The Top CX Trends That Matter Most for Brands

Online experiences matter to shoppers. While in the past it may have been enough to simply offer consumers a breadth of merchandise and free shipping to attract them, today the stakes are much higher. In 2023, costs per visit climbed by almost 10 percent. This issue, combined with a significant decrease in traffic and site consumption, resulted in a decline in conversion by 5.5 percent. As a result, every site visit counts and is increasingly putting brands under pressure to reduce frustrations that are causing visitors to either leave a page or abandon their carts.

The solution is to optimize engagement. Engagement is the seam holding the customer experience together, turning consideration into conversion. And while there are many different ways to improve engagement, the leading online brands and retailers rely on these best practices.

Tap Into Experience Analytics

Brands can create far more personalized and profitable consumer engagements by leaning into experience analytics to drive decision making. Unlocking a deeper understanding of customer interactions, preferences and sentiments helps brands orchestrate a more seamless experience for online shoppers. Understanding the complete customer journey across all platforms arms brands with the data they need to improve engagement, retention and loyalty with their shoppers.

Embrace Hyperpersonalization and Customer Centricity

The dawn of hyperpersonalization is upon us, with the most engaging brands ditching the one-size-fits-all mentality to focus on a human-centered and authentic approach to customer centricity. Prioritizing direct relationships with customers leads to increased loyalty, higher engagement, and better satisfaction overall. With the death of third-party cookies, brands must leverage their own zero- and first-party data in order to heighten customer centricity and make their experiences more relevant.

We also know from Contentsquare's recent benchmark data that 70 percent of website traffic in Q4 2023 was driven by mobile, however, mobile browsing time is 60 percent shorter than on desktop with visits typically lasting less than 2.5 minutes. Even though consumers’ attention on mobile is brief, brands must prioritize a seamless and optimized mobile experience to remain customer-centric.

Understanding AI’s Role in Retail

Generative artificial intelligence is a tool consumers are already using on their own, and it's having an enormous impact on the customer experience. Its allure is the very specific, personalized responses that are quickly synthesized in a way that’s straightforward and digestible — this interaction is typically short, but valuable. Consumers are already using the technology to build very personalized experiences (e.g., build me a five-day itinerary in Tokyo that includes sushi, Disneyland, and a cat cafe). In order to meet shopper expectations, brands will need to begin offering equally relevant and curated experiences.

Generative AI is also enabling a conversational transformation of e-commerce, not just through search but also through advanced chatbots and other interfaces which are giving online marketers a far better understanding of consumer preferences than ever before. Brands do need to be careful with AI and understand the rules of engagement, especially around privacy. Contextual AI will allow brands and retailers to better predict their shoppers’ needs. It will also provide merchants with better insights which will ultimately improve the customer experience and help them innovate their product or service further.

Reduce Frustration

Poorly performing sites aren’t just minor inconveniences for brands. Forty percent of all online visits are plagued with avoidable friction, including technical website errors, slow page loads, and rage clicks. Leaving frustrations unchecked often leads to painful consequences for brands, resulting in lost engagement and site abandonments at every stage of the customer journey.

The days of organic traffic simply flooding onto sites are gone. With conversion becoming more elusive, e-commerce marketers must focus on improving engagement and customer centricity to maximize every site visit. Engagement analytics, new AI tools, and reducing friction will be critical components to establishing a more personalized approach to customer-centricity online.

John O’Melia is the chief customer officer of Contentsquare, a digital experience platform.