In our last post, we talked about:
- Why it’s often asked whether it’s better to focus on acquiring new customers or retaining the ones you have
- How both acquisition- and retention-focussed strategies have their pros and cons, but if you had to pick one to go for first, retention is better for your long-term success
- Why, despite that, acquisition vs retention isn’t really the question we should be asking. Your goal should be to continuously make new customers loyal – in a 360 viral loop.
It’s all well and good to say that you should aim to have acquisition and retention together. But the reality of the online world today is that it’s more difficult than ever to create a loyal user base. Today, over half of your site’s visitors spend less than 15 seconds on it. So in this race against time, how do you actually make acquisition and retention work together?
Let’s take a closer look at this 360 loop, and step through why bringing it to life depends on personalizing your home page, landing page, and social posts.
The Home Page
The Home Page has traditionally been the first page for your users to come to, and their portal for finding more detailed information – whether it’s an article, item for sale or sign up page. But more than that, your home page is the face of your brand.
Personalizing your home page lets each of your most loyal users see what they love most about you. And as we’ve mentioned in previous posts, 78% of consumers want personalized experiences online and feel twice as connected to brands that personalize to them. Think about your homepage as the chance to put your best foot forward with people who know your brand – giving them the headlines, recommendations and layouts they want will keep them coming back.
There’s no doubt that for your most loyal users, the homepage is a crucial face for your brand. But what about everyone else? As social media grows in importance, most sites are seeing less and less traffic coming through their home page. By the end of last year, social media was responsible for almost a third of all traffic to websites. So how can you optimize for that much side-door traffic?
The Landing Page – Articles, Items for Sale and Sign-Up Pages
Today, it’s normal to expect that up to half of your traffic will come through the side door straight to your landing pages. As we discovered from talking to our customers here at Vidora, that number can sometimes be as high as 80 or 90%.
Online businesses will always look for new ways to bring people to their site. But in the case of the landing page, the more important question is: how do you get them to stay?
In the words of The Atlantic editor Bob Cohn (88% of their traffic comes through the side door): “The old mantra that every page needs to be a home page has never been more true”. And that doesn’t just mean having a cleanly designed page that represents your brand – it means giving people a reason to stay on your site. Personalizing your landing pages for headlines, images, content recommendations and ordering will help you show each person a site that they’re more likely to stay on. By doing this, you can help minimize bounce rate, increase time on site, and ultimately turn new users into loyal brand advocates for your site.
The Landing Page is where customer retention comes into its own. But if you’re trying to organically grow your user base, you need to efficiently acquire customers too – and that’s where social media comes in.
Social Posts
As of the start of 2015, Facebook was responsible for a quarter of all referrals on the internet. And as other platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest continue to grow in influence, it’s clear that social media is becoming the internet’s home page. But with so many different media, eCommerce and B2B sites vying for attention, how do you stick out and drive traffic back to your site?
One solution that has already come through focusses on knowing when to post content to social media and maximize the audience that sees you. But beyond that, we think it’s important to know what to post as well. After all, what’s the point of ensuring someone sees a headline if they don’t want to read more once they’ve seen it?
At Vidora, we’ve found that content that’s optimized onsite is far more likely to perform best offsite as well. And by learning from your site to publish the best content, at the best times, you create an experience that helps drive the 360 loop of customer acquisition and retention, all at the same time.
A.I. Needs to be at the Heart of Organically Growing your User Base
You have seconds to grab someone’s attention and then get them to stay on your site. But if you can manage it, the potential rewards for your business are massive. So how can you make this personalization loop of the homepage, landing page and social post a reality?
In our next post, we’ll talk about why Artificial Intelligence needs to sit at the heart of this 360 loop – and why with the power of machine learning at your disposal, you can truly revolutionize the way you do business.
