

If you’re interested in learning how to optimize your website before launching in a foreign market, we suggest signing up for a free landing page assessment. In the assessment we’ll take an in-depth look through one key page of site and make actionable recommendations for how you can begin to improve it.

The post How to Launch a Successful Cross-Border Ecommerce Strategy appeared first on The Good.

Without all these interconnected pieces working in unity, websites inevitably fail. Getting them in agreement requires blood, sweat, and tears. It requires a strategy.

Planning for just one website element or project—a redesign, a new product launch, a new campaign—is really re-planning the entire universe of your website.

Disrupting one element causes other elements to spin differently, changing the course and trajectory of your website (for better or worse). Each piece is dependent upon the other to be successful and for a website to work well, all the parts need to be in harmony.

While this may seem daunting (it is), dividing the universe of your website into zones can minimize the chance of an extinction event. It’s a great first step in a strategic website optimization process.

With these smaller Stuck Zones you can systematically examine, experiment, and ultimately improve the way things evolve in your website’s universe.

“NASA may look at the whole universe, but their main focus is on smaller experiments (Mars Rover, Pluto New Horizons, the moon).”

Divide your strategic website optimization into habitable zones

We have identified seven Stuck Zones to your website’s universe. Each is connected and overlaps, but each can be explored and improved on its own. Let’s look at each separately.

Stuck Zone 1: Brand

The reality is that your website is not a marketing tool. It is a selling tool. Your marketing’s job is to get customers to your website. It is your website’s job to sell your products and services to your customer and it does this by helping your customers get what they came for, do what they came to do, and get them on with their life. Throw marketing into this mix and you’ve got a problem. It’s time to evolve beyond the flat-earth, marketing-centric website strategy and accept the customer-centric approach.

Review your website for heavy-handed marketing and brand-first content. Does your homepage make it easy to 3-click to checkout our is there a field of jargon to navigate through before a customer finds what they are looking for?

Stuck Zone 2: Customer

Ever try to find an answer on a cable company’s website? If you have, you know it’s like looking at the moon with a microscope. Too often company websites are not geared towards their customers, but are designed to meet the agenda of stakeholders within the company who either don’t understand the web or subscribe to the old idea that website visitors want to know all about the company when in reality customers really want to research and buy products and services.

If your website makes this research and decision making process difficult or frustrating, it’s time to give your customers the right tools for exploring, viewing, using, and searching your website.

Stuck Zone 3: Channel

If your company sells online and in retail stores or through channel partners, there is inherent (perceived and real) conflict. Most brands solve this conflict by taking the easy way out; creating and maintaining a website that does a poor job of doing anything. Channel partners don’t like you selling online. Make the website terrible. Channel partners complain you are siphoning customers away. Make the website unusable. Channel partners having a bad month. Crash the website.

The reality is that your channel partners revolve around your brand. Without your gravity holding them in orbit, they would drift off into the vacuum of space. The stronger your website is at helping your customers, the stronger your brand’s gravity becomes, the more customers and channel partners will take orbit.

When a customer is looking for a product or service you sell, their first instinct is to look at the brand website. Don’t make that first impression terrible.

Stuck Zone 4: Content

Content is the oxygen your website requires to survive while also acting as the corrosive element that can erode sales, leads, and your team’s morale. Too much content is unsustainable. Too little content is crippling. Fighting off stakeholders for a share of the website’s content can be exhausting. But offering the right amount content at the right time is the key to a customer-centric web experience and successful website.

Sales and leads are created when content helps customers accomplish their goals. Content that distracts or derails those goals can kill your conversions and harm the success of your website.

Stuck Zone 5: Technology

Having the technology infrastructure in place to create a successful customer-centric experience only gets you into orbit, but without a solid infrastructure your website can’t even get off the ground. Solid infrastructure doesn’t mean having a website full of bells, whistles, and red buttons. In fact, a website that is full of features that are not important to your customers is a website full of obstacles that only slows the website’s load speed and your customer’s conversion.

Evaluate your website’s technology and features for mobile friendliness (even if you only sell to businesses who are desktop dependent) and feature effectiveness. Having an effective website is more than just having cool features, it’s about having effective architecture and navigation design. It requires constant refinement.

Stuck Zone 6: Customer Path

Your customers will chart their own path through your website. Knowing what that path is can tell you all that is right and wrong about your strategic website optimization. Customers who are constantly looping between the homepage and a product category page indicate that they are not finding what they are looking for. Loops are a visual representation of the ineffectiveness of many websites.

Ideal customer paths should be linear with a clear starting page and finishing on a transaction page (whether that is a checkout or a field submission).

Stuck Zone 7: Post Purchase / Follow through

When a customer makes a purchase or submits a form, they are voting with their mouse (and their wallet) what content they want. It also indicates opportunity for your brand to follow-up for reviews, complimentary products, and future business.

Forgetting your already converted customer while in search of life in the Internet ether is a mistake made by most brands. Don’t forget your already converted customer, they are more likely to convert again (and spend more) if treated right.

There is an art to following up with converted customers. Too many emails can cause irritation and spam complaints. Too few or no follow-up at all is a missed opportunity. Discover your right mix through constant testing and iteration of frequency, quantity, and content.

Start small with your strategic website optimization

Dividing your website into seven Stuck Zone areas can help focus your attention away from the vast universe of your strategic website optimization and towards smaller, important targets.

Begin with one page, one line of content, or one headline and A/B test variations. Limiting your testing to one thing eliminates the chance of making a conclusion based upon bad data and false results. If there are too many variables, how can you confidently say a particular headline works better when you also changed the navigation structure and page design? Start small, test thoroughly, and act on the results.

Broaden your tests

Using the data from your small tests, begin to broaden the scope of your testing. If your original testing was on the homepage calls to action, look next to CTAs on subsequent pages. Do the CTAs that work on the homepage also work on secondary pages? If so, great. If not, find out what does. Use each test to broaden your scope and refine your content.

The universe of your website is vast and expanding. Before embarking upon wholesale website changes, focus instead on the smaller Stuck Zone areas of your website. By prioritizing experimentation, iteration, and improvement within each zone, you will effect positive change on the entire website’s universe.

We wrote the book on strategic website optimization. If you are ready to effect positive change and dive deeper into the seven Stuck Zone areas, request a free landing page assessment.

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