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5 billion people across the globe access the internet regularly. In response to that demand, almost 2 billion websites are live, each fighting for audience attention so they can generate sales or other types of actions.
To stand out, you have to start taking audience-focused data insights into account, now.
Fortunately, getting insights from your audience is easier than ever thanks to tools like Google Analytics, review boards, and other quantitative/qualitative feedback aggregators. To hit home the importance of data insights, below, we break down 6 actions digital managers can accomplish via data that can vastly improve a customer’s journey.
Keep reading to discover what they are!
1. Identify Popular Content
As a digital manager, you likely have a hand in the kind of content your brand puts out on the web or at least which platforms that content is programmed on. Data allows you to get instant feedback on that content/medium combination so you can see what’s working and what’s not.
For example, if your team is using resources to repurpose Twitter posts on Instagram and are finding that the amount of engagement you get on Instagram dwarfs what you see on Twitter, that might inform taking an Instagram-first or Instagram-only approach in the future.
Data also allows us to identify content themes that resonate with users. That way, you can also work to double down on certain concepts and phase out others.
2. Address Feedback
When people discuss data insights, they often get fixated on topics surrounding how to maximize insights in the quantitative spectrum. Those insights include things like web traffic, retention rates, and the like.
Don’t get us wrong, quantitative insights are important. Perhaps more important though is the qualitative feedback your customers leave, often through review boards.
If you go to your business’ Yelp page, do you have feedback left by consumers on how they feel about your products and services? If you do and you’re ignoring that critical data, stop doing that, and start pulling insights.
Taking constructive insights from qualitative feedback can help you fix product flaws, address toxic team members, and invest in products that are having the biggest impact on your consumer’s lives.
3. Decrease Load Times
The average person will give a website about 3-5 seconds to load before they click away from it. Do all of the pages on your web products exceed that standard?
If you’re like most content managers, you probably don’t know.
Using tools like Google’s page speed assessor can help you identify where load times need to be increased. By identifying those areas, you can compress content on those pages, reduce content, or employ several other fixes, all of which will lead to happier customers and more conversions.
4. Improve Call to Actions
In marketing, there’s a popular concept called A/B testing. In short, A/B testing puts two pathways to a product in front of a consumer to see which pathway yields better results.
A thirst for data insights is what powers A/B testing and leveraging these sorts of testing protocols can help you enrich your product’s calls to action which in turn will net you more money.
If you’re interested in A/B testing, several online tools can help you accomplish this means of data mining. In the email marketing arena (one of the most popular for A/B testing), tools like “Mail Chimp” offer great split testing functions. There are also more general, qualitative tools that make testing easy like “Sounding Box” that are worth exploring.
5. Implement Onsite Recommendations
Did you know that a significant portion of the sales Amazon generates comes from the products they suggest to users based on their buying history? The same is true for Netflix when it comes to content consumption.
Those facts may seem obvious to you. If so, then why aren’t you leveraging customer data insights to drive recommendations of your own?
Onsite customization is one of the biggest trends we’re seeing data power across a variety of business niches. To follow suit, you need to be capable of identifying the customers that interact with your web products, log their habits, and make machine-powered suggestions on how they can get the most out of your business in the future.
Accomplishing those things is no small feat and something most digital managers will need the help of skilled software developers with experience in recommendation engines to tackle. Believe us when we say though that making investments here can skyrocket your company’s success.
6. Market in Ways That Matter
The more personalized you can make your marketing messages, the more successful those messages will be. This is yet another avenue that is paved by data insights.
Data enables digital managers that are caring for marketing funnels to make sure that customized messages are sent to customers. Those messages would typically be based on buying habits and are consequently, hyper-relevant.
Relevancy matters not only in generating sales but in keeping customers from getting frustrated with your commutations.
Data Insights Sit at the Foundation of Almost Every Successful Business
Insights inform content publishing, marketing, user experience design, and just about everything in between. As a matter of fact, we’re hard-pressed to think of any business function that doesn’t benefit from data insights.
If you’re a digital content manager, you need to start getting data-savvy, now. Doing so will not only boost your company’s viability but your value as a professional.
Hungry for more data-focused content? If so, we welcome you to explore similar write-ups on our blog.
