jemappellestephani marketing
Marketers always strive hard to boost website traffic. A significant metric which quantifies the performance of websites is the bounce rate, indicating the percentage of users who leave without delving any further than the initial page.
In this context, it is important to understand web accessibility. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990. It prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities and provides equal opportunities for accessing the web to all users.
Disabled users find it inconvenient to access disabled-unfriendly websites and their sessions naturally tend to bounce. A 2016 study from Click-Away Pound, a surveyor focusing on the online shopping experiences of people with disabilities, found that 71% of disabled customers with access needs usually clicked away from a website when they found it difficult to use.
These customers who click away have an estimated spending power of £11.75 billion in the UK, which figures to approximately 10% of the total UK online spend in 2016. The survey also found 82% of customers with access needs will spend more if websites were more accessible.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) elaborates on making the web accessible to disabled users. Adhering to the WCAG standards not only helps site owners improve the reach of websites, but also steers them away from unwanted legal repercussions.
What is AI marketing and how can it help reduce bounce rates?
AI marketing is empowered by the building blocks of artificial intelligence, helping develop creative services to simplify website accessibility. It leverages customer data with the help of machine learning to automate processes like extraction of data and prediction of customer behaviour that improves customer experiences.
Here are a few ways AI marketing contributes towards engaging disabled users and reducing bounce rates on websites:
Improving web accessibility
Website accessibility ensures equal access to users with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive impairments without any barriers. Empowered by technologies like natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, AI marketing helps marketers deliver personalised and contextualised experiences.
For example, Facebook has incorporated the automatic alternative text tool backed by object recognition technology to help the visually impaired. This tool uses screen readers on iOS devices to generate detailed descriptions of the elements in photos as the user swipes past them.
Private website owners should consider accessiBe, an AI-powered, pioneering web accessibility tool that simplifies the way business owners deliver accessible content to disabled users. This automated tool creates accurate alt text descriptions for images on websites, improving accessibility for visually impaired users. The application also ensures the website is compliant with WCAG 2.1.
Among the features that accessiBe offers to apply website accessibility are:
- Optimisation of websites for keyboard navigation to accommodate users with motor impairments
- A built-in dictionary which explains expressions, slang, and phrases for users with cognitive disorders
- Granular adjustments in colours, fonts, and typography to make content more accessible for users with visual disabilities
Boosting customer engagement
Customer engagement is naturally a defining metric to reduce bounce rates. With a diverse online community, identifying customer types and engaging them based on their requirements is a challenge for marketers.
AI marketing helps marketers deal with this challenge by categorising disabled users and self-optimising websites to improve conversions. For example, users with hearing difficulties may find it difficult to access video or audio content. It also helps users with hearing difficulties by offering textual scripts. Adding this script not only helps augment the customer base, but also boosts search engine ranking.
Previously, such scripts were entered manually. With the advent of AI-powered technologies, however, these scripts can be generated automatically. YouTube uses this speech recognition technology to create captions for videos.
Offering recommendations based on buying personas and search history
AI marketing offers product recommendations based on the individual needs of customers. These recommendations are derived from the user’s purchase history and preferences from browsing behaviour, which makes them highly relevant. With AI, marketers can obtain intuitive insights from scanning volumes of data on customer behaviour.
The AI algorithm leverages data such as account information, customer preferences, purchase history, and contextual information about the customer. Product recommendations are based on this data. This technology ultimately helps improve user convenience and helps with online purchases.
According to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), web usability for the disabled is defined as the extent to which users can use a product to obtain specified goals. This guideline throws light on the need to include simplified and understandable instructions on websites to help people with cognitive and learning disabilities.
Providing AI-enabled product recommendations eases the complications of searching the web for products and information for disabled users. The website automatically offers recommendations based on the history of the customer which narrows down the search results. These recommendations prevent customers with cognitive or learning disabilities from getting lost in the deluge of online information. The recommendations aim to direct them with sufficient information to accomplish the intent of their online visit.
Helping derive customer information to enhance the quality of service
It’s no secret that personalised services result in exceptional customer experiences. Using traditional analytics for this purpose will be time-consuming and tedious. The result will also be confined to pre-defined metrics. AI marketing, however, enables marketers to deliver quick and seamless customer services that are backed by insights obtained from numerous customer journeys.
AI-powered marketing uncovers numerous relationships from data to predict customer behaviours with the utmost accuracy. It also finds the drivers and inhibitors of delivering seamless customer services. Unlike conventional methods of collecting customer data, such as feedback forms and sign-ups, AI-enabled marketing initiates the right questions to derive insightful customer data.
In the context of users with disabilities, AI marketing helps websites optimise their usability based on intent.
Conclusion
AI marketing opens up new avenues to accelerate website performances. The above-mentioned factors of AI marketing will help marketers extend their customer base, understand and explore a different segment of the audience, and reduce bounce rates while driving potential traffic.
Written By: Manish Dudharejia - Marketing Tech
Along with hunger, fear and love, visual stimulation is deeply embedded in the human experience. Ninety percent of all information is transmitted visually, with the human brain processing an entire image after viewing it for as little as 13 milliseconds. Social media platforms have tapped into this primal inclination with tremendous success.
Unique among them, Instagram has quickly proven to be one of the most influential forces in content-driven marketing today. The image-based app is known for having amplified engagement rates over other social media networks.
Instagram success comes with quite a daunting caveat: You must stand out on a platform with 800 million active users who “like” 4.2 billion posts daily. Luckily, there are ways your brand can cut through the noise. Here are five ways to build a passionate Instagram following that sequentially leads to increased revenue.
Create A Plan Of Action
Your Instagram strategy is what separates posting for profit from just crowdsourcing self-esteem. To be effective, your plan needs to define your target audience and outline a clear direction for content.
Creating content that resonates with your followers is the result of a well-defined buyer persona. When you internalize your ideal customers’ demographics, behaviors, concerns, motivations and goals, you can tailor your message to attract them. Doing so ensures your image and message will evoke curiosity, incite action and humanize your company, all of which will expand your base of regular followers and set the baseline for your overall strategy.
Instagram tactics might target several of the following objectives: increase brand awareness, build customer loyalty, enhance and complement event experiences or drive sales. By defining your goals, you’ll be able to determine the best approach for each step.
Elicit Emotions
Emotions are at the heart of all relationships, including with brands. Logic persuades but feelings motivate, influencing a customer’s intention to purchase over anything else. According to a study, purely emotional campaigns were twice as likely to generate profit gains than those with a rational approach. Therefore, when choosing images, the intended emotion should be front and center.
However, not all types of emotions are rated equally. Research found that admiration, interest, amazement and astonishment are extremely common sentiments in highly viral content. Positive posts are more prone to be shared than negative ones, but things get complicated when it comes to dealing with specific feelings.
Anger, anxiety and other high arousal emotions drive us to take initiative. Fear is a commonly depicted emotion in marketing. This can take the form of showing the downside of not taking action, as in Allstate’s Mayhem campaign. At our agency, we often use social proof in campaigns. Happy clients touting results that prospects are not getting taps into the fear of missing out and establishes credibility.
Build A Visual Narrative
Show actual customers using your product or service so that prospective buyers can easily visualize themselves enjoying the benefits, relate to the people featured and, in turn, connect with your business.
When using images of people, show their faces since that is what best conveys emotion. Instagram photos with faces are 38% more likely to be "liked" and 32% more likely to receive comments. As such, consumers who see a user-generated picture when online shopping results in 4.5% higher propensity for conversion.
The more authentic your photos, the better you will be able to form an affinity with your customers, followers and fans. Using a real person associated with your company instead of a stock photo can increase conversions by 35%.
Create Conversations
Instagram posts should start conversations and encourage self-revelations that your social following can become a community. Participation provides a sense of connectedness, paving the way for conversions down the road.
Consider the desired response from your caption: Are you posting a statement or something that people will naturally reply to? Continue the conversation with exclusive discounts or by asking questions, using polls or hosting a live Q&A session. Dedicate time to responding to comments, liking other users' images and joining conversations where you can add value. By commenting on someone else’s profile, that person is 401% more apt to follow your brand.
Simplify The Path To Purchase
According to a survey, at least 72% of Instagram users have bought something they first discovered on Instagram.
Instagram has been continually rolling out tools that allow marketers to connect with customers in an immersive way, making shopping actionable and facilitating impulse buys.
• Stories: Include a link in your Instagram Stories that directs viewers to the product page on your website.
• Stories Highlights: These video clips appear directly under your bio and above your Instagram feed and play as a standalone story, allowing brands to showcase the content they want to be viewed first.
• Action Buttons: Fans can make reservations, buy tickets, place orders or book services through third-party partners without having to leave Instagram.
• Shopping: Transform your Instagram profile into a visual storefront with easy access to pricing and details, where shoppers can tap on a tagged post to take the next steps to purchase.
Instagram is an essential part of any holistic marketing strategy and can be a dominant force in your brand-building arsenal. To attract new followers, generate leads and sell, it is imperative to use photos that create an emotional association with your brand.
With a proper understanding of the psychology and engineering behind the platform, you’ll ultimately be able to guide fans to take the action you want: make a purchase and become a long-term customer.
Written by: Jenna Gross - Forbes Agency Council
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