Digital Stress Test: Is your website meeting customer expectations?

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Digital stress test: Is your website meeting customer expectations? By Lindsay McLeod


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Many companies are applying stress tests to their corporate websites to see how they measure up against their competitors and to validate whether they are meeting customer expectations. You should be doing the same with your website. It's your point of differentiation and likely your greatest acquisition and retention tool. You need to make sure your website is up to par and ensure your customers’ needs are being met every time they visit. Take this simple seven-step stress test. If you can't answer “yes” to all seven questions you should be making plans to revise your site and improving your customer experience. 1. Do you know what your customer journey looks like? Where do they start this journey? Is your customer standing on property with a mobile device looking for a promotion? Did they see a billboard on the interstate and are now trying to find you online? It is important to acknowledge that the journey doesn't start simply at your website. It could start minutes, or even days before coming online. Understanding where your customers come from and then driving them through a journey that satisfies their original question is paramount. Removing any barriers from that journey is the first step to success. 2. Do you know if your website supports all types of visitors? Is it usable on mobile, tablet and desktop? And above all, does it meet current accessibility standards? It is crucial (and required by law) that all these user needs are met as customers become more savvy and fickle. You have to be inclusive of the many devices in the marketplace.

3. Do you know your digital cost of acquisition?

No longer can you throw money against digital ads and assume they will work. Measuring only clicks and impressions are a thing of the past. It is imperative that you measure and know how much money you spend to acquire and retain customers in your digital journey, and, more important, how much you spend to lose a customer. To do this you need to know what brought the user to the site, in how many steps, what converted them and where you lost them. This is the art of understanding attribution and the cost to acquire a customer. Ignoring this measurement will guarantee that clicks and impressions will continue to send false positives with little impact on the bottom line.

4. Do you offer and reward your customers with exclusive content?

Technology has given us the ability to segment to a level that we now know what pair of shoes a customer last looked at online. Customers expect a personalized experience. Generic content does not satisfy the masses. Custom content is key and only half of the equation. You need to put in as much effort producing rich content as you do providing it to your customer. Do you house it in a member-based mobile app? Do you have to register to get access to this content? Customers are willing to work for content that is rewarding. Asking for preferences and personalized data to access this content is a win for both marketer and customer.

5. Do you know what content you are posting/sharing/saying in two weeks, three months or six months?

Taking a reactionary position or, even worse, ignoring social content is a thing of the past. Having a content strategy that supports a customer throughout their digital journey is key. Knowing what that content looks like weeks ahead is even more important. This ensures your content is on brand, is strategic and delivers on your digital promise. It also gives you more time to focus on the organic discussions, humanizing your brand and if need be - deal with a negative situation.

6. Do you know if you are you paying for inefficient keywords?

On the surface it looks like you are generating awareness and traffic, but from qualified customers? Unlikely. So many times when reviewing a client's adword setup we uncover the ugly truth — you are paying for broad match keywords that have nothing to do with your vertical, let alone your segment. The opportunity is endless to target very specific customers and tie it back to your ROI when done correctly. Knowing how to leverage that opportunity and implement a keyword strategy for both paid search and organic search that supports your customer journey is where many fall short.

7. Do you know how your email is performing?

Emails have become a commodity in the digital space. At times worse than regular junk mail, with some of the messaging not even making it to our client’s digital doorstep. Yet email continues to serve a purpose — but you need to make it work even harder than loading up a generic blast and hitting send. Email is the delivery mechanism of your customer journey that you have control over. Ensuring it is personalized, exclusive and timely will prove of great value to your customer. Measuring open and click rates will no longer suffice. You need to understand where and what your customer does after they have opened and clicked. Tying email into your digital journey will give you the visibility you need to understand which customers to attract, retain and just how much you need to spend to keep them.

If you answered yes to all seven questions, congratulations you get a gold star!

If you didn't and you believe your digital strategy doesn't measure up, work with a marketing expert such as Marshall Fenn, which can help casinos across North America differentiate their brands from the competition, increase property traffic and use mobile technology to increase customer traffic.

Lindsay McLeod is Director, Digital Strategy at Marshall Fenn Communications in Toronto. Marshall Fenn is a full-service marketing agency with over 20 years’ experience developing marketing and advertising campaigns for the casino industry in Canada and the U.S. For more information, visit www.marshall-fenn.com.

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