There are few times where I could look any client in the eye and say if we just do this one thing, we will lift online customer engagement, conversion and satisfaction. And know that it will happen.
What The Data Is Telling Us
The reason I can say that with confidence is based on years of detailed data based on many millions of customer views of interactive and personalized video.
This was not always the case. There were many years in my career where we went on our gut instincts and experience to guide ourselves and our clients. Decisions on even the largest budget, mission-critical creative materials were done largely by feel, and what had worked anecdotally in the past.
To be fair there was little in the way of meaningful video data a decade ago. Which is in good part why we were be paid a lot of money to bring expertise and experience to the table. That was all we had to go on.
So back to this one thing. Let me give this some context. I’m not talking about front-end advertising designed to pique interest. I’m referring to the customer who is already interested, for any of a myriad of reasons, and is now looking at your website. Trying to get information, and potentially make a buying decision.
Why Customers Don’t Convert Online
And here’s where the disconnect happens. Typically, to get informed enough to make a buying decision, especially for things like complex financial products, it takes a lot of your prospect’s time and effort. They may have to read through multiple savings or checking account descriptions, loan options or credit card types to get anywhere near comfortable to make a decision.
That folks IS the whole game, based on data. By tracking the typical pathing and time to get informed vs drop-off rate, we can easily see that the time and effort required is far higher than most people are prepared to give.
The Golden Rule – Reduce Time & Effort
What we also see, is that anything that helps your prospects and customers lower that threshold, ie: the time and effort to get and understand their options, the more they will make actual decisions. I’ve never seen a case yet where this did not hold up, as shown in the analytics.
This is where interactivity and personalized video come in. Because they more closely mirror human communication vs text and images, they have the ability to reduce the time and effort for your customers to process and understand the information they need. And that has always proven to be the basis of lifting conversion and customer satisfaction.
Making It Happen
The interactive video below for Navy Federal is one of the best examples of how this works in action. Prior to having this interactive video, Navy Federal customers had to read through multiple mortgage options to figure out which one was best for them. What happened is they didn’t, with the resulting high drop-off rate. The interactive video asks just 3 questions, and can then bring forward a suggested mortgage type that best matches each customer’s needs… and explains why.
The result is one of the strongest interactive personalized video performers by every measure… simply because it made it much easier and faster for customers to get what they were looking for online. If customers feel they can quickly get what they need to make informed decisions, they will do exactly that.
So I’m sticking with this one rule that has always paid off, regardless of the industry, product or customer stage. Make it easier for your customers. It sounds so simple, but if we set that as our North Star, great things happen. And that’s not me, that’s the data talking.