A Recession is Here: Digital Experience Optimization First Movers Will Survive and Thrive

A Recession is Here – Only the Digital Experience Optimization (DEO) First Movers Will Survive and Thrive

Significant economic changes are coming sooner than we'd like. Even so, MarTech budgets are expanding due to increased online spending over the past few years, and this demand will increase even more as the macroeconomic storm develops. However, this budget expansion only deals with keeping up and isn't geared toward getting ahead of the curve. Being asked to do much more with much less will be your new situation, and the story will not change no matter where you go.

Maintaining a competitive edge this holiday season, for example, will be even more challenging due to economic pressures. Retailers and eCommerce websites are especially vulnerable. Earnings are melting, margins are shrinking, and revenue is being chipped away. It's never been more critical to optimize the digital customer experience and eliminate known causes of end user frustration so you can weather the economic storm and come out ahead.

Are you prepared for what's already knocking at your door? 

The optimists post articles about how eCommerce and digital need to "evolve quickly or be left behind." That's true, but the current situation is now dire regarding transforming efficiency and optimization into top-line revenue. Having the discipline and foresight to be prudent and wise with technology during these times will require the ability to prove the ROI of each of your toolsets accurately.

Let's explore a timeless concept, overly discussed and rarely embraced when times are "too good" but desperately needed when conversion rates and margins are shrinking. In these times, just a few percentage points difference may mean snowballing downhill financially or sustaining business and strengthening your brand.

The commercial internet is only about 25 years old. But the recent spike in energy prices increased FED interest rates (U.S.) back in Q1 of 2022 to 8%+, plus an inverted yield curve (that has preceded every recession in the U.S. since 1955) are all reasons to prepare for leaner times.

Former Treasurer Secretary Larry Summers recently analyzed the central bank's response to higher inflation. For over a year now, Summers has been warning about the economy we appear to be entering. He understated the current circumstances by stating, "the odds on a hard landing within the next two years are certainly better than half, and quite possibly two-thirds or more."

Consumer and producer prices are now at levels we haven't seen since the early 1980s. The consumer price index recently hit 9.1% in June, and the producer price index is above 10%. The National Federation of Independent Business's index of small businesses recently revealed that confidence is now at its lowest level since the pandemic. Price increases are not transitory; consumers feel it, which means your business will be impacted. 

Digital Experience Optimization

The Digital Experience Optimization (DEO) Platform is a PaaS that will produce incredible dividends in these uncertain times. DEO brings together all possible digital touchpoints a business has with its employees and customers. It's aimed at delivering a continuous and complete digital journey across applications, devices, and services by monitoring the various touchpoints users interact with. The current digital ecosystem provides opportunities to learn from user interactions and gain actionable intelligence.

The best DEOs are the ones that allow you to know with certainty which projects will deliver the most revenue lift and then provide the proof, complete with ROI receipts. For those responsible for the digital experience, brand opportunity, and revenue opportunity, do you know with 100% certainty if every digital optimization or performance project is the most significant contributor to newly found revenue? How can you prove that what you are working on is producing (or saving) the most revenue?

 Do you have accurate receipts of how much ROI the last project is now hauling in? Or is it a loss? Or do you not know? And how should DEO handle the overlap between sales recency and frequency?

"Proper Digital Experience Optimization focuses as much on retention and user lifetime as it does on the immediate revenue benefits," says Mike Lively, Head of Technology at Slickdeals. "The more actionable, accurate information that a DEO Platform gives you, in terms of what the problem is and how it can impact larger scope metrics, the more beneficial that tool is going to be."

Hear more from Mike Lively and a panel of digital experience experts during an upcoming webinar to discuss site optimizations and holiday preparedness. 

With the Blue Triangle DEO Platform, you now don't have to guess at this stuff, and leadership that's moving on these opportunities are shouting it from the rooftops. This is one guessing game you can no longer afford to play.

Stop guessing which projects will yield the most returns. Now. Before first-mover competitors eat your lunch. Before you find yourself behind the curve or beyond the escape velocity of what the market will bear. 

Transforming from guessing to knowing is how you will avoid pain. If a recession hits hard in 2022/23, without a platform to guide you through ROI-based decision-making, it will not go well for you, your organization, or your company. I am not asking you to consider changing the kinds of projects you are working on. I'm not even suggesting that you switch tools. I urge the entire industry to embrace the accurate prediction of revenue outcomes based on specific tasks.

MarTech budgets should be increasing to meet consumer demand during the impending recession, but how will CIOs, COOs, and CMOs utterly understand which technologies and projects contribute to online revenue? When assessing the most significant needs for web and digital, having a DEO in place like Blue Triangle is one of the best ways to solve this problem because it provides business line-of-sight from the C-suite down into the dark corners of operations and operational tools. And to ensure a holistic perspective, the DEO Platform can include both online and offline transactions to understand the impact of cross-channel conversions for digital affiliates and in-store purchases.

In talking about transforming DevOps to RevOps, Dan O'Reilly, Head of Group CRO at a leading online fashion store, said, "Every company should have Blue Triangle."

Operational tools are for KPIs, but the business needs to be driven by objectives and key results (OKRs). One cannot expect a functional set of operational-oriented tools to yield a business outcome accurately, so ensuring you have a holistic platform that aligns your desired business outcomes with the actual business outcome will be essential to surviving and thriving.

Begin now by creating revenue opportunity and brand opportunity reporting (i.e., loyalty programs, price alerts, newsletters, engagement offers, etc.) that directly map to every performance and optimization project. Within the DEO, your A/B/C/D/E testing will prove that your decisions are always winners and reveal the ROI receipts you'll need to prove the strength of your team.

A Director of Digital Experience at one of the leading sofa and carpet retailers in the U.K. that generates significant online business, recently commented, "By implementing the Blue Triangle Digital Experience Optimisation Platform, [we have] already begun to see a return on our investment from increased digital sales and conversions. Without the Blue Triangle solution and the team's expert guidance, it costs [us] missed revenue opportunities across the customer journey." 

So before tough economic times overwhelm you, explore digital experience optimization with the Blue Triangle DEO Platform. Doing this now will quickly deliver success and a bit of practice that will inform the best way to optimize the digital experience through both economic downturns and times of prosperity. Leadership will find you to be the trusted partner they rely upon to keep revenue optimized from the smooth digital experience you have been able to maintain across all screens.

Summary:

• Leverage a Digital Experience Optimization (DEO) Platform like Blue Triangle to transform your business from "guessing to knowing" which projects will move the needle in your business.

• Use DEO to create a revenue opportunity baseline now for your current business and allow you to manage your business line of sight between executives and digital operations.

• Utilize DEO as a holistic decision-making mechanism for producing multiples of site optimization ROI, creating verifiable ROI receipts to justify future digital projects, and turning a cost center into a revenue center by moving from DevOps to RevOps.