Customer acquisitionAccording to studies, our attention span in the year 2000 was still 12 seconds, but by now dropped to 8 seconds only, which means that brands must succeed even faster to get the attention of their customers and make their message stick in their minds immediately.

Not to mention that patience is generally a rare commodity. See the ad or video, click, and buy is the ideal customer journey. Hence, it is important to master it successfully in order to trigger a conversion, and here is how you can achieved that, although customer acquisition in the 8-second era is becoming increasingly difficult.

Personalization, real-time marketing, and responsive design are the three most important key factors to succeed, besides providing the right content, at the right time, on the right device. In fact the combination of all these three aspects, started to become the core competency in online marketing. Nevertheless, many websites of major brands and companies are still neither providing personalized nor relevant real-time content. So far, really good personalization in real-time is only practiced on a few portals and websites, such as on Netflix, Facebook, or Amazon, although the latter actually produces mainly logical relationship between products.

But how does personalization in real-time really work?

Some tools on the market already offer real-time and personalization in all facets. Based on the browser information and the IP address, you can receive accurate GPS data that reveals the location of the target person. This information is of great value for retailers, since it is allowing them to easily customize campaigns that are e.g. based on the current weather forecast, which means: "You need an umbrella? Then turn left and you will find the nearest store to buy one."

Who is the user, what he is doing, and what he is looking for?

Personalization, however, can by no means be equated with stalking or espionage, since technology cannot know us fully as a human being. It can draw, however, a fairly accurate picture of us as users by learning which device we use, understanding our usage context, and consequently be able to give us an appropriate content that’s appreciated in our current situation.

Therefore, examine both the context and the behavior of your users. Analyze which products they are looking for in your shop and offer them complementary products in a similar color or the same style the next time they visit your website. Take advantage of all data the user has to offer in order to create the best user experience for him.

Deliver best performance, because users don’t like waiting!

Ask yourself, if your content is optimally adapted to the respective device. Anyone who wants to capture the attention of the users, must enthuse them. Always show your visitors exactly where they stand and which brand offers them the content. Only a few iconic brands in the world, such as Coca-Cola or Nivea, can afford to act without brand logo.

On large displays, high-resolution images look good, while lower resolution images allow for a better user experience. For that reason, you should provide a swipe function for mobile users and various touch functions. Even the navigation should be adapted to the smaller screen.

Speak the language of your user!

Did you know that only 55% of the online users worldwide speak English? Well, that’s more than half, but you can imagine that speaking the appropriate language is an important success factor. Needless to say that most people prefer to use a website in their native language, therefore, create your website in as many languages as possible. No MNC can go without a multi-language site and has to present its website in many different languages and adapt it to their users respectively.

Recognize the context, allow transactions, and above all do not hide your features. Use A/B testing to find out whether, for example, an offer or a function performs better with a large call-to-action button on the homepage than with a link on a subpage.

In fact, more than 50% of the world's largest websites are permanently in the so-called ‘repair mode’. Although they offer the most important key features and a decent user experience, companies generally do not test new features, since they are busy trying to improve current features. Thus, innovation often falls by the wayside, but keeps us at least steadily on our toes.

By Daniela La Marca