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Video marketing
Video marketing is the way to promote products and services, raise brand awareness, and increase engagement by using video materials.
In the article, we explain why video marketing is effective and how to build a successful strategy, provide its statistics, benefits, and types, give effective video marketing ideas, and examples.
Why is video marketing effective?
Video content has become a trend in the recent few years. More and more businesses start to produce videos to increase customer engagement. We explain why they are so effective in this section.
Firstly, videos drive engagement on social media. They are more popular than any other type of content, such as photos, texts, etc. In the recent study by Biteable, video content got 480% more clicks, was 497% cheaper per click, and cost 280% less per lead.
Secondly, according to HubSpot Research, more than 50% of customers want to see videos from brands more than any other type of content. People watch videos to discover the best-selling products and their features. Potential clients want to know how the product works and how to use it. Consequently, video is the best type of content to help people make buying decisions.
Thirdly, compared with the effectiveness of videos, their production now is relatively cheap. Some brands create videos using only smartphones.
To sum up, we can say that video is one of the most cost-effective types of content nowadays. We provide some statistics and prove this statement in the next section.
Video Marketing Statistics
To calculate the effectiveness of every content type, marketers analyze lots of metrics. Below are the most up-to-date statistics for 2021 for you to go into 2022 with the most relevant content.
According to the study of Lemonlight:
99% of users enjoy watching videos from brands online;
94% of people stated that watching a video has helped them to make a buying decision;
70% of respondents share 1-4 videos every month across different marketing channels;
If users had to choose one social media to distribute videos, 26% would choose LinkedIn, 25% — Facebook, and 24% — YouTube;
Also, 98% of marketers stated that video would play an important role in the next years, and 81% of them are going to include videos in their marketing strategy;
There was also research by Wyzowl in which marketers has found that:
78 % of marketers say videos have directly helped increase sales, and 86 % also say that videos increased traffic to their website;
YouTube was the most popular platform for marketers to post videos, the second one was Facebook, and the third one — LinkedIn;
video content consumption will increase to 240 exabytes every month in 2022.
A trend on using video marketing will increase in the next future years. Discover its 5 powerful benefits in the next section.
5 Powerful Benefits of Video Marketing
Lemonlight states that 99% of respondents enjoy watching video content from brands online so using video marketing to promote your product may grow your revenue significantly. We explain why it is so and provide the benefits of video marketing in this section.
It helps customers make buying decisions. Market research is an important part of the customer journey. According to HubSpot, 97% of users say that video helps them increase user understanding of a certain product. Animoto Blog discovered that 64% of customers are more likely to buy after watching a video.
It helps rank higher in search and attract more traffic. The amount of time that people spend on your website influences ranking on the search engine results. According to Forbes, internet users spend 88% more time on websites that contain video. Moreover, websites with video content are 50 times more likely to reach the first page in Google, states Forrester. Additionally, video helps increase organic traffic from SERPs by 157%.
It allows you to reach the decision-makers. Forbes states that 75% of managers watch videos connected with their work every week, and 54% of senior executives share them with their colleagues. Additionally, according to the Seattle web search, 59% of them prefer video over text and pictures content if they have a choice.
It increases the effectiveness of your email campaigns. ToolBox states that you can increase click rates up to 300% by adding videos to your emails. Use the word video in the subject line to raise open rates by 19%, click-through rates by 65%, and reduce unsubscribes by 26%, states Animoto Blog. If you are looking for the cutting-edge service for your successful email campaigns, LIKE.TG provides an amazing range of opportunities. Moreover, you can send up to 15,000 emails for free.
It helps grow revenue. According to HubSpot, companies that use video marketing are growing revenue 49% faster from year to year. Customers are 27.4 times more likely to click-through online video in the ad than through the standard banner, states MyCustomer. Additionally, 74% of B2B marketers are sure that video converts leads better than any other type of content, states Instapage blog.
Now you know the main benefits of video marketing. Let’s go further and highlight the most important types of video marketing.
5 Types of Video Marketing
You can find many typologies of video marketing on the Internet. However, most of them are quite difficult to understand. Below we provide 6 types of video marketing that are easy to use for different businesses.
Commercials. The main aim of such videos is to attract attention to a certain product, highlight its best features and persuade people to buy it. Commercials are usually short, attention-grabbing, and easy to remember. They concentrate on a few competitive advantages of the product and finish with a strong call to action. Some of such videos are called ‘spots’. Their peculiarity is that they tell the story within a relatively short time and suit any platform.
Social media videos. Businesses create them to publish on social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Linkedln, etc. Their aims can be different: to sell a certain product by using targeted advertising; to increase brand engagement; to raise brand awareness among potential customers; etc. Such videos are also short and dynamic. Note that every platform has certain peculiarities, so it might be good to discover more about them before starting video production.
Company culture videos. This video aims to promote your brand, increase people’s loyalty or attract potential employees. This type includes behind-the-scenes videos, videos about the company’s values, documentaries about the brand, reviews from current employees about work in the company, etc.
Explainer videos. If you have a complex product, it might be a good idea to describe its features with a video. Brands typically use them to build trust with the audience and establish themselves as the experts in the sphere. You can make such videos short and engaging, and place them on your company’s website to increase the time users spend on it.
Testimonials. Such videos show past or current satisfied customers talking about their positive experience using your product or service. According to Zendesk Blog, 90% of users state that online reviews influence their buying decisions. Testimonials can help you push people from the consideration stage to buying. Moreover, it is a great way to show current customers how you appreciate them. You can also place them on your website or use these videos to promote your brand on social media.
Now you know the main video types and are ready to choose the best ones for your business. In the next, section we provide some ideas to make your video marketing more effective.
7 Effective Video Marketing Ideas
There is a huge competition between companies that use video marketing nowadays. Below we provide 7 effective ideas to become the best in the market.
Develop a posting schedule. It is vital to post videos regularly to increase brand engagement. Think about how often you will do it before the production. You may decide to break one video into a few parts or create a series on a certain topic.
Use storytelling. It is essential on social media because people use these platforms to entertain, not to buy something. To encourage users to watch your content, you can tell stories that will be exciting and interesting for the target audience.
Include calls to action. If you want to persuade people to do something, tell them about it. Conversion Rate Overview research stated that calls to action have an average conversion rate of 11.04%. Note that mid-roll CTAs have the highest conversion rate — 16.95%, compared with post-roll ones that have 10.98%.
Encourage people to post UGC content. You may provide a discount or a pleasant gift for posting videos with your product. Share UGC content on your social media to build trust with potential customers and increase the brand loyalty of existing ones.
Use SEO optimization. To reach the top positions in the search, include keywords in the title and description. Use tags to help your content appear in recommendations and related videos. You may also add links to your website and other social media to attract people to the other brand’s social media platforms.
Think about video promotion. Cover more audiences using different ways of advertising. You can collaborate with the influencers or use targeted advertising on Facebook — the strategy depends only on the peculiarities of your product.
Analyze metrics. Nowadays, most platforms give the opportunity to analyze the performance of your videos. To discover the most popular topics and video types, check analytics regularly. Note that the metrics you use should match the goals. For example, if you want to increase brand awareness, the main metric will be users reached, and if you want to promote your products, the main metric will be revenue.
These ideas can help you attract more customers and promote your business. However, you need a well-defined video marketing strategy to maintain good results. We explain how to create it in the next section.
How to build a video marketing strategy?
Video marketing strategy can help you stand out from your competitors and provide only high-quality content that transmits your brand personality. Below there are simple steps to develop a strong strategy.
Define your goals. The first step in your marketing strategy will be defining the main goal of your videos. Decide whether you want to attract new customers, engage existing ones, increase brand awareness or persuade people on a decision stage to buy your products. The methods and techniques you will use are directly related to the goal.
Analyze your target audience and competitors. Describe your ideal potential customers, their needs, pains, and interests. Figure out the platforms they use and video types they are interested in to concentrate on them. Then find your direct and indirect competitors, watch video content they produce, and highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each one. Combine all pros into your strategy to produce the best videos.
Include brand’s personality. Ideally, your company should have a brand platform describing such peculiarities of your company as tone of voice, visual language, brand’s philosophy, etc. Think about the ways to transmit all these elements in your future videos. Show that your brand and its products are special.
Develop your story. To persuade people to buy, you should explain why they need your product. Keep it in mind while creating the scenario for your future videos. If you want to use storytelling, highlight the main characters that will align with your target audience, conflict to transmit customer pains, and resolution — how your product solves the problems.
Create videos and post them. Collaborate with professional production, creator, or just film video on your own. Concentrate on the quality of the picture and sound. Then mount videos and add some effects on post-production. When everything is ready, post the created content.
Engaging videos can boost your company in the market. In the next section, we provide some inspiring examples to help you produce creative and attention-grabbing content.
4 Examples of Video Marketing
These videos impressed viewers and became amazing examples of unusual video marketing. Watch and read why they are so effective below.
Reebok: 25,915 Days
This video is aimed to show how short our life is. We see running women and the numbers in the background. The final scene shows the room full of newborn babies. We see the message saying “25,915 days in the life of the average human”, and understand that all those numbers were the days left to those women. It helps us feel the transience of life, motivates us to act, value what we have, and choose the best things right now.
Dove: Real Beauty Sketches
Dove describes another important topic: people’s perception and beauty standards. The company asked a few women to describe their faces for the artist to paint without seeing them. Then the same artist painted the same women based on descriptions provided by other people. Obviously, the two pictures of each person were different. Moreover, the second ones were much prettier. Dove showed that we are our worst critics, and it is vital to work on our self-esteem.
Budweiser: Someone Waits for you at Home
This video describes the story of a man who went to drink beer with his friend and left the dog at home. He stated that he would come back soon, but the dog did not wait for the owner. The viewers might suppose that something happened. The next day the man returned and said that he decided not to drive home after drinking the previous night. We understand that nothing bad happened because that man made the right decision, and see how one decision can change a life.
Congrats, now you know why video marketing is so effective and its benefits. You can build a video marketing strategy, produce different types of videos and make them engaging with our ideas. Use all this information to promote your brand and boost it on the market.
Web-version
The web-version of an email is a feature that mailing services offer. It offers recipientsthe ability to open an HTML version of the email and view it as a webpage if it does not display correctly.
The web versionis often used for sharing the email in social networks.
Vlogging
Vlogging is a type of blogging that involves brands and individuals creating videos to share their experiences, thoughts, expertise, or daily activities with their target audience. Vloggers use a camera or smartphone to record themselves, discuss various topics people are interested in, provide travel tips, review products or services, or let people see their daily lives. By uploading videos to video-sharing platforms like YouTube, brands and individuals can establish brand awareness, boost engagement, increase revenue, etc.
In this article, we’ll unveil why you should start vlogging and how to make money from it. We’ll also provide you with a guide on starting and promoting your vlog.
Why should you start a vlog?
According to statistics, 44% of internet users watch vlogs every month. This makes vlogging one of the channels that allow brands to reach a wide audience and promote their products effectively. Moreover, Statista mentions that the most active vlog viewers are between 16 and 24 years old and are likely to make purchases if interested. There are even more reasons for starting vlogging; we’ll cover them below.
Establish awareness. When creating a vlog for your brand, you can communicate your brand's personality, values, and expertise in a way that encourages customers to engage and interact. Consistently sharing valuable and entertaining videos enables you to draw attention and establish brand visibility.
Engage with your target audience. Creating video content allows you to connect with each viewer. If you share behind-the-scenes, makeup tutorials, product reviews, travel tips, and industry insights through your vlog, you can interactively engage with your audience, encouraging them to buy your products and watch videos once they are released.
Share expertise. Vlogging is a great way to share your knowledge, skills, and expertise in a specific industry. By adding educational videos with insights, experience, and tips, you can position your company as a trusted source of information and catch customers’ eyes with your solutions to their problems.
Boost traffic and engagement. Since videos are often shared between friends, they help you boost traffic to your site, social media platforms, and other online sources. When the vlog is optimized for search engines and often promoted on social media, you can boost customer engagement, attract and generate prospects, and ultimately increase your company's sales.
Stay competitive. Since video content continues to gain popularity among individuals and brands, brands having vlogs can have a competitive advantage in their niche. With a strong online presence on YouTube, you can become a trusted source of information and an expert in your field and, as a result, stay top-of-mind with your viewers.
Now that you have some reasons to start your vlog, it’s time to proceed to the next section to find out how you can monetize your vlog.
How to make money vlogging?
Having a devoted audience of viewers and various monetization approaches can help you make money not only from selling your products but also from ads, sponsored content, and many other strategies. You can find more information on those in this section below.
Incorporate ads. You can monetize your vlog through advertising. If you have a well-established vlog, consider joining YouTube's Partner Program to add ads to your videos. The sum of money you earn will depend on ad impressions, clicks, and viewer engagement.
Create sponsored content. Having a good vlog opens new possibilities, including creating sponsored content. You can collaborate with companies and create sponsored content for them, featuring products or services for a specific compensation. There are various forms of content you can share such as product reviews, tutorials, brand integrations, or others.
Consider affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is one more way of earning commissions from products and service promotion. It can be presented in the form of affiliate links featured in video descriptions or sites. When customers use these links for purchasing, you’ll get a percentage from sales. However, be transparent with your viewers and disclose affiliate relationships to maintain trust.
Incorporate paid memberships. You can make money vlogging by incorporating paid memberships or subscription-based services to your viewers. For instance, you can add some exclusive video content, behind-the-scenes, early access, or access to private communities. If you use platforms like Patreon or YouTube can ensure this monetization feature.
Look for brand partnerships and collaborations. Consider partnering with brands for some special events, activations, or partnerships. For example, you can organize and promote brand-sponsored events, participate in influencer campaigns, or create co-branded content.
Now that you know how to make money vlogging, it’s time to proceed to the guide on starting your vlog.
How to start vlogging?
When starting a vlog, you should complete several steps to succeed. To simplify this process, we’ve compiled a short guide consisting of the most crucial ones. So let’s dive in.
Identify your industry and target audience. First, consider the expertise, knowledge, and skills you have to share with a large audience and bring value to them. Then, consider your interests and passions so you can focus on something you like doing in your vlog. Finally, you need to identify your target audience and understand their demographics, interests, and preferences so that you can create content that resonates with their needs and problems.
Select a platform. The second step involves finding the best platform for displaying your video content. Consider using YouTube, Vimeo, and social networks like Instagram and Facebook. To identify the perfect match, pay attention to the features each platform offers and the audience demographics they cover to define the best solution aligning with your content and business objectives.
Outline your content. Gather your team and try brainstorming to find vlog topics relevant to your industry and audience preferences. Besides, you need to create a content calendar. It’ll help you organize your ideas and create a schedule for video releases. Moreover, think of the format and style of your vlogs.
Purchase the necessary vlogging equipment. Get ready with the needed equipment for your vlog, such as a high-quality camera, microphone, tripod, and lighting. When searching for equipment, consider such aspects as your budget and technical requirements. Make sure that you have specialists who can edit your videos or learn how to do it. You should explore video editing platforms like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, and iMovie. You need to discover editing techniques like cutting, trimming, adding transitions, overlays, and text, making your videos look more professional.
Create valuable video content. Your content should be useful and engaging, encouraging viewers to come back. Make sure that your videos are authentic and relevant, allowing you to establish connections with viewers. You can use various storytelling techniques, visuals, and editing styles to make your videos interactive.
Work on your channel. Consider focusing on your channel to reflect your brand identity. You should think of a channel name, logo, and banner, communicating the main idea of your vlog and showing your brand personality. When doing it, write an engaging channel description using relevant keywords. It will help you create an optimized channel for search engines. Organize your videos into playlists, allowing viewers to navigate your channel easily.
Promote your vlog. Consider promoting your vlog through the available channels, including social media networks, forums, and communities related to your industry. To increase your reach, partner with influencers related to your industry. When viewers show activity under your videos, respond to their comments, ask for feedback, and encourage them to share your channel with others.
Assess and improve. Once you add videos to your channel, you should monitor your vlog’s performance using analytics tools available within the platform you choose for sharing. Monitor metrics, including views, watch time, engagement, and subscriber growth, to evaluate each video's success. Consider using insights to improve your content strategy, implement new ideas, and improve the quality of your videos.
Now that you have some essential steps for starting your vlog, it’s time to promote it. In the next section, we’ll uncover some effective tips.
How to promote a vlog?
Effective promotion of a vlog implies accurate planning, combining various channels, using paid ads, and many more techniques. We’ll discuss some more tips below.
Make your vlog visible to search engines. Consider adding relevant keywords in your video titles, descriptions, and tags so that viewers can find your videos easily. It will result in high organic traffic to your channel. You should research popular search terms in your industry and add them to improve discoverability.
Add eye-grabbing thumbnails. Your thumbnails should be eye-catching, capturing attention and representing your content. Make sure you use high-quality images, bold text, and vibrant colors to encourage clicks.
Share your content on social media networks. To improve your vlog visibility and reach, consider promoting your vlogs across various social media, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Gather with your team to develop an effective promotion strategy for each channel. You can use all the available features, like hashtags and mentions.
Interact with your viewers. Respond to comments, messages, and feedback to engage with your audience. This will help you establish trusting relationships with your viewers and make them loyal to your brand. If you want better visibility and reach, encourage likes, shares, and comments.
Consider partnership with other vloggers. You should collaborate with vloggers and opinion leaders related to your industry to cross-promote each other's content and reach a larger audience. Consider creating joint videos, guest appearances, or shoutouts to introduce your vlog to new followers and improve exposure.
Use a bulk email solution. You can promote your vlog through one of the most effective channels — email campaigns. Consider building a mailing list of subscribers and sending them updates, announcements, and links to your newest videos. For better efficiency, use a special bulk email service like LIKE.TG. It will help you send relevant personalized email campaigns containing valuable information resonating with viewers’ needs.
Run paid advertising campaigns. Allocate resources to paid advertising campaigns on Google Ads, YouTube Ads, Facebook Ads, or Instagram Ads to reach your target audience with your vlog. Consider implementing demographic targeting, interest targeting, and retargeting to communicate your message to viewers who are interested in your topics.
Promote your vlog during events. By participating in industry events, conferences, meetups, and networking events, you can effectively promote your vlog and reach potential viewers and sponsors. You can prepare business cards and promotional materials so that new subscribers can find you online.
Organize giveaways. Giveaways, contests, or challenges are excellent incentives, encouraging followers to engage with your videos, subscribe, and share your content with their friends. Provide rewards, exclusive offers, and prizes to participants, encouraging word-of-mouth promotion.
Promote your vlog through forums and communities. Consider joining online communities and forums in your industry and participating in conversations. Share your vlog when it’s appropriate and relevant to provide value and attract new viewers.
Congrats! Now that you know some reasons to start vlogging and have some effective recommendations on how to do it and monetize your efforts, consider registering in LIKE.TG for more successful and fast vlog promotion.
Video advertising
Video advertising is a marketing strategy that involves creatinga short and informative video that promotes a product andis played before, during, or after the main video. It helps tella story, improve sales volume, create buzz, convey information concisely and captivatingly, and reach a wider audience.
In this article, we’ll unveil the reasons to use video advertising, its benefits, types, and examples. We’ll also cover how to create a compelling video ad for your business.
11 Reasons Why You Should Use Video Advertising
Video advertising is an effective marketing approach that helps brands improve their business performance. Marketers admit that promotional videos help increase awareness, communicate with their target audience, and build trust with prospective customers.
69% of users prefer video over othercontent formatswhen learning about a new product. That’s why, according to Biteable, 60% of companies create promotional videos since theybelieve themto be effective.Multiple reasons explain why such alarge percentage of businesses consider videos their promotional material.
These reasons include:
increasednumber of social media shares;
high level of visibility;
wide international audience;
boostedconversionsand sales volume;
enhanced ROI;
improved trust and credibility;
betterrankingin Google search results;
excellentorganic traffic;
better mobile user engagement;
great click-through rate.
Now that you know the reasons to consider video advertising for your business, let’s proceed to the next section to exploreits benefits.
Benefits of Video Advertising
It’s always critical for marketers to find new, effective, and uniquetactics and techniques that help a product or service stand out in a market overwhelmed by competitors. Video advertising is not a new kid on the block. It’s an established way of communication with consumers that brings visible results to businesses. With its help, entrepreneurs create quality and unique content that boosts their outreach, sales, and brand recognition.
It’s not a secret that peoplewho lead ahecticlifestyle would rather watch a short video and obtain all the necessary information about a product rather than read long articles. Although this oneis thekey pro, there are even more for you to consider.
Video advertising also helps:
obtain great sales volumes;
tella story;
communicate the necessary information fast;
receive high organic traffic;
educate people on a topic in an interactive andengaging way;
gain more social shares;
go viral;
attain wider customer reach;
establish brand awareness.
There are many benefits you can reap after implementing video advertising. However, to reach your goals, you should identify the most suitable video adformats for your company. In the next section, we’ll help you find out the key types of video ads and decide whichones can help you attain your business objectives.
Types of Video Advertising
Outstanding video ads canhelp brands reach out to customers and grab their attention. You can run your videos on YouTube or other video-sharing platforms to gainmore exposure. To choose the right video ad format for your brand, you need to knowmore about theavailable options and their features, so let’s start exploring.
In-stream ads.You can see this ad type when video content is played before, during, or after the main video on YouTube or other platforms. In-stream ads can be both skippable and non-skippable. In the first scenario, a viewer can skip the video. These ads help establish brand awareness, reach leadsand customers, and drive organic traffic to a website.
Out-stream video ads. These are mobile-only ads users can find outside of YouTube. Out-stream video ads appear in apps and partner websites. You can easily recognize out-stream ads since they play with a sound off. If a viewer is interested in the promoted product, this person can tap the video to unmute it and receive all the necessary information. Thisvideo adtypeis perfect forcompanies that need to increase their reach at an affordable price and boost brand awareness.
Bumper ads. These are unskippable 6-secondads that can appear before, during, or after the main video. People can encounter this type of video ad on YouTube, sites, and apps. Brands that use bumper ads pay for them based on the number of ad impressions. If a company strives to reach out toits target audience with a clear and short message, this type is a perfect choice.
Video discovery ads. These ads can be found in related YouTube videos, YouTube search results, or on the YouTube homepage for mobile devices. The ad includes a thumbnail (a snapshot of a video) and short text. The length of this promotional video can vary depending on the placement, but this ad type always contains an invitation to watch the video.
Masthead ads. The format is perfect for promoting a new product and boosting awareness. It will help reach a wide audience and create a buzz within a short timeframe. Viewers can seean advertising video playing automatically with the sound off for around 30 seconds at the top of the YouTube Home feed.
Now that you know all the ad formats, it’s time to delve into the topic deeper and figure out how to create a great video ad for your company.
How to Create an Effective Video Ad for Your Business
We’ve prepared five effective tips that will help you create a video ad that converts, so let’sfigure out how to do it.
Make sure to include the most compelling part at the beginning. According to Stone’s Throw Media, you have only 15 seconds to grab your potential customers’attention and spark their interest, which is why you need toinclude the most important and eye-catching information at the beginningof yourvideo. If you succeed in producing a high-quality video that captivates its viewers from the first seconds, you’ll be able toprevent them fromskipping your ad. To do it,start your video with a statement that will instantly intrigue your target market. Strive to hook your potential clients fromthe first secondsby discussing a widespread problem, asking a question, or sharing a new fact.
Tell about your company’s competitive advantage. Every customer wants to know the reasons to choose your brand— the things that make you special and help you stand out in a competitive market. Make sure to include the answers to these questions in your video. Share your strengths, unique features, benefits, and achievements. You can also include some social proof of your success: reviews, testimonials, and feedback.
Choose the optimal length of your video. Remember that you are making a video not tolay out the whole history of your brand but to promote and sell your product. Your advertisement should be short enoughto keep customers’ attention and communicate your message. In general, the length of online video ads is around 30 seconds or less. So when you write a script, make sure that you can convey everything you want withinyour given time frame. In case you produce video ads for mobile users and social networks like Facebook and Instagram, creating a 15-second video to ensure that people will watch it until the end is an excellent idea.
Provide convincing arguments that your brand is worth customers’ trust.Your viewers should be able to understandwhy your company is a good choice for them from your video. To make it happen, you need to provide customers with enough arguments that your product really solves their problems. Visible value, unlimited warranty, new technology, or innovative features— mention the things that are crucialto your potential clients and can convince them to buy from you.
Consider using a CTA. Your goals can be different: brand awareness, a wider customer base, orboosted sales. Include a call to action button to encourage people to take the desired action. The best option is to place it at the end of your videoso that customers can hit it after getting acquainted with your product. At this moment, prospects might want to visit your website to learn more about the company, check the event details, or explore promotions.
The process of creating video ads is clear, so let’smove on to the examples. They will help yougenerate some fresh ideas and create a perfect video ad for your viewers.
Examples of Video Advertising
A creative approach to creating a promotional video increases your chances of enhancingbrand recognition and customer engagement. If you don’t have any ideas for your video ad yet, we hope our examples will guide and hook you with their originality.
Reebok and 25,915 Days
The famous footwear manufacturer proves that a powerful videoadmessage can reach out to people and push them towards action without words. The campaign was created to show people that they have so many opportunities to reach their goals, become better versions of themselves, and explore the world during their life (the average human life expectancy is25,915 days). Theprimary message behind the video is that people should live their life to the max every day.
Google Android and Friends Furever
Android, with the help of a bright, friendly, and nice-to-watch video, managed to winviewers’ attention fast. Its simplicity and originality made it the most shared video in 2015. It went viral on Twitter and Facebook, and the number of shares reached 6,432,921. In the ad, people can see the friendship between different animals. The video succeeded in grabbing viewers’ attention and became very popular on social networks.
Congrats, you know the reasons to consider video advertising and its benefits and types. Get inspired by our examples to create a video that grabs viewers’ attention and boosts sales.
Video lesson
A video lesson is a lesson that contains an educational video on a specific topic. It helps educators present their information in an interactive and interesting way.
In this article, we’ll review the pros and types of video lessons. We’ll also unveil how to make a video lesson.
Why are video lessons important in education?
Visual content plays a significant role in education in our digital era. According to statistics, 65% of the population are visual learners. It means that these people remember and learn the information better through videos, images, infographics, special apps, and websites. Videos provide students with an engaging sensory experience. They appeal to a wide audience and enable more efficient processing and memory recall. Video lessons help you present the topic in an interesting way and allow you to see information from different perspectives. They encourage thinking, reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making.
Video helps people increase knowledge retention. Learners can stop the video and replay it as many times as they need to remember the material. Better yet, they can refresh their knowledge to prepare for exams or tests by reviewing the videos once again. Video lessons are free to access and don’t have any time limitations.
The digital world requires learners to adapt, and that’s why they search for new ways to learn new topics. Videos are visually appealing and can be accessed from any device like a laptop, PC, smartphone, or tablet. Students all over the world can take video lessons if they have the internet.
Video lessons are crucial for learning highly visual topics. Teachers can show everything in detail so that students understand it and see the examples.
Now that you know why video lessons are essential, it’s time to review some more pros. They will help you decide whether you need video lessons for your online course, training, online school, etc.
6 Advantages of Video Lessons
After implementing video lectures in online education, you can reap various benefits. They include improved engagement, knowledge retention, and cost-effectiveness. This section will help you identify all the advantages of video lessons and help you decide whether you need them.
The advantages include:
higher students’ engagement;
reduced cognitive overload;
higher knowledge retention;
cost-effectiveness;
easy access;
personalized learning experience.
Now that you know the benefits, let’s unveil the types. The next section will help you figure out what type of video lecture suits your main purpose.
Types of Video Lectures
To teach students, you can use various formats of video lessons. In this section, we’ll uncover the most effective types. They will help you communicate the necessary information to your learners.
Lecture capture. It’s a recording of classroom lectures and uploading them to the internet so students can see them. Once you type the query in the search field on YouTube, you can find various video lessons on different topics. These lectures are designed to help students understand the topics. Learners can find appropriate lectures and watch them as many times as necessary.
Voice-over presentation. It’s usually a PowerPoint presentation accompanied by a voice of a teacher. An educator explains the information included in the slides of a presentation. With this video lecture, you can combine visual information with audio explanation and make the most of the materials provided.
Talking head video. It can be real-time or pre-recorded video where a teacher speaks on the subject. This type doesn’t require any knowledge of animation. A teacher needs to make a script and explain the topic without reading the script. While recording this video lesson, you can take a break, re-record some parts, or cut them off, if necessary. It only works with pre-recorded video lessons. If teachers plan to give live lectures, they should be prepared enough to avoid peeping into the records and stuttering.
Interactive lecture. It’s a lesson that includes different activities and implies a teacher using video, adding audio, PowerPoint slides, etc. You can switch slides and videos to make your lesson more interactive and engaging.
Now that you know the types, it’s time to figure out how to create a video lesson. Step by step guide will allow you to make the process more efficient.
How to make a video lesson?
If you replace your sit-in lectures with video lessons, you can improve students’ engagement and reduce your workload. Follow the 6 steps below.
Select the main topic. If you have expertise in several issues and want to share your knowledge with others, you need to narrow down your topics. Choose the point of interest you’d like to talk about the most. Since people get bored with long videos, you need to prepare a lesson in which you talk to the point, and share useful materials, tips, guides, etc. For example, if you are a fitness coach, demonstrate to people some effective exercises to keep their bodies fit and healthy. Provide helpful exercises to people with back pain, teach prenatal yoga, or help improve posture.
Research data. Search for information about your topic and choose the most suitable materials for the first lesson. For instance, if you decide to record video lessons teaching yoga for beginners, make sure to explore all information available. It’s necessary to ensure that people don’t get hurt or get trauma while exercising for the first time. Research the techniques and different approaches.
Create slides. If you create instructional videos, make sure that they are highly focused. Use visuals to highlight the most important points and create short instructions. Remember that learner engagement reduces after the 6th minute of your video. Moreover, it falls drastically if the slides are overloaded with information. Keep everything short and sweet and include the essential facts.
Analyze competitors. Search YouTube or other educational platforms to figure out what type of video lessons students like. Search your competitors and watch their video lectures. Read comments and reviews. It will help you identify the advantages and drawbacks. As a result, you’ll be able to create video lessons people enjoy. Moreover, you’ll find out students’ real intentions, needs, and demands.
Record your video lessons. There are several things you should pay attention to when recording a video: recording device, microphone, and screencasting program. Since videos have a major impact on your audience, you need to create them right. It doesn’t mean that you should buy an expensive camera to create a quality lesson. You can use your old camera or even a smartphone to record your lectures. Feel free to use your phone for video lessons of less than 10 minutes. If your video is longer, then consider using a camera. It has big storage space and allows you to record for hours. To keep focus and prevent your video from shaking, use a tripod. This way, you’ll be able to create high-quality video lessons. You should also take care of the sound. Make sure that your microphone works properly.
Use an educational platform. Once your video lessons and other materials for your online course are ready, search for the appropriate platform. It will help you combine all your pieces of content into an informative online course. LIKE.TG’s free course builder enables you to create lessons and add as many videos as you wish. Better yet, you can insert images, PDFs, downloadable documents, and text to make your course more engaging. You can design tests and add them after each video lesson to check students’ knowledge and skills. This way, you’ll be able to track their progress.
Congrats, now you know what a video lesson is and why it’s essential. Hope that our instructions will help you create an outstanding video lesson for your students and communicate your message.
Video email marketing
Video email marketing is a strategy that uses embedded HTML5 videos, GIFs, static images with a play button as a link to a video to increase subscriber engagement via emails.
Watch this video where Sheryl Plouffe explains how to use video in email marketing.
Why is video email marketing effective?
Increases open rate and click-through rates
Draws a lot of attention
Information is digested effectively
Increases forwarding
It can go viral
Increases open rate and click-through rates. The word “video” in an email subject line can increase open rates by 19% and clickthrough rates by 65%. It means that people are more curious to see what’s inside and detect the information displayed in the video as more valuable.
Draws a lot of attention. People pay more attention to moving pictures than static images. Videos in email extend the time of reading, and people examine such emails more accurately.
Information is digested effectively. When people watch a video, they retain much moreof the information in comparisonto reading the text. Our brain processes visual information much more rapidly, which means that a video in an email gives a chance to deliver all the necessary information remarkably fast.
Increases forwarding. If the video appeals to people’s emotions, recipients are more likely to share it with their friends and peer groups on socials. This way, you increase outreach and brand awareness.
It can go viral. If the video is professional, short, and impressive, either because of its beauty or the sense of humor, it is likely to become trendy in no time. Of course, a video should be perfect and easy to understand for going viral, but with the right attitude and a team of inspired professionals, the sky’s the limit!
How toUse Video in Email Marketing
Introduce a product video
Provide understandable tutorials
Create beautiful celebration emails
Grow credibility
Introduce a product video. Video email marketing gives unlimited options for presenting your products and services. You can make a short video or even come up with a sequence of short videos cut from a longer one. Your audience will surely remember it. Though, it’s not the best practice to use video in every email, because people can get used to it and the wow effect of video email marketing may disappear.
Provide understandable tutorials. As a human brain reads visual information faster than the textual, video is a fantastic tool for explaining complicated things and processes within a short period. Video allows you to describe how a particular software feature works or motivate subscribers to buy a ticket for a movie by putting a brief but the most captivating film trailer.
Create beautiful celebration emails. Videos and GIFs help to make holiday and birthday email campaigns even brighter and touching. Typically, brands display a cake with burning candles or a firework. But you can go further: it only depends on your audience, creativity, and budget.
Grow credibility. A company can show subscribers the manufacturing process and introduce people who made it. The viewers will be glad to look behind the scenes. It will positively affect brands’ reputation and make the audience more open for communication.
Playable Embedded Video Support
Many people wonder if there is a technology that allows embedding playable videos in emails. Yes, it is possible with HTML5. However, the is no universal tool for video embedding, so the main issue is that only a few email services support this function now.
If you want to embed videos in your email marketing campaigns, you should find out the most common email services among your subscribers and check if they support embedded videos.
Email servicesthat support embedded video
Email services that do not support embedded video
Apple MailThunderbird 24iOS devices, native email clientsSamsung Galaxy, native email clientsOutlook.com (except on IE8 and Safari5)
GmailYahooOutlookAOLAndroidLive MailLotus NotesWindows MailBlackberryKindle Fire
Bear in mind that an embedded video may influence email deliverability in a wrong way: many emails with video are detected as spam and blocked by email servers as they treat a video tag in email code as malicious code.
The good thing is that the recipients whose email services don’t support embedded video will see a fallback picture as a link to a video.
How to Include Video in an Email
There are two ways you can insert video in an email powered by LIKE.TG:
Drag-and-drop editor. This feature is available in both Layout Template Editor and Existing Design Templates. With the drag-and-drop editor, you can add a link to a video that appears as a static image with a play button.
HTML editor.An HTML editor enables you to create a GIF instead of a video. HTML templates require some coding skills. Here is how to add a video while you are creating an email campaign with both features.
Drag-and-Drop Editor
Create a new campaign. Choose a template from the Layout Template Editor or Existing Design Templates.
Drag and drop the “Video” element to the template. Place it where you need it.
Add a link to a video. When you add a link to a video, the screenshot from a video with a play button will appear right where you placed a ”Video” element.
Please note that you can’t create a GIF with the drag-and-drop editor, and there’s no option of choosing a particular screenshot from the video.
HTML Editor
Choose an HTML Editor. Then click the “Insert video” button.
Insert the link.
Generate a GIF.
Please note that if you insert the code of the embedded video, it will not work out. It will be either cut off or ignored by the email servers.
Examples of Using Video in Email Marketing
Kate Spade, New York. They created a hilarious GIF that showsthat their handbags are as tasty as the cupcakes.
Awesome Merch. It is a welcome email that contains a static image as a link to a video of the manufacturing process.
Uncommon Goods. This email contains a GIF that highlights different gifts for Valentine’s Day.
Tips for Using Video in Email Marketing
Plan your campaign
Shoot great videos
Keep it short
Create a sequence
Place a CTR in its place
Test before launching a video email campaign
Plan your campaign. Think about the goals you plan to achieve with video email marketing. Whether you want to engage more people, to promote a new product, or to show a testimonial interview about your product or services — a clear and straightforward aim will determine how to use video email marketing.
Shoot great videos. Use high-quality equipment for filming. Hire professionals to create a beautiful video product for your audience. Plan your budget accordingly.
Keep it short. Optimize your video for email marketing: keepits timing between 30-90 seconds to maximize effectiveness under short attention span conditions.
Create a sequence. If 90 seconds is not enough to highlight all the aspects of your proposal, cut the long video into the shorter bids, and create a series. If done right, it will intrigue your subscribers.
Place a CTR in its place. Put a call to action at the end of the video, engage your viewers in sharing your video on social networks.
Test before launching a video email campaign. Share the email with your friends and colleagues first to find out how good your video is.
Voice of the customer
Voice of the customer (VoC) is customer feedback that reflects expectations and real customer experience. It encompasses customer needs, desires, and preferences and enables a company’s team to improve a product or service.
In this article, we’ll review the importance and 6 methodologies of the voice of the customer. We’ll also unveil questions, 5 best practices, and examples.
Why is the voice of the customer important?
The voice of the customer plays an essential role for different businesses. With its help, brands can be more attentive to their customers and ensure a seamless customer experience. Once companies receive customer feedback, they can understand what influences the purchasing decisions of their customers. Entrepreneurs know what their clients need and expect from their businesses, and they can address those needs.
When companies know what consumers expect, they understand exactly what product or service to offer. Customers’ feedback allows them to hone their products and give clients something they desire. This way, they avoid long research and the process of collecting information about customers from third parties.
Brands can directly contact consumers and ask them about their expectations and experience. However, all feedback can’t be positive since people have different needs and desires. This is even better because constructive criticism can reveal the negative aspects of a product or service. Once brands identify specific issues, they can eliminate them.
Now that you know the reasons to employ the voice of the customer, let’s explore methodologies.
6 Voice of the Customer Methodologies
You can use different methods to capture customer feedback and enhance customer experience. We’ve prepared a list of the most effective ways to measure satisfaction and identify problems within your company.
Net promoter score. It helps you assess the loyalty of your customers. By asking consumers about their likeliness to recommend your company to friends, you can get to know how happy they are. Provide customers with an opportunity to evaluate your brand on a scale from 0 to 10.
Interview. This is the most traditional and reliable way to capture customer feedback. With its help, you can unveil the consumer’s point of view regarding different features of your product or service. You can prepare specific questions for one customer or a group of people and ask them by email, phone, or in person. As a result, you’ll understand your customers and establish stronger relationships with them.
Online survey. Once you succeed to create surveys with the right questions, you’ll be able to solve problems and instantly address consumers’ wishes. However, to design excellent online surveys, you need to choose an appropriate platform. SurveyMonkey, Typeform, and SurveySparrow are the best free online survey tools.
Website behavior. Although you might think that surveys are more effective, your website is also a source of useful information. Consider leveraging tools like heat maps to evaluate customer behavior on your site.
Live chat. Since around 75% of customers choose live chat over other channels to reach out to a company, there’s a point in implementing a live chat and gathering customer insights. With a live chat, you’ll get real-time feedback from your target audience. You can perform multiple actions to get valuable information. You can instantly solve customers’ problems and conduct surveys to assess user experience. As a result, you’ll be able to identify issues and boost customer satisfaction. With LIKE.TG, you can create a live chat for your website for free without any coding skills. Answer users' FAQs, help them choose a product, assist in their buyer journey, and accept payments via chat.
Focus group. It consists of 8 people who can discuss the product in person. They can freely share their opinions, expectations, and perceptions about a brand or its product. Later, a company can use this data to understand customers’ needs and priorities. Its team can also find out what consumers want to see in a business or product. A brand receives feedback on each of the company’s main areas.
The methodologies are clear, so let’s proceed to the questions.
Voice of the Customer Questions
Your survey can consist of different questions and depends on the goal you target. We’ve prepared a list of the commonly asked questions to capture the VoC.
What do your clients think about your company and product? Whom, where, and what do they say about your brand?
What are the feelings customers have when they talk about your brand? How do these feelings and opinions influence their buying decisions?
What is the main reason for having these feelings and sentiments towards your company?
What needs, expectations, intentions, and desires related to your product or service customers have?
What do customers think about your competitors? How satisfied they are with their products and services? Do they meet their expectations, desires, and needs?
Now that you know the main questions, it’s time to delve into the 5 best practices.
5 Voice of the Customer Best Practices
If you want to get the most out of your VoC, you need to follow the next practices. Keep them in mind when you decide to create the voice of the customer for your business.
Collect customer feedback regularly. Many customers engage with your brand every day. Each of them requires your attention. Your company reputation depends on the experience customers have with your business. They can shape a positive or a negative image of your brand and share it with their friends. To have your product work properly and customers satisfied, you need to conduct surveys regularly. This way, you’ll gather customer feedback and find out what areas need your attention and improvement. If you capture customer feedback often, it means that you interact with your target audience on a regular basis. As a result, you’ll know customers’ most recent needs, preferences, requirements, expectations, and pain points. They can also give you some suggestions on how to make customers happier.
Capture information from different touchpoints of the buyer journey. Clients while interacting with your brand can go through several touchpoints during their buyer journey. They can purchase online or go to the physical store. Depending on the type of purchase, consumers can encounter different teams and have various experiences. To have a full overview of customer experience, you need to identify all touchpoints during the buyer journey and analyze them. Once you do it, you’ll know what steps to take next and what areas to improve.
Examine feedback. Once you have all customer insights gathered, you should analyze them and highlight helpful information for your company. Try to understand consumers through their answers. Your main task here is to identify the main reasons for customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
Share the data with all your company departments. All your teams should know about the problems and negative experiences customers might experience when using your product since they play a great role in boosting customer engagement and customer loyalty. That’s the reason you should share customer data across your company. Complete customer insights will help your company develop strategies to improve business and customer experience.
Take measures regarding negative customer experience. You should not only listen but also act. Together with your core teams, you need to develop a plan to improve customer experience. The faster you solve the problems, the better for customers and your brand.
Now that you know about our best practices, it’s time to jump into some examples.
Voice of the Customer Examples
In today’s world with increasingly demanding customers, the voice of the customer techniques are widely used among businesses. We’ve prepared several examples for you to grab some inspiration.
Lawley
Lawley is an insurance company based in New York that manages risks and takes care of employees. The company used a net promoter score survey to find out what their clients think about the company, its service, and recommendations. With the voice of the customer, they succeeded to gather feedback from different regions and identify customers’ pain points. Lawley also improved customer service, experience, and reduced customer churn.
Subbly
Subbly is an e-commerce subscription based-platform that uses customer feedback to unveil what to do next, which improvements to implement, and features to release. The company has a special page where users can leave their feedback on its product, customer service, experience, etc. Besides, the platform’s team constantly conducts surveys to find out how clients feel about the pricing of its plans. Subbly pays attention to customers when deciding about pricing and new feature release.
Congrats, now you know the different peculiarities of the voice of the customer methods. Hope this information will help you once you decide to create such a survey for your customers.
Viral marketing
Viral marketing is a method of influencing the target audience and brand promotion with the help of the target audience itself, which does it both consciously and unconsciously. This is word-of-mouth advertising, which means spreading a word about your company to reach a wider audience.
Advantages of Viral Marketing
Low costs
High credibility
A fast method of lead generation
Facilitates brand awareness
Low costs
Expenditures for viral marketing are lower than on other types of marketing, especially traditional ones. Starting a business, one is to spend much money on advertising, while viral marketing does not require such expenses. Your target audience will share information instead of you.
High credibility
Guess who people trust more: businesses or other customers? The answer is evident. Businesses carry little credibility since they aim to sell. If your business grows, more hype is around — the more people will trust you as they have the proof why you are a reliable company.
A fast method of lead generation
Viral marketing is an excellent example of quick lead generation as it can use all digital marketing types and channels altogether. So, a broad reach is guaranteed. Besides, people are always interested in trendy topics. They are eager to share interesting, entertaining, and original pieces of information with their friends. Probably the most famous example is a significant number of memes and videos with cats.
Facilitates brand awareness
Brand awareness can't be built quickly; a lot of time is needed for your brand to be discussed. If you understand your audience and succeed in viral marketing, you will get long-lasting results.
How does Viral Marketing work?
Creating content is not a challenge, but creating viral content IS. Why? The content becomes viral, not by chance. To make your piece of information viral, it should appeal to the emotions and feelings of the audience. Recall the last post you shared with your friends. What kind of emotions did you feel? Joy, awe, happiness? Were you moved? It may not be an easy task to correlate your product with some feelings. To get a better idea, think of some original and unusual problems it helps to solve. The modern audience is sophisticated, and you should make efforts to surprise it. Once your customers smile while watching your video, be sure that their friends will do the same.
Make sure that your content is easy to share. Otherwise, people won't spend the time to find ways. The best digital marketing type for viral marketing is Social Media Marketing. Besides, there won't be any difficulties with monitoring the results of your work.
While thinking over the strategy, remember that the audience should easily understand your piece of viral content.
"Do us a Flavor" is an example of viral marketing created by an American brand Lay's. They had promised $1 million for a person who offered the best idea of a new taste for their chips. This way, they not only got a great many new ideas but increased brand awareness.
Viral Marketing Techniques
Appeal to feelings and emotions
Avoid direct advertising
Give something for free
Connect viral marketing with your brand
Outreach partners and experts in your industry
Involve celebrities
Appeal to feelings and emotions
We have already mentioned that appealing to emotions is a must in viral marketing. Forget that you are a seller; think about what makes people buy. They should perceive your advertisement, unconsciously. Joy, awe, happiness, sadness, sympathy — everything that helps to unleash emotions, and deep feelings attract people's attention, make them think about it.
Avoid direct advertising
Would you share just an ad video containing an ordinary "Buy our product"? We do not think so. Avoid direct advertising, as it's already clear that you aim to sell. Surprise the audience, bring something unexpected and original.
Give something for free
Freebies always attract people. Give your client something valuable for free. The most popular method is a giveaway. Thus, you will increase brand awareness and encourage lead generation.
Connect viral marketing with your brand
It may happen that after watching the viral video, your clients will feel anger because it has nothing to do with your brand, so what's the point in wasting your time on it? Some people may share it, but there's no guarantee that somebody will mention your brand name. Make the reason for your viral ad clear for the audience.
Outreach partners and experts in your industry
Your brand will be talked about more if reliable companies recommend it. Connect with such companies, ask them to try your product, and leave their feedback, but do not ask them about direct advertising. If your product is useful for them, they will surely advise it to the audience.
Involve celebrities
Celebrities are taking part in your marketing help to raise its chances to become viral significantly. Such people can make accessible everything they use: trainers they wear for a morning run, their car, the coffee machine they use daily. Any ordinary thing used by a famous person does not seem to be so casual. People believe that stars use only the best goods in their category. For example, Nike actively involves celebrities in creating viral videos.
Viral Marketing Strategies
Place social sharing buttons near your call to action
Motivate to buy
Give a chance to recommend a product
Tempt with a discount
Give a value for sharing
Place social sharing buttons near your call to action
If you are in eCommerce, you can place buttons for social sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. near "Buy." Add the text "If you like this product — share it with your friends."
Motivate to buy
Add the motivating text to your social buttons, for example, "Ask your friends whether this bag will suit your shoes!"
Give a chance to recommend a product
After clients buy something, ask them, "Will you recommend this product to your friends?" and give two variants — Yes/No. If they do not recommend, ask for the reason and provide some variants with, then ask for contact information. It will be useful when the reason why they do not recommend will be eliminated.
Tempt with a discount
You can place two calls to action buttons on different sides of the product. The text of the 1st one will be "Buy headphones" and of the 2nd one "Buy three pairs of headphones with a big discount" and state the percent of a discount. But it will be available only if the clients share this product with their friends. If they choose three pairs, a pop-up window with sharing buttons will appear.
Give a value for sharing
When ordering a product, you can offer free shipping in case a client shares it with the friends. You can also offer a discount for the next purchase under the same terms and conditions.
This way, you will not only facilitate viral marketing but encourage the next purchases.
So, we have dwelt on the most critical issues of viral marketing: its advantages, the way it works, techniques, and strategies. You will indeed find something suitable for your business.
Variable costs
Variable costs are regular expenses of every business. Their total amount is proportional to a company’s production and sales level. If it goes up, variable costs increase, and if sales decrease, so do the costs. These expenses include raw materials, commissions, transaction fees, direct labor, utilities, etc.
In this article, we’ll explain why variable costs matter, review the difference between variable and fixed costs, show how to calculate this type of expense, and share some tips to reduce them.
Why are variable costs important?
If your sales increase, you may decide to produce more units to skyrocket your revenue. At the same time, you need to buy more raw materials, pay more for utilities, and spend more budget on wages. As a result, this can lead your business either to the ultimate breakthrough or some tangible losses. This is a reason why you should regularly calculate your variable and fixed costs.
If you manage to get more sales and find ways to reduce variable costs, you’ll save a lot of money that you can invest in improving your product or expanding your product range. Everything depends on your strategic goals. Lastly, variable costs are crucial when pricing your product. The higher your expenses are, the more money you’ll have to charge for your goods, which may negatively impact your position in the market.
Variable costs are not the only expense an entrepreneur has to cover. They go hand in hand with fixed costs, so let’s make the difference betweenthem clear.
Variable Costs vs. Fixed Costs
Variable costs mean expenses that are affected by the changes in production and sales. If a company increases sales, it will increase production to earn more money. Hence, it will have to spend more on wages, utilities, shipping fees, buy more raw materials, pay more for packaging, etc.
Conversely, fixed costs are not affected by the production level. They are set for a specified time period within a contract agreement and don’t change along with sales. They include basic costs of every company, such as rental lease payments, insurance, property taxes, interest expenses, and depreciation.
Now that you know the difference between these two types of costs, let’s find out how to calculate variable costs.
How to Calculate Variable Costs
To find out your variable costs, you need to keep a record of them and add them all to see how much it costs to create one unit of your product.
Let’s see an example.
Say, you own a bakery and want to discover the price of one strawberry charlotte cake that weighs 500g. You should take into account the following expenses:
direct material costs per unit: $13
utilities: $5
the total cost of labor: $10
It means that your company should pay $28 ($13+$5+$10) for variable costs to produce one cake. High production levels will decrease your total costs, but you should not forget about fixed costs. Hence, to cover all your expenses, you should get the money needed for investment, have a net income, and know how to reduce your variable costs.
5Tips to Reduce Variable Costs
In this section, we’ll offer you some tips that will help you decrease your variable costs and invest money in your business development.
Ask your suppliers for a discount. The larger the volume of raw materials you buy, the bigger your provider’sdiscount is. Don’t forget that they are as interested in this deal as you are, and negotiate some mutually beneficial terms and conditions.
Outsource some labor if possible. If you work with digital products, you should definitely consider this point. Since freelancers work remotely, you can pay them less than your staff members. The only trick here is that you’ll probably need some time to find an experienced specialist.
Invest in high-performing products. Check which products bring you the most sales and which have a low-profit margin. Maybe you need to reduce the production of slowly-moving products or even stop manufacturing them, concentrating on your bestsellers. This way, you’ll stop wasting your budget.
Invest in technology. Look for the process you can automate with the help of technology to eliminate the need to hire a person. For example, you can save some money on customer support staff by developing chatbots that automatically answer clients’ frequently asked questions.
Update your machinery. Look attentively at the tools vital for production. Do you maintain them correctly? Are they enough for your production volume? Are they updated? Why don’t you buy the latest model to speed up production?
These are some essential tips to reduce your variable costs. Don’t forget to monitor all your business processes, check if your staff members are doing their best, take the recruitment process seriously, and regularly calculate these expenses.
Value pricing
Value pricing is a pricing strategy in which prices are set according to the client’s perceived value of a product. Customer-centricity helps benefit businesses that offer unique and valuable features and provide excellent performance.
In this article, you’ll learn the advantages, disadvantages, and examples of value-based pricing and get to know how to implement it.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Value-Based Pricing
Often price formation is a difficult process. Based on your prices, customers decide whether your product is worthy or they can easily find a substitute product from a competitor at a lower cost. Companies with products or services that have some distinct unique and valuable features can reap several advantages after carrying out value-based pricing. In this approach, the customer is the top priority. Brands charge people a price based on the value a customer assigns to a certain product. The actual or perceived value of a product and the client’s evaluation is essential.
With this pricing strategy, you won’t have any limitations and can increase your sales volume and revenue. Over time, you can earn even more when you get to know your customers better and what they value. Your offer will become even more personalized, and customers will be eager to purchase more. Eventually, you can even raise prices if the product's value increases (new features, services, and upgrades).
Customers who get the best option out of all available appreciate the brand for providing the best services. They become loyal and purchase often. If they are very satisfied with your product, they will recommend it to friends and refer them. As a result, your customer base will expand.
When you know your customers and their preferences well, you can craft an exceptional product that brings value. One more advantage of value-based pricing is the opportunity to provide products people need. Researching before you set prices will help determine the features you can add to make people happy.
The disadvantages include a limited number of customers who can purchase a product, a highly competitive environment, high production costs, and difficulties during business growth.
Now that you know the pros and cons, let’s discover how to make value pricing work for your business.
How to implement value-based pricing?
To implement the strategy, you need to be aware of the key processes. Our guide will help you do everything step by step and achieve the necessary result.
Determine an audience segment you want to target. Since value-based pricing focuses on the value your product can provide to certain customers, you need to choose a specific audience segment. This way, you’ll be able to meet their needs and address their desires. However, if you want to reach several audience segments at once, you’ll need to shape a value-based strategy for each.
Check out the price of the next best alternative. You need to find a proper alternative for your product. Study competitors’ products to select the one with similar features and can be a perfect substitute. This product or service should bring the same benefits yet differ in performance. Once you identify such an item, check out the prices. It will help you determine the prices for your product. Customer research will come in handy to discover the prices.
Identify your product’s value. You need to identify aspects that differentiate your product from the alternative. Focus on the performance aspect.
Calculate the price your product is worth. At this stage, you need to determine the unique features and performance that provide you with a competitive advantage. These features are essential for setting the price. The more value your product brings to customers, the higher the price they can pay.
It’s time to delve into some examples to figure out how it works in real life.
Examples of Value-Based Pricing
Once you know how to implement the strategy, but are confused about where to start, consider reviewing the examples. Many companies operate based on value pricing and have happy customers. We’ve prepared several examples of famous companies to inspire you.
Louis Vuitton
The well-known fashion house is often associated with luxury and wealth. The strong brand image and famous logo are associated with stylish and expensive clothes and accessories in regard to its strong brand image and the famous logo. The brand has premium pricing, and not every person can afford to purchase from Louis Vuitton. However, many loyal customers are still willing to pay more to receive high-quality and fashionable clothes, jewelry, and bags.
Unlike other modern brands, LV stays classic and uses a recognizable color scheme and logo. People appreciate the fashion house for exclusivity, gender-neutral design, and more affordable price compared to more expensive brands.
Apple
You can’t skip an excellent example of a technology company that brings valuable products to the target audience. The brand succeeded in winning loyal fans worldwide. When creating and selling its products, Apple focuses on customers. Its team designs iPhones, iPods, and Macs that are simple and easy to use for clients. Now the company holds 39% of the US market share. People consider Apple’s products valuable because of their simple and modern design, familiar iOS and macOS, and seamless work.
Framer
The next outstanding example is Framer. This design tool helps create websites and apps in minutes and communicate with a team to stay consistent. The service doesn’t require you to pay or insert credit card details to start a free trial. This company allows users to try a free plan. However, users will need a more advanced plan with a certain monthly fee to get more valuable features. So before making a purchasing decision, customers can decide whether this service suits their purposes. Users can also watch the educational video to understand how everything is organized. Different plans target different audience segments. Framer prepared a plan for teams and organizations.
Congrats, now you know how to use value pricing. Hope our examples inspired you to develop a unique strategy for your company.
User experience
User experience (UX) is an overall experience a person has when using a product or service. By providing good UX for visitors, companies can increase customer retention and market share, invest less in acquiring new customers, build customer loyalty, and improve theirSEOand sales.
In the video below, you’ll find some interesting facts about user experience.
When you hear about user experience, you probably associate it with platforms, websites, smartphones, and laptops. However, this concept covers a lot more than you think. It’s about dozens of experiences you have every day when you go shopping, drive a car, and cook dinner.
In this article, we’ll unveil why you should care about user experience, provide you with some tips to make your UX better, explore ways to measure it, and review several examples.
Why should you care about user experience?
User experience comes in a variety of forms that help satisfy customer needs: great customer service, an excellent and easy-to-use product, a platform that allows a customer to solve their current problem, etc. It includes everything that creates a good impression about a brand. A positiveuser experience drives more attention to a company, while a negative one scares off buyers.
Poor user experience evokes negative emotions like anger, frustration, and impatience. They discourage the majority of consumers from coming back for a product. You definitely remember your bad experience with a company since it makes you avoid its services in the future.
If you don’t want the same future for your business, then strive to provide a seamless user interface, good customer support, and an easy-to-use product. You will be able to drive more traffic, attract newleads, attain more customers, develop customer loyalty, and increase yoursales volume. After improving your UX, you’ll notice some positive changes in your SEO, customers’ first impression,word-of-mouth, and investment costs.
Now that you know the reasons to care about the user experience you provide, let’s move to the next section to explore ways to improve it.
9Tips to Improve User Experience on a Website
Use a visible call to action
Leverage white space
Optimize your website speed
Ensure mobile-first design
Use lists
Apply visuals reasonably
Maintain consistency during your buyer journey
Ask users for feedback
Remove 404 error
Your website is a very powerful tool for obtaining leads and retaining existing customers. Make sure that you have an excellent UX for the constant growth of your company. Check out our tips to figure out whether your site complies with customers’ needs.
Use a visible call to action
The effectiveness of a marketing campaign very often depends on the quality and thoughtfulness of itsCTAbutton. This written directive encourages users to perform the desired action on your website.
A good visible call to action button tells what to do next, creates a sense of urgency, and, as a result, increasesconversions. To create a great CTA, make it concise, and ensure that it informs users what to do next and leads immediately to the right place.
When you open Shaw Academy’s website, you can instantly see a clear, large, and visible CTA that encourages visitors to take four weeks of online certified courses for free. In this call to action button, you can notice the value the academy provides.
Leverage white space
Graphic designers often use white space to balance elements on a web page. White space makes your website look fresh and modern and increases customer concentration. The technique also enables website visitors to freely navigate the software and have some space for action. Besides, it improves readability, which allows visitors to comprehend your content easily.
Apple did a great job by implementing white space into its website design. As a result, visitors can easily navigate, scroll down the website, and take the desired action.
Optimize your website speed
One of the most frustrating things is visiting a website that takes forever to load. According to Think with Google, the possibility of bounce increases by 32% when page load time increases from 1 to 3 seconds.
To improve page load time, consider eliminating unnecessary elements, optimizing images, hosting videos on third-party platforms, such as Wistia, YouTube, or Vimeo, using browser caching, and reducing JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. You can leverage a special tool like PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, or GTmetrix to check your website load time.
Let’s find out the speed of Monki’s websitedesktop version. You can see the results and suggestions that help improve your load time.
Ensure mobile-first design
Mobile-first design implies developing a website that users can access from their smartphones. It ensures that your site has a responsive web design, so you don’t need to worry about people who visit your platform from different devices. Besides, it simplifies the perception of content you post there.
Let’s take Pixelgrade, for example. This design studio has a responsive web design. When visiting the website, you can see a visible call to action button in the center and a convenient menu. To find out more about the platform, you just need to scroll down the site or tap on the hamburger menu.
Use lists
With lists, you can put together related information, guide users, and make your materials more readable. By using checklists, you provide your visitors with an opportunity to quickly scan the text and remember the most useful facts.
For instance, HubSpot uses the technique to list the features of its software and encourage users to take action.
Apply visuals reasonably
Visual content is essential for keeping your visitors engaged and moving them through thebuyer journey. Informative visuals can tell even more than long articles. Remember that images can also influence customer decisions. Much depends on the aesthetics of your site and whether it can evoke trust in your company.
Shopify wisely uses images to demonstrate the examples of great business websites, sales features, and tools that help run a startup. The eCommerce company shows visitors how it helps start or grow a business.
Maintain consistency during your buyer journey
Being consistent isn’t an easy task. However, to make people recognize your product among hundreds of others, you need to use the same or similar color, font, and visual elements across all communication channels and promotional campaigns.
Let’s take LIKE.TG, for example. The platform is designed in blue color, which can be seen across its marketing channels.
Ask users for feedback
In general, feedback and reviews are some of the most important sources of information about your products and services. Listen to your customers’ recommendations and comments to figure out the areas you need to improve.
For example, Thrive Market enables customers to leave comments about the service on its websiteand also includes product reviews under the product card of each item.
It’s also a great idea to post product reviews on your landing page. They motivate leads to buy and help relieve their fears and objections.
For example, when you open Yelp’s website, you can instantly see the reviews of different restaurants in your area.
Remove the 404 error
The last thing users want to see is a 404 error when accessing a link or image. Avoid any problems with your website to satisfy customers with the sources and information they need.
Now when everything is clear with the best practices, let’s walk you through the ways to measure UX.
4Ways to Measure User Experience
As a creator, you want to see whether your product satisfies and brings value to a customer. To obtain this information, you need to evaluate user experience. This is how you can do it:
Retention rate. When we speak about retention rate, we mean a percentage of customers who stay with a brand for a certain time. The metric enables an entrepreneur to find out how important their product is for buyers. Different actions, such as visiting a web page, logging in, and using certain features, might show a product’s usefulness.
Level of satisfaction. To measure a customer’s fulfillment with your product, you can evaluate their level of satisfaction with your company. You can do it in various forms: social media monitoring, satisfaction surveys across different marketing channels, customer satisfaction score (ask consumers to rate their overall satisfaction on a scale from 1 to 5), and net promoter score (ask your customers how likely they are to recommend your company, and let them rate you from 1 to 10).
Conversion rate. The rate shows the percentage of visitors who take a certain actionat each stage, from registration to purchasing. By monitoring your conversion rate, you can easily determine whether the UX you provide is satisfactory or poor. Check out the article to find out more about thismeasure.
Task completion time. It shows the time a user needs to complete a specific task. For sure, different visitors need different amounts of time to handle the same task. However, you can still evaluate it by calculatingcustomers’ average completion time (only those users who succeed to do a task), monitoring the time it takes for a customer to give up on completingit, and using the time customers usually spend on a task.
Now that you know the ways to measure UX, let’s explore several excellent examples.
Examples of Good User Experience
To understand what to do for your business to provide a seamless UX, have a look at the examples below.
Duolingo and fast language learning
Duolingo is an excellent platform that both effectively teaches different languages and cares about user experience. The website tries to simplify everything for its users as much as possible. The only thing beginners should do is choose their path from already available options, and advanced learners need to take a test.
Google Maps and people who get lost
Google Maps care about people for whom it’s hard to find their way in busy city streets and unfamiliar locations. In 2019, the app’s team decided to test a new feature that enables users to see a live view of the street with arrows and street names floating on their phone screens. This way, creators strive to make it easier for people to use maps.
To put it simply, a great user experience is one of the key components of your business’s success. Grab some inspiration from the examples above to create your unique UX.
Vertical marketing system
A vertical marketing system is the type of cooperation between the members of a distribution channel. It includes a producer, a wholesaler, and a retailer collaborating to deliver necessary products to their customersand aims at achieving better efficiency and economies of scale.
In this article, we’ll review the benefits of a vertical marketing system and its types and grab some inspiration from ourexample.
Advantages of Vertical Marketing System
Companies preferred a conventional marketing system earlier. It can be described as one where retailers, wholesalers, and producers operate independently to earn better profits, even at the expense of one another. The system caused a lot of conflicts between business partners and reduced ROI. To avoid such consequences, some companies decided to switch to a vertical marketing system.
In a vertical marketing system, manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers participate together in the production and distribution process. Therefore, business owners can manage their businesses efficiently and obtain a more significant market share. A vertical marketing system tries to eliminate competition and conflict that often arise between companies. As a result, there’s better efficiency and a reduction in product costs.
In this system, producers, wholesalers, and retailers cooperate to reach their business objectives and gain increased profits for all parties involved. Besides, each member has the power to control channel activities.
This cooperation allows businesses to control all aspects of a company, helps solve problems, and boosts efficiency. However, to achieve success, the system requires good communication and coordination skills.
Different types of businesses can use vertical marketing systems. Whether it’s a small firm or an enterprise, the system helps create a strong bond with suppliers, distributors, and retailers.
Now that you know the pros, let’s proceed to the types of this marketing system.
Types of Vertical Marketing System
The system can be divided into three main types. Let’s review each of them in detail and with examples.
Corporate. This type involves a single company that has ownership over all stages of the supply chain. Although there’s only one business that controls all the production and distribution processes, each organization inside this channel continues to manage the project. One of the examples is Amway. It’s an American marketing company that manufactures beauty, home care, and health products. The brand belongs to a corporate vertical marketing system because it sells products only through its authorized stores. Hence, the company plays the role of a producer and distributor of its goods.
Contractual. In this system, every member of the distribution channel performs as an independent entity. They integrate their pursuits to achieve higher efficiency and obtain value for all companies involved in the process. Firms sign contracts with large distributors to sell their goods and stay competitive. Working with a franchise is an example of a contractual type. To open one of such stores or cafes, individuals purchase a license. However, they have to follow the standards, practices, and guidelines of a franchisor. The famous examples of franchises are Pizza Hut, Dominos, and McDonald’s.
Administered. The activities of companies involved in the production and distribution channel are affected by the size and power of one of them, although there’s no contract. Simply put, a large company that has the most influence dominates the activities of others. For example, Procter Gamble. This consumer goods corporation commands a high level of cooperation.
Now that you know a lot about this system, it’s time to explore an example.
Example of Vertical Marketing System
You can find a lot of examples among modern companies. This is because the system allows firms to manage the costs and logistics of a distribution channel to improve their efficiency and reduce product costs.
Let’s take Zara, for example. The brand has complete control over all activities of the supply chain. This prevents the company from having any conflicts. Zara owns all stores, so they follow the same marketing strategy. Complete integration of all activities removes reasons for conflict between channels and stimulates maximum efficiency.
Simply put, a vertical marketing system is an alternative to a traditional marketing system. It ensures the cooperation between several companies and helps them meet customers’ needs, gain more profits, and reduce costs.
User-generated content
User-generated content (UGC) is original content that is created by the audience of a brand. This content can be anything, from comments on a blog to photos and videos. The company can use it for its purposes — on the site or on social networks to promote its brand, and often the UGC is much more efficient than conventional content.
The use of UGC is beneficial to both parties — companies, and users. The company benefits from a fantastic amount of fresh ideas and unique content, for the generation of which itmay take many sleepless nights. Besides, most often, user content does not require a large cash investment. To users, the creation of UGC allows them to collaborate with their favorite brand, express themselves creatively, get various rewards and discounts for it, and even make some, even small changes in the company. Unlike usual advertising campaigns that are focused on sales, campaigns using user content are based on honesty and sincerity.
Pros of User-generated Content
Credibility
Reaching new users
Potential to go viral
Positive impact on SEO
Encourages users to make a purchase
Credibility
One of the most valuable bonuses that can be obtained with the use of user content is the trust of users. When you show interest in some of their thoughts, ideas, feelings, show your openness, attention, and respect for them, you will generate confidence in your company.
Reaching new users
When some people start to trust you, others will see it, and there is an excellent chance that they will be interested in your company. This phenomenon is called social proof, which you have probably heard of more than once.
According to a study conducted by Nielsen, 92% of users believe content shared by their friends and relatives, more than any other messages from the brand itself. The second most important source is considered to be the opinion of strangers about a particular product.
Social proof has a strong influence on people, and with the help of it, you can significantly expand your audience. People tend to believe other people more than brands and companies. Thus, UGC allows you to not onlystrengthen relations with existing customers but also to reach new users.
Potential to go viral
Most likely, the virality of user content will be higher than that of ordinary content, as people tend to share their creativity with friends, relatives, and acquaintances.
Positive impact on SEO
UGC also has a positive effect on SEO. KissMetrics revealed that if we consider the top 20 brands in the world, their results in the ranking are higher by 25% due to successful user content. This means that a large amount of organic traffic and content is associated with links to the site (mainly backlinks).
Encourages users to make a purchase
The most challenging task for brands is to make people buy their products. According to a report from L2 Inc, when a user is in the process of thinking over the purchase faces UGC, it increases the conversion rate by 4.6%.
The Main Types of UGC
Comments
Reviews
Photo review
Video review
Ideas for new design
Comments
Comments help identify whether the product or service is helpful or not, whether people managed to find what they had expected.
Reviews
Think about the process of making an online purchase. You visit a website, open the page with a necessary product, scroll down to find clients' reviews. We do it unconsciously. Why do we look for them? We want to discover customers' experience in dealing with a company.
Photo review
We want to discover the way our product looks in real life without ideal lighting and presentation since very often, a product ona website and real-life may differ.
Video review
Video review is another excellent kind of UGC because it allows you to see how the product is used in real-life. It is especially crucial for gadgets and household appliances.
Ideas for new design
UGC is an excellent variant when you are in search of newand fresh ideas for your products' improvements. Use social networks and ask your clients to create a unique design for a reward. We offer you two helpful examples of such practice.
Starbucks offered its clients to create a new design of their white cups, to post them for collecting likes and shares. As a result, 4,000 people participated, and the number of clients grew by five times.
Heineken also asked their clients for new ideas and used them successfully.
How to Start Collecting UGC
Analyze your target audience to find better places for UGC
If your target audience consists mostly of young people, use social networks like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If you work with both youth and adult people, create a special place on your website for leaving feedback. Its interface should be user-friendlyand simple toreview. Offer your clients a chance to leave their feedback after a purchase.
Be creative and original
Make regular competitions for your subscribers, and don't forget about rewards. Create a page on social networks and post there new arrivals, posts, questionnaires, competitions. Ask your clients for likes and shares. Another great idea is to do a giveaway. People will be delighted to get something for free, and you can also ask them tomake a post with a unique hashtag.
Creating high-quality content takes a lot of time, money, and energy. Therefore, user-generated content is hugely beneficial — with the help of it, you can save a lot of money and, without much effort, get a lot of fresh and unique ideas, increase customer loyalty and brand awareness.
Value analysis
Value analysis is a set of techniques, knowledge, and skills used to improve the value of a product by eliminating unnecessary costs or improving its functions without compromising its quality, reliability, and performance. It involves understanding the components of a product and related costs.
In this article, we’ll review the benefits of value analysis, compare value analysis and value engineering, unveil several techniques, explore the steps of value analysis, and see an example.
Why is value analysis important?
The technique is valuable for businesses since it helps reduce costs and improve the quality of products. Besides, it enables a company to increase business efficiency and effectiveness of all processes involved. The approach implies breaking down operational processes into smaller components and improving or removing them to ensure the increased value of a product in the future.
Since analysis allows firms to break down their product or service into smaller components, they can evaluate their importance and performance. As a result, businesses obtain a clear picture of the components that are unnecessary and can eliminate them to save costs.
Value analysis brings several benefits to your business, so let’s review them.
Benefits of Value Analysis
As we’ve mentioned before, value analysis is crucial since it identifies possible problems and suggests improvements that should be made in your company. This process helps:
reduce costs;
maintain high quality;
provide an opportunity to use new technologies;
eliminate waste;
encourage new ideas;
improve brand image;
improve design.
Now that you know some fundamentals, let’s explore this topic in more detail and make the difference between value analysis and value engineering clear.
Value Analysis vs. Value Engineering
It’s essential to understand the difference between these two processes since they play a great role in your business. To start, let’s review value analysis.
Value analysis implies analyzing existing products and evaluating them to improve their functioning or reduce cost. A step-by-step plan helps assess different aspects of a product, such as functions, alternative components, design, and costs. Value analysis includes function analysis, during which a product is broken down into components that are reviewed later.
Value engineering appears during the development of new goods. A company uses teamwork to analyze and evaluate the product to improve its functions and reduce costs. This process is conducted before any investments in tooling, equipment, or plant are made.
Now when you know the difference, it’s time to proceed to the techniques.
3Value Analysis Techniques
Value analysis involves many various techniques that simplify the process. We’ve prepared the main three for you to consider.
Be specific.Companies often try different methods and then report that none of them works. You should be specific and not make vague statements to prevent this situation. A careful manufacturing process requires accurate examination before it starts.
Obtain data from authentic sources. Different types of data should be received from reliable sources. You can use a questionnaire to obtain accurate information on costs, methods of manufacturing, and packing. Prepare accurate and relevant questions on topics you find relevant.
Use creativity.If you aim to find the unnecessary costs, you need to develop new ideas. By doing this, you can eliminate the previous problems and implement some valuable improvements. Besides, it enables you to discover how to simplify the existing component of a product and reduce costs.
Now it’s time to explore the steps of this process.
5Value Analysis Steps
We can distinguish the five main steps of value analysis. So let’s jump in.
Gather information. During this step, the main aim of your team is to understand the purpose of a project. Team members collect project data and concepts and try to understand the project scope. They analyze budget, risks, costs, and other issues, visit sites, and study various project documents.
Determine and analyze the function of a project. First of all, your team identifies the primary and secondary functions of the project. Next, team members should determine value-mismatched functions to improve them.
Generate new ideas for improvement. This step is for team members to create and develop improvement ideas. They should find alternatives so that the project could perform the same functions.
Evaluate these ideas and develop them. Team members discuss each idea in detail and identify the costs. They review all the possible risks and choose the most relevant and suitable ideas. Once ideas that make sense are identified, it’s time to work with them. Your value engineering team develops the options and passes them back to the project team. These ideas should be thoroughly explained so that project owners and stakeholders can understand them.
Present improvements. At this stage, the ideas are presented to stakeholders. The best salesperson is responsible for the presentation.
To understand how value analysis works, we need to proceed to an example.
Value Analysis Example
Let’s imagine that there’s a motor manufacturer that asks an engineer to conduct a value analysis on the motor casing and all that is required to build it.
During this analysis, an engineer discovers that there should be three different sizes of nuts and bolts and that it takes time to insert them. The specialist finds out that after a redesign of the casing, it’s necessary to use only one size of the bolt with threaded bolt holes, and nuts aren’t needed. As a result, the manufacturer can see clear savings in time and costs.
By doing a value analysis, companies can receive information about the out-of-date practices businesses use and replace them with new approaches that will bring visible results. That’s why many companies use this technique.
User onboarding
User onboarding is the process of users getting acquainted with an app, platform, or service and becoming proficient in it. It involves initial experience, training, and goal setting.
In this article, we’ll uncover the importance of user onboarding and how to use it. We’ll also review how to measure user onboarding success and provide some examples.
Why is user onboarding important?
Showing customers how to use a product is essential since it helps them realize the value of your product fast. To reduce customer churn and dissatisfaction, you should design a seamless and fast user onboarding strategy. Since the competition is increasingly high, you need to be ready to provide consumers with all the necessary materials to become proficient in using your product.
A huge number of SaaS products and low switching costs enable users to change companies without losing a thing. So, if they don’t instantly see the value of your product, they can decide to search for another brand.
Effective onboarding allows users to handle the product fast and learn everything they need to obtain value. This way, you’ll increase customer satisfaction and productivity. With successful user onboarding, customers won’t need to spend extra time to figure out how your product works and how to make the most of it.
Now that you know why user onboarding is crucial, it’s time to unveil how to do it.
How to do user onboarding?
To bring customers all the benefits of your product, you need to ensure a healthy onboarding process. We’ll show you how to combine your efforts and knowledge to provide value and increase productivity.
Ask customers why they need your product. Since user onboarding focuses on customers’ success and value, understanding customers' needs is your top priority. Usually, consumers have several goals they want to accomplish with your product. If you want them to stay with your brand as loyal customers, you need to help them attain their targets. There might be different goals: personal, social, and functional. To find out these details, consider interviewing existing users. Ask why they choose your product and identify their successes with it.
Find out what success means for users. To develop onboarding flows for different situations, you should know the final goals. You can’t create a user onboarding strategy that meets all use cases. However, you can show customers the solution they look for. The faster you show it, the bigger the chance of them becoming your long-term users. You should be ready to provide each user with a solution. For instance, if you teach users how to use your CRM, you can help them reach several goals: monitor all deals and their statuses, store users’ information securely and track the changes in orders.
Break tasks into small steps. You don’t need to overwhelm users with excessive information. Onboarding should be step-by-step. Break down complex tasks into pieces so that users can finish them without feeling tired. Ask for simple actions customers can complete. During this time, your users can discover some new features by themselves. It helps them know your product better and perform tasks they need.
Show customers’ progress. If you want to motivate users during their journey, share their progress and appreciate their work. Demonstrate the number of steps users have to take to finish the task. It will help you figure out the time they need to complete a specific number of steps. Ensure that your tasks are skippable. If prospects aren’t prepared for the task, they can proceed to the next one. Every user wants a short onboarding, yet it’s necessary to pass through several modules to reach success fast.
Ensure educational content. If you don’t provide your users with engaging content, they can get bored and finally stop discovering your product. You need to find a balance. Don’t leave users alone, and don’t overperform with tasks and materials. You should guide your customers through your product and provide them with time to explore the features independently.
Give them some time to learn additional materials and find something useful. Once you identify your users’ intent, you can ensure the information they need. Let’s say you have an online course builder and want to guide your users through the process of creating appealing courses. For example, there’s a user who wants to find out more about the process of designing tests. Provide this person with all the necessary materials. You can invite this user to watch a tutorial, send useful links, and share some important facts.
Track the user’s onboarding process. Besides having personalized onboarding, you should also have a tracking system. It will help you understand who and when churns out. Moreover, monitoring users allows you to understand how people use your product, what issues they face, and what initiates disappointment with your onboarding. Having all these facts in mind enables you to improve your user onboarding strategy and reduce the churn rate.
Now that you know how to onboard, it’s time to find out how to measure it. The following section will help you figure out whether the process you design satisfies your customers.
How to measure user onboarding success?
You need to track multiple metrics to understand whether your user onboarding strategy is healthy and successful. We’ll list crucial measures you need to ensure an excellent experience discovering your product.
Identify engagement rate. The engagement rate highlights the percentage of active users of your product. To calculate the measure, consider segmenting users into groups based on the date they started onboarding. Afterward, find out the percentage of users who use your product every day, week, or month. You need this metric to change your onboarding strategy and see if it’s successful. After optimizing it, you’ll be able to increase user engagement and the quality of your onboarding process. Moreover, fewer people will churn out.
Find out the retention rate. This metric indicates the percentage of people who stay with your product over a specific period of time. To estimate the retention rate, you need to divide the number of users who signed up on a specific date and haven’t churned out yet. If the percentage of users retained is low, you need to work on your short-term retention rate. Consider simplifying your onboarding and improving user experience and see the reaction of your users. If they are satisfied, your retention rate will improve.
Check out the free trial conversion rate. It’s the percentage of users who joined the onboarding after signing up for a free trial. These people turn from free trial users into paid customers. After you get paid customers, you can ask for feedback and find out whether your onboarding communicates the value of your product.
Monitor the completion rate. The completion rate indicates the percentage of users who passed the onboarding. This metric tells about the effectiveness of your onboarding and the number of users who plan to convert. If you see that many potential customers don’t complete the onboarding process, it means they have some complications. You need to fix the problem so that they don’t leave your company.
Now that you know the indicators you should track to assess the effectiveness of your onboarding strategy, it’s time to see some examples. The next section will inspire you to ensure seamless user onboarding for your potential clients.
User Onboarding Examples
You can find numerous examples of successful user onboarding. In this section, we’ll review several of them to inspire you to provide an exceptional experience with your brand.
Duolingo and product experience
Duolingo has nothing similar to other language learning apps. It incorporates gradual engagement which starts with user onboarding and then invites users to signup for the platform. This is a very clever step since people can test the app before registering. Deferred account creation enables users to postpone the signup process until they are sure the app is their perfect solution. Potential customers are allowed to use the core features to learn a new language without having to register. This way, people can understand the product’s benefits and obtain the desired value.
TikTok and value
TikTok unveils its algorithm during the onboarding. To improve users’ experience, users have to watch, like, and comment on videos they like. This way, the platform will understand their preferences and find the necessary materials. When new users onboard the platform, they are explained how to switch videos. Moreover, TikTok doesn’t require users to instantly register within the platform unless they want to like and comment.
Tumblr and personalization
Tumblr focuses on ensuring personalized experience and uncovering product value. Once users decide to sign up, they can see explanations of a platform and set their expectations. To provide a personalized experience, Tumblr asks users to choose multiple interests.
Congrats, now you know what user onboarding is and why it’s essential. Use our guide to make your onboarding seamless.
User story mapping
User story mapping is a tool that outlines a customer’s interaction with a product and things the company’s team should do next to ensure a great user experience. It enables brands to unveil possible risks, reach a consensus, and provide an excellent customer experience.
In this article, we’ll uncover the purpose and advantages of user story mapping. We’ll also review when and how to do user story mapping.
What is the purpose of user story mapping?
Producing a product customers appreciate requires companies to work hard on different aspects of their businesses. People choose specific brands for the value and benefits they provide. To meet expectations and bring value to your target audience, you need to know them better. User story mapping helps you with it. A marketing team creates an outline of customers’ interactions with a product and decides which steps to take next to achieve the necessary outcomes. As a result, all your team members understand your clients and can work towards the achievement of their goals.
With a user story map, you’ll identify the value that plays the most important role for your customers. The departments of your company will know the steps they should take to resonate with the audience and encourage them to take the desired action.
Now that you know the purpose of user story mapping, let’s explore the benefits.
Benefits of User Story Mapping
Businesses spend a lot of money to create a great product. Besides, it’s a time-consuming process. Yet it’s a must if you want your brand to thrive and prosper. One of the things we recommend doing is user story mapping because of the pros it provides.
This tool focuses on the value user can obtain from your brand. A product team creates the map to figure out how customers perceive a product, how they react, and how they perceive specific options. With its help, companies can identify the steps they need to take next to provide clients with the best products. Also, departments can prioritize their work and determine the tasks they should perform immediately. An accurately developed plan allows businesses to find potential risks that should be eliminated before they escalate. Finally, your teams reach a consensus and act towards the achievement of common goals.
It’s time to unveil when to do user story mapping.
When to do user story mapping?
The product development stage is the most appropriate time for companies to create user story maps. They encourage discussions between team members and try to align them. Maps cover user experience and ways to solace customer problems. You can develop maps both for your new product and the existing one.
Now that you know when to create a user story map, let’s proceed to the next section to figure out how to do it.
How to do user story mapping?
If you need to make a user story map for your new or existing product for the first time, you need to stick to several steps. Follow our guide to do everything right and obtain excellent results.
Define the problem your product helps solve. You need to know the problems your product can solve and the value it brings to consumers. Think about it because it’s essential both for your customers and business. A product should give customers the benefits they need. If it satisfies users, they will come back.
Understand your customer. If you know your audience, you understand how to approach them and address their needs, expectations, and desires right. Your audience segments are different; that’s why you need to analyze them all. As a result, you’ll have a clear picture of how to solve their problems and resonate with their needs.
Identify customer actions. Identify customers who interact with your product and analyze their activities. Users can filter items to find the cheapest ones, add and delete products from their shopping carts, and finish buys. This information will give you reasons why some users leave your website without purchasing.
Search for user experience stories. When customers perform certain actions, they can encounter different problems. As a result, you’ll have different stories about their user experience. For instance, a user might face problems with adding more products to the shopping cart.
Identify issues. A story map is an excellent way to identify problems and risks that might influence user experience later. There might be various problems, from missing information to technical requirements.
Work on product releases. Finally, the product team collects all the information to find out what things should be improved first. The product should pass all the levels of improvement to provide customers with a seamless user experience in the nearest future.
Consider a user story map if you create a new product or improve an existing one. Hope our information will help you do it right.
UX design
UX design is a process that involves creating an easy-to-use product that can satisfy customers and provide them with pleasure and value while interacting with it. It helps enhance customer satisfaction and loyaltyto a certain brand.
The video below will help you figure out what UX design is and what UX designers do to provide the best experience for customers.
In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of UX design and its five principles. Next, we’ll unveilsixtips to improve your site’s UX designand review three great examples.
Why is UX design important?
UX design encompasses customers’ motivation to use a product, its excellent functionality, and meaningful experiences. UX designers ensure that customers can access and use products seamlessly from any device. They take care of the values, features, accessibility, usability, and aesthetics of a specific product.
By developing great UX design, companies enhance the flow of visitors and increaseconversions. They ensure that leadsand customers obtain all the necessary information aboutthem and theirproducts. User experience design also influences SEO, especially ranking. As you know, Google pays attention to website speed, mobile-friendliness, and user-friendly URL structure when prioritizing sites.
Designers develop products that are easy to useand high-quality and bring delight when consumers interact with them. With great UX design, a company can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty as well as meet consumers’ needs.
Now it’s time to move to the next section and discuss UX design principles in more detail.
5UX Design Principles
UX design is a constantly evolving process. However, there are some principles thatremain unchanged,meaning that every UX designer should follow them to make customers happy.
Customer centricity. This principle is the most important for UX designers. They come up with impressive websites and easy-to-use products to provide clients with a seamless user experience. When creating a website, you should remember that your user is your top priority. To ensure the best experience, you need to think about how customers interact with your company, their goals, and how they achieve them. Keep these points in mind during product and website developmentto create a product that will help attaincustomers’ goals.
Consistency. This principle involves using the same design throughoutyour site, in email campaigns, across all marketing channels,and in all promotional efforts. Your website shouldmaintain the same font, color scheme, and visual style to improvebrand awareness.
Clear hierarchy. When speaking of hierarchy, we mean the way you organize your content. Remember that your website navigation should answer users’ questions in order. A landing page invites visitors to explore an article on the topic users are initially interested in. If these people are eager to read on, you can encourage them to reviewyour products’features. Make sure to place the most important information in a prominent place. Visitors should instantly notice the benefits of your product, its features, and the problems it can help solve.
Mobile responsiveness. You should ensure that users can access your website from different devices. Mobile responsiveness is now the number one priority for most customers since there are 4.28 billion mobile internet users worldwide.
Usability. The main aim of user experience design is to help clients solve their problems. That’s why you should do your best and comply with the main principle — usability. Your website and product should be simple and easy to use so that customers don’t have to spend time and effort to figure something out. Each icon and button should haveitspurpose. Be clear in your copy, and present the most valuable features. To determine whether your website is easy to use, consider conducting special testingand leveraging usability testing tools. UserTesting, UserZoom, and Validately are just some of the platforms that help check your product’s usability.
Now that you know the key principles, let’s proceed to the tips thatcan be useful if you consider improving your website’s UX design.
Tips to Improve Your Site’sUX Design
Excellent UX design provides your visitors with clarity and intuitivenesswhile also boosting conversion rates. We’ve prepared the most powerful ways to improve your website’s UX design.
Increase website speed. Users expect your site to load in 1-2 seconds, and during this timeframe, people are more inclined to convert. However, if it takes longer to see your website pages, there’s a high possibility of visitors leaving your site frustrated. As a result, your website will have a high bounce rate, which affects the ranking. To prevent it, explore free services that help evaluate your websitespeed,and identify the causes that slow down its work. For example, you can make use of PageSpeed Insights to check both desktop and mobile website speed.
Design a visible and clear call to action.You need the right CTAsto allow users to take your desired actions. They should be clear, visible, and appealing to attract leads and make them convert into customers. One landing page should contain one CTA, and it should communicate action and be clickable. A call to action button should be large enough so that the user can easily click it on a laptop or phone and immediately get to the necessary page. The button should be around 47.9 pixels tall.
Create original and high-quality images. You can’t provide customers with value by posting stock pictures. Since visual content is crucial for users, the best option is to create original images. Ensure that they are high quality and unique. Besides, images should also be informative. Sometimes a user just needs to look through the infographics to find the most important facts within minutes.
Make use of white space. White space is the key to a minimalist and stylish website and your customers’ convenience. It enables users to perceive information easily. White space helps improve user attention and makes your content look readable and easy to understand.
Remember about consistency. To make visitors feel familiar and comfortable when navigating your site, you need to ensure consistency in colors, style, fonts, button sizes, etc. Unify all the elements to simplify the process of navigation on your website and establish brand recognition.
Be short and sweet.Implementlists to enable users to find the information they need fast. They will help visitors get the necessary data immediately, explore the main product features, and find solutionstotheir problems. Remember to write short and to the point and provide customers with answers as soon as possible.
Now that we have set that straight, it’s time to discover several outstanding UX design examples.
3Brilliant UX Design Examples
UX design is a process that has no limitations. Everycompany can implement its unique techniques and approaches to simplify the use ofits services, satisfy customers, and bring them value. Let’s now review several examples of famous brands that succeeded in crafting excellent UX design.
Booking.com
You’ve probably heard about the online giant in the travel industry — Booking.com. The company’s website is easier to navigate than its competitors’ alternatives. Users appreciate the brand for its highly-rated mobile app that enables people to book easily from any device. The search and booking processes are efficiently organized and allow clients to find everything they need for their travels at once.
Disney+
A well-known video streaming service provides subscribers with a wide variety of movies and shows in one place. To improve user experience, the brand decided to use a familiar design so that when customers log in, they see a layout similar to Netflix’s design style. Disney+ gives you a valuable lesson: use established design styles users are already familiar with.
Facebook
Although Facebook has 2.701 billion loyal users, the company still cares about providing the best UX and meeting itsclients’ interests and needs. To encourageusers to explore Facebook and continue using it, the company personalized customer experience based on theirpreferences, interests, locations, and other variables.
In a nutshell, great UX design is a must if you want to improve conversions and increase your customer base. Use our tips to make your website and customer experience better.
vCard (VCF)
vCard is a file format used for electronic business cards. Usually, it is attached to email messages with information like one's name, address, telephone numbers, email addresses, company logos, and photographs.
It may also contain sound clips and geo-positioning information. With vCard, your subscriberscan easily add your sender information to their address book. In this case, the data is displayed in the following way:
The following is an example of a vCard file containing information for one person:
All vCards begin with BEGIN:VCARD and end with END:VCARD. All vCards must contain the VERSION property, which specifies the vCard version. VERSION must come immediately after BEGIN, except in the vCard 2.1 standard, which allows it to be anywhere in the vCard.
You can read more about vCard properties here.
Unsubscribe link
An unsubscribe link is a link that allows subscribers to opt out from receiving marketing emails sent by a particular brand. It is usually placed in the email footer and leads to theunsubscribe page.
Why should I add an unsubscribe link?
It is a legal requirement
It influences your sender reputation
It has an impact on email deliverability
Its’ absence discredits your business
It encourages your mailing list’s self clearance
It is a legal requirement. CAN-SPAM Act and other laws regarding unsolicited email activity require adding unsubscribe link to every email that you send. These legislations were drafted to protect users from getting spam and give them control over their communication with brands via emails.
It influences your sender reputation. If you make it hard to find the unsubscribe link, those users who want to leavewill mark your email as spam. It will damage your sending reputation even worth than unsubscribing.
It has an impact on email deliverability. Email service providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo analyze your sender reputation: if it seems doubtful, they may block your emails before they even get to the subscribers’ inboxes. The fewer emails reaches people, the less revenue you can get from your email marketing.
Its’ absence discredits your business. If you hide the unsubscribe link, your audience may feel trapped, which will raise questions of trust among your subscribers. If you try to keep your subscribers from opting-out by not allowing them to do so, it will return in a negative attitude towards your brand and a wish to leave your mailing list as soon as possible.
It encourages your mailing list’s self clearance. A normal unsubscribe rate is 0.05% from all delivered emails. Unsubscribing within these numbers is OK because it means you will communicate with the engaged part of your audience, achieving higher click-through and conversion rates.
You need to understand that unsubscribing does not necessarily mean the end of any relationships. Your unsubscribe link can lead to an unsubscribe page whereyoucan make a small optional survey to find out why users unsubscribe. Besides, you can suggest continuing communication in socials or setting preferences on email sending frequency.
How to Add an Unsubscribe Link
Even if you forget to add an unsubscribe link, LIKE.TG will insert it automatically to every email template, caring about your sender reputation and your subscribers’ user experience. You can customize the unsubscribe link by changing the wording, the font, its size and color, and the color of the background. Here’s an instruction on how to customize your unsubscribe link.
In the drag-and-drop editor, you can create a block called “Footer,” which contains that unsubscribe link, privacy terms, your company’s address, etc., and use this block throughout your email campaigns.
Unsubscribe Link Examples
Some of the unsubscribe link examples we’ve gatheredbreach the CAM-SPAM act; the others show how to conduct your email marketing with transparency. Let’s see the difference between them.
Poor examples
Architectural Digest.In this example, the unsubscribe link is hidden in one line next to the “Private Policy.” Chances are that users won’t findit here. Besides, the wording in the result isn’t logical: “View our Unsubscribe.”
Valfre. This brand places an unsubscribe link correctly but makes the font size so small, that it’s almost impossible to find the link without the magnifying glass. ?
Victoria’s Secret.The unsubscribe link is lost in the text at the email’s bottom. The word “Unsubscribe” is not underlined or highlighted in any way, so users will have a hard time finding it. Give it a try!
Good examples
Art.com. In this case, the unsubscribe link is highlightedin blue color — a uniform color for all types of links, which users find easily. It is separated from other elements in the email, has a larger font size, and placed along with “Contact us” and “Privacy.”
Mitsubishi. It’s quite easy to find the essential word “unsubscribe” here because it is underlined and bold. If it wasn't, you wouldn’t find it in the text.
National Geographic. The unsubscribe link has its paragraph, and it is underlined and bold, as well, so there’s no trouble to find it.
Gain more insights into why an unsubscribe link is your marketing friend in this blog article.
User acquisition
User acquisition is winning new users for a specific service, application, or platform. Companies develop promotional campaigns to increase the number of installs by mobile users. User acquisition helps more users discover the app and prevents companies from spending extra money.
In this article, we’ll uncover the importance, channels, and examples of user acquisition. We’ll also review how to increase and measure it.
Why is user acquisition important?
The user acquisition strategy is essential for finding and winning new customers. It helps a company develop a roadmap that depicts the sequence of actions necessary to obtain new users. Companies design advertising campaigns and promotional offers to increase awareness about an app and generate installs. A user acquisition strategy allows entrepreneurs to be aware of all spending and can avoid additional costs.
To develop an effective strategy, a company employs successful marketing methods, hires experts, and segments users. It’s necessary to identify potential users of an app, platform, or service. Once a company’s team finishes these tasks, the business can target the right people with the relevant message. It helps introduce a new app and educate people about it. If marketing efforts are successful, the number of installs will increase. As a result, business owners will receive bigger revenues.
Now that you know the importance, it’s time to review user acquisition channels. The next section will unveil the platforms you can use to promote your mobile app and acquire new users.
User Acquisition Channels
To grow your business, you need to reach a wider audience. You can do it by using multiple acquisition channels. Your main task is to choose the most effective channels for your company. In this section, we’ll review online and offline user acquisition channels so that you can make a decision.
Email marketing. Email campaigns remain on the top of the list for the most effective acquisition channels. Branded emails demonstrate good open rates. With the help of quality and relevant emails, you can reach new subscribers and encourage them to test your app, platform, or service. LIKE.TG’s bulk email service helps you design professional email campaigns without code knowledge. The process is fast and simple with the platform’s free ready-to-go templates.
Paid search. It enables you to pay search engines for placing ads at the top of search engine results pages. So when potential users search for an app similar to yours, they will see your platform at the top of SERPs. It helps drive brand awareness and traffic to your website. This is one of the most effective and fast ways to educate people about your app.
Website. Most companies invest in their websites to bring value to visitors and educate them about their products. If your brand’s site manages to provide people with informative articles and engaging blog posts, you can gain new users. A quality website drives traffic, attracts new customers, and serves as a reliable source of information. To convert visitors into subscribers, your website should include subscription forms. LIKE.TG enables you to design custom subscription forms for free and convert users into subscribers.
Trade show. It’s an exhibition that gathers different companies so that they can showcase their latest products. Trade shows bring together the most influential brands in the industry and create buzz around their products. These businesses can collaborate, learn new things from their competitors, and attract new customers. Journalists promote brands by discussing brands’ products. So if you have a product created for a specific niche market, it’s better to present it at a trade show. This way, you’ll be able to reach your target market.
Blog. It’s a perfect way to drive interest in your product and win new customers. If you manage to share high-quality blog posts regularly, search engines will appreciate it with top positions in search results. Once you bring value to your blog visitors, you can earn their trust and intent to buy your product. To convert blog visitors into customers, you need to choose relevant topics, add unique visuals, bring social proof, and create an appealing email capture form. Your blog should be both interesting and useful.
Influencer marketing. It implies collaboration with influencers aimed at product promotion. Brands choose opinion leaders who have power in a specific industry and the trust of consumers. They recommend a certain product to their audience. As a result, they drive interest in a product, increase sales, and improve brand recognition.
Social media. Social media networks enable companies to reach their target audience faster and communicate the necessary message. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok allow you to publish organic posts or create ads to speak to your audience. Choose the most suitable channels to communicate with potential clients and you’ll see instant results. Social media networks enable you to communicate with customers directly and see their responses to your posts, product, and promos. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are the most suitable places for gathering customer feedback. You can find out what people think about your product from likes, comments, and views. User-generated content helps promote your product and serves as a format of word-of-mouth promotion. More people find out about your brand and its value.
Event. It empowers you to communicate with your prospects and introduce your brand to them. In-person contacts help you reach the right audience at the right moment. Find an event that is related to your product and consider participating in it. You can also host an event to increase brand awareness and present your latest product.
Now that you know user acquisition channels, it’s time to find out how to increase user acquisition. These techniques will enable you to get more clients.
How to increase user acquisition?
You can leverage various marketing approaches to increase the number of customers. In this section, we’ll review several techniques that will help you acquire new clients.
Use targeted ads. If the number of customers isn’t enough for your business, you should consider incorporating targeted ads. Targeted advertising is an advertising format that focuses on audience segments that have specific needs, preferences, desires, and traits. Targeted ads allow you to reach potential clients with a solution based on their personal information. These ads help you generate qualified leads. To make ads work, you need to define the location, age, gender, occupation, family, hobbies, and problems of your potential customers. Divide your potential customers into groups based on demographics, geographics, behavior, and psychographics.
Consider content marketing. Different content formats, including blog posts, social media, email campaigns, videos, podcasts, and ebooks contribute to the promotion of your brand. People search for answers and they find them in articles, blog posts, and videos. If you manage to become a reliable source of information, people can consider using your product as a solution. Strive to create informative and valuable content that unveils the benefits of your product. Make sure to provide a personalized experience, include call-to-actions, and write good articles for each stage of the sales funnel.
Increase social media presence. The number of social media users amounts to 4.70 billion people worldwide. Social media platforms open you access to a wider reach and exposure. You can communicate your message to a huge target audience with many potential customers. Paid ads, organic posts, and influencer marketing help you promote your product to new clients. Social media channels don't require you to have huge spending. Explore the trending to create relevant content formats. Today, people prefer to watch reels, so consider creating some useful short videos for your Instagram account. With LIKE.TG’s chatbots, you can reach your subscribers and update them on new posts, releases, and product features on Instagram, Facebook, or Telegram. Chatbots provide assistance 24/7 and can inform customers about your product.
Share information about your company on forums. Communicate with people on the most popular forums like Quora and tell them about your product. With the help of forums, you can show your expertise and establish your brand as an industry leader. These discussions can also bring your prospects. Make sure you provide open-ended answers to users’ questions to encourage them to use your product in the future.
Implement referral programs. Develop a good referral program so that your current customers could bring you qualified leads. A monetary reward, a gift, or a discount provides consumers with value and encourages them to participate. You’ll win new customers.
Conduct giveaways. You can attract new customers with the help of giveaways. Let potential customers win your product and they will be interested in your brand. Run giveaways to let consumers try your products and come back for a purchase. This technique helps you increase your social reach, generate leads, and engage with existing consumers.
Now that you know the ways to increase user acquisition, it’s time to figure out how to measure it. After evaluating your user acquisition, you’ll be able to find out what steps to take next.
How to measure user acquisition?
To assess the performance of your user acquisition strategy, you should identify the three most important metrics. We’ll review each of them in detail.
Calculate customer acquisition cost (CAC). CAC is a metric related to the company's costs to acquire new customers. These costs include sales and marketing activities, fees, travel expenses, and other efforts required. To calculate the measure, you need to sum up sales and marketing costs and divide them by the number of customers. To find out whether you get profit from the customers you acquire, consider comparing your customer acquisition cost to the revenue these new clients bring to your business.
Estimate customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV is the revenue a brand can expect from a new consumer during a specific timeframe. To calculate this metric, you need to multiply the average sale by the number of repeat sales and the average lifespan of a relationship with a customer. Once you estimate the measure, you need to compare it with CAC to unveil whether your recurring revenue is high.
Identify your churn rate. The churn rate is the percentage of customers who stop interacting with a brand and buying from it. Losing customers in business is a sure thing. However, this number shouldn’t exceed the number of customers you acquire. Once you estimate the churn rate for your business, you can take important measures to retain these customers. Usually, companies estimate a churn rate for specific timeframes to prevent big problems and eliminate issues that cause customer dissatisfaction. To identify the number of customers who churn out, consider dividing the number of consumers lost during a specific month by the number of customers at the start of the month.
Now that you know how to measure user acquisition, it’s time to proceed to the examples. You’ll see how popular brands generate new customers.
User Acquisition Examples
There are many successful examples of user acquisition techniques that help boost the number of customers. In this section, we’ll explore the methods famous brands use to drive attention and get new customers.
Web Summit and Facebook Ads
People can find out about Web Summit, an annual technology conference held in Portugal from Facebook ads. The company targets its potential customers with sponsored ads on Facebook effectively. The ad introduces Web Summit to a broad audience and uncovers speakers and attendees from different countries.
Lyft Referral Program
Lyft, a ride-hailing company, generates new customers with the help of its referral program. The brand manages to collect qualified leads and increase its customer base. The company’s app enables users to refer new riders and obtain rewards. The platform’s users can also refer to drivers eligible for the position. Existing users can send invitations to their friends through the platform to refer new customers.
ASOS and Live Chat
ASOS, a British online fashion, and cosmetic retailer ensure that its new website visitors receive all the necessary information about its products. Its virtual assistant instantly answers all visitors’ inquiries. As a result, people know about the available items, discounts, promo codes, etc. people have a seamless user experience with the website.
Now you know what user acquisition is and why it’s essential. Hope that our examples helped to figure everything out.
User behavior
User behavior is how users interact with your website while visiting it. It helps you realize which pages they visit, how much time they spend on each one, the buttons they click through, the videos they watch, and places where they bounce. With this information, you can better understand the triggers which make users perform different actions. As a result, you'll be able to improve user experience on your website.
In this article, you'll learn why it's essential to analyze user behavior, uncover types of user behavior analytics, and learn how to analyze user behavior.
Why is it important to analyze user behavior?
It provides a clear picture of what's going on under the hood of your website.
Say, your landing page conversion rate is 40% lower than last month. Such a drastic conversion rate drop!
What would you do?
You can play a guessing name listing all the possible suggestions with your team. However, it's not a reliable method. Or, you can go into your website analytics to get some insights. There you will compare how user behavior changed during the last two months. You may find out an increasing bounce rate. To uncover the reasons, look through all the updates made during this period. You might have changed the CTA button's place, color, or text. Alternatively, the registration button doesn't work, or a live chat window doesn't open. Finally, your landing page may be poorly optimized, so it doesn't correspond to users' intent while searching for the answer in the search engine.
So, analyzing user behavior allows you to understand the triggers which make them visit your site, scroll down, click your CTA, or leave the website. With this actionable data, you can run experiments and A/B test different page design variants to determine which one performs better.
Let's take a closer look at the advantages of analyzing user behavior.
Benefits of Analyzing User Behavior
Monitoring your website users' behavior regularly will enable you to reap the following benefits:
get accurate insights on how specific pages perform;
understand which types and formats of content drive more conversions;
realize what your potential clients are interested in and what is not that important for them;
identify the places where leads get stuck and drop off;
invest in effective strategies and tactics only;
improve customer experience and satisfaction;
boost conversions and revenue.
Now that you know why tracking user behavior is essential, read on to discover which type of analytics you should monitor.
Types of User Behavior Analytics
We'll shed light on four fundamental categories of user behavior analytics for you to know which data to consider.
User experience. It helps you determine whether users interact with your website pages the way you supposed them to when designing each page element. Use Google Analytics tools and Hotjar to analyze users' in-page clicks, navigation patterns, scroll depth, mouse movements, etc. With this data, you'll understand what prevents users from using your website as you planned. As a result, you can improve the navigation flow to retain more leads and convert them into clients.
Content performance. Content is the best way to maintain user engagement on your website. Different types of content and their formats help you reach other goals — attract new leads, boost engagement, get users' contacts, increase a conversion rate, etc. You can analyze the top-performing content pieces, the number of clicks and shares, and the bounce rate. All these metrics contribute to building a 360-degree view of your content performance.
Engagement. Many leads require some help and assistance before buying. They write emails and contact support teams via a live chat or chatbot. LIKE.TG allows you to create a chatbot or a live chat for your website for free without any coding skills. They may need you to dispel their doubts or provide more data about the product. Customer care departments can tell you about the typical difficulties of your leads that complicate their buyer journey.
Conversion rate. Conversion is the primary goal of each landing page, and only you decide what a conversion is for your business. It can be sharing an email address, app download, registration for an event, purchase, etc. Your task is to analyze user behavior to make this path less stressful for your client. For this purpose, you can monitor the changes impacted by specific variable testing or look at how users behave during the checkout process. With this data, you'll find out why leads are getting stuck and what helps them make a buying decision.
Now that you know which data to use, learn how to conduct the analysis.
How to analyze user behavior?
Follow the six steps below to analyze users' behavior effectively.
Set the goals. Remember that you should align your business goals with analytics goals. For example, your goal is to increase sales of a specific product. For this purpose, you should get insights into its landing page. You've updated its design, so check which version performed the best. Examine the scroll depth, content users interacted with most often, CTAs, and buttons clicked through. Also, consider where users had some troubles and left the website. So, these are the most important metrics for you to track. Ensure that you have this type of data; otherwise, you won't be able to reach the goals.
Set the event and categories of events to reach the goals. You need to develop an event taxonomy to understand your customer journey better. An event taxonomy is a path a user should follow to buy your product. It can include googling your brand, registering, checking the reviews, considering product features, and using a free trial and purchase. With this data, you'll uncover your users' issues when dealing with your product. Organize the events into categories to ensure quick access to the data.
Identify the users. To recreate a complete user journey, you need to divide them into cohorts based on their actions. So, assign specific cohorts to sessions to identify your users. You can integrate your analytics tool with a database or CRM for more accurate results and productivity.
Set the crucial metrics. To evaluate the success of your analysis, you need to select the metrics that align with your business and analytics goals. They may include the number of sign-ups, feature usage, sessions per user, stickiness ratio, drop in in-app sales, etc. Focus on the most critical metrics and sort out fewer informative ones to pursue your goal.
Make sure the events are tracked correctly. To prevent spending time in vain and wasting the budget, run a test session to check whether everything works perfectly.
Adjust your analysis. With time you can discover other vital issues that require your attention, so be ready to change your course. You may either find that this type of data is no longer valuable or need a higher level of data granularity.
Congrats, now you know the benefits of tracking user behavior and how to analyze it. Start step-by-step, and don't try to analyze deeply on your first try. Use your findings to develop a great product that your users will love!
Upselling
Upselling is a sales technique that allows brands to increase their revenue by inspiring customers to buy more upgraded and expensive models from their product lines.
Why Is Upselling Important?
The idea of upselling is to suggest a product that sweetens the primary deal, making the entire offer more expensive, but also adding value. Some of the obvious benefits of this practice are:
It is simpler to retain current clients than to attract new ones;
Upselling helps establish deeper relationships with your clients;
Upselling results in better customer lifetime value (CLV).
Upselling is also important because it makes it possible to sell more than one item or a single more valuable item. This technique can increase income significantly as the difference between the former product and its upgraded version may be huge.
What Is the Difference Between Upselling and Cross-Selling?
Cross-selling is offering a related good or service to the buyer (for instance, shoes in addition to a dress). Upselling, in its turn, is about offering an upgraded version of the product. What do they have in common? Both methods are used to optimize profitability by motivating clients to spend more money.
You might need some examples to realize how these practices work. Below you can see some examples of upselling and cross-selling.
Bundling Sales
One example of cross-selling is so-called bundling sales. One of the most known companies to use this approach is the famous Amazon. Businesses that sell goods online use this method and benefit from it. The bundled products should be relevant and related, like this example with “Harry Potter” below. If the products aren’t coherently related, it won’t work and will only annoy potential buyers. You may also call it “Frequently bought together.”
Mixing SEO and SEM Services
It is a good idea to mix search engine optimization and search engine marketing services. To do so, determine and create customer personas. Then, do keyword research. After that, separate and arrange the keywords; assign more complicated keywords to SEM while the rest will go with SEO. If you have to hit both long and short-term goals, this option is right for you. Another example could be offering extra services or products related to the main topic of your website. If you offer editing services for writers and students, you may list all the possible assignments that you deal with, as many similar services do (e.g., CustomWritings).
Similar and RelatedProducts
You may also choose a strategy like Laconicum does. It includes several similar or related goods in their initial offer. No matter which good you choose, you’ll be offered a better option with everything you need at the same time.
Paid Subscriptions vs Free Trials
Sky Broadband and Fibre prefer upselling to cross-selling, and they do it perfectly. They always offer a free trial or package, but the thing is that it lacks most of the features that clients need. That is why they initially try to offer paid subscriptions starting from ten pounds, for instance. They specify that the paid option adds plenty of speed, and that is exactly what customers need because everybody hates to wait.
The idea is to show that paid offers are much better than the available free options. An attention-grabbing picture is required but does not always matter if the offer has many exclusive features.
Now, it is time to dig a bit deeper into the process of creating an opportunity to upsell. Read on to find out how you can motivate your customers to buy more than they planned.
How Can I Upsell?
Define the needs of your customers
Come up with buyer personas
Combine relevant goods
Redesign the checkout page
Select the type of upsell
Benefit from knowing buyer persona
Design and set up the campaign
Upselling takes place at the point-of-sale. Both salespeople and customer success managers are responsible for creating an upselling proposition. Here is how to do it.
Define the needs of your customers
You should understand why people are interested in specific goods or services. What motivates them to make a purchase? You can either talk to your clients on the phone or try to find their customer needs via polls and questionnaires.
You might think that your service or product has everything your customers need, but you have a limited perspective. Regular conversations with your customers will detect what demands remain unmet, and you’ll be surprised. You have to put yourself in the shoes of your clients sometimes to realize what they care about most. Otherwise, your business will not please your customers or bring in the desired revenue.
Come up with buyer personas
A buyer persona is a portrait of your ideal customer. Define the exact age, gender, occupation, hobbies, needs, goals, and other critical factors to realize what they expect from you and target the correct segment.
There are many factors to consider but focus on the main things: industry, pain points, and challenges. These are the major things to keep in mind because they will bring you the most value.
The next step is very close to the previous one. To create a buyer persona, you should communicate with both returning and potential clients. Do not think that loyal clients won’t ever leave you – you should implement the best practices of retention management to keep your existing customers satisfied.
Combine relevant goods
Bundling is a type of upselling that does not simply recommend products, but groups them in a specific category. It helps customers get an all-in-one purchase: everything they might need in one package.
Redesign the checkout page
If you don’t have the relevant goods displayed on your checkout page yet, we highly recommend adding them ASAP. You may set up different checkout pages to find which approach works best.
Select the type of upsell to use
The first approach is offering an upgraded version of what a customer is already interested in purchasing. Propose another version of the good or service. Additionally, you can offer product protection – asking the customers to extend their warranty to get cheaper product support and repairs. A screen replacement warranty is one of the common because it is something that suffers most damage out of all of a phone’s components.
One more type of upselling is customization is all about adding special touches to your product. It is about personalizing the product or service so that the customer feels special and is the exclusive owner of a specific design. As for the extended service period, it is somehow similar to product protection: the idea is to suggest a better value for a prolonged contract. SaaS companies benefit from such an approach.
Don’t be pushy withyour offer
It is critical to come up with the right time for your offer. Inc.com has collected data from different sources, showing that Thursday is the best day for closing sales and setting up upsells.
Do not scare off your clients with annoying notifications and pop-ups! It is smarter to display your upsell at the payment stage, at the checkout or after that. Then, you’ll be sure that people who see your offer really need your product or service, and won’t be scared away. In the example below, the company reminds you that it is possible to get 25% off if you keep on shopping on their site. It is a rather attractive deal!
Benefit from Using Buyer Personas
So, you have determined your buyer personas, now, it is time to use this knowledge. When you are aware of a customer’s purchase history, you can provide valuable recommendations based on their previous purchases. Also, address your clients by name to make every client feel special.
When messaging, select suitable terms and phrases. For instance, it is better to avoid tech-savvy terminology if you are selling software so that you are more accessible for beginners. You should not use informal language or slang if you offer something related to serious issues like cancer treatment or home violence. Make sure that you speak the same language as your customers.
Design and set up the campaign
The last stage is to use free or paid tools to create and launch your upselling campaign. Many services make it possible to customize the fields and overall design completely.
Examples of Upselling
Now, it is time to have a look at some examples. It is up to you to choose the right form for your upselling campaign. It may be a website or an email campaign. Email upselling means sending messages after a purchase motivating buyers to take more action and continue their purchases.
Dollar Shave Club
Dollar Shave Club seems to understand its target audience perfectly. They place some restock features on their product pages and stress that clients can always count on some extras and full packages for shaving instead of, for example, blade only. Their upsellers are perfect reminders. It’s not another annoying sales pitch – it’s something that clients need and are already accustomed to using.
BMW
BMW does several things excellently. In addition to a successful UX design, they generate an opportunity for upselling. When ordering a car, they made it possible to configure the characteristics, making the car fully customizable and adding lots of upgrade opportunities.
US Pizza
The menu provides the opportunity to select cheese or olives as an extra component for a salad or pizza. US Pizza offers more ingredients or fully customizable order.
Now you understand how a good upsell looks. The practices in the section below will help you create your own perfect upsell campaign.
Upselling Tips and Best Practices
Build trust
Remain relevant
Entice returning clients
Don’t underestimate customer support
Recall the “rule of three”
Manipulate with time and delivery
Come up with the social proof
Are you looking for more tips to make your upselling offer more effective? We are ready to share some with you!
Build trust
If a customer hasn’t been with your brand for very long, they may refuse to listen to your recommendations. Build credibility by referring to specific, trustworthy, up-to-date sources related to your product or service. You may also involve influencers and ask them to share an opinion because 63% of customers rely on influencers to inform their decisions. In the example below, you can see that restaurant experts have chosen these particular places to visit. Most restaurant-goers are likely to trust a professional opinion and are more likely to visit your restaurant.
Remain relevant
Avoid suggesting items that your clients likely don’t need. Coming back to the “Harry Potter” example, do not add “Lord of the Rings” to the recommendations list. You have no evidence that your readers want to see anything other than HP-related items on their list of recommendations. These books might have similar genres, but they target different audiences.
It is not necessary to only offer books from the series of the same name. You can add other products related to the series like memorabilia to the list because it is related to the main item.
Entice returning clients
The best way to attract return customers is to give them exclusive offers. When they think that you have nothing left to surprise them with, surprise them with a compelling offer! Exclusive offers include early-bird or seasonal discounts, referral programs, vouchers, and coupons for friends, etc. In the example below, River Island stresses that there is a limited discount on a certain group of products to make you eager to make a purchase.
Don’t underestimate customer support
Client support representatives capture the most upselling opportunities. They should be able to consult a client on any upgrades or special offers at any time – make sure that they are ready.
Recall the “rule of three”
You should not forget this rule whenever you are doing any kind of marketing. Three is a magic number when it comes to sales. Perhaps, you have noticed that, in most cases, there are three subscription packages to choose from on many websites. The first one is usually free, while others show their price and explain their benefits. Besides, people love having choices, but more than three options can quickly become overwhelming. Thus, it is better to settle on the three alternatives.
Manipulate time and delivery
If you sell goods, stress that your customers can get free shipping if they hurry up to make an order now or complete any other requirements. Stress that your offer is urgent and leave little to no time for postponing their order. This tactic is used effectively in the example below.
Use social proof
Mix your upselling offers with testimonials like in the example below. You can see what other customers think about the company. This makes your customers more confident when purchasing from your company. Social proofs are effective when it comes to upselling and email marketing in general.
Once they place an order and get what they want, do not think that your work is done. Remember customer retention? After a purchase, keep sending personalized emails notifying about new offers and deals from your company. Let them come back for more like the example below illustrates.
In summary, upselling is a vital part of a successful sales strategy. It is one of the best ways to increase revenue in the short-term. If you use email marketing in your strategy, send upselling emails with LIKE.TG! Automation 360 allows marketers to set up automated email sending after the purchase event is triggered by your clients.
Follow this guide to increase revenue with the upselling techniques!
Unsubscribe page
An unsubscribe page is a web page that appears when a userclicks on the unsubscribe linkin the email footer. It aims to confirm the opt-out,and it is the last chance to keep asubscriberfrom leaving your mailing list.
Check out this video on how to create an unsubscribe page with LIKE.TG.
Why is an unsubscribe page important?
Unsubscribing is a serious issue, as it influences the way email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook judge your sender reputation. Acertain number of unsubscribes — over 0.05%from emails delivered —may harm the deliverability of your emails.
Most often, people opt-out because of a high email sending volume, irrelevancy of content, or because they feel overwhelmed with the overall number of emails in the inbox. Sometimes userseven can’t recollect they have once subscribed. Keeping the unsubscribe rate within a norm is a challenge, and the unsubscribe page is the last chance to re-engage users or, at least, find out why they want to get no more emails from you.
An unsubscribe page is also a way to confirm the user’s intention to leave your mailing list. With AMPemails, unsubscribing directly in the email became possible,but not many brands use this technology so far.
How to create a custom unsubscribe page?
It takes just a few minutes to create an unsubscribe page with LIKE.TG. The service provides a default unsubscribe page for confirming the opt-out.
You can create a custom one, change the background color, create a survey with the questions that will help you find out the reasons whyusersunsubscribe. If a person has once opted-in to receive different flows of emails like weekly newsletters and blog digests, suggest unsubscribing from one flow of emails, staying on another.
Here’s an instruction on how to create an unsubscribe page in few steps. Check the example below.
Unsubscribe Page Tips
Suggest updating email preferences
Encourage unsubscribes to follow you on socials
Make a survey optional
Don’t require signing in to unsubscribe
Leave a positive trace
Suggest updating email preferences. Since the most common reason for breaking up with a brand is the wrong email sending frequency, ask your audience to change their email preferences. Even one email a monthcanturn out into some revenue in the future.
Encourage unsubscribes to follow you on socials. Some of your subscribers may want to clear out some private space because they feel overwhelmed with the number of emails in their inbox. Offer to continue communication on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Does it matter where exactlyis your engaged audience, even if it’s not in the email inbox?
Make a survey optional. Don’t make an obligatory poll about what was wrong and how you could improve your job. Such an approach may result in moving your email to a spam folder, too. It’s OK to ask subscribers why they unsubscribe, but let them decide whether they want to answer any questions.
Don’t require signing in to unsubscribe. When the user wants to unsubscribe, that’s for a reason. Allow them to do so in the easiest way possible. Signing in to unsubscribe pushes them to mark your email as spam, which harms your sender reputation even worse than unsubscribing. After all, when uninterested users leave, it makes your mailing list healthier.
Leave a positive trace. Yes, it is not easy to say goodbye after all you’ve been through together, but if there are no other options, make it memorable in the right way! Say that you'll wait for them to become subscribers again. A great example is HubSpot’s unsubscribe video. Some comment on YouTube says: “I want to sign up so that I can unsubscribe!” This is a kind of reaction you should try to achieve.
Unsubscribe Page Examples
Architectural Digest. On this unsubscribe page, AD suggests changing the email sending frequency. This is an excellent strategical move since thisbrand kind of bombards its subscribers with daily emails from the very start.
Death to Stock. There is a small optional survey on this unsubscribe page, that would help improve the brand’s email marketing. The only thing that'snot quite righthere is Death to Stock unsubscribe a user right away after they click on the unsubscribe link. In case the users will change their mind, it would be too late: they would have to go back to the website and subscribe once again, which they would probably not do.
Chubbies. As always, any sort of communication with these guys is humorous and friendly. They use every single chance to keep users from unsubscribing: suggest changing preferences, hilariously plead for sympathy, and offer to continue communication on socials.
Check this helpful blog article for more examples of unsubscribe pages.
User agent
The term user agent stands for agent software, which is acting on behalf of a user. In its most common meaning, it is a client application that uses a particular network protocol.
When a user agent operates inside a network protocol, like HTTP, SIP, and NNTP, it identifies itself (including the operating system and software vendor) by submitting an identification string to the operating peer.
This video produced by OSINT Curious considers the user agent string and explains why you should care about it.
User Agents in Email Marketing
When it comes to email marketing,a user agent serves as an essential source of information about operating systems, browsers, and devices, which subscribersuse to open emails. LIKE.TG provides these statisticsfor all email campaigns.
Knowing these statistics enables you to analyze an email campaign in terms of graphic design and adapting HTML emailsto different kinds of mobile devices.
Usability
Usability is a term that entails the accessibility, clarity, credibility, simplicity, and relevancy of a website for users. Good usability ensures a seamless experience, improves conversionsand rankings, and establishes customer loyalty.
In this article, we’ll uncover the importance of usability’s key principles and review some great examples. We’ll also discuss website usability testing and offer several tips to improve your website’s usability.
Why is website usability important?
Webmasters and developers do their best to create user-friendly, easy-to-navigate, and modern sites. Since a website is one of the main mediums for communication with customers for many software companies, it should be almost perfect and comply with clients’ requirements. Businesses build their online presence to reach prospectsand customers and attain their goals. The image of a company is often shaped by its website’s accessibility, relevance, convenience, simplicity, and credibility.
By creating sites with good usability, you enable users to convert faster. If you want users to buy from your company, subscribe to your email newsletter, or contact your support, provide them with a seamless website experience. To obtain higher conversion rates, businesses avoid complicated formsand long checkout processes and ensure that links work properly and their website load time is fast.
Satisfied clients stay loyal to a brand and don’tswitch to competitors. If users feel comfortable using your website, they will stay with your company. Website usability significantly affects SEO, and itentails not only customer satisfaction but the ability of users to easily explore and findwhat they are looking for on a site. Google tracks websites that are useful andanalyzes them while shaping the ranking. Besides, some websites experience high bounce rates because of low usability.
Now that you know why website usability is important, let’s talk aboutits main elements.
Key Principles of Site Usability
If you strive to see your company prosper, you need to have excellent website usability. We’ll review several aspects you need to consider when developing a user-friendly website.
Accessibility. Availability and accessibility are vital since they let leadsand customers explore your product. Ensure that your websitedoes not have any loading errors to avoid dissatisfaction among users. For this, find good hosting. Check your website for broken links, and remove them if you have some. Since the number of mobile internet users now amounts to 4.28 billion, there’s a point in applying responsive website design. It will help make your site navigation more accessible, especially on devices with small screens.
Clarity. Users who come to your website with a specific goal and can’t find the necessary information may never revisit it. That’s why you should help them achieve their goal. If you aim to let customers reach their objectives, provide them with a consistent experience, guide them across your website, focus on the most important information, implement the strategies people are already familiar with, and structure your content.
Simplicity. Design a user-friendly interface that people can handle without instructions to simplify your website usage. Leverage easy-to-manage design concepts people already know. Make use of these popular approaches consistently to meet customers’ needs as soon as possible.
Familiarity. Even if you have quality content, people won’t trust a company without a good reputation. It’s pivotal to provide users with information about your business to establish credibility and brand awareness. Create an outstanding “About Us” page where you can tell about your company’s mission, vision, and goals. Make sure to include your contact information and address. You should create informative and quality content people can trust. Double-check your articles and other content for spelling and grammar.
Relevancy. One more principle of good usability is relevancy. The content your company presents should solve users’ problems. That’s why you should make sure you know yourbuyer personas, their wants, needs, interests, and issues to address them and provide solutions. Once you know their goals, develop scenarios where customers will come to your website for help. Make use of them when creating new content.
It’s time to jump into website usability testing.
Website Usability Testing
Website usability testing is implemented to gauge a website by obtaining feedback from users after they visit a particular site. Companies that leverageit create a list of tasks and scenarios a person needs to perform when visiting a specific site. There’s also a person who monitors the actions and performance of a website in different situations. As a result, business owners can instantly see the strengths and weaknesses of their websites andidentify the areas that require improvement.
Usability testing can be divided into three key methods:
explorative (it’s used at the early product development stage to evaluate the effectiveness and usability of a preliminary design or prototype);
assessment (it’s used to assess your technology and includes real-time trials tomonitor satisfaction, effectiveness, and usability);
comparative (it involves comparing two different solutions, defining their weaknesses and strengths, and asking users which one they prefer).
Now that you are acquainted with the methods, we need to proceed to the next section to explore several ideas that will help you improve usability.
7Tips to Improve Website Usability
Increase website speed
Be consistent with your website design
Come up with a mobile version
Leverage a simple navigation layout
Arrange your content based on generally accepted rules
Ensure that your main features and benefits are visible
Use images wisely
To make your business successful, you need to develop a simple, convenient, and useful website. Explore our seven tips to improve usability and attract more customers.
Increase website speed. Statistics show that a slow loading time leaves users unhappy and discourages them from coming back.Moreover, the majority of customers expect a website to load within two seconds. According to WebsiteBuilderExpert, 46% of internet users don’t revisit websites with poor performance. Hence, if you don’t want to lose prospects and customers, ensure that your website speed is high enough. Remember, unoptimized images, bad hosting, problems with JavaScript, and lots of flash content slow down the speed of your site.
Be consistent with your website design. Once you finish with the website speed, check if you are consistent in your layout, font, and color scheme to make a user feel more comfortable and recognize your brand. Make sure to have the same layout across all pages, similar colors, and fonts not to confuse customers.
Come up with a mobile version. Now when the number of smartphone users worldwide has reached 3.8 billion, a responsive website is a must-have for every business. Since the majority of people browse the internet from smartphones and tablets, you need to ensure a seamless website experience: good speed, clear navigation, and easy-to-find CTAs. Apart from that, don’tforget to use the same font and colors you have in your desktop version.
Leverage a simple navigation layout.Find a good, clear, and familiar navigation layout if you don’t want users to abandon your website without even exploring it. Keep in mind that many customers have already gotten used to certain layouts, so you better use something simple, standard, and familiar to everyone. Your main goal here is to make visitors feel comfortable. Consider leveraging a simple navigation bar at the top of the website that contains links to your main pages.
Arrange your content based on generally accepted rules. It’s critical to have quality content in terms of customer satisfaction and SEO. Therefore, create your content based on standard rules and SEO guidelines. Use clear and short headings and subheadings to break your content into logical parts and make it look better for users, and let them perceive information easily.
Ensure that your main features and benefits are visible. To let customers instantly gather information about your company, product, features, and benefits, create a section with this data, and make it visible. You can implement icons for your features to attract customers’ attention.
Use images wisely. Of course, visuals play a significant role in demonstrating your product and the benefits it provides, but you should not overdo it. Bear in mind that although images will help you break up the text, they influence your website speed. You need to moderate your website to hold the attention and interest of readers.
You already know some great tips to improve website usability, so it’s time to see several examples.
Examples of Good Website Usability
Increasingyour website loading speed to improve usability is not enough. This process needs improvements in layout, navigation, design, content, visuals, and more. Now we’ll unveil how different companies managed to achieve it.
Master Class
Let’s take Master Class, for example. The company that offers classes in different disciplines enables users to easily access and load its website fast. It’s consistent in its font, color scheme, and layout usage across all web pages. Master Class also has a visible and clear CTA button and all important information for newcomers.
Mobile users can also explore the company’s services from their smartphones or tablets.
Apple
You can’t ignore the simplicity of Apple’s website and the way it focuses on the key benefits and features of its products. It contains a lot of white space and makes a site look very stylish and minimalistic. The classical navigation menu allows customers to feel comfortable when they decide to explore the company’s products.
Pantene
The company’s website has a standard navigation menu, consistent content, similar font, color scheme, and layout across all website pages to make people recognize the brand and easily navigate its website. Pantene also provides a convenient mobile version.
Congrats, now you know the importance and key elements of usability. Grab some inspiration from our tips and examples to develop a user-friendly and relevant site.
