Discovery - far beyond traffic./Unsplash
Yonatan Nimrodi has been working for 7 years at Meta Israel, where he deals with everything related to experiences on the client side, i.e. what happens after surfers click on ads and enter the publisher's external website.
From there, his job is to help those advertisers to refine the customer's experience on the site and to make the most of the traffic that arrives.
In this article we will talk about the psychology of how people discover products online and how to design their DISCOVERY experience so that it is good.
According to Yonatan, this is the best opportunity in the field of marketing that people do not take advantage of enough.
In the 15 years he has been in the field, he has noticed an alarming phenomenon that happens in almost every company: you build a website once and then it just stays the same.
So it is true that the content is updated from time to time, but the design and customer experience tend to remain static.
Why?
Because the media team is busy buying traffic, the commerce team is busy with sales, and the site always sits in the middle where it is not clear who is responsible for it.
So you build a website and abandon it, without realizing that improving the website is the most effective way to generate profits with almost zero investment.
And if you think about the fact that the website is usually the first thing that investors, partners or potential customers will look at to know if a company is doing a good job or not, you realize that improving the customer experience on the website is something you should have done a long time ago, and continue to do it often.
So what is a Discovery Funnel and how is it actually related?
Yonatan Nimrodi./PR
According to Yonatan, every customer experience consists of 4 stages:
creative -> landing page -> registration -> purchase.
A person sees an ad, clicks and reaches his first post-click experience, the continuation of which can be a purchase, registration or, in the worst case, abandonment.
How do users consume the creative the first time they encounter the brand?
How do they consume the first experience on the site to which we refer them?
How do people actually discover products online for the first time?
These questions have many answers, but the first answer is not on the computer!
Mobile First is not just a password
97% of network traffic happens on mobile, so basically, a website built for viewing on a computer is not relevant at all, and this is true even if it has a mobile version.
If we want to design a site that will really be convenient and effective for traffic that comes on mobile, we need to think about what people do when they browse from their phone.
First, people hold the phone with their hands on the bottom half of the screen.
Sometimes they use both hands but in most cases they will use only the right hand or only the left hand.
To get to the top of the screen in this mode, you have to really stretch your thumb and the chance that the phone will fall out of your hand or that you will press something you didn't mean to press suddenly increases by dozens of percent.
This is why in the most popular apps in the world, decisions are made in the lower half of the screen - and a quick look at the mobile apps of Spotify or Netflix proves this.
For the same reason, menus should not be at the top as is customary on a desktop, buttons should be stretched and centered so that they are easy to press regardless of which hand is currently holding the phone, and it is absolutely forbidden to ask the customer to come up with a password consisting of upper and lower case letters, numbers and punctuation marks.
Why?
Because we already know in advance that it is going to challenge them and this is exactly the experience that we want to spare them in order to reduce the chance of abandonment.
If you really have to, ask for the user's email and do verification through it instead of asking for a password.
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People scroll 100 meters of content a day
Yes, you read that right.
This is the length of content that an average user scrolls per day across different feeds, equal to the height of the Statue of Liberty.
At some point along that journey they'll see a 4cm creative on their screen, and that's where we want them to stop and not just look but click. The likelihood of that happening is really low for a couple of reasons.
First, our attention span is limited. A really good way to understand this is to try to know what the user is doing on the phone without looking at the screen - and if you are one of those who travel by public transportation, here is an interesting activity to pass the time on the way. According to Yonatan, a person who watches the clock backwards is definitely on social media, he is in a passive mode like watching TV. On the other hand, if He's looking for something on Google, he leans forward because it's an active action that requires a little more concentration. In the case of advertising on social networks, we meet the customer in the first situation. It's a ZipZop mod. He didn't intend to buy anything. We offer him anyway, but we have to remember that in those moments when he encounters us, the desire to buy is not there at all. So these things are a bit complex and it means that the advertisements of the social age have to be very different from the television advertisements that some of us grew up with.
Jonathan hums an old time-out commercial in which the presenter is seen gliding on the snow for long seconds Until finally he stops, pulls a time out from his pocket, rips open the package with his teeth and burps.
It took 40 seconds to get to this moment.
Why?
Because it used to be impossible to skip the ads.
Today it wouldn't work because 80% of people don't survive even 2 seconds of an advertisement.
He hasn't taken his first step in the snow yet and we've long since flipped him over.
Therefore, today they start with the main message and then tell the story "how did I get here"? In this case they will see the man biting during a timeout and only then how did he get there.
So how do you build an effective creative in 2024?
In the creative workshop located in the Meta offices in Tel Aviv, they analyze working creatives. After analyzing campaigns in which hundreds of millions of dollars were invested, they came up with a proven recipe for creating ads or videos that start straight from the punch:
Everything - what do I actually sell?
Breaking the resistance - how do you approach those who are not currently interested in buying?
This can be through demoing the product, opening the package, wearing the garment, installing the app, etc.
Building trust - through proof, for example, see what it did to my skin, see what customers say and so on.
End with a call to action (CTA) - depending on what we want the customer to do.
For example - there is a discount, come register, go to the website, fill out the questionnaire, and so on.
And how do you take the experience of the creative into the landing page?
Yonatan points out what he feels is a serious problem: almost all websites in the world are built for people who come from a Google search.
He does not say this because he works in meta, but because when building a website, according to him, it should be done with the user's intent in mind.
To illustrate, 90% of the websites we enter will ask for an email right at the beginning.
If we already know what the product is and we came to register then there is no problem with that, but if we just saw an ad on TikTok and we don't know what the product is, or we come across the brand for the first time, why would we want to give our email?
Also offering products for purchase is not a good idea, because as mentioned, at this stage when the customer has just arrived at the website for the first time, he is not yet ready to buy, and if he came following a creative he saw on TikTok, then what he sees on the website should be compatible with what he saw there.
Jonathan also points out that if we sent people to our website from Instagram, they should not be sent to the homepage.
You need to drip the information to them just like in the four-step model we used in the creative phase: at the top of the page we will present in one sentence what the product does;
Immediately afterwards we will offer a significant discount and tell about our satisfied customers, or show "before and after" photos of the customers;
Finally, we will invite the customer to answer a questionnaire that will introduce him to the process and give him the feeling that he is receiving personal service.
Customization gives immediate value
63% of the tech companies use questionnaires in order to adapt the product to the customer - but there is no reason why we should not also do this with consumer products or in direct sales to the consumer.
For example, a questionnaire designed to know the purpose of the diet will give the user the feeling that he is getting value even before he is offered a product.
According to studies, the more questions the user answers and the more personal the questions, the more likely he will buy - because he is emotionally involved.
At the end of the questionnaire, we would like to give the customer a personal recommendation, based on the answers he gave.
And we'll tell you a secret, in many cases there is no difference between the recommendations that different customers receive, but the feeling that someone on the other side listens to them and makes sure to find the perfect solution for them is enough to increase sales, without once saying the words "buy now".
In conclusion,
We talked about a discovery funnel, which is actually a model that describes the customer's journey, starting from the initial acquaintance with the brand to converting the customer and creating loyalty over time.
If the discovery funnel starts on social media, increasing visibility and generating interest is a critical condition for success, therefore any creative you choose to invest a budget in must start straight from the punch if you don't want to be scrolled down the feed.
But even if the customer stops at your ad and clicks on it, it still does not mean that he will buy, so the following steps must be characterized by minimum friction and maximum creation of desirability.
The challenge is to create value without telling the customer to buy.
A thorough understanding of the customer's intent, where he comes from and his intent are the key to standing out in a crowded market.
More on the same topic:
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Creative
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