This report outlines key trends impacting organisations and how embracing digital experiences with impact is not only essential for business survival but will put you ahead of your competition and leave a lasting impression on your customers.

The digital landscape is becoming ever more competitive at an alarming rate. In the early, heady days of the internet, having a website might have been enough to get noticed. Early adopters capitalised on the novelty and just being in the game was enough.

However, digital transformation has been exponentially accelerated by the global coronavirus pandemic. What used to be a choice in the way we do things has rapidly evolved and is now embedded in our way of life. The resulting change in consumer behaviour is here to stay even post pandemic.

There are some key opportunities and growth sectors. Ecommerce is rising across all age demographics; social commerce is on the rise; the direct to consumer market is growing; and there is a wealth of new online market sectors to consider.

It is an exciting time for organisations to capitalise on the opportunities presented by digital acceleration and ensure they are operating with a renewed focus on their customers’ experiences and improved proficiency in engaging with digital channels.

This report is intended to support those leading, or working on, digital projects, who are passionate about the customer experience and crafting the best possible interactions between their customers and their organisation.

“Experiences with impact is in our DNA. Our goal is to create something special that triggers a response. Something you feel in your gut.”

Gregg Lawrence - CCO Yoyo

Our experiences of brands are so often taking place online that it is hard to remember a time when that wasn’t the case. When our interactions with companies, communities and people were only ever in face-to-face situations and delighting the consumer was dependent on an appealing shop front and the talent of the staff serving at the counter.

A shoddy shop front or a rude shop assistant was enough to have us turning on our heels and finding an alternative further down the high street. And this is exactly what is happening in our online world today.

If a website isn’t appealing to the customer, then they will continue their search until they find one that is.

Incorporating optimisation in your website design and build, so customers can find you in this crowded digital space is imperative. Companies spend a huge amount of time investing in SEO and slick, exciting marketing campaigns to entice customers to their website, so it makes sense that once those customers are there, the online experience lives up to the hype and delivers on brand promises.

57%

of people won’t recommend a business if its website isn’t designed or optimised well for mobile use.

Source: socPub: Mobile marketing mistakes

We’ve all experienced the frustration, when our interest has been sparked and we want to delve into some online content or better still, wanted to order something online, and then been completely let down by the process.

Slow page loads, unnavigable menus, broken links, unappealing content, not being optimised for mobile use and poor website design, will have customers walking away and going back to their initial online search.

“Experiences with impact (EWI) is about a careful balance: of creativity and strategy, data and instinct, short and long-term, business and user goals.”

Brook Bateman - Head of Strategic Partnerships Yoyo

Digital experiences with impact, are the culmination of years’ of strategic, creative and technical experience, delivering the most exciting online customer journeys to wow the user and keep them coming back.

It’s about the skillset of the strategists to discover the intrinsic business goals and ensure they are reflected in the digital experience. It’s the time taken to fully comprehend the needs of the customer and how the online experience will fulfil them. It’s understanding the technicalities of shining a spotlight on your website, ensuring it is found and that it performs as it needs to. It’s about the things you can’t see.

“Experiences are what people buy, what people remember and what people talk about. They are fundamental to the product and the way it is promoted. They build brands.”

Source: Jason Vandeboom, founder and CEO, ActiveCampaign

The customer can’t define or quantify a digital experience with impact. They will just see that everything works as it should. The online experience is friction-free and engages their senses. Loyalty and trust will build as the brand promises are fulfilled. Customers will want to return to their familiar and trusted brands and bookmark your website.

The impact experiences have on you can be long-lasting - for better or worse.

So how can organisations ensure they are creating digital experiences with impact that are having a positive effect on bottom line performance?

A carefully crafted skill stack, incorporating top level strategy, creative talent and technically excellent execution is what is required to deliver a digital experience with impact.

A fundamental ingredient, at the heart of the process, however, is the customer and their needs, wants, desires and reactions. This is where the social sciences of psychology and sociology play a role in influencing the experience.

Empathy mapping is one way we draw out these pivotal insights on our client’s customers. By considering all the forces acting on their decision making - from the functional aspects of their role or remit, to more emotional factors including personal goals or emotional triggers - we lay the foundation for what the experience needs to solve and how it needs to make them feel.

What insights you have however are only as good as the ways you draw upon them in delivering an experience to the end-user.

The fascinating world of semiotics is one way of being able to strategise your approach to creating digital experiences with impact. Semiotics explores sign-using behaviour and how people might react to your website design.

What is semiotics?

Semiotics, and semiology is the study of signs and sign-using behaviour and their meaning in society. Anything that can convey meaning or be open to interpretation can be described as a sign. Common examples include brand imagery, colours, website animation, use of imagery on the website or use of AI and chatbots.

On Marie Curie’s Memory Cloud, for example, the gentle falling motion of the animated flower petals was designed to create a soothing atmosphere alongside the fluid graphic builds. The sensory nature of the experience of being drawn into the page is amplified by the accompanying soundtrack, selected to strike precisely the right tone. This gives the user a sense of a safe, welcoming digital space, where stories of loved ones could be told. It opened the door for Marie Curie’s support services to a wider audience and spoke to anyone coping with bereavement, not just those using Marie Curie services. The impact was a wider reaching campaign and engagement with new users.

The old adage ‘A picture paints a thousand words’ is true and semiotics is the science behind interpreting ‘digital experiences with impact’. We can’t always define why we react to something or why we have a gut reaction, but it can be linked to psychological responses to signs.

One of the modern uses of semiotics to create connection can be seen in social media and the use of emojis and emoticons. According to research our brains now respond to smiley emoticons like a real face. Adding a human element to the design in terms of imagery or giving an AI chatbot a human name for example, makes the user feel more connected to the experience.

Everything you add into the digital experience should have your customer front of mind.

The user journey needs to be seamless, and all aspects of your digital project need to be aligned to your customer’s values.

So, although we don’t often think about or define how we feel when we’re navigating a website, or engaging with an organisation and its brand, it is clear that there are creative and design elements that will be affecting how we react, feel and respond.

“80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services.”

Source: State of the connected customer report, Salesforce

Research pre-COVID demonstrated that digital transformation led to improved financial performance for organisations. A Deloitte survey revealed that digitally mature organisations were three times more likely than lower-maturity organisations to report net profit margins and annual revenue growth that are significantly above the averages in their industry.

Digital maturity is defined as the extent to which an organisation experiences positive impact from its digital transformation initiatives. It takes into consideration 7 digital pivots, including a unified customer experience. This is delivery of a seamless customer journey across all interactions and touchpoints, in an engaging environment. In other words, experiences with impact.

For example, the Vintner website represents a vibrant, fun brand and all customer interactions are expressed in the same way. From the email and social media marketing, through to the customer ordering process and final delivery of the stock; the same brand ethos shines through at every stage. Order processing is quick, easy and fun and fulfilment of the order meets with expectations. There is no friction through the buying process and brand promises are delivered and enjoyable.

56%

of CEOs said digital improvements led to revenue growth.

Source: Blake Morgan: 40 stats on digital transformation and customer experience

There have been some clear winners in the pandemic, particularly those already embracing digital innovation and e-commerce as a channel.

For example, Tesco’s market share rose for the first time since 2016, as their infrastructure already included click and collect and their online grocery shopping proposition was strong. Conversely, those not already embracing the online offer, such as Aldi and Lidl, were slower to respond and lost out. With 68% of consumers said to continue to buy essential goods online after COVID-19, Tesco are likely to be able to maintain this market share because they were ahead of the competition and consumers are used to shopping with them in this way.

As the pandemic forced us to live in the confines of our homes, more and more people found themselves online and interacting more digitally than ever before. Amazon reported 26% increase in sales amounting to $76 billion dollars of business. Amazon gives its consumers a slick and engaging brand experience with speedy order processing and delivery. This means consumers shopping online have those same expectations of other organisations operating within e-commerce and when they are interacting with other brands.

Not only does digital transformation lead to revenue growth, the effects of not focussing on crafting the best digital customer experience are detrimental to the bottom line.

Any barriers to purchase and friction in the digital process will affect online sales conversions and revenue. With 62% of customers saying they would share a bad experience with others, word quickly spreads if organisations are getting it wrong. In addition, 57% of customers cite they simply go elsewhere to find better experiences if companies don’t get it right.

Customers engage and become loyal when they feel companies understand their expectations and needs. They expect so much more of their brands to help them solve the problems they face.

For example, Moonpig has online functionality for users to input key birthdays and anniversaries, as well as purchasing cards. This solves a problem for the user, as well as providing a useful marketing push tactic to the company.

The organisation needs to be trustworthy for users to give up this data voluntarily, in the knowledge the data will be handled carefully. The organisation then ultimately becomes a partner in the process, not just a supplier.

If brands truly want to connect to their audiences, they need to give them an experience with impact beyond the purchase to build trust and connectivity. Trust in a brand makes customers over twice as likely to select a company’s products and services.

“Brands need tangible interactions rather than passive absorption.”

Source: Campaign

For brands to attract customers and gain loyalty they need to develop engaging experiences and interactions to set them apart from their competitors. Research shows that companies often fall too short when it comes to delivering great customer experiences though.

One of the reasons for this is not putting the customers’ needs at the centre of the design process or involving them in validating the solution. Organisations need to invest in user testing and customer research to get a deeper understanding of their needs, wants and requirements before embarking on their digital design and build. This includes gathering meaningful, qualitative data, as well as quantitative data. It also means iterating and building on the experience over time based on learnings. Even if the solution delivers first-time, it should evolve, just as your customers will.

How to overcome the competition for customer loyalty.

The competition for customer loyalty has never been greater and focusing on the overall customer experience, particularly user engagement, is the route to customer loyalty and competitive advantage.

Strategy

You will need to start by researching your customer needs and defining your organisational goals. Ask yourself “What impact do you want to make?”. This should be twofold: an impact on the business as well as the end-user. This will be your anchor when developing your digital campaign. Be mindful of the user at all stages of the process. This foundation phase is fundamental to success, whether it’s technical limitations in the business or knowing your target audience on a deeper level, it sets the path for creating a solution that works.

Design

Consider innovations and engaging digital experiences that connect people at every touchpoint. Bring your brand experiences and the topic to life.

Our work with J.P.Morgan encapsulates this. Despite having been around for well over a century, Investment Trusts remain something of an unknown quantity among investors. The topic is complex and difficult to grasp quickly. A digital solution that can guide and direct users brings the opportunity to swiftly reach and onboard a wider audience than ever before.

Our solution, A Story About Trusts, engages, educates and, crucially, encourages users to explore how J.P. Morgan’s expertise and product offering in Investment Trusts could benefit their portfolio.

With creative freedom to explore the brief, we looked to the diversified, global nature of J.P. Morgan’s investment business for design inspiration. The result was the ‘particle’ concept, based on fluid fragments that dynamically react to user input, forming shapes as they swarm together. It was bold and distinctive but also alive with interactivity, which was vital as the site would be displayed on touchscreens at customer-facing events with the aim of sparking new conversations with investors.

These particles are used as a connecting motif, guiding users to priority sections of high-value content allowing the experience to unfold in manageable sections culminating in a quiz to uncover the objectives of the users.

“The final experience barely changed from the first concept pitched, which to us as a client, showcased the collaboration between agency and client to understand the heart of the business problem and produce a solution that answered every part of the brief whilst pushing the boundaries digitally.”

Jordan Chinchen - Senior Marketing Manager, J.P. Morgan Asset Management

Taking advantage of market trends such as the increased use of Augmented and Virtual Reality incorporate more engaging functionality in your campaigns. Companies are exploring and exploiting technology in their competition to engage busy audiences and communicate information in new, interesting ways. Technologies such as these can seem intimidating or out of reach, but Yoyo concepting, testing and launching AR experiences for J.P.Morgan within a matter of weeks in time for a key event.

Typically, AR requires the development of a bespoke app, which can present a significant development cost and also introduce a barrier to the user experience. However, by using A-Frame, an open-source web framework for creating augmented reality experiences, we were able to contain activity within the native camera app and web browser common to all modern mobile devices. All that was needed was a single, printed card for users to scan with their phone, avoiding the need to produce additional physical collateral.

In this case, AR helped the message resonate and ensured their outreach reflected how they wanted to be perceived. It emphasised and actively demonstrated how our client was closely aligned with the sector’s digitally-driven future and armed them with ‘wow’ moments to kickstart conversations with their audience.

Tech

Consider which technological solutions will enhance your organisation’s digital performance and how the website will integrate with other digital functionality to create a seamless experience. Too many brands invest in multiple platforms and fail to invest the time in making them talk to each other having the tools isn’t enough, making them sing harmoniously together is what will make your customers feel loved and loyal.

Planet

In line with trends to reduce carbon footprints, you can take a look at how your website is impacting the planet using this website:

If your organisation is positioned as one that places sustainability high on the agenda, then this will be a useful point of difference to draw out.

What’s the secret?

The icing on the cake is commitment. A commitment to impress the customer with an experience that will be so memorable and engaging that they will want to return to your site again and again.

If you are successful in creating a digital experience with impact, that resonates with your audience, this will translate to the bottom line.

“Brands and retailers will see a 3x higher lifetime value with consumers if there is an emotional connection.”

Gregg Lawrence - CCO Yoyo

Creating something powerful and moving is not easy. It takes vision, dedication to the cause, an unwavering commitment to being customer led, expertise and creative flair.

Crafting experiences with impact is also not cheap. A Rolex watch and a Timex watch both tell the time but there’s a stark difference between the two experiences. Driving a Ford Fiesta and an Aston Martin are no doubt very different experiences but essentially they are cars that transport from one place to another. It’s the same when crafting digital experiences with impact. You will get what you invest in.

One website might well be compared to another website – it is after all still a website – but it is the experience that will be different, what you can’t see, and that’s where the investment will pay dividends.

There are some common barriers to creating a digital experience with impact, here are a few of the pifalls

The technology driven mindset

The advent of exciting technologies can become a hindrance rather than help when an organisation adopts a technology-driven mindset. This comes in the form of ‘we want to use AR/VR, what can we create?’. The issue is then forcing a solution onto any problem where it may be plausible, but not necessarily the right fit. Problem-solving should be as it says, problem-solution in that order. Technology should enable the idea, not be the beginning of one.

The catch-all-customers approach

Every brand, product and service appeals to different people in different ways. Even the most well-loved brands will have different entry points into the hearts and minds of various audience segments. Not accounting for these variations in the creation of your experience can be a downfall. This doesn’t mean every audience segment needs a completely unique experience, but their differences and similarities should be understood to deliver on a shared experience that works, and accomodate nuances in journeys.

A failure to evolve

One of the beautiful benefits to a digital experience over and above physical is the ability to see how well it’s performing, and optimise without the need to overhaul or start again. Experiences should be built to learn from long term, as well as deliver on short term goals. Having an ‘after-care’ style programme following initial launch is what sets the best in the game apart. Optimising with incremental changes over time, as well as drawing inspiration for bigger innovations and changes in the future. Doing this does not mean the initial investment or experience delivered is weak, it simply strengthens what you’ve created to ensure it remains relevant and continues to work.

Creating experiences in siloes

Customers are impacted by every department in the business, involving a variety of stakeholders and perspectives in the early discovery process will elevate the solution to beyond what’s gone before for the brand. Diversity of skillset and thought will enable you to think about the end-user from all angles and touchpoints, as well as highlight challenges in implementation that may otherwise be missed. Ultimately, colleagues are customers of your brand and can provide valuable input to the process, as well as advocate for the end-result.

Experiences with impact needs to be embraced

“The final experience barely changed from the first concept pitched, which to us as a client, showcased the collaboration between agency and client to understand the heart of the business problem and produce a solution that answered every part of the brief whilst pushing the boundaries digitally.”

Jason Vandeboom, founder and CEO, ActiveCampaign

Creating digital experiences with impact needs to be embraced at the highest level in organisations and be embedded in the corporate value system. When leadership teams embrace experiences with impact and design them with their customers’ expectations in mind, they can build relationships with their customers, build their brand and ultimately improve their profitability.

It can no longer be the sole responsibility of the Head of Digital, Head of Marketing or Head of UX/CX but the wider C-suite and leadership team needs to ensure digital experiences with impact are part of the organisational DNA. Although traditionally the realm of creatives and marketing professionals, everyone has a collective responsibility to make sure they wow their audiences at every touchpoint.

Yoyo

Digital experiences with impact is at the heart of what we do. From its inception, Yoyo’s vision and purpose has been to create engagement between brands and real people by blending creativity with technology.

The digital experiences they create for clients offer a competitive edge in a digital world that is increasingly crowded. And it’s not just the digital experience that matters but the creative process of making something great; of getting to know the people and brands through discovery and curiosity; of developing long-lasting client relationships and friendships; of enjoying the creative process and at the same time caring for people and our planet.

“Yoyo exists to have a positive influence on, not just client outcomes, but our people, the wider community and our planet.”

Jenny Kitchen, Chief Executive Officer, Yoyo.

The Yoyo team has the optimum blend of creative and project management experience, technical skill and a passion for demonstrating impact and delivering outcomes to its clients. This means you can be assured of a first-class service that positively impacts the bottom-line of your business.

“When looking for an agency to work with, we knew that we had to choose a group of people who not only would work collaboratively with us to ensure our new brand was showcased in the best and most authentic way but were also culturally aligned with our core values.”

Hamish Kirwan – Operations Director, Vintner

If you would like to get to know us more, contact us. We can put a date in the diary for our first conversation and begin the process of creating an impactful digital experience just for you.

We look forward to hearing from you.
Jen, Gregg and the team

Get in touch with Jenny to find out more and let’s make something great together