5 Digital Bites b/f Breakfast: SG Marketers Underinvest In Online Mediums, & More

Team Construct Digital
28 Jun 2016

Digital media is growing in importance.

Yet, research from Econsultancy and Datalicious found that Singapore marketers still overspend on offline media while under-investing online. What’s holding marketers back? Read this week’s 5 Digital Bites to find out more!

P.S Check out our blog post on why you should continue to spend on digital marketing, even during a downturn!

In other digital news: The “Marketing Trick of the Century”; Social media chat bots; Checkout page UX; Icons8’s redesign fail and what we can learn from it

1) Why you should re-evaluate your marketing budget

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In Singapore, many marketers continue to stick to traditional marketing channels (e.g. TV, print and radio). One possible reason is Singapore’s small geography, which makes it easy to seize a majority share of eyeballs with a single ad.

Marketers here would do well to capitalise on digital media. Research shows that digital is where the most consistent growth and investment is being seen. Marketers should also stop being obsessed with the distinction between digital and traditional mediums, and which ones to spend more marketing dollars on. Marketers should care about context instead of worrying about what medium to use. That is, where and when their marketing will be most relevant.

>> Originally from: Marketing-Interactive
Image source: Marketing-Interactive
Shared by Ying Yi Wan, Content Marketer 

Do you know how to maximise a limited digital marketing budget? Our Digital Marketing Budget Allocation Kit can show you how!

Get The Digital Marketing Budget Allocation Kit

2) Bottled Water Is the New It-Thing You’ve Been Tricked into Buying

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Sugary beverages have time and again been criticised for their negative side effects. The healthy lifestyle movement sought to tackle America’s obsession with sugary sodas by portraying water as go-to drink. But it’s not tap water that Americans are reaching for these days – It’s bottled water!

While the ‘drink-water-instead’ trend has no doubt inspired western consumers to criticise companies that sell carbonated drinks, what these consumers do not realise is that the companies they critique are the same ones that supply them their bottled water!

It’s been labelled the ‘marketing trick of the century’ by John Jowell in The Week . One theory for why consumers prefer to spend money on bottled water instead of simply drinking tap water suggests that buying bottle water reassures consumers that they are making the healthier choice for their body.

Companies like PepsiCo and The Coca-Cola Company have already started making the shift away from carbonated drinks to focus on the sizeable market for healthy snacks and other non-carbonated drinks.

>> Originally from: Business Insider
Image source: Business Insider
Shared by Edwin Tam, Digital and Content Strategist

3) Social Media Chat Bots - the Future of Communication

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Communication is evolving – one bot at a time. With apps like Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Skype, Telegram, Kik, and LINE having their own chatbot APIs, social bots can now reach an unprecedented number of users.

We are at the brink of a bot revolution. These bots will define virtual assistants, new purchasing experiences, and how we consume any service or product. It is predicted that in the next 2-5 years, bots are going to infiltrate our lives so deeply that majority of our chores will be chat-bot assisted.

But why chat bots?

Compared to scouring pages on a website, social bots make communication with brands much more convenient and intimate. The dominance of instant messaging apps also makes it easy for companies to market a bot and ease the discovery for users.

>> Originally from: LinkedIn Pulse
Image Source: LinkedIn Pulse
Shared by Melanie Lim, Content Marketing Intern

4) How to Improve the UX of Your Checkout Process

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Your checkout page UX can improve customer conversion on your eCommerce website. But what makes a great checkout page UX?

According to Yoast, an optimal checkout experience includes:

  1. Generating a feeling of trust: You want your users to be comfortable enough with you to complete their purchases. So, in your shopping cart overview, state shipping (and other additional) costs upfront. Any additional costs after this point in the checkout process can ruin the checkout page UX!

  2. Gamify the checkout process: The progress bar is important as it allows users to see how far along they are in checking out, resulting in gamification. This makes it even more likely they’ll finish the whole process.

  3. Convenience for users: Don’t force them to create user accounts during checkout as this could lead to shopping cart abandonment. Instead, ask users to create an account for future purchases after the actual sale.

>> Originally from: Yoast
Image source: Brooke Cagle @ Unsplash
Shared by An Phan, Technical Director

5) How Icons8 Lost 47% of Its Users After a Redesign

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Icons8’s story of how it redesigned one of its services and lost almost half its users in the process is a cautionary tale for UX designers.

The Icons8 team wanted to improve the overall look of its popular Request Icon feature by “making it simpler and more modern”. But because certain key details were axed in the name of minimalism, users ended up confused about what to expect from requesting an icon. The result was a 47% plunge in icon requests.

Moral of the story? There’s no point in pretty-fying or simplifying a look if functionality and real information ends up sacrificed in the process. Or, as a commentator put it,

Graphical whizzery must itself have a meaning or function.”

>> Originally from: Icons8
Image source: Startup Stock Photos
Shared by Kendrick Leow, Digital Designer

Want more digital news? Check out the rest of our 5 Digital Bites b/f Breakfast series!

Image Credits & Sources 
Header image:  kaboompics



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