Decoding Digital Body Language

Body Language, ”the gestures, movements, and mannerisms by which a person or animal communicates with others.” Body language is key to interpersonal relations, as it helps us understand how a person thinks or feels especially when verbal communication is unavailable. In addition to helping us better read people’s emotions, body language also helps us adjust our behavior accordingly without explicit direction from others.

We are born with the ability to read body language. It is intrinsic to how we communicate.

But body language isn’t only limited to interpersonal interactions. Body language is also available online in digital form. Every interaction a visitor has online, implies the visitor’s interests, needs and intent. There is a wealth of untapped, self-defined data available to marketers to improve their digital interactions with visitors, written about in detail by Steve Woods. The challenge?

Marketers Continue to Utilize One-Size-Fits All Web Content, Ignoring the Digital Body Language of Their Visitors.

Can you imagine if we acted like this in real-life? Picture this: You walk into your favorite shop to buy new shoes. You find a pair you like and ask the clerk to grab you a pair in your size to try on. The clerk comes back with a pair of jeans. Not only are they not what you asked for, they are also 2 sizes too big! As you start to object, the clerk responds that these jeans are his favorite product the store sells. You’d probably be a little annoyed right?

Stop Using The Same Brand-Centric Messaging, Start Focusing On the Visitors Needs.

Recently there has been a push to create more visitor-centric content, and marketers have responded, creating whitepapers, emails, datasheets and other content marketing material that addresses the visitors needs and challenges. But, for most websites, the story remains the same. Your homepage probably displays a slideshow telling the company value proposition and featuring a few core products. The content remains the same whether it’s the visitors first or fifth visit, where they’re located, whether they’ve already downloaded content and regardless of what pages they previously visited.

How to Identify and Use Digital Body Language to Personalize The Visitor Experience With Your Website

Visitors leave a trail of interaction data online that denote their interests and the challenges they are looking to solve. Use this digital body language to personalize the content and call to action served to each visitor, enhancing their digital experience in an unobtrusive, yet valuable fashion. You help them find relevant information faster and don’t have to waste time asking them to complete the same online actions again and again.

Here are some examples of how to identify visitor’s needs using digital body language data:

How to Identify Someone in the Awareness Stage

• Visitor has never visited your site before


• Arrived on your site by searching a non-branded keyword term


• Clicked on an advertisement to visit your site

How to Identify Someone in the Interest Stage

• Returning visitors, have already signed up for e-mail or downloaded marketing content.

How to Identify Someone in the Evaluation Stage

• Has visited multiple information pages on your site


• Visited your pricing page

For more on using digital body language to improve your web performance, download our whitepaper, “How Personalization Advances Leads Down the Sales Funnel”

Source: B2C_Business

Decoding Digital Body Language