The Promo Playbook by Cubic Promote

From Uber to Etsy: What Makes Digital Experiences Stick?

• charles-au • Season 1 • Episode 15

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We explore the critical elements of exceptional digital customer experiences with Aira, Lead Infrastructure Site Manager at Cubic Remote. Uncovering what makes brands like Uber and Etsy stand out in creating seamless, personalized user journeys through strategic data collection and AI implementation.

• Uber and Grab's successful digital experiences through personalized offers, service options, and cross-channel integration
• Etsy's website success factors: lightning-fast loading speeds and AI-powered relevant product recommendations
• Creating emotional connections through digital channels based on platform context and customer needs
• The power of including genuine human faces throughout websites to establish immediate connection
• Website optimization techniques: speed, transitions, animations, and minimizing user input requirements
• Responsible data collection practices that balance personalization with privacy protection
• Upcoming digital experience enhancements: AI chatbots, instant product reviews, and self-service tools

Please tune in for more future episodes.

Website: Top promotional products supplier in Australia | Cubic Promote

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Host: Charles Liu (99+) Charles Liu | LinkedIn

Guest: Aira Demesa (97) Aira Demesa | LinkedIn


Find out more and visit our website: https://www.cubicpromote.com.au/

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Cubic Remote Podcast. Today we're going to be talking to Ira Lead Infrastructure.

Speaker 2:

Site.

Speaker 1:

Manager for All Digital Assets, ira, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for having me, charles. It's nice to be here on your podcast, so we're going to be talking about digital customer experiences.

Speaker 1:

so far, before we dive into the topic, ira, did you want to share a little bit about yourself and the type of work you do here?

Speaker 2:

My name is Ira. I'm the website infrastructure lead at Cubic Remote. My role focuses on website optimization, so I make sure our website runs smoothly and give our clients the best experience possible.

Speaker 1:

What are some of the key fundamentals when it comes to customer journeys? Maybe let's start off with your best customer journey. Some of the best digital experiences I've had interacting with companies is actually with Uber. I've also used Grab as well in overseas countries and I found that the experience with Grab they seem to really copy Uber and the experience is incredible. When I use Uber, invariably if I have not used the app in a while on my phone it will ping me with discounts and offers for free rides.

Speaker 1:

If I do use the ride quite often, it would also then direct me to special deals and offers throughout the journey and the process. To make it easier, they've also allowed me, as a user, to select the levels of service I want. Do I want to go in a ride share with someone else, say a bit of money, or do I want to go from point A to point B using their fastest express service? And now that I've carried on into the app a lot of purchasing services into it, they take my journey and they know where I live clearly, and then they extrapolate it through other channels outside of my app as well, through my email, when I engage with them and, incredibly, I also. This is yet to be verified, but I do find that they follow me around on social media, on Instagram and other tools.

Speaker 1:

The digital journey and the amount of data it collects from me is epic. It's so seamless from my end I don't see anything that would indicate that I'm giving them a lot of data. And then the second is that they utilize that data really to enhance my customer's journey. So I thought my experience with Uber has been brilliant. What are some of your journeys digitally, ira, that you could share?

Speaker 2:

I think for me is something's something you can grab as well for food ordering or navigating the maps, so I use it for transportation as well, and I think it was able to make more recommendations for me for food delivery or transportation. I was able to know my preferences, so I think that's been it's the future of websites or experiencing online purchasing as well. The app was able to provide me recommendations, which is what I want.

Speaker 1:

I use Etsy quite often as well, and so Etsy also from a purely non-app, because I don't use the Etsy app, I just use their website interface. I think it's quite brilliant as well. The number one thing is intense speed. It's so fast, it loads almost immediately. The second thing is the ability for it to just memorize my previous purchases as well as give me relevant recommendations, and I think AI has got a lot to do with this in the future, just giving you relevant suggestions.

Speaker 1:

For example, I may have purchased some anime stickers in the past, but it knowing that I have purchased the stickers already, it's like highly unlikely that I will purchase more of the same stickers, but I might be. For example, I may purchase a naruto sticker. It might be thinking okay, clearly he's Naruto fan, I'm not going to recommend him Dragon Ball items, I'm going to recommend him a couple of maybe Naruto figurines, and I think that AI, when it comes to recommendation, is brilliant stuff. How do you feel about companies such as Etsy and others just taking a lot of your data and just using it to show you other products? So give it a magic wand, say if you were given unlimited funds, unlimited resources or you could create things out of the blue. What type of customer journey would you be creating for a user, based on their website, based on their mobile, based on, maybe their email or even, if you could, based on maybe their email or even if you could, would you be even willing to take it offline so that they continuously experience your?

Speaker 1:

let's talk about emotional connection when it comes to creating online experiences. So all these tools that we use. I'm quite a factual type of person where I simply want output something to be done. But how important do you feel creating emotional connections with customers through the online journey, whether it be social media journey, perhaps, when it's engaging on our website, perhaps it's even through this podcast? How important do you find emotional connection On a scale from zero to 10, zero being doesn't really matter as long as we give the customers what they want or 10, where you feel that it is 100% relevant to have the customers feel engaged, connected on an emotive level of a company.

Speaker 2:

When it comes to emotional connection, I think it varies, depends on the type of application or social media, for example, like for Instagram, because it's more image-focused or image-based social media. I guess the type of content put out there is as professional as on LinkedIn. So I guess for emotional connection I would make our content more connected for our social media on Instagram, for example, and for LinkedIn the emotional connection there is professional-related content. So I think it depends on the application For our website. I guess for our website the emotional connection there is how we communicate and engage with our clients. So I think for our website it's critical to have a website that is very fast and able to provide accurate quotation, because for our website it's the very first impression for the clients. I think it's very important to have an accurate pricing for our website.

Speaker 1:

Are there any other aspects to designing a website where you feel that we could provide tips to the audience out there on how they could create it so it's more engaging? Any tips and tactics that you could suggest or recommend to their audience who's listening in on ways that they could level up their websites so that it creates more emotional engagement and connection with potential customers? So you mentioned the speed as one thing. What about other ways and techniques to create an emotive connection, engagement and connection with potential customers? So you mentioned the speed as one thing.

Speaker 2:

What about other ways and techniques to create an emotive connection? I think knowing your clients is important. Getting a feedback from your clients or your colleague as well or your employees, because they're also the ones that's navigating the website. So, maybe because they know the clients more than you do, getting feedbacks from them on how to improve the website will improve the connection to their clients as well.

Speaker 1:

Data collection. With myself, I find that the easiest way to create instant connection is actually with human faces, and I'm not talking about AI faces, which would be identified quite easily, but simply having images of team members visible throughout the website journey. That's just a simple, basic, fundamental one-on-one human connection. When it comes to and having obviously now in this case having a smiling face, would make things infinitely better than having no human face, I find that it's very hard to replicate. Using the models, or perhaps just using product pictures simply is not enough to create the emotive connection that a human face can create.

Speaker 2:

I agree, charles. I think that's also one of the people I look for on the website. So who's behind, or who's yeah, who's behind your website? So?

Speaker 1:

what are some of the tips that you would want to avoid? Or perhaps you've been through a terrible customer journey online excluding speed, because obviously, if something doesn't load, you can't get to view it excluding speed. Can you share some of the worse examples that you have ever used? Perhaps it might be a service or a website that you've used and you've just hated the experience and what was that like?

Speaker 2:

I guess you could tell if a new website is very old because it does not have any transitions or any animation on the website, so you could tell what an old website looked like. So I guess for me, for my point of view, that's the type of website that I avoid most of the time, because, number one, sometimes not being optimized, not maintained, or maybe someone is not working on improving anymore. Or, number two, maybe it's loaded with different links or maybe gather any links that will lead you to all or entire barriers.

Speaker 1:

I would say One of the worst website experiences I've had is actually with some of the Australian government websites. Now, there's a lot of different websites with different services, but some of the services I'm not going to name which ones I find are very pain to go through, and the reason why it's a pain is they typically ask me the same questions repeatedly and I find that journey really does make things very hard. I prefer websites where the journey is as light as possible. It brings to mind one journey that I lost, that on my PlayStation 5, made a purchase within two clicks after filing the product. I purchased the product without even realizing I made a purchase within two clicks after finding the product. I purchased the product without even realizing I made the purchase. So let's talk about data collection. How do you feel about the concept of data collection? Are you happy to reveal as much data as you can to third-party sources? Are you happy to collect as much data as you can from third-party sources? What's your take on data collection?

Speaker 2:

For data collection. I think it's very smart for people to collect data, as long as it has a limit, like providing confidential data that's supposed to be shared on public as well. So data collection for me is also equivalent to personalization. So for AI, for example, we'll be able to provide you more personalized contents if you gather data, or more data from you. As long as no confidential data is shared, I think it will be great.

Speaker 1:

So what's next in the future of digital experiences, what you have in store that you will be rolling out in the work that you do, or perhaps in the industry as a whole? Let's start with the work that you do. What's next in your journey to creating magical experiences for our clients?

Speaker 2:

As for our website, we're actually in the process of rolling out a few new tools, so, for example, things like AI chatbots or instant product reviews. So currently we've got a product filter instant codes so we're making it better, we're improving it, so our clients have better coding and, yeah, so for us, for our AI chat support, I think, it means they'll get quicker answer and clear idea of what their product will look like, and for us, for our team, it means more efficiency and stronger insight into our client behavior.

Speaker 1:

Right. Thanks for sharing, and one thing that I'm working on behind the scenes is having more user-accessible data where users can find the information that they need very quickly without needing to ask a team member, so everything will be online. Perhaps they want to see a visual mock-up of their product. They could help themselves. So what I'm aiming for is a help themselves type of situation where, if they want to help themselves, they have all the tools available to them, and if they do want someone to hold their hand, we also have a team of account managers ready to work with them, whether their query is big or small, complex or simple. Thank you for taking the time out to have a chat about customer digital experiences with myself. For all those listening out there, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Promote Label by Kubrick Promote. Please tune in for more future episodes.

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Charles Liu

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