A recent Digital Experience Index report indicates that 49% of people feel that brands are “missing the mark” with their websites and apps.

The study was focused on user experience and the way that we design and build consumer-facing technology, but I’ll take that a step further.

Digital marketing is obsessed with shiny things. We love viral videos, beautiful websites, and campaigns that get mentioned in industry blogs, but how often do we stop to consider our most important responsibility, which is to simply make it easy for people to do business with us?

I think the problem stems from the fact that we have defined everything that happens online as “marketing,” lumping our websites and digital communication in with billboards and ads.

In a traditional way of looking at a business, marketing is responsible only for the top half of the funnel. It finds new customers, gets them interested, and then passes them off to the “real” business operations to take care of the rest of their experience.

When we look at the online world, however, much of the work we do is the customer experience. In many cases, we are providing the product education, customer service, shopping experience, and even the post-purchase relationship.

If our only goal was to attract customers, then it would make sense to focus on shiny things (that’s how we get noticed), but when we consider that what we’re building goes far beyond the first impression, it’s easy to see why so many people are feeling let down.

At the risk of pumping our own tires (this is our newsletter after all), that’s exactly what we noticed way back in 2016 when we made the decision to pivot Junction and dedicate 100% of our focus on helping businesses build what we call Digital From the Inside Out.

Embracing that concept means putting the customer experience at the centre of all of our decisions. As businesses, we are not putting on a show, we are providing a service, and if we do a great job we will be rewarded in the form of higher conversion rates, loyal customers, and referrals.

Most importantly, we would never build an offline business without first doing a great job of laying out a physical experience that is easy for people to find, browse through, and engage with our staff.

We love the work we get to do with our clients, so if feel like your businesses could use a little more Digital From the Inside Out in the form of strategy, planning, or training, we’d love to hear from you.

And finally, if you work in the tourism industry, we have program that provides one-on-one coaching to boost your digital presence in a way that’s unique to travel and hospitality. It’s called the Digital Marketing Accelerator, and funding is available in many regions across Canada. To find out what financial support is available in your region, fill out the application form and we’ll get back to you.