The best way to understand your customers’ motivations and needs is to get this information directly from them. An added benefit of asking for customer feedback is that doing so engages your customers and lets them know you truly care. With some companies, the customer feedback tool appears when users exit the site without making a purchase so that they can better understand why. With other companies, the tool appears after users have made a purchase so that they can understand what these users enjoyed and what persuaded them to buy. However, most companies make their customer feedback tool accessible via an icon that appears on the lower-left corner of the page, and the user can click on it at any time to give feedback about the site.

Of course, customer feedback is most useful when compiled and analyzed across various customer demographic, geographic, and socioeconomic levels. Insights from feedback analysis can provide a wealth of information regarding ways to enhance the site with specific personas in mind and addressing specific customer pain points.

YouTube has become the hub for tutorials and informative videos about products and services. But what if you could bring that discussion to your site? Again, engage your customers by understanding what they need. Skis.com, shown in Figure 8-13, realized early on that some customers did not understand the difference between certain types of skis, and had other questions about using their products. So, the company created several videos informing users about its products and addressing some of their main questions. Skis.com realized that a more informed user is a better potential customer. By providing the information users sought, instead of allowing them to navigate away from the site to search for the information, Skis.com engaged its users and increased its business tremendously.

Skis.com’s use of video to inform users of its products
Figure 8-13. Skis.com’s use of video to inform users of its products

Another engagement tool that is related to videos and has gained some traction in recent years is video spokespeople. As a conversion optimization company, Invesp has never been a fan of this tool, although companies have succeeded in implementing it. A company would use a video spokesperson to explain its product or service in an engaging way and point out areas of interest or facts pertaining to the product or service. However, one of our clients deployed video spokespeople on their brand pages to explain the brand to users, and they were shocked by the results (but we weren’t): they experienced a 19.2% decrease in conversion rate after running the test for more than a month. Customers complained that the video spokespeople were annoying, and customers also did not appreciate the information they received. However, it’s important to note that with some sites catering to the services industry, such as consulting, video spokespeople have proven to be minimally successful.