Want to Win Conversions and Increase Revenue? Leverage Identity
Ever wonder what the “sweet spot” for conversions might be? And if so, what's your benchmark? In 2020, the global website conversion rate was 4.3%—surprisingly low. The goal of any successful marketing team should be to drive visitors to their website, then convert those visitors into customers and users. Clearly, this feat is not easy nor an exact science. But, like web pages themselves, the endeavor may be more of a dance between art and science.
Successful conversion rates help companies achieve several initiatives:
- Boost revenue
- Increase users or paying customers
- Gather product or service feedback
- Gain insights into their website design, functionality, and messaging
For companies offering products or services, each of these goals is critical for success.
Another relatively recent, key benefit of gaining user conversions is the gathering of new customer data, also known as personally identifiable information (PII) or simply digital identity. Collecting user information and securing this data is critical to modern, forward-thinking organizations. Understanding your users and customers and having their confidence in how you use their identities is essential. Your customers expect a customized experience based on their identity each time they access your product, service, or site—without friction. Eighty-three percent of users say that a seamless experience across their devices is important to them. So, by identifying a user, gathering background on their identity, and customizing their experience, your company gains a serious edge over organizations that ignore these investments. Meanwhile, you’re also making gains in revenue and earning customer satisfaction.
Secure your identities to hold conversions and win customer loyalty
As your website or device gathers customers and users through conversion, these users will provide a subset of their PII and/or that of their organization. This might also include their reasons for choosing your product or service. This information constitutes their identity, which must be diligently secured. Identity management is critical to developing trust with your users.
To that end, it’s key that you develop a relationship of trust in these initial interactions with your customer. Users are trusting your company to securely manage their information while simultaneously making it available when and where they need it. So it’s critically important that you protect those customer accounts. If you earn and maintain this trust, they’ll continue to buy and refer your product to others. So, the more you can learn about a converted user's identity, while keeping it protected, the more you strengthen this hard-won relationship.
Gather insights to provide a seamless experience
Once you’ve converted a visitor into a customer, you’ll want to learn how they use your products, services, or website. Identity gives you these answers. Tying your customer to a secure identity allows you to track behavior, functionality, and workflow.
A key stat is that 70% of consumers say they prefer a personalized experience. Understanding your customer’s behavior enables your development team to personalize their experiences. This translates to learning what functions they use the most and providing them with access to what is important to them. You can easily uncover this kind of data through tracking tools like Hotjar, UserZoom, and Winware.
The key takeaways here are to
- Capture your user behavior
- Tie this information to your customer identity
- Provide this data to your product development or engineering team
Free of polls or customer surveys, you can use this intel to make changes to your current offering and/or customize it for unique experiences.
Use identity to convert, upsell, and decrease customer churn
For even established brands, driving visitors to a website is always tough. Converting those visitors to leads, users, or customers is yet another challenge. However, the obstacles don’t stop there. Your company needs to retain them, and churn is a real challenge. It costs 6 to 7 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one, so, intuitively, businesses focus on current users and customers. By understanding your customers and utilizing identity to recognize their needs, wants, and patterns, your customers will be more loyal to you, buying more products or services.
In a recent Think Impact report, companies stated that 65% – 75% of their business came from retained customers. This implies that if you can accurately capture your customer’s identity, then implement a road-mapped strategy to retain and upsell them, you’re looking at a significant success metric. Build an experience customers enjoy, with access to the services they want and trust—they’ll remain customers.
Another interesting stat is that 90% of companies annually track customer churn. Why? By tracking, analyzing, and implementing improvements based on identity insights, a company can reduce its churn and increase customer satisfaction which can, once again, enhance that bottom line.
What's the bottom line?
Converted customers are a direct source of revenue. They spend more with your company, and they share their experience with potential customers, providing leads and referrals. Hopefully, I’ve made clear that utilizing your customer’s identity is not just about storing their information but so much more, helping you to
- know your customer
- provide an unmatched level of security
- build sustainable trust
- improve your existing products and services
Want more details on securing customer identity management? Visit www.okta.com to learn how we can help.
