Forget Gimmicks: How to Effectively Welcome Your Online Consumers

Think of a time when you walked into a store and you were made to feel special. What happened? Was it a warm hello? Did the clerk take notice of something you were doing, or find a creative way to strike up a conversation without being too pushy?

And what about the shopping experience? Were items easy to find? Or did the sales associate ask you a series of personalized questions to get you matched with your favorite color and style within your desired budget?

So why does digital ignore real world fundamentals and best practices? Why is it that when you visit many websites, you are interrupted within seconds?

You know what I am talking about: The gimmicks. The promotions. The contests.

The big pop-up, that takes over the whole screen, gets in the way of what you were doing and offers you 10% off to sign-up to a newsletter. Or maybe, it’s free shipping when you spend $50. You probably have not even decided if you are going to buy something before you are interrupted with a banner asking you to give your email address.

There is a famous expression “You only get one chance to make a first impression”. So for brands who operate digitally, think about a good welcome experience for your customers and website visitors.

Here is a basic checklist for creating business building welcome experiences (backed by loads of data).

RESPECT THE CONSUMER

If a consumer comes to your website, please don’t get in the way. They have come to your site to learn something, browse, or buy something. When you serve a pop-up, you interrupt the consumer and so you are telling the consumer that your business interests are more important than theirs. If you want to drive newsletter sign-ups, you can launch a personality quiz or a product finder and send the results to a shopper once they have put in their email address. This is a more orderly way of getting an email address and does not require a promotion or discount.

MUTUAL EXCHANGE OF VALUE

Consumers will often give you more information than an email address if there is a mutual exchange of value. For starters, an email address on its own is not that valuable. You probably want to know age, gender, category interests and more. At Jebbit, the data shows that experiences that provide a mutual exchange of value are a great way to gather data and to drive better lead generation, conversion rates, AOV, etc. Guided selling experiences (Product Match Quiz) help the consumer save time, find the right product and so they will provide personal information for these benefits. 

PLAY THE LONG GAME

Marketing is hard and complex - from the myriad of on-going technical changes (ATT, FLoC), and privacy challenges (GDPR, COPPA, CCPA), to changing buying habits due to COVID and acceleration of e-commerce. However, brands who build for the long term are the ones who tend to win. Don’t avoid the foundational work - building relationships with consumers starts with a deep understanding of their needs and wants. Personalized digital experiences help brands uncover insights, and to build better segmentation models. With Jebbit, most brands start with simple business cases – drive more cost effective leads, drive improved conversions, and collect more data.

By laying the foundation, brands can get beyond “gimmicks” – short term tactics like discounts and contests – and build strong customer relationships and long lasting  businesses.

Want to learn more? Click here to talk with a zero party data and Jebbit expert today. 

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