The internet has had a significant impact on the way businesses develop and promote their products or services as consumers are increasingly engaging with brands online before deciding to purchase a product. As reported by Business Insider, 40% of consumers visit search engines to acquire more information before making their purchasing decision.

What does this indicate for a business? Developing and applying an integrated website marketing strategy with effective SEO and website user experience, provides a valuable opportunity to reach and engage leads online. According to Harvard Business Review, creating an evocative website experience drastically increases conversions, especially for firms closely related to technology. When Intel renovated its website, for example, software downloads were increased by 27%. This was achieved by adding a verbal advisor to assist visitors in downloading the best software for their camera. However, not all customers thought this was a good idea. More analytic visitors, who are also less verbal, preferred a more graphic way to present downloadable content and thought that the verbal advisor is annoying. Therefore, matching the cognitive style (“a person’s preferred way of gathering, processing and evaluating information”) of visitors as a website developer is a major driver of profit, since customers are more likely to navigate and process information more effectively, potentially leading to additional sales.

A research conducted by Chakraborty et al. in 2004 demonstrates the factors that directly influence the effectiveness of a B2C website’s user experience.

• Level of Information
• Organisation
• Interactivity
• Personalisation
• Accessibility
• Security
• Entertainment
• Usability

As stated by Kim and Niehm in 2009, perceived value is affected by perceived information quality, entertainment and online completeness, therefore if a brand is concerned about increasing customer loyalty through their website, such as Roccat, these 3 factors can directly increase loyalty rates. Personalisation is also crucial as it provides visitors with value rather than just trying to convince them to purchase a product. It is a great way to increase customer’s trust and expand the audience. Content strategy plays the role of the protagonist when it comes to a website’s user experience. Marketing expert Adam Erhart’s video suggests great ways to create appropriate content to reach the desired audience.

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ6V76Zd05Q

According to Forbes 77% of Marketers believe that personalising content in real-time is critical. As CMO suggests 33% of marketers consider personalisation their highest priority. This indicates that personalising digital touchpoints has countless benefits. Hubspot suggests 8 guidelines massive brands use for exceptional Usability, Web Design and User Experience. https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30557/6-guidelines-for-exceptional-website-design-and-usability.aspx

How can website developers personalise content?

One option, as proposed by the MIT Sloan School manager John Hauser, is to create a personal, self – selection website, where customers are given numerus options to interact and navigate through the website. However, this strategy can lead to websites that are confusing, complex and difficult to use as customer options grow.

Another approach to create personalised content is “Morphing”, a great approach for content mapping. Morphing is the process of automatically matching customers cognitive styles to website characteristics. The practical goal is to tailor functional characteristics in real time. Morphing includes: Recommendations, such as Amazon, Factorial experiments, such as Google’s Website Optimiser and Self-selected branching, such as Dell, as Ansari and Mella proposed in 2013. Different morphs appeal to customers differently. The Bayesian learning system can be used to sort the swift assessment of cognitive styles while dynamic programming engines will serve the morph most appropriate for each user. For instance, deliberate visitors prefer high detailed content whereas impulsive buyers may prefer info with less details. This method is used by BT in an attempt to sell broadband services more effectively.

When comparing the 2 morphs it is evident that the first one is targeting more a more analytical cognitive style, with graphical morph and focused content. The second one is a verbal morph with general content targeting more impulsive and verbal buyers.

BT Broadband Advisor 1

BT Broadband Advisor 2

Website morphing effectively utilises all factors influencing user experience, however, it presents at least 4 technical challenges:

1. Implementation needs a real-time working system that may affect loading times and includes difficult web programming.
2. Even if a customer’s cognitive style is recognised the website must determine which traits and characteristics match with which customers in terms of profit and sales.
3. Prior distribution on parameters is a must for practicality.
4. First time visitors will see little benefit as the website will morph on relatively few clicks.

In general, the best practice examples of website personalisation are demonstrated by Amazon and Very.co.uk where product recommendations and web banners are tailored to reflect customers’ needs and wants.

Amazon.co.uk:

Product recommendations appearing in the home page are relevant to the users past browsing history, therefore, increasing the chance of a click through. Marketing Week suggest that 35% of Amazon’s profit is generated by the recommendation engine, indicating that application of such an engine can be a game changer for an e-commerce website.

Personalisation can be a key for the ultimate website user experience, yet, there are underlying risks that can prove a catastrophe if not considered thoroughly.

1. Bombarding visitors with personalised offers.
2. Not using a control group while still testing. Some users should be able to access the generic version of the site to benchmark the impact.
3. Personalising everything is a trap. Users won’t be allowed to discover new things and might believe the range of products is extremely limited.

Razer is an international gaming hardware manufacturing company established in 2005. It is known for developing the cutting edge of software for businesses, gaming peripherals and systems, holding 30% of the global market share for gaming peripherals (Fortune, 2015). A Pioneer in developing a brand personality across the gaming community and industry. Razer’s gaming culture and brand image inspire devotion from customers in every continent, running by the motto, “For Gamers. By Gamers.”, often inspiring them to blindly purchase any new release. With over 8m loyal followers in Facebook alone, the company is becoming a lifestyle choice for people all around the globe. All sales are generating by their website leading to e-commerce site.

To set off, key problems on the website experience will be identified by conducting a Heuristic Evaluation. The task scenario is that of purchasing a new gaming mouse. The first issue encountered is that Razer separates their main website from their E-commerce store, therefore adding one more step to the journey (from products to store). “Product” section presents users a catalogue in which essential information is missing, such as stock availability and product price. Only in “Store”, users are able to see all information required for the purchase.  Another issue arising is that items displayed in the e-store are often out of stock, something that the visitor only finds out after clicking on “purchase”. In this common scenario, the level of customer success decreases. Users also claim to feel insecure when they are unable to make changes to delivery timings or track their package through the website, especially when ordering a laptop.

Compared to one of its competitors, SteelSeries, Razer has a more complex customer journey resulting in harder conversions. SteelSeries has a simple, extremely streamlined process of three steps to buy a product, whereas Razer has an additional step in the journey.

Both Razer and SteelSeries provide a unique range of interface elements on their website that become apparent on computers and mobiles. On both landing pages, the products take the centre stage before any features, availability or pricing is mentioned.  According to the general theory of visual hierarchy, this technique is very effective to customers because stunning photos of the product are brought up first and foremost, consequently forming a good first impression to customers. SteelSeries mainly uses large photos of products whereas Razer uses smaller ones. Razer aims to keep it simple by using large margins and big areas of black space to focus on single products or areas of content. Razer’s landing page usually features a large picture of a product and other smaller ones under the fold. Both companies have very apparent touchpoints, such as their social media pages and newsletter on the landing page, high quality email marketing, inspirational quotes linked to products and discount banners.

The website’s marketing targets both B2B and B2C. This post will focus only on B2C activity in order to identify the customer personas. Obviously, the main audience is consumers involved with technology looking for high performance and aesthetics. To better understand this, 2 customer personas will be introduced.

George the Student (Hobbies: casual gaming, Age: 18, Occupation: University Student)

George does not have high-purchasing power, therefore the decision-making process will take longer. Feeling safe when buying a product is one of his major concerns. He looks for credibility from online reviews and peers. This persona uses the website as a browsing catalogue and is driven by credibility and price. The decision for purchase will take longer in this case.

Max the Fanatic (Hobbies: Gaming, Age: 30, Occupation: Automotive Engineer)

Max worships Razer, he requires less convincing when it comes to Razer products. He wants constant updates on news and new products visiting the website 3 times a week. He believes self-image is very important to satisfy customers. This persona is driven by trends and brand image, is very loyal and will decide out of spontaneity and impulse.