Website Magazine February 2015

5 Web Design Principles for Easy Interaction, Page 20

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THE MAGAZINE FOR WEBSITE SUCCESS FEBRUARY 2015

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PERSONALIZATION for the Digital Consumer INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

Next-Level Marketing Automation Using Humor to Increase Conversions Everyday Content Development for SEO Top 50: Digital Ad Platforms for 2015

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PERSONALIZATION for the Digital Consumer

24

Today’s consumers can take their digital business anywhere and that’s causing companies to rethink how they capture and keep visitors’ attention. Personalization-related technologies and strategies are fast becoming the best approach to do so, of course, providing modern digital enterprises with powerful ways to cater to customers’ wants and needs, in some very creative and engaging ways.

THIS MONTH IN WEBSITE MAGAZINE

30 Top Apps for Web Pros

While there is no shortage of mobile apps to choose from, Website Magazine profiles five innovative applications to download today.

32

The Link Between Humor & Conversions

Making an immediate connection with website visitors is the only surefire way to get them to stay, but is humor the best approach?

Explore Website Magazine’s

DEPARTMENTS 09

Stat Watch: Who’s Personalizing What?

10

Enterprise Ready:

12

Small Business Lab:

13

Gamifying Employee Motivation Next-Level Marketing Automation

Quiz Time: How Socially “With It” Are You?

14

50 Top: Digital Ad Platforms

34 Email Marketing’s True ROI

Marketers that fall into the common open/ click-through rate trap when measuring email’s ROI may miss out on the bigger digital picture.

16

Everyday Content Development

18

Companies don’t launch websites with server migration in mind, but they’ll need these practical strategies when the time comes.

38 Display Advertising Myths

From click-through rates to banner blindness, online advertisers would be smart to not believe everything they hear about the Dos and Don’ts of display advertising.

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E-Commerce Express: Polyvore’s Impact on Web Design

20

36 Server Migration Guidance

Mastering Search:

Design & Development: 5 Principles for Easy Online Interaction

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Web Commentary: Reinventing Your Digital Business

GET THE DIGITAL SCOOP Check out Website Magazine’s email newsletters covering search, e-commerce, social, design and more at wsm.co/webscoop.

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From the

EDITOR Let’s Get Personal

Find Website Magazine at these Internet industry tradeshows. eTail West Feb. 17-20 Palm Desert, CA LeadsCon March 3-4 Las Vegas, NV Next Generation Customer Experience March 23-25 San Diego, CA

The Magazine for Website Success

Ask any consumer why they remain loyal to (and regularly purchase from) certain brands and the answer will likely be the same: they deliver a personalized, useful and meaningful experience.

The problem is that most companies simply have no idea how to take advantage of this, no longer nascent, trend toward delivering personalized experiences. In fact, according to a 2013 Econsultancy report (“The Realities of Online Personalization”), 72 percent of companies say they don’t understand how to carry out website personalization (the common barriers are the lack of technology or the inability to translate data into action). As a result, only 29 percent of marketers today invest in website personalization and the use of behavioral data. That changes now.

Digital enterprises that recognize the importance of engagement and actively deploy solutions that deliver a more personalized experience to Web consumers are those that will more quickly establish a loyal following and drive positive business results in 2015 and in the years to come. In this month’s feature article, Website Magazine Associate Editors Allison Howen and Derek Schou profile the many technology solutions, tactics and techniques that are helping brands get more personal with their audience of prospects and active clients.

Engagement and personalization is the primary focus of this edition of Website Magazine, and readers will find a range of articles tackling this fascinating topic. This issue also includes guidance on the use of gamification within the enterprise, some advanced marketing automation techniques and some very useful insights on using humor when in pursuit of conversions. These pages also contain useful and practical information on design trends in e-commerce, as well as tips on content optimization, migrating servers and driving more revenue from email marketing initiatives.

As always, we hope you enjoy this issue of Website Magazine and invite you to join us on the Web, where our editors and contributors explore the topics that matter most to your digital success.

10 CELEBRATING

Best Web Wishes, Peter@WebsiteMagazine.com

YEARS

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The (Digital) Road Goes on Forever, and the Party Never Ends!

Continuing our year-long celebration of Website Magazine’s 10-year anniversary, join this month’s digital mission! Find the phrase “infinite scrolling” (hint: it’s in blue and bold and in the first half of the magazine), open up the digital edition of Website Magazine (wsm.co/digitalwm15) and click that phrase. Participants will then be directed to a special landing page where they can enter to win a $500 prize. Website Magazine will be sending readers on these special missions through 2015, so keep a digital eye on this space in the months to come!

MARKETING:

Abdul Umer a.umer@websitemagazine.com Website Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 2, February 2015, (ISSN# 1942-0633) is published 12 times a year, January through December by Website Services, Inc., 999 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018. Periodicals Postage Paid at Des Plaines, IL and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Website Magazine, 999 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018.

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Resource Center FINELY FOCUSED INFORMATION FROM INDUSTRY SPONSORS Scan to visit our Resource Center at www.WebsiteMagazine.com/resources.

Website Magazine’s Resource Center presents whitepapers from our sponsors that provide information, specifics and metrics to help you make decisions for website success. Download free at www.WebsiteMagazine.com/resources.

3 Tips To Boost Email Engagement With Customer Data Email marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) data allows marketers to identify timing preferences, effective promotions and even subject lines that are more likely to result in an open or click. With large customer data sets playing an important role in today’s multichannel world, this whitepaper provides three tips to improve email engagement with customer data for the savvy marketers of today.

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Download free at www.WebsiteMagazine.com/resources

Net

BRIEFS

Just the Facts, Bing Bing is taking another page out of Google’s search engine playbook, releasing a new feature dubbed “Fact Answers.” Similar to Google’s Knowledge Graph, the feature enables users to discover answers to localized queries at the top of Bing’s search engine result pages (SERPs). For example, when a user enters the name of a restaurant on Bing, the search engine will return a local brick-andmortar address. The Fact Answers section will also provide results for other queries, such as the distance between two locations, a brick-and-mortar store’s hours of operation or a local business’s phone number.

Breaking Down the Language Barrier Skype is reducing the challenges of global communication, announcing a preview of its new real-time translation tool, Skype Translator. The first phase of the preview works with two spoken languages, English and Spanish, as well as more than 40 instant messaging languages. Through the tool, individuals that speak different languages can communicate with each other via Skype Translator’s machine learning technology. Google also took steps to break down language barriers recently, updating its Translate app with a real-time interpretation feature.

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Way Better Analytics for DIGITAL PRESENTATIONS A few months after making many of its premium features free, LinkedIn’s SlideShare presentation platform has begun providing users with an improved analytics system. SlideShare users now have access to details on geographic distribution, traffic sources and timing to help them better understand the performance of their content. Additionally, LinkedIn indicated it made changes to improve count accuracy by automatically removing views generated from bot activity.

Amazon Sellers Drive Record Sales in 2014 Amazon has transformed itself from a simple marketplace to a major Web power player with ventures such as Amazon Web Services and Amazon Instant Video. However, the Web company has never lost touch with what made them successful in the first place, their marketplace. In fact, sellers on Amazon had such a good year in 2014 that for the first time they collectively sold more than 2 billion items worldwide. Also, the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service, which allows sellers to offer Amazon Prime benefits, grew 65 percent.

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Net

BRIEFS

Is Facebook’s Audience Network Really Worth it?

Fiksu, a mobile marketing company, has released a new report, titled “Facebook Audience Network Investigation – Value Beyond CPI,” which details the differences in earnings from display ad campaigns, Facebook News Feed ads as well as Audience Network ads. The report found that the revenue from purchasing users on Facebook’s Audience Network was $3.64 compared to the News Feed’s $1.63 and display ads paltry $0.15. Also, the report found that the Audience Network conversion rate was almost 10 percent higher than the News Feed and 25 percent higher than display ads.

Mobile Shopping Experience Fails Consumers Mobile is one of the hottest trends in the Web tech world, yet consumers are still not happy with the technology. Mobiquity, a provider of mobile engagement solutions, released the results of a consumer study on the state of m-commerce in which it found that while consumers believe that m-commerce has potential, it still has a ways to go. One of the most interesting findings from the study was that while speed was voted the most important facet of a mobile website, 33 percent of participants stated that retailers’ websites take too long to load.

MORE NEWS OF NOTE: Popular retailers fail at social media too. Find out which ones at wsm.co/smretail Internet ad revenue hit historic highs in 2014. See the numbers at wsm.co/adhighs Amazon sellers can now negotiate with buyers. Learn more at wsm.co/negamazon Google works to get rid of CAPTCHA. Read more at wsm.co/byecaptcha 8

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#WEBTECHWATCH See what has the ‘Net community all abuzz with Website Magazine’s #WebTechWatch series – a weekly roundup, available online, that profiles emerging technologies and some of the most useful, new and established solutions for today’s Web workers. If you have a digital product or ‘Net service you think deserves a mention, tweet @WebsiteMagazine with the hashtag #WebTechWatch.

+ 7Geese: (EDITOR’S PICK) Cloud-based social performance management platform that provides the ability to designate goals, give recognition to high-achievers and receive feedback in a private social network. + ConvertFire: Platform that enables performance marketers to optimize any advertiser’s landing page. + Sandatum: Real-time (no buffering or data extrapolation) Web analytics platform with some interesting features including cross-domain tracking. + Taxamo: SaaS solution for compliance with the new 2015 EU VAT rules on the sale of e-services. + Localize.js: Human and machine website translation with one line of code. + Sonar: Send SMS messages programmatically and receive direct communication from customers. + Synup: Online marketing software for local, geo-focused businesses. + Instagress: A tool to automate like, comment, follow and unfollow activity on Instagram. + MixMax: Instant scheduling, tracking, templates and polls for Gmail users. + WalkMe: An enterprise-level engagement platform for onboarding users. + Embedly: Responsive shareable cards for Web content for easier reposting.

Stat

WATCH

46%

WHO’S PERSONALIZING

WHAT?

At 46 percent, Facebook remains consumers’ network of choice for social login – a popular login method that lets users sign in to websites and applications using their existing social credentials, which enables marketers to, in turn, collect profile data to use for personalization and segmentation.

67%

Companies that actively prioritize the “customer experience” have three times higher annual revenue compared to those who do not. Despite the benefits, 67 percent of organizations are only in the first stage of the “Customer Experience Maturity Model,” a roadmap for ‘experience marketing’ established by Sitecore.

Stage 1 includes companies whose digital marketing involves little more than a static brochure-ware website and a “blast” email newsletter that goes to all customers. These organizations do no outreach through social channels and make no attempts to identify what a customer’s preferred marketing channel is. Surprisingly, numerous Fortune 100 companies are at this level – failing to provide a personalized, engaging 1:1 customer experience.

Companies in Stage 2 (18 percent) are those that are beginning to reach out to customers through multiple channels including social media. They, according to Sitecore, may begin targeting messages through channels that are preferred by each visitor segment. It’s clear that first-stage companies can do more.

“Experience now makes or breaks a brand, and only brands able to provide the best experiences will prevail,” said Lars Birkholm Petersen, global director of business optimization services at Sitecore. “However, our research indicates that a vast majority of organizations serve disconnected experiences for their customers that fall far short of their expectations. The time for change is now.

“If customer experience laggards don’t evolve their approach and strategy, their businesses will be obsolete in less than five years. Marketers must collect and connect data and use insights in real-time to remain relevant to customers and compete in their respective industries.”

(Janrain, Oct. 2014)

80%

A large portion of online shoppers (80 percent) who have signed up to receive promotional emails report that they find it helpful if products featured in emails are relevant based on their shopping habits and preferences.

(Listrak, Jan. 2015)

31%

Seventy percent of retailers report that they have email capabilities, but only 31 percent see targeted emails as an opportunity.

6%

(CQuotient, May 2014)

Very few organizations (6 percent) are extremely satisfied with their ability to use customer data to make effective business decisions.

67%

(Aberdeen, March 2014)

When asked about their attitudes toward on-site personalization, 67 percent of American shoppers find product recommendations on a retailer’s website helpful.

Similarly, 69 percent appreciate online retargeting ads featuring products previously viewed on a retailer’s website.

(Listrak, Jan. 2015)

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Enterprise

READY

The New Employee of the Month

By Allison Howen, Associate Editor

The “employee of the month” program has been around for decades.

Along with bragging rights, these top employees typically receive a variety of other “perks,” such as a certificate, a front-row parking spot or a monetary bonus.

In short, the title and perks are management’s way of motivating its staff, which, hopefully, wants to perform well enough to earn the award.

While the employee of the month program and other traditional sales contests can be effective motivation tactics, they can also backfire. Traditional sales contests, for example, have a tendency to lose their appeal.

Since perpetual top performers typically win these contests, it doesn’t take long for underperformers (who need the most motivation) to disengage. Moreover, it can be difficult and/or time consuming to accurately measure results. This is why many enterprises are turning to gamification to motivate employees.

Gamification…Internally?

Gamification is a strategy that has been adopted by a variety of brands across the Web, typically in an effort to increase loyalty and engagement among consumers.

This is done by providing consumers with some type of reward – from points to exclusive discounts – for completing specific tasks, sharing articles via social media or visiting websites multiple days in a row.

This concept is beginning to have appeal as an internal motivation tool too. The following three companies are among the top performers helping brands gamify their employee motivation efforts.

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FantasySalesTeam Used by enterprises like Cisco, LinkedIn and HP, FantasySalesTeam is a gamification platform that is modeled after fantasy sports, where success often depends on getting the most out of all of a team’s members, not just star players - an important element of any incentive program.

“A lot of companies talk about gamification as a way to make work fun,” said Adam Hollander, CEO of FantasySalesTeam. “While that’s a byproduct of gamification – it’s not the goal. The goal is to drive improved results across the metrics that matter to your business. The key to seeing ROI is engaging/motivating a larger portion of your team for a longer period of time while reducing operational cost/hassle.”

Using FantasySalesTeam, companies can move closer to a ROI by setting goals to drive employee performance and behavior. Sorting employees into teams will also help level the playing field between top performers and new/low performers, to ensure everyone stays motivated. Furthermore, FantasySalesTeam enables users to monitor employee performance via Excel or integrations with existing customer relationship management (CRM) systems like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. According to Hollander, this can help enterprises strengthen team adoption of CRMs. “Our games can pull data from your existing systems like CRM or LMS,” said Hollander. “If a player knows that they won’t earn points in the game unless they log a call or create an opportunity – it forces adoption of the CRM. It also allows for near real-time updates of the leaderboards without any operational management of

On the FantasySalesTeam profile dashboard, users can view information like stats and awards.

the game. This makes the results more visible and engaging to interact with in the form of profiles, performance charts, badges/trophies and leaderboards.”

Enterprises can sort their employees into teams with FantasySalesTeam.

Badgeville Popular gamification company Badgeville offers solutions for both customer and employee engagement.

With the employee engagement solutions, enterprises can create motivational programs to engage customer support teams, increase sales and productivity, as well as encourage employee collaboration.

The customer support solution, for example, helps enterprises measure, analyze and reward employee behaviors. In fact, Badgeville notes that, on average, its customer support solution reduces support tickets filed by 20 percent and improves ticket response time by 40 percent. On the other hand, the company’s sales productivity solution can be leveraged to assist sales leaders in providing a more engaging user experience on top of their sales applications, which drives adoption and improves employee performance. According to Badgeville, this solution typically results in a 30 percent faster sales cycle and 50 percent faster CRM and sales app adoption.

Regardless of the solution chosen, Badgeville’s gamification offerings have been used to help a variety of enterprises, from American Express to Marketo, better engage employees, heighten performance and measure their ROI.

GamEffective While GamEffective doesn’t offer customer-facing solutions like Badgeville, it does offer a variety of employee gamification options, including those for employee training, sales and customer service teams.

In general, GamEffective’s solutions provide enterprises with strong narratives that drive positive employee behavior. The company offers a variety of themes, from fantasy sports leagues to virtual city-building, which encourage both teams and individuals to perform better.

GamEffective doesn’t stop there. It helps enterprises measure employee engagement with insights into em-

ployee behavior. The company’s employee training solution, for instance, mixes game mechanics with training tasks to improve employee on-boarding, which can result in a higher ROI and a more knowledgeable staff.

The platform provides users with a personal avatar to let them know how far they have progressed, how they compare to others and what else they should do to advance in the training process.

It is also important to note that GamEffective is offered as a software-as-a-service solution as well as a private cloud. Additionally, the gamification solutions are easy to implement and require no code, and can also integrate with many platforms and software, including Oracle, Zendesk, Yammer and Salesforce.

Introducing the Virtual Employee of the Month Consider introducing your enterprise’s new employee of the month - an internal gamification solution - at your next meeting. Although this employee won’t benefit from perks like front-row parking, it will be able to motivate the rest of your team.

How Major Companies Motivate Employees From free food to paid day care, see what top brands are doing to keep their workforce happy (and loyal) at

wsm.co/perksco

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BUSINESS LAB

MAKE IT OR BREAK IT Next-Level Marketing Automation

By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

Marketing automation has changed the way many of the Web’s most savvy enterprises manage their digital presence.

If you are already using these incredibly powerful systems, many of which you can find in Website Magazine’s “Master List of Marketing Automation Tools” at wsm.co/matools, the time is now to take that initiative to the next level. Consider the following techniques and your enterprise will quickly find that it receives much more value from the digital opportunities available.

Make it Real-Time Step-By-Step Lead Nurturing –

wsm.co/ienurture

Marketing from an automation platform to a list of prospects or customers that rarely (if ever) changes is quite limiting in that brands can’t take advantage of users’ most recent activity and interactions. A better option is to leverage the data provided by the actual systems (e.g. e-commerce or content management systems) that users regularly interact with on a website. Acquiring this data is possible by making use of a marketing automation platform’s application programming interface (supposing one exists) to create a more dynamic list. Marketers might, for example, import a list of users spending a significant amount of time in a product knowledge base, which proves far more useful when executing campaigns. Fortunately, marketing automation platforms are excellent at integrations and may already have produced a way to deliver real-time data.

Make it Phase-Based Better data (read “real-time”) will only get a business so far; the next step is to understand that brands can do way more when they deliver content to the consumer (prospect) in the appropriate phase of the buying cycle.

Most (if not all) automation platforms provide marketers an opportunity to deliver different “types” of content 12

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depending on not just their interests, but also the content that draws them further into the sales funnel and ever closer to a sales-ready frame of mind. Consumers that are still in the research stage, for example, should be presented with content that makes the case for buyin, while those further down the funnel should be presented with content that expresses the credibility of the vendor or the uniqueness of the product. The importance of segmentation of this type can’t be overstated – delivering credibility-related content to a completely cold lead will do little to increase conversion.

One of the most powerful aspects of automation platforms is their ability to provide marketers with an opportunity to “score” their leads, or assign a scale-based value that ranks each prospect based on their value to the organization (useful for sales teams to prioritize which prospects they engage with first). The savviest brands today, however, aren’t scoring alone; they are attempting to actively move their prospects further down the funnel by remarketing.

Make it Omni-Present Leads can get cold quickly; consumers lose interest, get distracted or, worse, become discouraged. Marketers are challenged daily to ensure their messaging is “omnipresent” and within the view of consumers wherever they are on the Web – from search to social channels as well as to the millions of websites that make up the ‘Net. The best way to do that, of course, is through remarketing, but that is not always easy to do – at least not without a marketing automation platform.

To really make the most of marketing automation platforms, and foster the relationship they have with prospects, digital brands must explore paid placement initiatives. While it is crucial that marketers have cookies with retargeting beacons in place at the outset of campaigns, the delivery of supplementary messaging becomes an incredibly powerful way to draw users back into and further down the funnel.

Tracking the interactions within the marketing automation platform will further ensure the consumer is getting the information they need (and, again, at the right phase of the buying cycle).

Next-Level Enterprises The preceding guidance isn’t really for those just getting started with marketing automation, but rather for the digital enterprise that is looking to take its use of these powerful platforms to the next level. If you’re ready to generate more leads, nurture those leads in a way that increases engagement and drives revenue, these tactics and techniques will accelerate your success.

Quiz

TIME

How Socially “With It” Are You? Keeping up with the wildly changing social landscape can be a full-time job, yet most marketers manage their brands’ social media accounts on top of their existing workloads.

The good news is that even a little effort goes a long way. According to HubSpot, 84 percent of marketers found as little as six hours of effort per week was enough to generate increased traffic.

Internet professionals can take their efforts further by taking time to discover the most recent social news, updates, features and more (which Website Magazine features in its Social Media Mavens channel at wsm.co/smmavens). The question is: how socially “with it” are you today? From Pinterest and Snapchat to Twitter and Facebook, test your social knowledge in this month’s Quiz Time.

For further reading – or to get a little social help – visit our cheat sheets on the Web.

See how well you did on this month’s quiz by visiting wsm.co/qtfeb15 or by scanning the QR code.

1.

The Snapchat feature that allows all followers to see a post is called: a. My Story b. Storyboard c. My Snaps d. Snaps Feed Cheat sheet: Check out “Snapchat for Brands” at wsm.co/brandsnaps

2. Among leading retailers, which three scored the highest in Engagement Labs’s “Retail Index,” which evaluated them on 300 social media metrics? a. Champs Sports, GameStop and Tiffany & Co. b. Target, Walmart and Sears c. Levi’s, Urban Outfitters and Guess d. Sports Authority, J. Crew and Ann Taylor Cheat sheet: See retail’s social winners and losers at wsm.co/ecommsoc

3. After nearly a year in beta, it was revealed by Pinterest that Promoted Pins generate this increase in “earned media” impressions: a. 30 percent b. 5 percent c. 65 percent d. No increase

Cheat sheet: Read, “The Performance of Promoted Pins in Focus” at wsm.co/promopins15

4. In Dec. 2014, which popular social platform released a GIF creator? a. Facebook b. LinkedIn c. Tumblr d. YouTube Cheat sheet: Discover who quietly released a GIF creator at wsm.co/gifs4everyone

5. Which was the fastest-growing social network in the U.S. in 2014? a. Facebook b. Pinterest c. Snapchat d. Tumblr Cheat sheet: Check out 2014’s top social sharing trends at wsm.co/sharetrends14 F E B R U A R Y 2015

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Top

50

Digital Ad Platforms for 2015 Digital advertising has never been more effective. Today’s brands are in greater control of their messaging (with myriad interactive bells and whistles at their disposal) and their virtual future, but even the biggest and most sophisticated spenders are faced with a variety of problems. The bad news is that there doesn’t seem to be any viable solution to solve the pervasive ills of the market – at least not yet.

From the viewability failures of video and display ads, to the increasing levels of fraud in the performance ad space (not to mention the seemingly ever-increasing costs), today’s advertisers are more aware of wasted budgets and diminishing returns than those before them. They are continually on the lookout for better solutions and platforms in which they can invest their marketing dollars.

One thing is for certain – it’s nearly impossible to compete without spending at least a portion of a promotional budget on digital advertising today. Fortunately, advertising technology affords current brands a powerful entry point to reach consumers and deepen engagement on their path to conversion – from mobile devices to the desktop and all of the channels in between.

In this month’s Website Magazine Top 50, readers will find many of the most popular networks, platforms and solutions to engage in digital advertising. The most astute digital media professionals, of course, will notice that the biggest vendors (including Google and Facebook) are absent from this list, but there is good reason. Most brands are already heavy users of these platforms. In essence, those who are not using them are in the minority. The good news is that there are plenty of alternatives for advertising and in nearly every conceivable channel – from mobile apps and video, to PPC and display.

If you’re looking to take your brand to new and greater heights in 2015, Website Magazine’s list of the Top 50 Digital Ad Platforms should be your first destination. Website Magazine has also provided additional insights on the advertising solutions listed at wsm.co/top50ads - check it out and start 2015 on the right virtual foot.

Digital Marketing Delivers The fourth quarter of 2014 was a big one for search advertising in the Americas, with Kenshoo reporting a 24 percent increase in spend and a 42 percent increase in advertiser revenue over the previous quarter. Learn more at wsm.co/seads14.

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Mastering

SEARCH

Everyday Content Development

By Jordan Kasteler, Senior SEO Manager at Red Door Interactive

Anyone who has been involved with SEO, even for a few short years, has likely seen a lot of change.

While an emphasis on creating, publishing and promoting “high-quality” content has remained consistent, marketers are increasingly responsible for ensuring their content performs well in the broader digital landscape.

Here are 11 SEO-focused tips to get you started:

1. Keywords vs. Intent The days of researching keywords and integrating them multiple times into titles, headlines, copy and descriptions are gone. Instead, it’s more about grouping keywords into buckets of “intent” to understand what the user is trying to do. Do the researched keywords have navigational, transactional or informational intent? What questions are people asking and does the preferred landing page answer those questions?

Who is ranking for those keywords and why?

If the content is not fulfilling the searcher’s needs, engagement will suffer. And if engagement suffers, the results will too. It’s important to optimize for results like bounce rate, interaction time and more.

Conversions will likely increase from such efforts, which will satisfy bosses and clients.

2. Titles, Headlines and Descriptions While intent is the main focus, keywords still play an important role in titles, headlines and descriptions.

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More importantly, keywords should drive action. Action-oriented copy will ensure searchers understand the benefits and ultimately convert. Ranking in search results is only the first step; getting people to click is the second (and they both work together).

3. Content Classification A content item’s purpose needs to be identified and aligned with goals from the onset.

Is the content branded or editorial? Is it informational or transactional? Mapping where planned content falls in a consumer journey is important in making sure the content is aligned with goals and speaks to the right audience at the right time. Speaking of audience, ensuring the content matches the needs of a cohort segment or buyer persona is part of the process as well.

4. Quality Score Those that have read Google’s Quality Ratings Guidelines, a manual for the human vetting of search results, may recall the acronym EAT (Expertise, Authority and Trust). It’s crucial to confirm that a brand, site and content are always abiding by these important factors.

Other areas include variables related to quality, quantity, online reputation, design and technical site issues.

These are the elements that must be considered when judging the quality of a site and assigning qualitative scoring. Make sure your website (and its content) is in

compliance with Website Magazine’s “Quick Guide to Content Quality” at wsm.co/qgcontent.

5. Content Presentation Continuing on the path of Google’s guidelines, marketers must consider the role of design and layout. People judge the credibility, expertise and authority of content and a site’s appearance as much as they do the quality and experience of it. Having a solid presentation increases engagement, links and social shares, in addition to establishing a baseline of trust.

SEOs should pay attention to fonts, headlines, spacing, colors, consistency, and borders and boxes. Most importantly, however, they must ask themselves how that content is perceived and viewed on different devices. Ensuring content is portable is a key step.

6. Visual Micro-Content

8. Content Promotion Creating a content masterpiece is only half the job.

Getting eyeballs on the content is the next step. Researching and then reaching out to influencers who will appreciate the content is a key step to getting links and social shares. With organic visibility becoming rarer on social media, paid social is a viable option of digital promotion. Blurring the lines by using paid social to get earned media (by getting in front of the right influencers) is a powerful strategy.

9. Remarketing

With all the emphasis on social media these days, it is important that brands don’t forget about paid search. If brands work hard to promote content on social media, they need to make sure they are capturing those users long-term by leveraging remarketing to bring them back to sign up for their newsletter or subscribe to a social channel. However, this depends greatly on the marketing funnel. It Learn more about Cohort may make more sense for ad creAnalysis and other ways ative to try to move the user to the to match content with next stage.

Data-Driven Content

Almost nobody prefers to read digital content in a solid essay format. Microcontent is “digestible” information placed throughout an article, such as pull quotes or small infographics, which helps readers visualize the main points.

Content and images that are grouped in such a way are highly shareable and apaudience needs at pealing to those readers that may only 10. Measurement wsm.co/cohort15 want to share certain segments.

Understanding how content is acThose creating content should contually working is a key method of sider using statistics or quotes to reinforce the message, getting executive buy-in, budget and more. While remember to convey emotion and use a variety of vi- achieving a high number of page views, social shares sual elements, including slideshows and infographics. and links are all leading indicators of success, it’s important to determine if the content is contributing to 7. Copy & Depth brand lift, conversions, audience engagement, lonThere is an indirect correlation with how long copy gevity, reader return and visitor loyalty. is and how well it ranks. The longer the copy (e.g. up to 2,000-3,000 words), the more likely people are 11. Repurposing going to appreciate its comprehensiveness and the hard Discovered that the content was a success? Don’t stop work that went into it. In turn, people are more likely to there. SEOs should repurpose the content in various share or link to it. However, this is not a hard, fast rule. formats to reach even more audiences. For instance, For example, news commentary or celebrity gossip is slideshows, podcasts, infographics, video, webinars more likely to be “short and sweet” while tech-related and white papers are all good options to make a textconceptual pieces have a tendency to be more in-depth. based article even more impactful and pervasive. This Regardless of length, writers should divide their can certainly be part of the content development stage content into shorter sections to essentially trick read- if the resources are available. ers’ brains into thinking content is easy to read. Since most readers won’t make it to the end of the page, le- Go Create veraging the inverted pyramid approach – where the There’s no silver bullet and no perfect formula most important information is at the top and the least for content development. Every brand, site and important at the bottom – proves very useful for to- audience is different. It’s important to emphasize reday’s Web writers (and has long been used by tradi- search, make a long-term plan and test everything for tional journalists). optimal success.

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E-Commerce

EXPRESS

Polyvore Want a Cracker?

How the social commerce website is shaping design in Web retail

By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor

In a world where nearly everything can be bought online, retailers need to find creative ways to assist shoppers in making buying decisions and completing the checkout process. And, it needs to be done as quickly as possible.

According to Monetate’s most recent E-Commerce Quarterly report, nearly 52 percent of transactions are made in the first 15 minutes of a shopping session, while nearly 75 percent of all purchases are made within an hour-long window.

Web design plays a pivotal role in every one of those minutes a shopper spends on a site. To keep up with evolving user expectations of how a site should look and perform, some top retailers are taking a page from popular social commerce website Polyvore to aid in product discovery and, ultimately, conversion.

users can A. Polyvore create style collages with products they like. Each product includes its name, price and retail website. a Polyvore style collage is created, B. Once users can publish them to share on Pinterest, Facebook, tumblr, Twitter, their blog or through email. More importantly, all the rich product info (retailer, price, etc.) stays with the collage as it’s shared.

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to social shopping sites like Polyvore, shopC. Thanks pers are expecting look-book editorial type pages on retailers’ websites – taking the guess work out of styling rooms in their homes or the outfits that they wear.

For the unfamiliar, Polyvore is a social shopping site where users are able to mix and match items they like and put them into a digital, interactive collage (see Image A). The result (see Image B) can easily be shared and, more importantly, shopped from.

Large brands including Nordstrom are implementing designs similar to Polyvore, leveraging techniques that group products in creative layouts, as well as using infinite scrolling on homepages and/or product result pages. Polyvore didn’t invent these techniques, nor was it the first adopter, but Polyvore’s popularity with some of the Web’s savviest shoppers (like millennials and moms) is certainly encouraging retailers to follow in its digital steps.

One reason why retailers are adopting infinite scrolling, in particular, is because it minimizes the number of clicks users have to make in order to view more products. Not all design and retail professionals are sold on infinite scrolling’s effectiveness for e-commerce sites, however, – citing it’s a distraction, which could cost conversions. That said, its use by many popular social networks (e.g. Pinterest) should make shoppers quite comfortable using it once more retailers adopt it.

Where retailers may be hesitant with infinite scrolling, they are flocking to Polyvore’s curated layout and style.

Take kids’ retailer Hanna Andersson for example.

Its “Shop the Room” feature (see Image C) shows off beautiful, professionally styled rooms where shoppers can easily buy the different items shown to recreate the room at home.

This style complements the idea of connecting shoppers with products that would have meaning to them in the outside world (read more at wsm.co/storycomm ).

Story-driven Web design is a creative way of enhancing product discovery by grouping like-items.

Many shoppers are becoming very comfortable with this concept, thanks to Polyvore.

10 YEARS

Resource Center FINELY FOCUSED INFORMATION FROM INDUSTRY SPONSORS Scan to visit our Resource Center at www.WebsiteMagazine.com/resources.

Website Magazine’s Resource Center presents white papers and webinars from our sponsors that provide information, specifics and metrics to help you make decisions for website success. www.WebsiteMagazine.com/resources.

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A/B testing has become an important tactic because it gives you the data you need for decision-making, so you can develop and evolve your campaigns with more confidence.

Join Aaron Bolshaw and James Patterson, both of Act-On Software as they discuss how to conduct an A/B test and share real examples and successes that you can act on today.

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Aaron has experience with big brands, Fortune 500 and various start-up companies in both B2C and B2B marketing functions. He has directed email, demand gen and Inside Sales operations for over 10 years and the last 4+ years.

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Design and

DEVELOPMENT

EASY DOES IT 5 Web Design Principles for Effortless Interaction

By Neill Harmer

Designers should want the websites they create to inspire user interaction. Whether a site sells goods or offers content, the goal is to provide a rewarding experience that encourages visitors to linger, explore, share and return on a regular basis.

Optimizing a site for user interaction is a constant balancing act, however. Too many sites try to do too much, offering all manner of content, imagery and links on pages that end up providing a cluttered and wholly uninviting experience, making it difficult for visitors to interact. An impatient visitor confused by too many choices will often make the choice to click away. That’s a problem, but it doesn’t stop there.

An excess of content also detracts from a site’s design aesthetic, further diminishing its appeal among visitors who appreciate a visually engaging presentation. With the glut of website choices that visitors have today, it pays to follow these five fundamental and time-tested principles to designing sites for optimal interaction.

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Understand What Users Want While it is not necessary to be clairvoyant, designers do need to spend time up front baselining who the target users are, what they’re looking for and what they want to do when they get to the website. Are they looking for how-to content? Do they seek entertainment, community interaction or product purchasing?

It pays to collaborate with the client, design colleagues and even non-design associates in sizing up the target audience, and examining competing sites for strengths and weaknesses.

Of course, not every user will want the same thing, but understanding the prevailing characteristics of the user population helps designers prioritize approach when shaping the visitor experience. Insights into the user’s persona will guide the design aesthetic, element placement, calls-to-action, navigational structures and visual hierarchies.

Don’t Make People Think Too much information detracts from website interactions. The more choices offered, the easier it becomes

to choose nothing…except to click away. A clear, visual presentation of content and imagery spares the user from laboring through a plethora of choices and prompts the interactions that are desired. Minimizing distraction and offering sub-navigation menus for further exploration help to strike the Goldilocks’ ideal of content volume that’s “just right.”

Word choice is another element in minimizing the user’s mental processing time. Straightforward, familiar language is often more effective than some novel treatment. For instance, users immediately recognize “Contact Us,” whereas they may be baffled by a more vague term like “Engage.” Consistency is another plus. Don’t put up roadblocks to user interaction, such as employing different navigation bar styles on different pages.

Err on the Side of Simplicity Simplicity guides every aspect of design at many of the world’s best websites. Simplicity gives designers the freedom to visually emphasize what the user wants, and what they want the user to do. Today, simplicity often means utilizing images and spare text to convey ideas and invite actions in favor of text-heavy presentations. The effectiveness of simplicity has driven the adoption of flat or minimalist website designs that have become so popular in recent years.

Simplicity becomes even more important in the mobile realm. Responsive Web design that enables a site to adapt automatically to whatever device is accessing it helps ensure a simple, rewarding experience for smartphone and tablet users. At the same time, responsive Web design with the right platform simplifies the life of a designer by not having to create multiple versions of a website.

Choose Fonts, Colors and White Space Wisely Choosing the right typefaces, colors and degree of white space has a big impact on site interaction as well.

These elements reflect a site’s credibility, usability and mood, so it’s important to tailor them to a given audience. While the use of different fonts enables designers to showcase their creativity, too many varied fonts can have a discordantly jarring effect.

Keep the variety of fonts to two or three, and be judicious in the use of larger-size fonts and bolding (if everything is bold, then nothing is bold; if everything is big, then nothing is big). Liberal white space helps call attention to key elements, while smart color choices are critical to creating the mood demanded for interaction—bold and daring or thoughtful and subdued, for instance, depending on the audience.

Treat Design as a Continuous Evolution The beauty of Web design is how it can unfold and flourish over time. To cultivate the best user experience, up-front and ongoing testing and feedback is essential. Broaden your horizons beyond fellow Web designers by consulting with prospective users— senior citizens for a retirement home website, for instance, or children for a kids-oriented site.

Software tools can help identify what’s working and what isn’t. Heat mapping applications, for example, show designers where visitors are clicking and scrolling to help them tweak the design to improve the user experience and the site’s results. Of course, it’s also important to track traditional Web metrics such as conversion, time on site, page views, single-page bounce rate and more. With ongoing insights, designers can iterate a site to the peak of potential for user interaction.

Delight & Inspire Good Web design will never be as easy as it may seem.

It requires a blend of art and science, as well as insights that come with experience. By keeping these fundamental user-focused principles in mind, you’ll be better equipped to create beautiful, richly functional websites that delight and inspire your visitors.

Neill Harmer is the lead designer for LightCMS (www.lightcms.com), a NetSuite company that provides a powerful yet easy-to-use cloud-based platform for creating beautiful websites and online stores.

SITES DOING ALL THE WORK Check out examples of websites that aren’t making their users think at

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PERSONALIZATION for the Digital Consumer

By Allison Howen and Derek Schou, Associate Editors

Whether they are looking for a breaking news update, a new pair of dress shoes or a place to purchase airline tickets, today’s consumers can take their digital business anywhere – causing companies to scramble to find and implement technologies and strategies that can make their websites stand out from the competition.

Personalization is fast becoming the best way to do so. At its most basic, personalization is a technique that alters the presentation of a website’s content to match a specific user’s preferences. At its most advanced, it is about delivering a truly custom experience to each individual user.

Companies with personalization strategies currently in place are engaging consumers with relevant content and customized experiences – increasing the likeliness of them converting and becoming repeat visitors.

With Janrain data revealing that 74 percent of online consumers get frustrated with websites when content appears that has nothing to do with their interests, it is clear that brands across all verticals must put a greater emphasis on catering to their customers’ wants and needs. So how can they (and you) get started?

In this issue, Website Magazine delves into personalization and engagement tactics that can help enterprises thrive. The challenge with implementing these initiatives, however, lies in collecting meaningful data and then using that data effectively.

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It Begins With Data Although the majority of brands have been collecting customer data for years, most aren’t the least bit prepared to use it to speak to consumers one on one (or 1:1).

The Channel Problem

The numerous channels available to today’s consumers (social, search, email, etc.) has left many brands overwhelmed with an abundance of “siloed” data, causing inconsistencies when trying to deliver both a personalized and consistent experience to website visitors on mobile and desktop devices.

“New consumer technologies are adding increasing complexity to marketers’ strategies and tactics for reaching their target audience,” said Larry Drebes, founder and CEO of Janrain. “Multiple devices, social profiles and ways for audiences to consume information require that marketers rethink their traditional approach to the purchase funnel and plan in an environment where the customer can find and engage with brands anywhere, at any time.”

One of the biggest challenges that marketers face in the evolving purchase funnel is creating true 1:1 interactions.

Complicating brands’ data collecting initiatives even further, however, is that 83 percent of consumers admit to giving false or incomplete information when registering for a website, according to the “Value of Social Login” study, which was conducted by Blue Research and commissioned

by Janrain.

Often, this is the outcome of consumers hurrying through the registration process so they can get back to the

Common Personalization Mistakes Learn from the personalization pioneers before you at wsm.co/1to1oops F E B R U A R Y 2015

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task, or tasks, that they initially came to the website to do.

Fortunately, there are technologies available that can help brands minimize low-quality data, with one of the most effective being social login.

Accurate Data via Social Login Social login enables customers to log in or register for a website by selecting their preferred identity from networks like Facebook, Google or Twitter. By implementing social login, brands ease the onboarding process for consumers, which provides a variety of benefits for both endusers and brands.

For starters, social login gives consumers one less username and password to remember, which has resulted in a 50 percent improvement in registration conversion rates in some instances. In addition, the technology and subsequent tactical approach helps brands collect richer customer profile data from each consumer’s social account, as well as keeps that data updated. With the majority of consumers active on social networks, brands are able to collect more accurate and meaningful data than they could from their own registration forms. Ready to get started? Compare four top social login solutions at wsm.co/lisocial4.

It is also important to note that social login data can typically be integrated into customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, which enables brands to add information, including rich demographic and psychographic profiling data, to customer records. This helps enterprises cultivate a unified view of their customers, which is difficult to do in today’s fragmented market.

Once a brand has created a richer and more unified view of the customer and their activity, they can get to work on their personalization strategies.

Getting Personal

Gartner’s “2015 Marketing Spending Survey” reveals that customer experience was the top area of marketing technology investment in 2014, which is further proof that providing unique experiences is vital when it comes to achieving a competitive advantage.

Novice mistakes, however, are easy to make when implementing new strategies and/or technologies. RichRelevance Director of Product Marketing Devang Sachdev, for example, notes that one common misstep is using add-on solutions, which may seem like the most simple and convenient option, but provide only basic functionality.

“While these providers excel at their core competency – be it delivery of content or analysis – they most likely only provide basic personalization capabilities that do not take advantage of all available personalization Discover 5 more recom- technologies,” said Sachdev. “Personalization ‘addmendation solutions at ons’ are frequently acquired technologies and thus wsm.co/pickthis15 require additional installation.

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“Another consideration is the level of support and flexibility that accompanies a standard add-on solution. For personalization tools, the ongoing investment made by a dedicated client support team is essential in: a) customizing the system so that it achieves the best performance possible and b) meeting the specific set of criteria that a [client] might be looking for.”

Although some solutions may fall short of a brand’s expectations, there are many others that are very capable of helping companies reach their customer experience goals.

Giving Recommendations Be it for products or content, offering recommendations is perhaps the most well-established personalization strategy on the Web. Just because it is has been used before, however, doesn’t mean it’s outdated and ineffective. In fact, Baynote data indicates that consumers who engage with personalized recommendations convert, on average, 353 percent more frequently – reason enough for brands to make it a consideration.

Evergage is an example of a company that offers personalization solutions for both merchants and information publishers. With its content publishing solution, Evergage helps brands present relevant and meaningful content to their visitors in order to increase metrics like page views, time on site and subscriptions. The solution uses behavioral data including previous actions and interests to deliver a personalized experience to customers in real-time. Brands can then A/B test their content for different audiences to optimize conversion rates, as well as leverage Evergage Promote to automate the process of promoting related content based on preferred authors, topics, tags and more.

“When we work with our customers we take a ‘playbook’ approach and have different plays depending on the vertical,” said Karl Wirth, CEO of Evergage.

“First, you’ll want to break your desired journey or lifecycle with the customer into its constituent parts. Then, think about how to move a visitor from one step to the next in the most effective way.”

With its content publishing solution, Evergage can help brands understand visitors’ interests in order to promote relevant articles to those visitors.

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For information publishers, according to Wirth, that could mean figuring out how to get a user who has read one article to go on and read two or three more – getting more page views and, therefore, more revenue from that visit.

There are also vertical-specific recommendation solution providers, such as RichRelevance, which just unveiled a new personalization platform dubbed RichRelevance Cloud. The new platform features product recommendation technology for retailers in addition to many other personalization tools, such as personalized product discovery – another incredibly powerful opportunity to boost conversions.

Providing Personalized Results Whereas Evergage provides readers with related content to increase page views, RichRelevance’s Discover product completely rearranges a store’s digital “shelves” (e.g. their on-site search results) based on individual relevance to enhance product discovery. In other words, they highly personalize on-site search results for each user.

Using the shopper’s behavior and preferences (e.g. price sensitivity, brand, category, products and product newness) Discover re-orders product lists (when a customer searchers or browses a site) to move the most relevant products to the top.

There are numerous technology providers catering to e-commerce merchants looking to personalize the search experience on their websites, including LI Systems, Nextopia and SearchSpring, as well as standalone plugins for e-commerce platforms, like Hawk Search for Magento.

While personalized recommendations and product discovery are must-have technologies for websites, brands can also personalize their marketing strategies to create a relevant experience at every stage of the customer journey, from acquisition to post-conversion.

Enhancing the Experience

Customer experience is at the heart of personalization, and the same could be said of customer service. The tech world has taken notice and found ways to marry personalization and customer service in some truly unique ways, like with live video assistance.

RichRelevance Discover offers a mobile sort feature, which personalizes the search and browsing experience.

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Getting Visual Adding videos to Web pages can dramatically increase metrics like time on site and conversions for brands across verticals. In fact, a recent study from Liveclicker found that merchants

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with videos on most of their product pages have a 68 percent higher average order value (AOV) than retailers that have videos on just a few pages.

In addition to videos that highlight inventory and provide product demonstrations, merchants should also explore solutions and platforms that provide video assistance to their sites’ visitors. Vee24, for example, enables online retailers to deliver an in-store experience online with customer service via video chat. The company’s cloud-based VeeStudio solution enables these brands to assist customers through voice, video, text and co-browsing to make Web shopping experiences more personalized and ultimately reduce shopping cart abandonment. Moreover, this solution can be integrated into iOS and Android apps for consistency across devices and channels.

Vee24 enables brands to bridge the customer service gap by engaging customers via video chat.

Video, however, isn’t just for customer service initiatives.

Data from a 2014 Demand Metric study reveals that 82 percent of B2B marketers report success with video marketing initiatives too. This is likely why the majority of B2B marketers (63 percent) note that video marketing spending is on the rise for their organization. Many of them likely also know about video’s positive impact on a brand’s search engine optimization (SEO) initiatives. When a brand publishes video (especially on Google’s YouTube), it has the potential to occupy more virtual real estate on the search engine result pages (SERPs), increasing the likelihood of being clicked on by consumers. Plus, videos provide a great opportunity for brands to add content to their YouTube channels, which is the second largest search engine (behind Google), receiving more than a billion unique users monthly.

While video is certainly an effective way for brands to increase engagement, there are other, more unique, ways brands can engage their customers too.

Focusing on Interactivity One sure-fire way brands can increase engagement metrics and other important KPIs is by providing a more interactive website experience to consumers.

Buzzfeed is an example of an information publisher that has been very successful at delivering interactive content to its audience. The publisher’s content star is undoubtedly its quizzes. In fact, quizzes have become so popular on BuzzFeed’s website that the publisher features a “Quizzes” category prominently in its main menu bar, as well as developed dedicated social accounts for this category on networks like Facebook and Twitter. It has even run some advertisersponsored quizzes for big brands including Mattel, which garnered nearly 200,000 shares.

Luckily, the Web has taken note of the popularity of content quizzes, and there are now a variety of platforms publishers can leverage to create Buzzfeed-style quizzes for their own sites. SnappApp, for example, is a content marketing solution provider that can help brands create a variety of unique interactive content, including knowledge tests and quizzes. These quizzes can be leveraged to evaluate the knowledge or aptitude of an individual or group, and the results can then be used to deliver more personalized content experiences to audiences.

Another quiz-making platform is Interact, which has been leveraged by brands like CBS, Red Lobster and the American Red Cross. With Interact, enterprises have the ability to add custom branding to their quizzes and embed them on their websites. Plus, Interact integrates with a brand’s existing CRM to make it easy to capture new leads with the interactive content. Other quiz-making platforms worth checking out include Zoomstra and Qzzr.

With Interact, brands can create content quizzes and include their own custom branding.

Aside from increasing engagement via interactive content marketing, retail brands can also focus on increasing engagement with their inventory by promoting interaction directly with their products. Technology like virtual fitting rooms provides a perfect avenue to do so.

Virtual fitting room technology like Fits.me and True Fit, for instance, help retailers increase conversions and reduce returns by assisting customers with sizing recommendations.

In addition to those important metrics, virtual fitting rooms engage consumers by encouraging them to interact with the technology (provide measurements) and virtually “try on” more items than they would have without a virtual fitting

room. This can improve other KPIs like time spent on site, page views and average order values (AOV). Discover six virtual fitting rooms your e-commerce business might want to try on for size at wsm.co/tryon2014.

Fits.me offers virtual fitting room technology that helps customers find the perfect size and retailers improve KPIs like conversions and average order values (AOVs), while reducing the number of items customers return due to sizing issues.

Regardless of the tactic used, increasing on-site engagement should be a priority for brands. In doing so, brands will solidify their site as a must-visit digital destination for both their mobile and traditional desktop audiences.

The Customer is Always Right

The old adage “the customer is always right” rings more true than ever in today’s age of the digital customer. The phrase’s modern meaning, however, puts the focus on the preferences of today’s digital consumer, which is different for each person.

The time is now for brands to throw away the “one-sizefits-all” approach when it comes to customer experience and instead focus on providing the most unique, relevant and consistent experience possible to each and every website visitor they have – both on the traditional and mobile Web. Doing so will lead to more engaged and loyal customers, which is an invaluable combination.

For further reading, check out “3 Fail-Proof Personalized Marketing Tactics to Try” at http://wsm.co/3persomar.

Did You Know? + 98% of companies + Just 4% of companies agree that personalizadescribe their website tion is key to current experiences as “very” and future success. personalized.

+ 59% percent of companies state they are “getting good ROI from personalization.”

Source: “The Realities of Online Personalization” study by Econsultancy

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Mobile

MATTERS

Mobile Apps

WEB PROS SHOULD KNOW

By Derek Schou, Associate Editor

There is no denying the prevalence of mobile devices in consumers’ daily lives.

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Digital marketing is a full-time job. With the latest version of email marketing platform GetResponse’s mobile app, users are able to quickly sign into their accounts to review and monitor their current campaigns for critical stats like opens, clicks and conversions.

Another interesting feature of the GetResponse app is the ability for users to view new subscribers and subsequently add them directly to marketing lists.

Estibot

From shopping to socializing, smartphone users spend an average of 162 minutes per day on their phones, with 86 percent of that time spent within applications (source: Flurry).

As new mobile apps constantly stream into the app stores, selecting what to download can be rather tricky.

To help users with this decision, consider the following list of five fun, useful and innovative apps Web professionals like you should know.

In real estate, location is everything. The same could be said of domain names - the more descriptive and accessible it is, the more it’s worth. Estibot takes all of that (and more) into consideration when valuing domain names.

Through Estibot, users are able to find out the worth of domain names, see valuable analytics like search volume and PageRank as well as see who the owner of the domain is. Users can also leverage Estibot to obtain contact information for the domain’s owner, as well as see when the domain’s current registration will expire.

Clips Video Editor

MindNode

One of the many mobile device features that has dramatically improved over the years is the camera. With smartphones now able to shoot high-definition quality video, many users are now leveraging their devices to capture video. To help users polish their videos, a number of editing apps have emerged. Few, however, are as easy to use as the Clips Video Editor. Clips is a no-nonsense solution that enables users to perform basic editing actions like cropping and sequencing snippets, as well as take it up a notch by adding background music.

New ideas take a lot of time, energy, persistence and organization to mature into a final product.

MindNode enables users to create a “mind map” or a brainstorming outline for their ideas. Users can also upload their mind map to a feature called MyMindNode, which then allows them to view their mind map on their desktop as well as share their idea through email or social networks.

Moxtra

With Clips Video Editor users can do simple video-editing tasks like cropping or more complex ones like adding background music.

GetResponse

On to the Next Apps have become the activity of choice on mobile devices and developers are pumping them out faster than ever to meet demand.

With so many apps available users should take their time when exploring what to download and remember that even if they acquire one they end up disliking, simply delete it and move onto the next one.

Effective communication is one of the most important aspects of a successful workplace.

With many people’s jobs taking them out of the office today, however, it can be difficult for individuals to communicate effectively with their colleagues.

Moxtra takes aim at this problem by allowing users to send messages to their colleagues both as an email and through an in-app chat.

Moxtra also offers more advanced features to users such as the ability to include annotations and multimedia files in conversations. Users can even leverage the app to conduct Web conference meetings with See what mobile apps are trending each and every day at Website Magazine’s new sister site, ApplicationMagazine.com. screen-sharing capabilities.

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Master the Web Fundamentals Web 360: Fundamentals of Web Success is the one-and-only guide to mastering all the elements critical to Web success.

Here’s what subscribers are saying about Web360: “A must-read for any level of Internet marketer.”

“Very impressed with both the journal as well as the no-nonsense book.”

“So much insightful information I had to reread the book, highlighting all over the place.”

To learn more, visit WebsiteMagazine.com/Web360

Conversion

CORNER

LAUGH ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK:

USING HUMOR TO INCREASE CONVERSIONS

By Tim Ash

It should come as no surprise to any experienced digital marketer that first impressions matter – a lot.

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, visitors will leave a website in as little as 10 seconds unless they see a clear reason to stay. Making an immediate positive connection with visitors is imperative, and many marketers have found that humor is just the way to do this. Done well, humor can provide an unexpected break from the typical Web experience, helping companies create a personal connection with visitors that can lead to better engagement and – ultimately – higher conversions.

Why should brands use humor?

People are bombarded with marketing and advertisements everywhere they turn, which over time has created a sort of “resistance” to sponsored messaging.

Advertisements that at one time might have been considered attention-grabbing are often overlooked today because of the sheer volume of noise that people are filtering out on a daily basis. Breaking through this resistance is one of the toughest challenges marketers face. Humor can help.

Researchers at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands explored how humor impacts the consumer’s natural resistance to advertising. They found that humor distracted the viewer from the instinct to resist the ad while also creating a positive 32

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brand association. Humor impacted both explicit and implicit brand associations.

Further humor experiments have also shown the benefits of using humor in the corporate world. Brands that have used humor or silliness in their messaging have found that taking themselves less seriously can: Increase positive feelings and associations and appeal to emotions Deflect and discourage criticism Reduce tension the customer might feel toward the company or the buying process Improve communication and make the information more memorable Distract a customer from developing sales objections That said, one of the most compelling characteristics of humor is its ability to attract and hold attention, particularly in cluttered media environments. And few environments are more cluttered than the Web. Brands that have infused levity, cleverness and humor into their websites and online marketing have learned that being funny can also be good business.

Using humor to boost conversions Humor on websites can range from cheeky or offbeat offers on a button to an entire brand that is built around having a laugh. For years, MailChimp was best known for its lightheartedness, offering entertaining

graphics, an animated mascot and witty copy throughout its site. Potential customers comparing MailChimp to other email service providers would come to MailChimp’s site and immediately notice that it was different. Was it the humor that made people sign up? Probably not. But MailChimp’s informal style of branding helped distinguish it from the competitors, breaking through people’s natural resistance to “marketing speak” by using a more colloquial tone. MailChimp found that engaging people in a less formal and slightly silly way helped them communicate key selling points that might have been ignored if presented in a more traditional format.

Building humor into a site does not have to encompass the entire brand. Several years ago, Cisco made news when they produced the tongue-in-cheek video “The perfect gift for Valentine’s Day,” promoting an $80,000 router as the perfect gift for that special someone. In an interview with Forbes, Cisco’s social media producer Tim Washer explained that his purpose in taking this humorous approach was to help Cisco stand out from the crowd, gain exposure and make people laugh – something he says is the most intimate connection marketers can make with their customers in a business environment. “When a brand shows that it doesn’t always take itself too seriously, it’s a powerful way to demonstrate authenticity and confidence, as well as connect with your community,” Washer said in the interview.

Salespeople have long known that humor can be an effective sales tool, and the same logic applies to online selling. Back in 1981 an experiment by O’Quinn and Aronoff showed that when salespeople used humor it helped create a more relaxing environment for the buyer, which subsequently broke down objections and helped win over an otherwise unreceptive audience. The experiment was simple: half the sellers added humor to their “close” with the line “my final offer is $__, and I’ll throw in a pet frog.” It may sound ridiculous, but the researchers found that buyers were willing to pay more money when the frog joke was used.

Rules for using humor Humor can be a surprisingly effective and subtle persuasive technique, but there are a few tips for maximizing its value in online marketing.

Keep the end goal and brand in mind - Just as a dirty joke told by an innocent 9-year old girl would come across as awkward and inappropriate, corpo-

What’s the ultimate Valentine’s Day Gift? In a tongue-in-cheek video Cisco said it’s an $80,000 router.

rate humor needs to match the brand or product it is supporting. Using humor on a website should be viewed as a means to build rapport with visitors and support them through their purchase journey.

Humor that seems out of place will distract potential customers and could kill conversions.

Trigger the right emotion - Remember that humor works in marketing because it touches people’s emotions. Ironically, this is also the reason humor can fail. Most purchase decisions are made on an emotional level long before the logical, rational part of the brain kicks in. Marketers who use humor must be careful that their approach to being funny will, in fact, be perceived that way. There must be absolutely no chance that a visitor might be confused, angry or offended by a company’s attempt at humor.

Keep it simple - Online humor has to work swiftly in order to be effective without becoming a distraction. Visitors shouldn’t have to think about the humor being used - it needs to be simple and direct in order to make a connection. Clarity should always win out over cleverness.

Using humor online can be a powerful means of building rapport with visitors, putting them at ease, communicating complex information, breaking down resistance, and creating a memorable experience that could lead to repeat visits and/or positive word-ofmouth marketing. For all of these reasons, infusing a little funny business into a company’s website is an excellent technique for marketers to employ as part of their conversion optimization efforts. Done well, humor has a universal appeal that even the most conservative companies can cash in on.

3 Tech Companies with Personality

Tim Ash is the CEO of SiteTuners, Chair of Conversion Conference and bestselling author of “Landing Page Optimization.”

wsm.co/funnytech

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From their social pages to their Web pages, see which tech companies provide a laugh at

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Email

EXPERIENCE

Email ROI:

Do You Really Understand Where Your Email Marketing Revenue Comes From?

By EJ McGowan, Senior Director and GM of Campaigner

Today’s marketers have multiple channels in which they can allocate marketing spend, so it is critical to measure the return on investment (ROI) of each (email, online advertising, trade shows, etc.) in order to develop an appropriate overall budget.

How do you properly measure the ROI of email marketing to gain these insights? Many make the mistake of relying solely on open and click-through rates to measure email success. While this measurement is a strong starting point, taking a holistic view is far more effective.

The process of building and analyzing an overall return on investment and tracking it back to a specific email marketing campaign is a complicated process. However, by following these three steps, you’ll be headed in the right direction: Step 1: Understand the Marketing Landscape The first step before beginning any campaign is to understand the brand’s marketing strategy and options.

With multiple marketing and advertising channels available, it is important to have a clear vision and objective for what the campaign will look like. Which channels will be used? What should be measured? This can vary significantly given the specific message and the goals a brand aims to achieve (e.g. brand awareness, social interaction, driving traffic, etc.). By understanding the different opportunities, marketers can choose the appropriate channel(s) with a better sense of assurance, knowing they will reap the greatest rewards.

Step 2: Be Realistic When Measuring Success Once the campaign objectives and marketing channels are determined and outlined, it is necessary to have an honest and realistic discussion about measuring success. Be sure to look at the big picture and understand that a majority of website visits and online sales resulting from email marketing may not be reflected in the metrics available. Despite one’s best efforts, much of the traffic received will continue to come from untrackable sources. For example, say a marketer is trying to increase the sales of sweaters this season through a targeted email 34

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campaign; traffic on the sweaters’ Web page should not only be attributed to directly connected opens or clickthroughs, but should also be considered in the context of wider brand awareness for the campaign (e.g. word of mouth, well-timed advertisements, promotional or PPC campaigns that correlated with the email campaign, etc.).

While the most recognizable and frequently used metrics from email marketing are opens and clickthrough rates, they are often difficult to tie back to the marketing goal of revenue generation. True, we want to believe that driving traffic to the site with increased click-through rates will drive sales, but it’s difficult to make that connection. For a more effective understanding of ROI, there needs to be a larger system.

Step 3: Build Out a Bigger Beast Since opens and click-throughs will not provide the holistic view required, it is imperative to use these initial metrics to bolster an overall chain of data that begins and ends with email marketing. Connect the dots and incorporate email marketing data with other metrics to track the full picture. For example, use email marketing to its fullest potential by connecting email campaigns with Google Analytics to track opens and click-throughs and integrate that information to shopping cart use and point-of-sale systems. More specifically, think of tracking the entire process: email marketing > opens > clickthroughs > pages views > calls-to-action > shopping cart > fulfillment systems > email marketing.

Lastly, go full circle and push this information back into email marketing software to tailor the success of future campaigns. It starts with an effective email strategy, but also requires data from other systems to gain a comprehensive understanding of ROI. Taking these steps will create a closed system that will continuously generate key data to leverage moving forward.

Knowing the Source Measuring the ROI of email marketing is no easy feat.

Try not to fall into the common open/click-through trap and realize that while these metrics provide a basic understanding of your campaign, you need a big-picture view to truly understand total success.

10 YEARS

12 MONTHS OF WEB SUCCESS Don’t wait, subscribe FREE at wsm.co/subscribe15 Join the largest audience of Internet professionals of any industry publication by claiming your FREE subscription to Website Magazine today.

Hosting

PANEL

Migration Mitigation

Sound strategies and cost-effective best practices to keep your server migrations from heading south.

By Ryan Pelerin

When moving into a new house, the last thing on your mind is uprooting and moving into your next house. For a growing family, however, the need for more space or updated amenities can make another move inevitable.

Similarly, for growing businesses, there are parallel reasons why Web/data migrations are necessary—the need for more servers, outgrowing a previous provider, adding more staff and customers, or simply taking advantage of emerging technologies like cloud hosting.

When a business first sets up its website and application servers, it doesn’t do so with migration in mind. Instead, it focuses on getting its website online, and making sure its email, CRM tools, accounting systems, etc., are available quickly and are running smoothly. As a result, most businesses do not plan, let alone budget, for future server migrations. While the reasons for a migration vary, the reality is every online entity will have to move to a new server at some point. Companies need to appreciate the importance of a migration, and understand the costs and consequences of different migration strategies and solutions.

How that migration unfolds depends on a wide 36

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range of variables and can become an expensive endeavor if not planned for and executed correctly. In that context, IT staff, website directors and chief information officers (CIOs) need to become familiar with the specialized techniques and strategies to perform server migrations. This includes avoiding budget overruns, such as identifying, vetting and leveraging experts with proven technical skills and knowledge about automated migration tools, the importance of migration planning and testing, and the capability to ensure a successful migration while keeping production sites and servers “live” to avoid disruption of business operations or worse, loss of revenue.

Understand the “What” and “Why” The first step in executing an efficient and cost-effective server migration is to answer two important questions. First: What are you moving? Stakeholders need to understand the composition and construct of their applications, such as websites, software, business systems and email, and what kind of hosting platforms are best suited for each. Since most organizations don’t typically document their digital assets, plan to engage a professional services organization to review and inventory servers and applications in advance of a migration.

The second question is: Why are you moving? Perhaps business growth requires more servers, there’s a want to adopt cloud hosting or to replace a current hosting provider. Answering this question will set the stage to specify what type of hosting services is required and define the proper migration path.

Consider the Price Tag

Understand the Variables As servers and software evolve, variables become more common and potentially complex, including upgrading application versions (similar to Windows updates on a PC, hosting servers require ongoing patching and periodic OS upgrades). There are unique considerations when moving from a physical to cloud environment. In this scenario, the best bet is to engage a specialized migration services partner who can make specific recommendations for an application/website in terms of what kind of new environment to migrate.

Numerous options and approaches can impact the cost of a migration, ranging from sophisticated migration software that automates data shifts for moving a high volume of servers (typically hundreds or more) in a “like-toDon’t Ignore the If testing Worst-Case Scenario like” migration, to specialty service providers that offer comprehensive When it comes to migrations, it is overlooked, “white-glove” migration services. pays to plan for the worst. Identify Specialized migration service problems in advance that may crebusinesses run providers can deliver not only the ate downtime or other issues, and technical tools, methodologies and create a contingency plan. A migrathe significant expertise, but also the strategic tion mistake can mean everything counsel, advanced testing and onfrom revenue loss to the expense of risk of having going DevOps support to ensure engaging a specialist to resolve timea successful server migration well sensitive problems. In the event of a costly technical beyond go-live. For example, find migration failure, do stakeholda provider that can enhance the miers know what happens next? Enproblems arise gration by offering load testing and sure a migration team has a plan in performance tuning of website applace to immediately direct services later. plications prior to going live. This back to the original servers in a can avoid costly downtime once the worst-case scenario. site launches. Without such a test, an e-commerce site Additionally, thoroughly test all migrated applicacould go down as soon as it’s migrated—a far more tions before go-live. A migration expert should provide costly issue than migration itself. testing instructions and oversight, as well as the ability to resolve any errors, prior to taking websites and applications “live” at the new servers. If testing is overlooked, Ask the Right Questions Just as choosing the right hosting solution is critical, businesses run the significant risk of having costly techselecting the right migration services provider can also nical problems arise later. be a difference-maker. When evaluating the experience Initiating a data migration effort can seem like a and expertise of a migration partner, ask detailed ques- daunting task. Even the most disciplined organizations may approach the process with feelings of uncertainty tions including: and doubt, devoting enormous amounts of critical resources to executing a successful migration. In that + How many migrations have you performed? + Have you previously migrated servers and applica- context, the guidance and support of a provider who is not only experienced, but whose scope of service is a tions similar to mine? good fit for your needs, is critically important. + Do you have the capability/resources to fix application layer errors or perform upgrades for compatibility with new architecture?

Ryan Pelerin serves as founding partner and COO of WSM International (formerly Website Movers), a leading Web-data + Are migration services your core business? server migration services provider and creators of the Web and + Do you guarantee a successful migration? data migration services industry.

“

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Migration Meltdowns Hear real-world server migration stories at

wsm.co/smigrate 10 YEARS

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Net

ADVERTISING

Fact & Fiction IN DISPLAY ADVERTISING

By Lindsay Arnold

Anyone with access to a search engine can claim that they know “all about” the best practices when it comes to advertising online.

GOOGLE BECOMES TRANSPARENT See how the tech giant is being accountable for “viewability” at

wsm.co/vidgoog

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The Internet has made so much information readily available that anyone can enter in a few keywords, and embark on a personal journey toward becoming a digital wizard. This has allowed the ‘Net industry to grow exponentially, but there is one major downfall – the high and very real risk of being misled.

People are susceptible to believing anything and everything they read online. While advertisers looking for genuine guidance don’t have to ignore everything they find on the Web, it is important to think twice before implementing every new tactic and technique they discover.

To help separate fact from virtual fiction, here are some commonly spouted display advertising tips, which could use some second thought.

CTR is the key metric for display success With any new campaign most marketers are hoping to see their numbers increase immediately - meaning more click-throughs, more conversions and, of course, more return on their investment.

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Consumers, however, don’t always click through – at least not right away. It is more likely they will make a mental note; perhaps do some research on the product/service, and just wait to move forward with their purchase. It is during this time that it is most important for the advertiser to stay top-of-mind and engage with the consumer (with tactics like remarketing).

The more reach a brand has with its display advertising and digital marketing efforts, the more engaged the targeted consumer will feel – leading to higher chances of a conversion in the future.

The more banners there are online, the more banner blindness will occur The sheer volume of competition in display advertising can be pretty overwhelming. Through display, retargeting and social media, no channel is untapped.

This is what leads people to believe that consumers are prone to “banner blindness,” especially with reports stating that the average click-through rate (CTR) of a banner ad is only 0.1 percent.

It’s true that there are more ads than ever working to reach each viewer’s attention, but this should be seen more as motivation to do better than a reason to give up. In fact, online advertisers can now even take advantage of their competitors’ strategies – with competitive intelligence.

A.

Competitive intelligence tools (including iSpionage, AdBeat and others, including WhatRunsWhere) exist to help brands analyze what their competition is doing with their own online advertising strategy. These tools provide data as to what is or is not working for one’s competitors or top advertisers in any given industry. In this regard, the more ads there are online, the more resources one can use to make their own campaigns better.

Google is the best bet for media buying Google is by far the leader in search-based advertising, and as a result, advertisers often assume it is the only ad network worth testing. Allowing Google to monopolize all of one’s paid advertising means that they are missing out on the great opportunities that other networks hold.

By using other networks an advertiser could find: more traffic, more targeted engagement, cheaper costper-click (CPC) or a variety of other benefits that could end up boosting their overall ROI. Don’t miss out on better opportunities just because Google was the easiest and safest option. For a long list of Google alternatives, go to page 14 of this issue.

A well-designed banner = more clicks The nicer something looks, the more likely it is that it will catch a viewer’s attention – makes sense, right? Against all logic, this isn’t necessarily true for banner advertising.

Consider this: If an advertiser posts an attractive banner ad on a professional-looking Web page, no one will be drawn to the ad – it will just blend in. Conversely, an amateur-looking advertisement will catch the attention of the viewer due to its contrast in style from the Web page (see Image A and B).

That said, there still needs to be a strategy for the banner’s creative. All the same rules apply in regard to proper branding, copy length and graphics – the countless hours polishing and editing just don’t necessarily have to be invested.

Graphics are more engaging than text When most people think of display advertising, they think of something that’s image-based. Generally it’s a product shot, or a visual of an actual person using the product (while looking and smiling right at the viewer of course).

B.

These ads from Tophatter and Wayfair are both telling examples of banners that are eye-catching, but not overly polished. They are likely to stand out when placed on any website.

C.

D.

Both Taco Bell and Harry’s effectively use text as the hero of the ad instead of the product. Rather than an image, Taco Bell relies on its catchy tagline, whereas Harry’s uses a product image but reduces its importance by using the same color in the background - giving more importance to its choice of copy.

It’s true that this can be very engaging, but the same can be said about a type-based display ad. Why not engage the consumer through a witty statement?

Or by asking them a question? Make them think by using the right copy (see Image C and D).

Research with Caution Remember that there are always two sides to every display marketing tip. What works for one advertiser, may not work at all for another. Research is important, but testing is the only way you will find what actually works.

Lindsay Arnold has a background in creative advertising and sociology. She is the marketing coordinator at WhatRunsWhere. Connect with Lindsay via Twitter @WhatRunsWhere and @lindsaydarnold.

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Web

COMMENTARY

HOW TO REINVENT YOUR

DIGITAL BUISNESS The following is a guest commentary from Michael Ni, CMO and SVP of products at Avangate

Most service providers and businesses think that it’s easy to sell online. You build a website, add a payment processor and now you’re officially a “digital business,” enabling you to make millions from online consumers.

To become a true digital business, you need to consider whether your current online business model allows you to adjust to new buyer preferences and purchasing habits.

As many businesses look to readjust and strategize for the New Year, they should consider the role that a full digital commerce strategy plays in their business.

Here are three tips for entrepreneurs, startups and even traditional businesses looking to go digital in 2015. And even if you’re thinking “but I’m already digital,” these three pieces of advice will offer you ways to reinvent your business model and support the expectations of sophisticated online buyers:

1. Readjust Your Digital Lens: Monetary Value is Shifting to Services

Have Something To Say? For possible placement as a guest contributor for Website Magazine, email editors@

websitemagazine.com

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To fully grasp what today’s digital business model should look like, you first need to understand where you can create the most value for your customer – and where this value is originating. The idea of the “traditional product” is evolving – products are now an excuse to sell online services, even as online services are fast productizing. Services are also being increasingly packaged and sold. Consider this: Uber first started with its traditional Uber and black car features, and then easily added Uber X to make it easy to order and trust. Uber’s valuation reflects its ability to package new services atop its platform.

2. Turn on the Charm: Customers Crave Engagement The ability to quickly adjust to new customer preferences and meet their demands starts with personalized, consistent engagement (Uber is another good example of this). Essentially, in order to derive new revenue streams and retain your customers, you need 10 YEARS

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to play on their terms. Customers want options to experiment, try-before-they-buy, and have the ability to add on new features and services at any time, such as 30-day free trials on Netflix and paying more for access to more channels on Hulu Plus versus the standard Hulu account.

3. Embrace Business/Buyer Symbiosis: The Secret is a Long-Term Relationship Today’s hyper-informed online buyers are in more control than ever before. They find out about an online business or service from various channel partners, affiliates, social media, mobile searches (or any combination of the above), and they arrive by any number of these sources. There are countless new channels where people can interact with a company’s content and, ultimately, make purchases. However, a purchase is now more than just a one-time transaction. Businesses need to earn the right to monetize the relationship with their customers and prospective buyers. This starts by ensuring a customer has options to grow with your business and that they are in control of their purchasing decisions, subscription preferences, payment options, etc. You can no longer rely on just payment processors to support the entire customer journey. Now, you need to engage, track and communicate with customers throughout every stage of the purchasing journey – from initial purchase to growth and retention.

To effectively reinvent your digital business and take advantage of the vast online population, you need to be able to get to market quickly, adjust your business model on the fly and offer customers options to experiment and test, both locally and internationally. Adopting an integrated commerce strategy in 2015 will help you to rethink your digital business and truly understand your customers – enabling you to see who’s buying from you, when and where a buyer interacts with what information, and how to best prompt a purchase.

Proactively influencing customers before, during and after the initial purchasing cycle is a key differentiator of successful, high-growth companies.

“Do You See Me?” “I see you! and so do your customers!”

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Go beyond! Website Magazine offers the following advertising opportunities: • White paper hosting • Job board advertising • Newsletters and eBlasts • Website advertising • Webinars • Video hosting • Listing on website

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