We now spend more time using technology than we spend sleeping. Research by Ofcom has found that Brits spend, on average, 8 hours and 41 minutes a day on their mobile devices in comparison to 8 hours and 21 minutes spent sleeping. As people’s technology consumption habits continue to shift and evolve, brands need to adapt to these changes in the knowledge that their audiences are always on, consuming content at any time and from multiple devices.
This shift in consumption means the manner in which people experience your brand needs to be at the forefront of your strategy. With people switching from device to device, long gone are the days of a website using Arial and the app using Helvetica, instead brands now concentrate on a consistent look and feel, which is essential for customers to truly engage with your brand.
Yet it would be naïve to think that your brand is aligned if your website and app use the same font. Something small like speaking in an inconsistent tone on social media can differentiate one brand to another in the eyes of a customer.
If you think about a time when you reached a payment check out that was off brand or an app log in process that was completely different to the website you were visiting, you may well have reconsidered your purchase or lost interest altogether. Maintaining a unified customer experience is clearly important, so what can a brand do to ensure they offer just this?
No more Mr. Nice Guy
With so many technological devices available, brands do not have to rely on predictable and generic brand personalities. They can now grasp all the new opportunities available to them to introduce a brand to its target audience. In the past the choosing of fonts, images and tones of voice may have been left to the developers, not marketers or brand specialists. Consequently consumers endured clunky interfaces, an experience that resulted in a loss of customers. The control is now in the hands of marketers, who need to embrace unified user experiences to ensure their brand succeeds.
Unified yet targeted
A unified experience still gives way for a more targeted approach when it comes to communicating with a subset of consumers; the key is to stay in line with your core message. Marketers should maximise the feature sets of individual social media channels to allow for them to be experienced effectively alone or combined with other platforms to create a seamless feel. The only way marketers can ensure this is by taking the time to concentrate on the challenges and opportunities offered by each platform. A particular social media platform may be popular or fashionable, but that doesn’t mean they work for your brand. Marketers should take the time to decide what will work for their audiences and define a strategy which retains the identity and purpose of the brand.
The power of context
No one can deny that the option of tracking your delivery makes your life easier. But the ability to receive updates on when you should expect your package is not only great for customers but also for the company itself. Providing the option to access your order from several devices will improve conversion. This year, marketers will realise the value of creating a strategy that builds a digital ecosystem and provides context throughout the process for the customer.
As the reliance on technology continues to increase, brand managers and marketers will have to take control of the decisions that impact the way their consumers experience their company. By taking a pro-active approach to prevent an inconsistent user experience, brands will be less likely to sink to the bottom. Marketing professionals need to ensure they are putting the need to unify their user experience to the top of their strategy to ensure that their customers don’t get disinterested in their brand and go to a competitor.
By Matt Cross, Deputy MD at Hotwire.
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