Optimising Your Business Online

For businesses, marketing is a job that never ends and never plateaus as trends constantly evolve.

We take a look at how your business can align itself with digital marketing trends set to impact 2022.

• The pandemic has expedited digital development
• Fast loading times are critical
• So is optimising for mobile devices
• Conversational commerce, like bots and chat services, is increasing
• Long-form content is still appreciated
• Personalisation is key in marketing communications

Australians continue to spend more and more time online, however, it’s not just streaming services, shopping and social media that are seeing more hours consumed.

Learning, working and appointments like medical consultations and tutoring, now commonly take place online.

The result is that consumers have come to expect smooth applications with seamless integration with things like banking and calendars, all with minimal or no loading times.

In a recent survey by Pew Research, 40% of respondents said they used technology in new ways since the beginning of the pandemic. 58% said the internet has been essential to their lives.

Insights by techjury.net reveal mobile device optimisation is critical.

• Over 80% of internet users use mobile devices
• 83% of mobile users expect a flawless experience whenever they visit a website
• 80% of mobile users claim they are most likely to buy from companies with easy to navigate mobile sites and apps
• 61% of mobile users will never return to a website if it is not mobile adaptive

Back in 2001, the general rule of thumb was 8 seconds. If heavy images or graphics clogged a page, most users would “bounce” or close the tab, hit ‘back’ or otherwise move on after 8 seconds.

In 2008, users gave up after an average of 5.1 seconds.

In 2022, most users give up after 2 seconds. A report by hobo-web.co.uk found that a 2-second delay in load time resulted in abandonment rates of up to 87%.

Google aims for under half-a-second load time.

Solution: Especially on home pages and landing pages (where users land after clicking a link in marketing material), keep backgrounds simple and images in the correct format.

JPG and PNG are good choices for websites. If your choice is between JPG or PNG, use JPG for photos and PNG for logos. A JPG image is compressed and loads faster, a PNG allows a transparent background and retains more detail.

Online platforms like Canva allow you to resize images and download them as JPG and PNGs.

Have a look on your phone to get an idea of what people might see and how they may interact with it.

Ensure email marketing campaigns are optimised for mobile and when posting on social media, follow image size guidelines. Remember that some people might have poor or limited signal (and poor or limited patience), so keep images within emails sized correctly.

That’s both in terms of pixel size and byte size.

The most popular screen resolution across both mobile and other platforms is 360×640 pixels. Roughly 34% of mobile users and 19% of all platforms use this resolution.

As a general rule of thumb, try to keep email images to a width of around 600px to 650px. Also, avoid making your emails just one large image as many people have email images disabled altogether to limit data use.

Make sure to add alt text to your images so that viewers who have trouble downloading your images can still understand.

Ideally, your emails images will compliment text.

Platforms like Mailchimp allow you to create mobile-friendly, visually appealing emails with alt text.

Post social media content when people are typically browsing social media. Below are optimal times for each network.

• Instagram: Wednesday around 11am and Friday from 10am to 11am
• Facebook: Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 9am – 1pm
• LinkedIn: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 9am – noon
• TikTok: Tuesday until 9am, Thursday lunchtime, Friday 5am
• Twitter: Monday to Thursday between noon and 3pm

Conversational commerce is when a customer interacts with a business online through chat, for example a chatbot, social media or an instant messaging platform like WhatsApp. 

The customer is typically seeking answers or advice and, like in a real life setting, a representative from the company helps them with their query.

In the past, a business may have used a website as a way to showcase their offering and prompted people to contact via an email, call or webform. Now, more consumers are looking to cut the email and phone call step and instantly chat with businesses.

A 2021 report by Deloitte suggested the conversational commerce market size is expected to grow at more than 20% each year. Furthermore, retailers that get conversational commerce right have seen an uplift in NPS (net promoter score).

Set up a messaging system through Facebook (Meta) for your clients (and potential ones) to interact with your business for their needs.

It’s easy to set up an automated message for out of hours queries, which you’ll see when you return to work.

You can also make your own chatbot to filter clients, answer simple questions when they type words like “rates”, “fees” or “car loan” and even have them schedule a call time.

Long-form content typically means a piece of writing that is between 1,000 – 7,500 words. It may seem like in this day and age, consumers would in no way have the patience to read something so long, but you’d be mistaken.

A long-form guide offers an in-depth reference which details the process of ‘how to’ – something crucial in the finance industry where, as most brokers would agree, the average consumer is unfamiliar with many aspects.

These guides come in handy when people want to find out how and why something works, for example, a car loan.

The best long-form guides have icons or infographics directing the reader along the process, simple language, definitions of industry terms and examples. Ultimately, the guide will leave the reader with the know-how they were originally seeking.

Additionally, businesses position themselves as knowledgeable and willing to provide trustworthy help.

Craft a long-term guide
Google Docs or Google Slides is a good place to start as they are simple to work with, provide customisation options and can be exported in PDF format.

Think of the typical steps your clients have to take from first considering finance to settlement.

Using easy to digest, upbeat language write what happens and why, especially your hard work behind the scenes, at each step.

Flaticon is a fantastic resource for icons to label each step or action along the way.

If using the above mentioned Google apps, go to File > Download and select the PDF option.

Consumers are always looking for more personalised content and that means finding bespoke information.

For starters, content on social media and a website should resonate with an exact audience rather than traditional catch-all style content.

If you find a large number of your clients requesting boat finance for example, do some research on their age range and lifestyles. Tailoring some quality content targeting their needs and ensuring they receive it at the right time might yield some good results.

Although a tough egg to unscramble for many, Web 3.0 is beginning to unravel. Web 3.0 is the third generation of online services, websites and applications and will focus on machine-based learning (AI) to deliver more accurate bespoke content to individuals.

Web 2.0, which is what we know today, is read-write. For example, YouTube, like social media, provides a framework by a tech company (Google in this case) for users to create content for other users.

Web 3.0 aims to be read-write-own. The ‘own’ part means more control of personal data and more personalised content. If two different people type ‘asset finance’ into Google, Web 2.0 gives them the same results but Web 3.0 personalises results for more accurate content.

Consumers are showing less patience for clunky, slow and poorly designed digital resources but growing their appetite for smooth content.

Keeping up with the latest marketing trends can do wonders for businesses and although some of the above might seem a tall order to implement, it doesn’t have to be.

Reach out to the Nodifi marketing team if you’d like some assistance on how to ensure your business is optimised for today’s trends – marketing@nodifi.com.au