They perform analysis and optimize results in numbers, conduct effective marketing campaigns measured in numbers, improve the customer service process and measure it in numbers, help create engaging content (yes, also measured in numbers), analyze competition activities, give results in percentages, and manage sales by moving results in columns.
What do marketing research bring us?
Large organisations also order quantitative research including, marketing research or market research. These are implemented using tools to examine as many people as possible. Contact of the researcher with the respondent can be direct or telephone – important that short. . The researcher receives specific answers and then conducts statistics. From these we will learn what are the general trends: ,who?”, ,how much?”, ,,how often?”. They will provide us with information about current market processes and phenomena – demand, supply, price level, competitiveness or consumer trends. In figures, consumption patterns and trends, price flexibility among potential customers are examined, interest in new products and services is measured, demand and supply are analysed, and market structure is analysed. To decide by the management staff whether to introduce a product or service or update the current offer is very important data. Is that enough??
The results of marketing or market research are often quite optimistic, and the interpretations of the awarding entities are very biased, because in favour of the company's interest, the product put into the offer. A brief reading of the research report and the pressure “up above” may tend to influence business decisions later. The figures indicated in percentages (potential customer segment or purchasing preferences) and lack of reliable leaning over the material (over the consistency of the knowledge gathered and the existing knowledge of key customer groups, their purchasing preferences, a broader context of shopping – such as lifestyles, preferred media, financial security preferences, etc.) may distort the picture of individual market segments, which is further the risk of “burning the budget”.
Of course, Google Analytics provides data on channels, sources of redirections to our store and we know where to direct our marketing campaigns, while these numbers show some collectiveity without going into the campaign details. We know where the client's interest came from, but we don't know his psychological causes. These numbers are certainly useful in observing their stability and critical points.
Another aspect of quantitative testing is the way in which these studies are carried out. In a very truncated format, without going into detail, the surveyed responds to this, What they think. the most right – without doubt. Sometimes the responses (with questionnaires) do not reflect the reality of the surveyed or there are some options to be selected among them. The surveyed then corresponds to the most “closer answer” or “sought”. This is important if there are key questions for business among the questions asked. The wishfulness of answers is a nightmare of such research. It's just that respondents overdo their preferences, or they do it, because they want to keep their well-being.
The results of the above studies are valuable, for example, to learn about the scale of shopping in the fashion industry using the phone, increasing the number of quick payments close to the group of customers of interest to us or the indicative expenditure on hygiene measures. These are definitely numbers that give direction to thinking about a product strategy or a strategy of the price of many online business owners, because these are the numbers that need to be followed, which need to be supported in order not to get out of circulation. In turn, undeveloped to deepen knowledge of the phenomena or needs of customers will bring further plans for development on uncertain ground and will drive them to invest money in campaign/action/product/service with a great pass-out with the end customer to whom it is addressed.
The awareness of phenomena and trends is extremely important, because even if you do not absorb everything, you should be simply aware, for example, of how you do not use all available payment solutions, what you offer in return and what you strongly develop value for the customer. In return, you can not offer a quick payment of such a trend (which we may not be able to afford technically in the current situation), but you can tip the value scale for the customer to another section of the sales path. And what segment of sales, you should ask a potential customer.
The knowledge of numbers shows certain tops of the iceberg, while the nuances of the functioning of the industry in the online world are already under its surface. . Under the surface there is, among others, a knowledge of the customer's needs. This is the knowledge that is necessary when planning to reach it, as well as to facilitate its interaction with our product or service, even with channels (all touchpoints, e.g. a website, are involved here). Even if we have a paired Google Analytics machine counting downs and increases in conversion on the shoe-sale website, then without knowing what affects these moves, we are floating on just a tab of numbers, without knowing what will happen to us in a year and longer than a year. It's possible to know their cause.
What happens when you measure the numbers?
The measured phenomena can therefore be learned deeper, following their course. The example of the continuing 1 % conversion is noted in statistics. The entrepreneur founded several reasons and sought solutions such as: hiring a marketing agent from SEO, also hiring a better graphic designer responsible for designing even better graphics, entering new sales cooperation channels, entering a store with even cheaper footwear, etc. The experience of the entrepreneur here is indisputable – he knows his business, he makes business contacts, he predicts some consequences, measures statistics, observes his competition, he also looks for new forms of attractiveness of the offer, but carefully. So far, the methods used to obtain customers were in different ways effective – they worked for a time, i.e. they raised statistics for a while, increased sales slightly, and then returned to the level of 1%. The entrepreneur also knew that sales cooperation should be repeated in other channels.
He's been operating on numbers all along, not expecting the problem to lie elsewhere. In the online store he was developing, he did not realize that a potential customer was doing some “work”. He expected that the occasional changing banners with the sale would turn on the recurring waves of interest and thus the shopping. From user session recordings (it was plugged into the store Hotjar) entering the store's website, the main “work” to be performed was scrolling pages with many offers of shoes. That's certainly not what the potential client expected.
How do I get to know your preferences?
It is obvious that the first seconds of attracting interest to our website are important. These seconds are converted into numbers, thus making profits for the company. The User Experience industry dealing with the issues of website usefulness has long developed principles of good interface building practices, as well as building such a site structure to simply design more friendly ones. But that's not what we're going to talk about. These good practices are based on the knowledge of certain phenomena related to the perception of a man derived from behaviorism, psychology, sociology, visual graphics. The way the user receives and moves on the pages, has been somehow schematized. Technological development and rapid growth rate, while hastily added their variables to human reactions in contact with technology.
This knowledge is still updated through quality testing, including utility tests. Through their case, conducted regularly at intervals during the development of one product/service, we learn about the preferences of different user groups about what they want to achieve through our service or product and errors that do not allow them to perform tasks.
Returning to our example of an online shoe shop, a potential customer faced the task of “over” several pages with shoe offers to find shoes for himself or for someone in the family. Thinking “targets” of our client introduces the primary principle of design of the interface, under which we will be subject, for example, to graphic thinking. User tests showed that our store has an underdeveloped system of filtering results according to personal preferences and the appearance of the first page. The search solutions on the site have made it very difficult in a short time to reach the user's dream shoes or to review the offer of similar shoes he would like to buy.
What the numbers don't show...
The observation of users while searching for a pair of shoes for themselves probably gives us the knowledge that we as authors and store administrators did not give him easy leads to this task. The answer comes to this: the client will go to another store, and he will not return to ours.
In our example of a shoe shop, we saw on Hotjar recordings leaving the shop after the page was scraped down and scrolling pages with a real rash of shoe offers, through which visitors had to break through. In the current growth of the pace of life – this is too much work to do for a potential customer. During tests, users complained about the performance of filtering results, especially when men's shoes were mixed with women's and children's shoes. On the main page with news and subsequent subpages reigned chaos in the presentation of shoes – without classification. This type of throwing out results discouraged them from further searching. Based on the opinions expressed and the observations from the session recordings, it was concluded that this should be redesigned.
What do observations do?
As the user moves on the side not only according to his own preferences, but also in such a way that he sees. Some information will be searched in specific places, e.g. the options for filtering results will be searched for in the main menu, the offers of women's shoes in the “lady's shoes” section. It is enough to know what the visitor's main objectives are and to facilitate his path to this task. He will also face various obstacles that may be insignificant or significant enough to leave the store. These obstacles can be identified by observing user interaction with our product (website). During the utility tests, it is used by the moderator of the so-called protocol of loud speaking, through which we get an opinion and comments on what he does and sees.
The interaction of the user with the interface, with its structure, graphic elements is a non-numbered data that translates into abandoning pages, product cards, baskets, forms, registration, etc. Well thought out and designed interface is a goldweight. Therefore, it cannot be expected that a “some looks” party or the idea of an entrepreneur “the customer will find out” will produce the expected results. Every day, Internet users abandon the pages they browse for reasons of not finding the information they need, of not being able to complete the task in a short time. Good sales are not affected only by the price.
We can now know most of the causes that affect the low score. An intensive marketing campaign will not help if it turns out that the client concerned will not be able to find out if the product really fits or will not receive precise information about returns or complaints. The more advanced the product, the more information about it should be provided in order to resolve any doubts before buying. With the same care we should also approach the services offered or other touchpoints, that is, the places of contact with the customer. It is simply worth asking customers from our target group about their impressions and opinions. This is worth monitoring to reduce the risk of costs incurred on missed treatments raising the number of page entries, but without further involvement.
Even the best advertising will not replace the well-designed and friendly user path. What does that mean? Each interface element is where the user expects it, for example Main menu. The site facilitates finding products that a potential customer cares about. Among them there will also be bookmarks to manage their account, i.e. the so-called self care. Filter management will take place smoothly, with the possibility of going back, removing some variable, to change the results. Search results will have some kind of easy logic to guess for someone who is first looking at the page, as well as the ability to easily modify these results.
Sometimes the process of achieving the goal by the user is very complex for various reasons: identity verification, receipt of necessary documents, receipt from other channels of account confirmation, payment receipt, etc. This process can also be designed in a painless way for our client. Here you need to gain detailed knowledge of all the activities that are on his side. The research will capture it and further design the user flow so that the task can be completed so as not to give up during the lack of information or waiting too long.
Business knowledge vs customer knowledge
The entrepreneur is convinced that he provides good enough solutions and touchpoints, and is sufficiently understandable. If they are understandable to him, they are understandable to others. The entrepreneur has worked so long to develop the product that he can find himself quickly. He clearly lacks not his perspective – outside of him are the prospects of potential customers, not connected with our business. Therefore, in the absence of confrontation with users, the designed touchponts (website) contain errors that block further user engagement. In a day of crisis, there is no hope of its longer presence, when it cannot find out how long the delivery will take or the phrase found meets the message: no results. It is the customer who is to be found in our structure and to emerge victorious from this interaction – not the team working constantly for the company's financial success.
