How Online Optimization Has Become a Must Have for Online Retailers
Chances are you're spending a lot of time, money and effort driving traffic to your online store. More and more, online retailers are realizing that the way to stand out from the crowd, and increase the return on investment of their reach and acquisition initiatives, is to optimize their site so that they're giving visitors exactly the experience they're looking for.
Increasingly, online optimization is becoming a must have for retailers in order for them to discover the following:
- the content their visitors prefer;
- which offers, discounts and incentives work best;
- how different audience segments behave online;
- what kind of content and functionality consumers prefer on their mobile devices;
- how to make their site work better, not just look better; and
- how speeding up page load times improves online conversions.
Personalize the Online Experience
For example, personalization is a key ingredient in successful online marketing. By optimizing their site, online retailers can do the following:
- target and personalize an experience based on a visitor's actions;
- use the recency, frequency and monetary value of customers to target them with customized offers;
- personalize the experience based on the referring URL;
- personalize the experience based on the day of the week, time of day or date ranges;
- personalize a page or site based on location (as broad as country or as granular as U.S. ZIP codes), as well as preferred language;
- personalize for a wide array of device types;
- use data to define criteria for personalization and targeting opportunities;
- personalize experiences based on browser type; and
- personalize the experience for new vs. returning visitors.
Optimize Mobile Channels
Online optimization extends to the mobile web and mobile apps, as consumers are increasingly shopping in these channels. In fact, mobile is the future of how people will discover your site, interact with your brand and purchase your products. As a result, it's important to test and optimize your mobile channels so visitors get the best experience possible.
Optimize Functionality
Certain online optimization approaches enable retailers to quantify the impact of every back-end application change for every individual user. For example:
