Episode 26: CMOs are facing a perfect storm: Online brand engagement is falling. Here’s why.

From Shoptalk Las Vegas, Amie chats with Jean-Christophe Pitié, CMO and chief partner officer at Contentsquare about their recently published report on the customer experience journey from initial acquisition to long-term retention.

Transcript

Amie:

Welcome to Retail Untangled. My name is Amy Lata and this is the podcast where we speak to retail industry experts and find out business hacks that help them succeed. You won't find these gems anywhere else. And we have some superb stories from the cold face, as well as helicopter insights from retail industry leaders. Digital teams are under increasing pressure. To thrive in 2025, retailers need to master every customer interaction and getting the digital experience right is more critical than ever before. In this episode, I chat with Content Square's Chief Marketing and Partner Officer, Jean-Ch  ristophe Pitié, to talk through their recent 2025 Digital Experience Benchmarks report to find out where retailers can optimise experience, remove frustrations and drive growth.

Your recent insights report analyzed 90 billion sessions, 389 billion page views across over 6,000 websites to really focus in on the whole customer experience journey from initial acquisition to long-term retention.

The results were really interesting. Before we dig into some of the more specific data, one of the top line takeaways from the report was that a series of smaller shifts is reshaping the customer experience. So can you start by painting a picture of the state of play today and then tell us how this butterfly effect, which was described as in the report, has really changed the landscape in the recent years? I mean, I'm assuming that at some points in time there was bigger changes. 

Jean-Christoph:

Yeah, no, it's a great question. And if you zoom out, let's zoom out. Let's imagine digital experience, customer experience as a Formula One race. It used to be very simple, you go full speed, you stay on the track.

That's the job of marketers, where hey, you're a courier, you get as much traffic as possible, you try to convert them. Very simple. And it feels like, you know, in the last few years, that's your butterfly effects. A lot of small things have changed, change has been thrown at retailers and customers. Like in the Formula One racing, like unpredictable weather, sharp turns, and predicted pit stops. And so in retail experience, would be, think about a Google search algorithm changing, LLM coming up, people shifting to social media or TikTok. That's all these small changes which are shifting the customer experience and the traffic landscape and so that's why you can talk about the butterfly effect because you can't pinpoint really one small change but it's all the sum of these small changes that are making the massive impact we seeing on traffic or conversions.

Amie:

Makes sense. So, if we start at the top of the digital experience, and I'd really love to unpack, sort of weave our way through for our listeners, there's been a steep decline in owned and organic traffic. How is the traffic mix shifting and what's the impact on acquisition costs and spend?

Jean-Christoph

It's kind of the perfect storm. Sorry for being negative, but when I talk to all CMOs and retailers, they tell you it's the perfect storm. Less traffic overall, think it's minus 3.3%. Retailer is minus five. More, as you said, more paid traffic, or less organic. You want to get it. And even within the paid traffic, you see more paid social. And we know paid social does not convert as well as paid search.

So if you align these three elements, again, give you some numbers, retail or traffic minus 5%, big traffic is at 13%, which makes up 39% of the traffic. It means the total cost of acquisition for a customer, you know, for retailers has been going up by 19% over two years. So talking about inflation, that's a lot. And we all see it. It's not just a report. We have qualitative feedback to show it. And so again, I talked about some of the changes, but probably the biggest one are wide traffic is going down. Overall, we see and shift to paid. We see Google search optimisation.

You know, and it's small changes like the zero search click, AI overviews for example, so you have less organic traffic, less SEO. You see a lot of people spending more time on social media, TikTok and so on, and Meta, and mobile too. With people spending more time on mobile and less on desktop, you know, it's also impacting your traffic. So that's some of the changes impacting traffic. 

Amie:

It makes sense. So,not surprisingly, consumption, which measures session depth and time on site and scroll rate dropped by 6.5%. What do you think are some of the reasons for this? 

Jean-Christoph:

Yeah, so we have less customers, more expensive, and also spend a lot less time. What we call consumption is also engagement. You mentioned the metrics.

Again a couple of things one, the shift to mobile we've been talking about 10 years about it but it's really happening and you know attention span on mobile phone is much shorter than on your laptop and to give you some ideas on mobile like in luxury consumer brands it's 80% of the traffic is coming from mobile so that's a structural shift which is explaining why consumption is declining and I think it went up from 80% it went up by 2 points last year again. That's one reason. 

Two, we still have a lot of new visitors. So brands are probably not doing enough with returning customers. And know, new visitors, you shop around, you... shorter span of control, so more new visitors. And we're also seeing I'm getting a bit technical, but PDP, product detail pages, you know we see more and more traffic being redirected directly to the product detail pages, which is good because you have more specific product information, but it's a bit like sometimes... 

Amie:

Maybe bad if it's not the right product. 

Jean-Christoph:

Yes, maybe bad if it's not the right product, so you have a higher bounce rate, exactly. And it's a bit like sometimes, if you go too fast to the product pages, it's a bit like if you enter into a store and you get to the checkout directly or most, like you want to browse around, walk around, and so again, it's a balance, but that's all the reasons why we're seeing engagement going down.

Amie:

Interesting, so less people to sites and retailers and then once they're there, it's not staying as long. 

Jean-Christoph:

Correct, correct.

Amie:

It's tough. So we've got, we've, we've captured them. They're on site and frustrations across the whole experience is still common. And there is a digital discipline that that's costing retailers a lot. So, and I mean, on the flip side, it's good to know that for those that have a really disciplined approach to experience monitoring, top performers removed about 4.5 times the frustrations, but I'm keen to understand what's the real impact of frustration when we're talking numbers like this?

Jean-Christoph:

 I call it a revenue drain or the silent killer, the frustration. It's basically you're spending a lot of money to get all these customers come and then they leave. 

Amie:

You're acquiring them but you're not keeping them. 

Jean-Christoph:

Yes, it's throwing good money after bad money. So that's why we call it the silent killer. if we explain, maybe let's explain in two seconds, what is frustration? Frustration is slow, Slow down time usually less than three seconds, usually two seconds. It's rich clicks. When you know when you click, we capture all of that data. You can see people clicking on a page, or it's not very easy. UI, economics, it's not really good. It's errors. And so we all encounter. And it's still, as you said, it still haunts 40% of the experiences. It got better last year, but it still haunts 40%. And I'm sure, like you and me, we all have, if you think about it, I'm sure you can think about a website or mobile apps you use recently. You were frustrated about it. So it's still very high.

Amie:

I think it's still really high because of the fact that people don't have this sort of discipline to perfecting it over time. It feels like it's something that's more of a journey rather than a destination. You've got to be really on top of it. 

Jean-Christoph:

No, I think you're spot on. I think...Because many, I think it's getting better, but many brands are still very focused on convergence. And again, now it's not about going fast and staying on track. It's about very precise driving to go back to my earlier analogy. And two, think customer expectations also are raising. I think you and I have different expectations now than 10 years ago. So I think, as you said, it's a journey. The bar is raising.

your report is that conversions fell 6.1 % across digital which is scary but you also said that retailers are still really focused on that point so it's interesting right now by addressing the things we've already spoken about in terms of you've got the frustrations we've got the traffic and I'm assuming you know an increase in paid social and that kind of thing

Amie:

Now, another finding from your report is that conversions fell 6.1% across digital, which is scary, but you also said that retailers are still really focused on that point. So it's interesting, Now, by addressing the things we've already spoken about in terms of, you've got the frustrations, we've got the traffic, and I'm assuming, you know, an increase in paid social and that kind of thing. What other tips do you have for reversing this sort of conversion crisis? 

Jean-Christoph:

Yeah, I would say you... Yeah, it's a crisis. It's scary a little bit. I think there are a couple of things. One, obsess over speed.

We talked about it for a session, but a very fast load time, pretty good. And retail is detail, as you all know. I don't know if you heard this expression. I'm sure you heard it. Retail is detail, but I'm just going to give you a small anecdote. Last week, I was talking to the CMO of a luxury brand. I can't name him, I think, I think Breitling, Rolex-like, very high-end luxury. The CMO was telling me he was spending an afternoon every month watching session replay of customers browsing on his website. 

So you know, basically,he was just watching dozens of replays of what the customers were doing on the website because he was trying to really understand how customers were experiencing the experience of his brand. and he was telling me, I'm selling $30,000 watches, so I don't have that much traffic. So for me, every experience has to be amazing and great. I need to delight the customer. My point being, it's detailed. So by being very focused on speed, by being very focused on detail.

You can really improve it and fix the PDP. We talked about it. Fix the PDP. Make sure you land the right traffic on it. Probably the most important one is segmentation. Make sure you segment your data between returning customers. They want more personalisation and new customers. Don't land them too fast on the checkout or product pages. So again, at the end of the day, it's all about data. And without data, it's just another opinion.

Amie:

Yeah, interesting. And I mean, we hear a lot that it's all about data. But what's the missing piece for retailers? Because we have a lot of data, but it doesn't seem like we're translating that into actions. 

Jean-Christoph:

I think it's, I say that at the end of the day, it's also about art and science. We need the data.

But the art pieces, that's what we talked about. It's like this CMO of a luxury brand, watching a session with them, trying to see what can be done. I think for me, it's getting in a multidisciplinary company, it's getting everyone coming together, thinking about the customer experience. It's IT, data team, marketing team, business team, all coming together is critical, looking at the same data.

Of course, it is critical, focusing on all this detail, removing the frustration. That's what's that's what's really, it's gonna make a difference.

Amie:

Yeah, and do you think one of the struggles from a marketing, or is it marketing perspective, is that, like, is there a missing skill set? Because a lot of CMOs over time, as an example, aren't necessarily trained in that kind of technical data. What do you believe is the gap that people aren't getting to this point where they can, really monitor and bring results? 

Jean-Christoph:

That's another question is like, are you measuring the customer experience? Is it NPS? I think you are the podcast presenter at NPS. Is NPS the right matrix? So it's another debate. I think for me, there's no...

Amie:

There's no overarching issue? 

Jean-Christoph:

No, there's no overarching issue. There's no easy solution, think. It's everything we say. It's no revolution. It's a journey. It's everything we said before. But I think…I used to work for Microsof, run Microsoft.com, one of the biggest websites. And it's all about these small details, looking at qualitative and quantitative numbers. I think the qualitative insights are getting from customers. We're seeing some people doing surveys and so on, like you do for NPS. All of that brings it together.

I think for me it's probably the one piece missing is making sure as a CMO or head of e-commerce you have goals which are not only KPIs and data goals. Otherwise you lose sight.

Amie:

And  I would assume that the head of e-commerce and the CMO have different remits sometimes, right? So it's potentially really understanding you know, what the outcomes are for this particular process. Because if you are looking at the KPIs for two very separate roles, that also might be a sort of shortfall in terms of the actual focus.

Yeah, that makes sense. So if we look at this holistically, some of the stats, you know, We have used the word crisis nearly almost more than once I think more than once but I'm sure getting the digital experience is but as I said before it's more of a journey not a destination. What are some brands or can you name some that are doing this well? 

Jean-Christoph:

Yes, can do it in this way I think yes. I think if you think about it in the US, probably North Face, you know North Face is an amazing experience and you can go browse on their website, on B2C is an amazing one. In Europe of course some of the luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Dior are all doing I think a pretty good job. 

Amie:

And what do you think we can learn from them? 

Jean-Christoph:

I think what they are trying to learn omni-channel consistency. It's hard. It's hard. We've been talking about it for 15 years, but it's really hard still. But I think they are very focused on omnichannel consistency, so we really listen to them because they know customers. They switch back and forth between both channels. The second thing, and we just talked about it, I think they are bringing together all these teams with different KPIs. They don't look at it just through the lens of one KPI or two. So again, marketing, product experience, IT, data, all of that, all these teams working together is critical. And I think the third thing, it's a job, but I have to say it, I think they are using a great analytics tool, like ContentSquare, you know, to add them, get the data and insights to fix it. 

Amie:

Sure, it completely makes sense. So from the report, are there any other sort of top level findings or any golden nuggets for retailers where you go, this is what you really need to hone in on. 

Jean-Christoph:

I think it's in the report, so I don't think it's a golden nugget. I would encourage all retailers and everyone to think about how paid search is going to evolve with the new LLM, Gen.AI stuff. We are going to see a very quick shift from Google search I believe to know the ChatGPT compiler out of the world. don't for you and me but we are starting to see the trend. 

Amie:

I know about it. 

Jean-Christoph:

You know about it so you know I think it's going to be much faster than we expect even if we see that today the traffic is less than one person coming from you know LNMs and chat bots it's going to shift very quickly so what does that mean for your brand you know how do you get it's kind of the USTO it's going to be a new source of traffic so it's an opportunity but it's going to be a threat so I would encourage everyone want to stop thinking about the LNN and Gen.AI strategy. 

Amie:

Excellent. Well, thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to add? 

Jean-Christoph:

No, thank you. It was a pleasure. 

Amie:

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Retail Untangled and a big thank you to Jean-Christophe Pithier from Content Square for joining me live from Shop Talk Spring in Vegas. To be the first to know when the next episode lands, like and follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts.