Marketers always strive hard to boost website traffic. A significant metric which quantifies the performance of websites is the bounce rate, indicating the percentage of users who leave without delving any further than the initial page.
In this context, it is important to understand web accessibility. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990. It prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities and provides equal opportunities for accessing the web to all users.
Disabled users find it inconvenient to access disabled-unfriendly websites and their sessions naturally tend to bounce. A 2016 study from Click-Away Pound, a surveyor focusing on the online shopping experiences of people with disabilities, found that 71% of disabled customers with access needs usually clicked away from a website when they found it difficult to use.
These customers who click away have an estimated spending power of £11.75 billion in the UK, which figures to approximately 10% of the total UK online spend in 2016. The survey also found 82% of customers with access needs will spend more if websites were more accessible.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) elaborates on making the web accessible to disabled users. Adhering to the WCAG standards not only helps site owners improve the reach of websites, but also steers them away from unwanted legal repercussions.
What is AI marketing and how can it help reduce bounce rates?
AI marketing is empowered by the building blocks of artificial intelligence, helping develop creative services to simplify website accessibility. It leverages customer data with the help of machine learning to automate processes like extraction of data and prediction of customer behaviour that improves customer experiences.
Here are a few ways AI marketing contributes towards engaging disabled users and reducing bounce rates on websites:
Improving web accessibility
Website accessibility ensures equal access to users with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive impairments without any barriers. Empowered by technologies like natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, AI marketing helps marketers deliver personalised and contextualised experiences.
For example, Facebook has incorporated the automatic alternative text tool backed by object recognition technology to help the visually impaired. This tool uses screen readers on iOS devices to generate detailed descriptions of the elements in photos as the user swipes past them.
Private website owners should consider accessiBe, an AI-powered, pioneering web accessibility tool that simplifies the way business owners deliver accessible content to disabled users. This automated tool creates accurate alt text descriptions for images on websites, improving accessibility for visually impaired users. The application also ensures the website is compliant with WCAG 2.1.
Among the features that accessiBe offers to apply website accessibility are:
- Optimisation of websites for keyboard navigation to accommodate users with motor impairments
- A built-in dictionary which explains expressions, slang, and phrases for users with cognitive disorders
- Granular adjustments in colours, fonts, and typography to make content more accessible for users with visual disabilities
Boosting customer engagement
Customer engagement is naturally a defining metric to reduce bounce rates. With a diverse online community, identifying customer types and engaging them based on their requirements is a challenge for marketers.
AI marketing helps marketers deal with this challenge by categorising disabled users and self-optimising websites to improve conversions. For example, users with hearing difficulties may find it difficult to access video or audio content. It also helps users with hearing difficulties by offering textual scripts. Adding this script not only helps augment the customer base, but also boosts search engine ranking.
Previously, such scripts were entered manually. With the advent of AI-powered technologies, however, these scripts can be generated automatically. YouTube uses this speech recognition technology to create captions for videos.
Offering recommendations based on buying personas and search history
AI marketing offers product recommendations based on the individual needs of customers. These recommendations are derived from the user’s purchase history and preferences from browsing behaviour, which makes them highly relevant. With AI, marketers can obtain intuitive insights from scanning volumes of data on customer behaviour.
The AI algorithm leverages data such as account information, customer preferences, purchase history, and contextual information about the customer. Product recommendations are based on this data. This technology ultimately helps improve user convenience and helps with online purchases.
According to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), web usability for the disabled is defined as the extent to which users can use a product to obtain specified goals. This guideline throws light on the need to include simplified and understandable instructions on websites to help people with cognitive and learning disabilities.
Providing AI-enabled product recommendations eases the complications of searching the web for products and information for disabled users. The website automatically offers recommendations based on the history of the customer which narrows down the search results. These recommendations prevent customers with cognitive or learning disabilities from getting lost in the deluge of online information. The recommendations aim to direct them with sufficient information to accomplish the intent of their online visit.
Helping derive customer information to enhance the quality of service
It’s no secret that personalised services result in exceptional customer experiences. Using traditional analytics for this purpose will be time-consuming and tedious. The result will also be confined to pre-defined metrics. AI marketing, however, enables marketers to deliver quick and seamless customer services that are backed by insights obtained from numerous customer journeys.
AI-powered marketing uncovers numerous relationships from data to predict customer behaviours with the utmost accuracy. It also finds the drivers and inhibitors of delivering seamless customer services. Unlike conventional methods of collecting customer data, such as feedback forms and sign-ups, AI-enabled marketing initiates the right questions to derive insightful customer data.
In the context of users with disabilities, AI marketing helps websites optimise their usability based on intent.
Conclusion
AI marketing opens up new avenues to accelerate website performances. The above-mentioned factors of AI marketing will help marketers extend their customer base, understand and explore a different segment of the audience, and reduce bounce rates while driving potential traffic.
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