Website Magazine January 2016 by Website Magazine

5 Email Marketing Resolutions for 2016

THE MAGAZINE FOR WEBSITE SUCCESS JANUARY 2016

Digital Power Players 2016 INSIDE THIS ISSUE... Managing SEO Expectations Trends in Landing Page Design The Age of Emoji Engagement

PLUS

0 5 P TOEmail ns o i t u l o S

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3 Pillars of Social Login, Page 38

The Link to Local SEO Success, Page 18

5 Tips to Leverage Reviews this Holiday Season, Pg. 18

CELEBRATING

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DECEMBER 2015

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NOVEMBER 2015

The Web

Everyday & Everywhere

Web Analytics The SMB Content Marketing Checklist Solving the Web’s Cruft Problem Build Business Models with a CRO Focus

IS ALIVE

BUSINESS OPERATIONS

INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

What Makes a Difference in SEO Today?

Hitting a Customer Service Homerun

Branding Basics for Marketers

Smarter, Faster, Stronger Website Redesigns

Last-Minute KPIs for Retailers

The Tricks & Treats of Transactional Email

TOOPT5oo0ls

TOP 50

IA L MED SOCIAGEMENT MANA TIONS LU SO ge 14

EMAIL CE IEN EXPERTIONS SOLU

Page 14

4 Steps to Stronger IT Security, Page 34

THE MAGAZINE FOR WEBSITE SUCCESS WEBSITEMAGAZINE.COM

AUGUST 2015

Fundamentals of International SEO

How to Spot a A Greedy Marketer

PASS OR FAIL: Tips for Grading Your Customer List

The IoT’s Impact on Customer Lifetime Value

Why is Your Content Not Converting?

TOP 50

6 Ways to Maximize Customer Loyalty Programs, Page 34

Digital Ad Creative Checklist

PLUS TeObPCo5nte0nt

W nt geme Mana ems Syst

AND

TOPom5ain0 D s Service

SEO Troubleshooting for Google Newbs, Page 16

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10 CELEBRATING

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Super Pack for jQuery Junkies

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CELEBRATING

How to Compete Against Amazon

People Problems in Conversion Optimization

3-Steps to Get More Product Reviews, Page 18

INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

Summer Email Fitness Guide

RCES RESOU

Page 14

SOFTWARE

Structured Data for the SERPs

TOMPOB5ILE0

ECIFIC BIZ-SP WARE SOFT ONS SOLUTI

The Stars of Digital

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JUNE 2015

LOCAL WEB

EDGY

INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

Email Personalization through Segmentation

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JULY 2015

The Race for the

E-COMMERCE

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YEARS

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ESSENTIAL

MOBILE SURVIVAL GUIDE

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3 Strategies to Increase Organic Reach on Facebook, Page 30

How to Set Up an Email Highlight Reel, Page 36

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OCTOBER 2015

Disruptive

Predictions for the ‘Net’s Future

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THE MAGAZINE FOR WEBSITE SUCCESS MAY 2015

PERFORMANCE MARKETING And the Affiliate Flow INSIDE THIS ISSUE... Today’s Top 3 SEO Trends How to Compete for Leads Conversion Rate Optimization for Startups PLUS: Top 50 Software Solutions for Web Professionals

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APRIL 2015

DIGITAL

DESIGN FOR OPTIMAL INTERACTION INSIDE THIS ISSUE... Create Value Propositions That Work Common Project Management Pitfalls Is CRM Failing the Digital Enterprise? PLUS: Top 50 Monetization Networks for Web Publishers

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Digital Power Players 2016 Much like a high-performing athlete, running an online business takes speed, stamina and strength. Web professionals must not only commit to success in a variety of areas, but the providers they choose to help them succeed must also commit to their growth. Website Magazine’s annual list of Digital Power Players will serve the online enterprise well for scouting winning technology partners.

THIS MONTH IN WEBSITE MAGAZINE Mobile-Friendliness & Bing

The Digital Death of Product Hunt

Bing is following Google’s lead in the mobile arena and Web professionals would be wise to pay close attention.

One of the most popular digital destinations for Web professionals, Product Hunt’s relatively simple concept could easily be duplicated.

Email Marketing Resolutions to Make

The Age of Emojis

Now is the perfect time for marketers to evaluate their overall strategy and determine what’s working and what’s not.

In the Attention Economy, emojis present a powerful opportunity to engage users, provide meaning and appeal to difficult-to-reach audiences.

Incremental Revenue & Audience Insight

The Sound of Network Security

Publishers struggling to keep up with Facebook’s massive data stores should check out these solutions that help balance the digital landscape.

As essential element in every IT infrastructure, the industry needs a different approach to keep customers and digital properties safe.

Why CRO Isn’t Enough

The Rise of Header Bidding

With top-level support, time for education and the right technology stack, CRO pros can break through ineffective patterns.

Discover how pre-bid technology is leveling the playing field between direct buys, ad networks and exchanges.

EXPLORE WEBSITE MAGAZINE’S DEPARTMENTS Stat Watch:

Mastering Search:

The Year of Millennial Engagement

Managing SEO Expectations

Enterprise Ready:

E-Commerce Express:

Hiring a Digital Team

‘Net Retail Roundup

Small Business Lab:

Design & Development:

Growth Tactics for Upward SMBs

Trends in Landing Page Design

Quiz Time:

Analytics Insider:

Engagement Everywhere!

Calculated Metrics in Google Analytics

Top 50:

Web Commentary:

Exceptional Email Solutions

Kobe Bryant & Information Publishing

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From the

EDITOR Powering Digital Experiences Those just beginning their Web careers are often surprised to discover just how many solutions are available to help satisfy their digital demands – from offerings for marketing and advertising to those providing greater design and development capabilities (and virtually everything in between).

b lu

d i g

p l a y e r s

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Seasoned professionals, on the other hand, have long been exposed to the myriad software and services that can be used effectively to accelerate online success. They’ve become so savvy, in fact, that their buying decisions are often made long before making formal contact with providers (thanks to their previous experience, an abundance of product reviews, and the information and education initiatives from the vendors themselves). It is always useful, however, to regularly explore those solutions that stand out. Enterprising technology providers are helping companies accelerate their Web success in a variety of ways – from focusing on the user experience to leveraging the real-time nature of the Web (and that’s just the beginning). Companies that recognize and leverage the leading solutions – like those featured in the “Digital Power Players” article – are those positioned to excel in the future. With both emerging and top-performing solutions, this year’s Digital Power Players are fueling the experiences of Web-based companies. More than 100 offerings are listed, which have been covered, researched and/or tested by Website Magazine editors and its audience. In addition to this resource, readers will find guidance on many different topics, including articles addressing starting the New Year with fresh strategies like those for email marketing, e-commerce and conversion rate optimization. Alongside features like, “Managing SEO Expectations” and “Landing Page Design Trends,” Web pros have access to more content than ever thanks to an increasing focus on including more in-depth reviews of products making a difference online. As always, we hope you’ll join us on the ‘Net, where our editors and industry contributors provide daily coverage of important tips, tech and trends. Best Web Wishes,

The Magazine for Website Success Reaching the largest audience of Web professionals of any Internet industry publication

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MANAGING EDITOR:

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ASSOCIATE EDITOR:

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Amit Khanna E.J. McGowan Tim Ash

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Kelly Springer kspringer@websitemagazine.com Brian Wallace brian@websitemagazine.com

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Satisfy Your Infographic Needs Launched last year, Website Magazine’s webmag.co is a virtual pinboard for infographics, presentations, videos and other

Website Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 1, January 2016, (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. Canada Post: Please send undeliverable items to: 2835 Kew Drive, Windsor ON, N8T 3B7

content aimed specifically at busy Web professionals. Browse,

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*The opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of Website Magazine.

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Net

BRIEFS

QUICK HITS Google+ Gets a Makeover Google has revamped its social network. The updated Google+ puts an emphasis on user interests, with the platform’s Communities and Collections features front and center. Google+ was also rebuilt across the Web, Android and iOS devices to make it more mobile-friendly.

Microsoft Gives Power to Enterprises Microsoft unveiled a new service called PowerApps to help enterprises build their own business apps. The service can be leveraged by anyone in an organization, as it offers a Microsoft Office-like experience with templates and a visual designer to automate workflows. This enables any employee to develop an app that works across devices, as well as share their creation with coworkers.

Mobile Email Opens Driving Mobile Clicks Consumers are opening more email on their mobile devices, and new data from Yesmail reveals they are starting to click through more frequently too. The data shows mobile clicks accounted for 46.7 percent of all email clicks in Q3 2015, a 23.9 percent increase year-over-year (YoY). Even though smartphone revenue is up 6.1 percent from Q2, the data shows that tablets aren’t fairing as well. Revenue attributed to tablets decreased by 5.9 percent in the same period.

$ WHO GOT PAID? $45 Billion Not only did Mark

Zuckerberg announce the birth of his daughter in Dec. 2015, but the Facebook co-founder and CEO revealed his plans to give up 99 percent of his personal Facebook shares, currently valued at about $45 billion, to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in a rather unprecedented philanthropic effort.

$24 Million

Digital marketing intelligence company Netsertive raised an additional $9 million to complete its $24 million Series C funding. The funds will support accelerated investments in the company’s platform, which helps brands and local businesses drive shared local digital marketing success.

$158 Million

Application intelligence company AppDynamics has secured $158 million in growth financing from new investors led by General Atlantic and Altimeter Capital, with participation from Adage Capital, Industry Ventures, Goldman Sachs and Cross Creek Advisors.

?OF THE MONTH

QUESTION

What type of content garners the best engagement from your brand’s audience? To answer this question and possibly be included in an upcoming issue of Website Magazine, visit wsm.co/janqotm.

Google Puts Live Blogs on a Carousel A new Google search feature is putting live blog content on display. Publishers using the feature will be able to mark up their content with a new schema that will make it possible for live blog content to be displayed in carousels on Google’s search results page. It is important to note, however, that several requirements must be met for live blog pages to appear in the format, including all content being contained within the page, as well as the content being in chronological order and displaying a user-visible timestamp.

Facebook Gives Nonprofits New Tools Facebook unveiled new tools to help nonprofits succeed on its social network. For starters, a new tool called “fundraisers” provides nonprofits with a dedicated place to raise funds for a specific campaign. By leveraging fundraisers, nonprofits can tell the story of their campaign, rally supporters, collect donations and track progress toward a goal. Facebook also unveiled an improved donate button for nonprofit Pages and posts. This button enables nonprofits to have a consistent place on the social network where they can collect donations.

Centennials are Shaking Up E-Commerce The generation after millennials, dubbed “centennials” (ages 13-18), are leading an in-store shopping charge according to new data from PowerReviews. The data reveals that although 94 percent of centennials prefer to research and browse products online, 46 percent prefer to make purchases in stores. Comparatively, just 37 percent of millennials (ages 19-34) prefer purchasing at brick and mortars. Additional findings show that centennials don’t have a lot of patience, with more than a third saying they would not purchase a product if they couldn’t ask a question about it directly on the product’s page, and 79 percent saying they’d head straight to another retailer or Amazon.

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5 Link Building Lies You’ll Hear in 2016 +

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With a new year upon us, there will be a plethora of “this or that is dead” articles. Somehow we all get sucked in. To stay above the fray, check out these five link building lies you’ll want to ignore in 2016.

Become a Customer Service Pro on Facebook +

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As the world becomes more connected, more customers are turning to social networks for their customer service needs. Often, however, these customers are left with a disappointing experience.

Net

BRIEFS WEB TECH WATCH

APP FOCUS

See what has the ‘Net community all abuzz with Website Magazine’s #WebTechWatch series, a monthly roundup profiling both emerging and established technologies and some of the most useful solutions for today’s Web workers. Submit your own recommendations by tweeting us @WebsiteMagazine.

Google Cloud Vision API

HelpingB

Popular e-commerce software provider Shopify has unveiled a new app called Sello that enables anyone to sell online. Users simply snap a photo of a product, add its information (e.g. price and title) and then share the product listing with the world. In fact, users can share the product directly through the app onto social networks, email, SMS and more. Discover additional apps at ApplicationMagazine.com.

Image recognition API for developers.

Torch An all-in-one artificial intelligence-fueled business suite.

Start Selling Online

TeamWave

Cast

Evolero

Record, edit, publish and host podcasts.

A platform for Web-based event planning. The solution is mobile-optimized, features ticketing capabilities and includes social media tools.

A unified platform for collaboration, sales, marketing and support.

WhiteTruffle PublishDrive

AppAction

Job matching service powered by machine learning.

Blitzen

Have tips, stories, or funding or acquisition news to share?

Tweet us @WebsiteMagazine

Stat

WATCH

2015: The Year of Millennial Engagement! Before 2013 nobody really cared about millennials – with the exception of themselves, of course. While this is not an entirely true statement, data from Google Trends shows relatively low search interest prior to that year. As Website Magazine readers know, interest started rising around that time and hit its peak in 2015. Last year, professionals couldn’t escape the importance of engaging the millennial consistently across channels. In this edition of Website Magazine’s Stat Watch, readers will find statistics that will provide brands encouragement to refocus their marketing and Web design efforts on these consumers and their oftendemanding expectations. As many know, however, millennials aren’t just impacting the online experience. Enterprises of all kinds and sizes must now learn how to engage this demographic in their places of business too. The 2015 Deloitte Millennial survey (analyzing 8,000 respondents born after 1982 who have a college degree and work full-time), for instance, found only 28 percent feel that their current organization is making use of their skills. While this may induce eyerolling for some, it’s a good indicator of how engaged millennials are in the workplace. What’s more, while most millennials (59 percent) hope to become the leader or senior executive within their current organization, according to the study, only 27 percent rated their leadership skills as strong – indicating companies will need to nurture their aspiring leaders. “These findings should be viewed as a wake-up call to the business community, particularly in developed markets, that they need to change the way they engage millennial talent or risk being left behind,” said Barry Salzberg, CEO of Deloitte Global.

500%

Advertisers are spending 500 percent more to reach millennials than all other groups online, including 4 times as much on both display and social, 4.5 times as much on mobile and 6 times more on video. (Turn, 2015)

24% Millennials are 24 percent more loyal to their favorite brands than baby boomers. (Crowdtwist, 2015)

62%

Two out of three (62 percent) of millennials feel that online content drives their loyalty to a brand. (NewsCred, 2015)

95% Nearly all millennials (95 percent) have the same or greater sensitivity to price as last year. (Blackhawk Engagement Solutions, 2015)

85% Millennials (age 21-34), who came of age with the Internet, have the highest levels of trust in online and mobile formats with branded websites (85 percent) second only to “recommendations from people I know.” (Nielsen, 2015) J A N U A R Y 2016

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Enterprise

READY Hire a Digital

DREAM TEAM

By Allison Howen, Associate Editor

Executives don’t have the luxury of drafting a dream team for every new business project. They do, however, have the ability to sign free agents (or freelancers, as we call them in the business world). Unlike traditional employees, freelancers typically have a specialized skill set, are self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long term. This makes freelancers a great option for businesses that need assistance with short-term projects or tasks. Finding quality freelancers for the first time, however, can be time consuming. Hiring managers must not only make a strategic plan that identifies the type of freelancers they need (e.g. designers, developers, writers, etc.), but also know where to look for this talent and what questions to ask during the hiring process.

Where to Look

27 Unusual Interview Questions They never could have prepared for these: wsm.co/qsinterview. 10

Most professionals have heard of popular freelance marketplace Upwork (formerly oDesk) – and for good reason. The marketplace has more than 10 million registered freelancers with 2,700-plus areas of expertise available, including Web and mobile development, designing, writing, customer service and accounting. What’s more, Upwork has an enterprise solution for companies that need to hire a large team. Other freelance marketplaces worth checking out include Guru and Freelancer.com. While all are good options for scouting talent, hiring managers shouldn’t limit their search to freelance-only hiring services. In fact, freelance opportunities can be promoted on traditional job boards as long as they are labeled as such. Plus, unlike in-house positions, businesses can search for talent across the globe. “Many freelancers work remotely, so forget about cityspecific job listings,” said Charlie Cohn, head of market.com

JANUARY 2016

ing at StudySoup. “I recommend searching for candidates at companies you believe are doing well at the role you’re hiring for and inviting them to apply. I also believe in word-of-mouth. Ask your network to aid in the search.” Once a hiring manager collects a good amount of qualified candidates, it is time to start reviewing portfolios and preparing for the interview process – which requires asking the right questions.

What to Ask Reviewing portfolios helps hiring managers get a better idea of each candidate’s skills and allows them to create customized questions for future interviews. “These questions are important, because portfolio items can be misleading,” said Adam Thompson, director of digital at 10x Digital. “For example, I’ve seen many designers/developers include a website in their portfolio, only to discover upon further questioning that they only did a very small task on the website, such as add a contact form.” Aside from questions related directly to the freelancer’s skills and work history, hiring managers should have a list of other important questions. For example, inquiring about the candidate’s availability, communication preferences and pay rate is vital. Here are additional questions worth considering: What is the biggest mistake you have made on a project and what did you learn from it? Which clients have been your favorite to work with, and why? Will you be working for other employers simultaneously? What would your previous employer list as your most positive and negative attributes? What do you expect from our company as a freelancer? Hiring managers can ask these questions via a telephone or video interview and should evaluate candidates’ responses similar to how they do when hiring traditional employees. After all, even though freelancers are typically short-term and remote workers, they still need to be a good fit for the enterprise that hires them. Further, they may work out in the long run as a viable full-time team member.

Setting Your Lineup Hiring a dream team of freelancers is beneficial for enterprises needing specialized skills for temporary projects, as these individuals don’t require a longterm commitment and require less day-to-day management than full-time employees.

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Design and

DEVELOPMENT

The Future of

Landing Page Design First Impressions Count; User Experience Matters By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

Web design (and design in general) is perpetually top of mind with serious digital-minded enterprises because they understand that first impressions do count, that user experience does matter, and that there is always a new and arguably better way to accomplish engagement and revenue goals. That makes keeping atop design trends fundamental to online success. So what design trends impacted the Web experience in 2015? And how can companies and the designers they employ use those trends, and their psychological underpinnings, to their advantage? Let’s find out, but first, let’s talk about a few trends we could all probably do without. 20

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Not all design trends that emerge will have longevity – either because they don’t work as well as expected, a better way is discovered or simply because users grow weary of them. The hamburger menu, for example, might be the trend to leave most quickly from the digital design world as it is often difficult to notice (on some sites more than others depending on the execution). Another trend that many hope desperately leaves as quickly as it came is that of ghost buttons – the transparent, empty-appearing calls-to-action that take on a common shape (like a rectangle) but are bordered only by a thin line, and use the page background as the color fill of that element (read more at wsm.co/ghostcta). Keep in mind that one person’s ideal design element is another’s design disaster and that what works for one enterprise, website and audience, may not

work well for another. The only way to know whether any design trend (be it hamburger menus, ghost buttons or any other) an enterprise opts to follow is effective is through a rigorous process of testing – that applies to both good and bad design. With the realization that testing is the only way to ensure new elements are effective, coupled with a critical and cautious approach to any new element that will be integrated into a Web design, 2015 has seen numerous trends that will likely, perhaps definitely, stand the test of digital time. Scrolling & Single-Page Design: In the not-sodistant past the assumption was that users would not scroll past what was immediately visible (what was seen above the fold). That, however, just is not true. Data analytics provider Chartbeat, for example, found that 66 percent of attention on a normal media page is spent below the fold, and ClickTale (analyzing 100,000 page views) found that people used the scrollbar on 76 percent of pages (with 22 percent scrolling all the way to the bottom regardless of the length of that page). What this means is that long pages with scrolling functionality are, in effect, no different in terms of their potential engagement impact, than pages that don’t force users to scroll. That’s good news because there are some great effects that can be put in place including parallax scrolling as well as scrolling-triggered animations. Simplicity & Minimalism: John Maeda, in his book, The Laws of Simplicity, wrote “On the one hand, you want a product or service to be easy to use; on the other hand you want it to do everything that a person might want it to do. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction. When in doubt, just remove. But be careful of what you remove.” Simplicity really isn’t about less of something (removal and reductionism), however, but rather about comprehension and clarity of purpose. Designers across the Web have long sought out simpler, and often more minimal designs (which are not mutually exclusive consequently), in their projects, but the trend toward simplicity has all but taken over in 2015 particularly with luxury brands; chances are excellent it will remain that way for the foreseeable future.

+ See examples of brands that have opted for a simpler and more minimal approach to their Web design at wsm.co/sevensimple.

Animation & Interaction: Web design has been “static” for so long that it can be surprising for a user to encounter sites that feature or offer up any animation at all. And that can prove to be a very good thing as motion and movement drive attention and engagement as they heavily influence the hierarchy of the visual experience. Animation can also show how things are related, reveal connections between elements and confirm the successful (or unsuccessful) completion of an event. With significant advancements of HTML5, C333, JavaScript and jQuery, a whole new world of possibilities emerged when it came to Web design, including more robust interactions. Designers can now include elements that can be pushed, clicked and swiped, and personalization features like geolocation can be implemented. In a time when digital enterprises are looking for an edge over the competition, animation and interaction are powerful ways to make a positive first impression and improve the user experience. Discover a few specific design-related scripts to engage and impress website visitors at wsm.co/scriptsdes. Typography & Fonts: The use of typography plays such an interesting role within the digital experience that Web professionals regularly find it within trend pieces like this one. Web design in 2015 leaned toward the use of dynamic typography – text that draws attention to itself based on its typeface, size or weight (its font). In fact, in certain instances, there are some sites that use typography as their primary image of their digital property, and specifically, on their landing pages. That works well when and if the chosen font achieves the goal of legibility and readability; if it can’t be understood at first glance, it should not be used. It’s important to remember that if a specific approach or style is effective, it will be around for some time. There’s no reason (at least no good reason) to adopt every one that emerges. It’s most important to adopt those styles and the resulting experiences that most benefit the audience viewing it because first impressions do count and user experience, as it always has, matters. There are, of course, many other trends (micro and macro) that deserve the attention of Web professionals – read part two of this month’s Design & Development Digest at wsm.co/trendspart2 to find out what they are and improve your brand’s digital experience.

The Benefits of TypeScript Discover why some developers are already ditching JavaScript in favor of TypeScript at wsm.co/typeplus.

Insights on

ANALYTICS

USER-LEVEL INTELLIGENCE

Getting Started with Calculated Metrics By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

In fall 2015, Google began rolling out its new Calculated Metrics feature in an open beta for those using its Universal Analytics offering. Calculated Metrics provide an immense amount of flexibility in terms of procuring and gathering insights by presenting an opportunity to perform some rather powerful calculations on any matter of data and to do so within the actual confines of the Google Analytics (GA) interface. Consider it a business and audience intelligence solution built right into the platform that will help enterprises gain a new and rather unprecedented view of the user and that user’s behavior on a digital property. Creating Calculated Metrics makes it possible to combine standard metrics like users, sessions and pageviews, with custom metrics like a conversion event such as sales, sign-ups, or even clicks or video plays. The feature is an exciting advancement over what was accessible directly within the solution previously. In the past, for example, it was difficult to obtain metrics like “Revenue per User” or “Site Searches per User” – but not anymore. 22

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The introduction of this capability will also mean that there is no longer a need to export data into third-party solutions (e.g. Excel spreadsheets or API-based solutions) in order to process information deemed important to an enterprise’s bottom line, and analyze methods it uses to optimize the user experience as well as its marketing or performance initiatives. What is important to understand about Calculated Metrics is that it enables users to compute their own metrics based on the standard metrics available in Google Analytics in order to come up with data that better aligns with the measured needs of their company, as well as answers questions that drive positive action. Anyone wanting greater control of their data needs to get started with Calculated Metrics.

GETTING STARTED Creating Calculated Metrics in Google Analytics can be quite overwhelming without a strong understanding of (1) the information that needs to be obtained, and (2) how to actually begin using the available formulas or those developed on one’s own (which can be cumbersome to construct).

Fortunately, Website Magazine has put together a detailed guide to creating and using formulas for the Calculated Metrics offering within Google Analytics at wsm.co/gaformulas; and there are plenty of very practical use cases available around the Web that when mirrored (and, of course, leveraged) can most definitely provide some powerful insights into the performance of a digital property. There are an infinite number of ways that data can be seen through the lens of Calculated Metrics – analysts are limited exclusively by their own vision, the quality of their existing GA setup, and, of course, the information available. Also, keep in mind that Google set a limit of five calculated metrics per view for free accounts (50 for premium accounts). Here are a few approaches to consider (organized into conversion- and experience-focused key performance indicators). This isn’t the only way to look at calculated metrics (also consider measuring through a journey-based approach to calculated metrics...read more at wsm.co/journey16), but it will definitely get Web pros started in the right direction:

CONVERSION FOCUSED + Subscription Revenue (where the formula

would subtract the value of canceled subscriptions from the value of new subscriptions). + Revenue After Refunds (where the formula

would subtract refund amount from total revenue). + Total Goal Completions (where the formula

would add the number of different goal completions – it is even possible to measure entrances to steps in goal funnels).

EXPERIENCE FOCUSED + Sessions/Pageviews per User (where the formula

would determine the average amount of pageviews or sessions per user for the specific data segment). + Events per User (where the formula would de-

termine the average number of on-page events per user from a specific data segment). Again, while there are some limitations (creating accounts is easy but creating reports of calculated metrics can be somewhat cumbersome) the sky is truly the limit in terms of what can be tracked and measured (and ultimately managed) thanks to the introduction of Calculated Metrics from Google. With a little effort, the intelligence gathered will prove incredibly valuable to enterprises.

5 Popular Custom Reports in Google Analytics Leveraging analytics does not need to be difficult, and thanks to Google’s Custom Reports Gallery, it’s not. Users of the system have access to thousands of pre-built reports that can be used to better understand a site’s performance and to do so with ease. Here are a few of the most popular across categories including acquisition, conversion, e-commerce, mobile, organic and paid search. Access these (and other) custom reports on the ‘Net at wsm.co/gcustom. PPC Keyword/Matched Keyword Report Learn which user queries are being matched to ads, then refine the Match Type (Broad, Phrase or Exact) to better match those ads to the most relevant user queries.

Content Analysis Dashboard Evaluate the efficiency of website content and determine which pages are underperforming or over-performing and start adjusting content strategy according to need.

SEO Insights for Google Organic Shows the landing page URLs along with their page titles to provide information on the general keyword themes that users are searching for on Google.

Site Diagnostics A custom report that splits data into mobile and non-mobile visits, providing an overview of the average load time, redirection time, server connection time and response time among others.

Acquisition from Referral Traffic Discover which third-party referring sites are sending traffic to a site; great for formulating link building strategy and seeing how effective link partners are in terms of PageRank equity.

Digital Power Players 2016 By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor

Fast, strong, smart, reliable…the characteristics scouts look for in athletes isn’t all that different from what business buyers need in the solutions (software and services) they seek to help run their Web-based businesses. Like a prospective player, a digital offering must not only be vetted with tests, trial periods and talks, but it also must complement a team (and, of course, fit into its budget). Thanks to the very Internet they look to dominate, how business buyers make these crucial decisions has rapidly changed and that was very apparent in 2015. In fact, these decision-makers can be up to 90 percent through the buyer’s journey before engaging sales (read more at wsm.co/b2buyers). Everything from vendor websites to user reviews can provide decision-makers the information they need to feel confident about picking up the phone, filling out a form, engaging in a trial or indicating in another way they are now ready to take the next step in their conversion path – and start fielding calls and emails from salespersons. Website Magazine is also here to help. In addition to access to industry executives and early announcements, our editors are provided the opportunity to test a variety of digital solutions 24

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thanks to the companies who offer us demos or accounts to vet their products. These insights help us provide this Digital Powers Players resource to assist readers in scouting the services they need to be successful online. This year, our list is separated into more than a dozen categories with 112 solutions honored with the label of Digital Power Player. Readers will find, however, that a company listed as one type of offering may fit in many other categories as well. In the New Year, tech companies will broaden their offerings even more through acquisitions and feature expansions, making the categorization of products and services more difficult, so keep an open mind to how the Power Players have been placed. From there, readers will likely ask, “What does it take to be a Digital Power Player?” In short, both emerging and established companies must help accelerate the success of their users through product innovation, client education, reliable service and easy-to-use features that help Web professionals create, power, optimize and analyze their digital presence. There are more companies deserving to be on this list, of course, so we encourage you to let us know which Digital Power Players you would have included by tweeting us (@WebsiteMagazine) or commenting on this article online at wsm.co/players16.

STARTING LINEUP Visual Content A new category in Website Magazine’s Digital Power Players list, the products and services that allow Web professionals to create content in a variety of formats deserve recognition. For instance, the ability to repurpose a blog via an infographic – and without the help of a busy design team – is a win for digital marketers, as is providing the same content in an affordably made video. Content marketers should consider the following 10 products and services in the New Year, as well as check out this infographic on how to repurpose content correctly at wsm.co/repurpose16. + Canva.com + Pagemodo.com + Visual.ly + TechSmith.com + Piktochart.com

Web Experience Call it a Web experience platform, a content management system (CMS) or a digital experience cloud, the providers that allow marketers to speak to current and prospective customers in a personalized manner are helping to accelerate conversions, loyalty and even end-user expectations both in B2C and B2B realms. What’s more, the platforms providing everyday content developers the ability to easily test, analyze and optimize messaging are those leading the pack. + Sitecore.com + hybris.com + Adobe.com + EPiserver.com

+ DNNSoftware.com + SDL.com + Acquia.com + IBM.com

+ Placeit.net + PicMonkey.com + HaikuDeck.com + GoAnimate.com + Sparkol.com

With DNN’s Evoq 8, marketers and content writers can quickly see how their content is performing on both a page level and the site as a whole.

Using a freemium model, Placeit.net allows brands to place their art on items (like the wine bottle shown above) to create instant mockups without editing software.

Search Engine Optimization Sixty-one percent of chief marketing officers consider search engine optimization (SEO) to be an effective channel for their businesses – tied with media coverage and second to a corporate website, according to a recent Accenture study. While the search engines will continue to update their algorithms (and indices) to benefit their users (and themselves), plenty of solutions exist that can provide search marketers with the insights they need to gain a competitive advantage; 50 of which are ranked at wsm.co/top50seo. + SEMrush.com + Moz.com + Wordstream.com

+ Majestic.com + Raventools.com + BrightEdge.com

Financial Management Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, as well as other solutions that allow for the effective management of accounting and finances, play a crucial role in a company’s ability to make decisions and move forward. The following are the power players in ERP, but other financial management offerings (for enterprises of all sizes) are addressed at wsm.co/mattersmoney. + NetSuite.com + Oracle.com + SAP.com + Epicor.com

+ Deacom.com + Intacct.com + Sage.com + Infor.com

Email Experience A staple in digital marketing, the email experience has not only kept up with users’ and enterprises’ increasing demands, but in many ways surpassed them. For instance, Monetate’s open-time personalization offering enables brands to deliver relevant messages for the moment a customer opens the email (as opposed to when it was sent) to increase the

relevancy of the promotions and products included. This experience serves customers much better than what they are getting nearly everywhere else. Monetate is not alone in improving the email experience, of course. Listrak’s partnership with Olapic, for instance, allows its customers to tap into user-generated content to select top performing images for inclusion in email campaigns – allowing customers to view the products in use by their peers (a group seen as more trustworthy than brands). + Salesforce.com + MailChimp.com + ConstantContact.com + Listrak.com + Campaigner.com

+ Experian.com + InfusionSoft.com + Aweber.com + Yesmail.com + Monetate.com

Testing & Optimization The answer to most digital questions in 2015 like included...“test it.” From calls to action (CTAs) and copy to social media widgets and site search results, there wasn’t anything Web professionals couldn’t test the effectiveness of. The following companies provide some of the top offerings that enable testing and the ability to collect feedback to better the user experience and the bottom line. What should digital brands be testing in 2016? Our editors have prepared a checklist at wsm.co/runtests. + SiteSpect.com: “Only the SiteSpect Digital Optimization Platform enables customers to test the entire user experience, from the front-end ‘look and feel’ to the back-end functionality, and centrally manage those tests across channels, product lines and business units,” said SiteSpect VP of Product Justin Bougher. + Unbounce.com + SDL.com + UserTesting.com + Webtrends.com + Acquia.com + Optimizely.com + VisualWebOptimizer.com

Customer Care Aspect Software released a report last year that indicated 76 percent of consumers look at customer service as a test of their value to a brand. While consumers want topnotch customer service, they’d actually prefer, however, to solve issues on their own (3 in 4). This further proves that enterprises must provide service any way the customer wants it, whether that’s through live chat, customer reviews, social media or via email. These 10 companies will serve any digital brand well if catering to the often-demanding modern consumer is their goal. + Yotpo.com + Zendesk.com + Needle.com + Velaro.com + Freshdesk.com

Social Media While chief marketing officers (CMOs) have long felt the pressure to deliver a return on investment (ROI) from digital marketing efforts, just 46 percent of those executives surveyed in Leapfrog Marketing Institute’s newest benchmark report said they are now able to track digital sales, compared to 63 percent the previous year. While some of the blame can certainly fall on social media’s digital shoulders (brands continue to struggle to prove ROI for the channel), plenty of tools exist to streamline efforts in the form of better social media timing (when posts are sent), identifying of influencers and analyzing key metrics (e.g. click-throughs, conversions, etc.). + SproutSocial.com + Hootsuite.com + Buzzsumo.com + Buffer.com

+ SocialFlow.com + SocialBro.com + Viralheat.com + Uprise.io

Domains While .com is still the most-used and most-coveted top-level domain, 2015 witnessed gTLDs like .xyz and .club rise in the ranks. GoDaddy and its competitors helped brands and domainers snag the perfect address and are sure to propel this space forward as more gTLDs are released. The registrars listed in this edition of Website Magazine’s Digital Power Players are those who consistently top the ranks of premier providers. + GoDaddy.com + 1and1.com + eNom.com + NetworkSolutions.com

Web professionals use VWO to tweak, optimize and personalize their websites with minimal IT help.

+ Zoho.com + Olark.com + TouchCommerce.com + PowerReviews.com + Desk.com

+ Web.com + NameCheap.com + Name.com + Register.com

Big Data Interest in “big data” reached its peak at the end of last year, with more companies looking to harness and act on big

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amounts of customer, business and performance data. Website Magazine’s, “Business Intelligence: Generating Dollars from Analytics Change” whitepaper is a must read for those serious about using data to expose opportunities for change. Download now at wsm.co/bidollars.

and will be of even more importance this year. From the ability to easily get started selling online to more sophisticated use cases like bridging the gap between online and offline stores with omnichannel offerings, these 12 companies helped power the most in-demand shopping experiences.

+ Teradata.com + Neustar.biz + Accenture.com

+ Magento.com + Shopify.com + Bigcommerce.com + Volusion.com + Demandware.com + Weebly.com

+ Dell.com + HPE.com + Tableau.com

Marketing & Sales Automation Forty-four percent of marketers are not fully satisfied with their marketing automation systems, according to 2015 data from Autopilot. The top reasons being that the software takes too long to implement, is difficult to learn and is expensive. With more than 200 solutions on the market (source: Capterra), the competition should help for quicker implementation and drive lower costs and learning curves over time. Many enterprises, however, have found success with these 10 power players, companies that consistently prove they are more than capable of helping brands automate their key marketing and sales processes. + HubSpot.com + Infusionsoft.com + Marketo.com + Act-On.com + Bronto.com

+ Eloqua.com + Pardot.com + Silverpop.com + SalesFusion.com + InsideSales.com

+ PrestaShop.com + Zen-Cart.com + MarketLive.com + Ecwid.com + UltraCart.com + 3dCart.com

Performance One of the foundations of Web success, how a company’s digital properties perform on a technical level (e.g. availability, speed) is vital to a company’s reputation, the likeliness of conversions and repeat business and even high search rankings. These eight companies make those operating on the Web faster, more reliable and overall more effective. + Yottaa.com + Dyne.com + Dynatrace.com + Cedexis.com

+ CloudFlare.com + Radware.com + Akamai.com + Catchpoint.com

One of the Cedexis offerings, Radar Live shows a global view of anomalies, based on data from the Cedexis Radar Community. InsideSales.com accelerates sales communications, engagement tracking, forecasting and even rep motivation and hiring to mitigate risk, improve revenues, and automate and leverage prospect data (including real-time buying signals) to close more deals – creating better operational efficiency similar to traditional marketing and sales automation platforms.

E-Commerce With record online sales (catch up on all the latest news and numbers on our e-commerce channel at wsm.co/ecommerceexpress), having the right e-commerce partner was vital for a retailer’s success in 2015

POWER ON PLAYERS Much like a high-performing athlete, running an online business takes speed, stamina and strength. Web professionals must not only commit to success in areas of accounting and automating and planning and performance – and everything in between – but the providers they choose to help them succeed must also commit to their growth. Website Magazine’s list of Digital Power Players will certainly serve the online enterprise well, but each decision-maker will need to do their part – researching, testing, inquiring – to ensure the solution, software, service fits with their team, their budget and their objectives.

Mobile

MATTERS Testing Mobile Friendliness at

BING By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

The increase in mobile devices across the globe demands that today’s companies be aware of the digital experience they present to users.

link spacing and the use of compatible plugins) but let’s take a closer look at what it all means and how Web workers can prepare their digital properties for the very mobile future of Bing.

There are, fortunately, plenty of mobile testing tools available for ‘Net-based businesses on the market today including the MobileOK Checker from the W3C, BrowserStack (which shows screenshots of how sites look on a variety of devices) and enterprise-grade solutions such as Keynote MITE (free with registration), among others. Google, for example, has long offered a mobile-friendly testing tool in PageSpeed Insights – one of the most recommended solutions among Web professionals. These are, of course, all very useful and excellent solutions but new offerings are continually emerging and it could prove useful to keep tabs on their development and how they ultimately measure mobile friendliness. Bing, for example, recently released its own mobile testing tool to enable webmasters to determine if their site is mobile friendly through the virtual eyes of Bing. If website traffic resulting from organic/natural optimization efforts from the search engine is important to an enterprise, testing a site’s mobile friendliness in the Bing index will prove essential. Bing recently began showing “mobile-friendly” labels in the results (just like Google did) a few months ago and even went as far as announcing it would be rolling out a mobile-friendly algorithm (just like Google did), so the new and free testing tool may not come as much of a surprise to industry watchers. That being said, however, the release of the tool does indicate Bing and Microsoft’s seriousness when it comes to anything and everything mobile. The search engine went into some detail about how pages are determined to be mobile friendly and the criteria it uses (including viewport and zoom control configuration, page content width, readability of page text,

VIEWPORT: The Viewport metatag must be set correctly in order for mobile-friendly pages to work well on devices of different sizes and orientations, so make sure the viewport is set with the content width equal to “device-width.” ZOOM CONTROL: Improper use of scale-related viewport settings (e.g. user-scalable, maximum-scale, minimum-scale) could result in hampering access to some page content. The Zoom Control check from Bing verifies if the configuration of the viewport hampers the user’s ability to pinch and zoom. CONTENT WIDTH: The page’s content width should not exceed the screen width; any page that requires excessive horizontal panning will likely receive a failing grade in the mobile-friendliness test. READABILITY: Not just a function of font size, but also viewport scaling, Bing indicated it is important to think of readability as the average area occupied by text when the page is fully zoomed out to fit the device width. ELEMENT SPACING: Bing also examines input elements and hyperlinks to determine if they occupy an area considered “tap friendly” at maximum zoom out. The factors that Bing uses to determine mobile friendliness are not unlike those of the other aforementioned tools. What is important to remember is that Bing (like other search engines) is focused on ensuring its users are able to easily access content (without any barriers to consumption). If enterprises can meet that relatively low standard, they will likely earn that coveted “mobile-friendly” label in the search results. J A N U A R Y 2016

Bing’s Biggest News With increasing market share, it’s worth your time to check out what’s happening at Bing: wsm.co/411bing. .com

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EXPERIENCE

5 Email Marketing Resolutions to Ensure Success in

action (CTAs) for mobile users and by leveraging data to achieve more effective interaction. Consider implementing new strategies like geo-targeting to deliver more targeted and personalized messages with mobile users (e.g. promotions based on location).

3. Dive into Data The term “big data” received a lot of attention in 2015, and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. For marketers, data analysis is the most effective way to gain insight into what contacts like and dislike in their emails. This understanding allows for micro-personalized messaging and increased engagement with contacts. In 2016, aim to leverage order entry, point-of-sale and/or customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to find new ways to segment customers and prospects. For further insights, read, “6 Segments You Might Not be Segmenting” at wsm.co/6segments.

By E.J. McGowan, GM of Campaigner

It is the beginning of another year. With the holiday chaos behind us, it’s time to look ahead and make plans to get the most out of 2016. For a marketer, the New Year is the perfect time to evaluate their overall strategy and determine what’s working and what’s not. Just as people promise to volunteer and hit the gym to make personal improvements, marketers should create New Year’s resolutions to better their brands as well. To set up marketers and their enterprises for a banner year, here are five email marketing resolutions to consider:

1. Own the Omnichannel

Subject Line Smiles, Frowns & Expletives Check out how brands are using emojis in their subject lines at wsm.co/slsmiles. 30

Many people will kick off the New Year by downsizing and getting rid of old junk. As a marketer, take the same approach and consolidate marketing channels to create a more streamlined communication process. This is especially helpful for marketers who have multiple roles within their organizations because it offers consistency across multiple channels. This approach will reinforce brand strength and provide a seamless experience to contacts, whether they are interacting with a website, social media pages or emails.

2. Move Mobile Beyond Responsive Design By now, the majority of marketers have already jumped on the responsive design bandwagon, but with consumer mobile activity increasing every day, it can’t stop there. For 2016, marketers will need to take the next step into Responsive Design 2.0 by customizing calls-to.com

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4. Return to Quality Content In 2015, traditional Internet service providers (ISPs) became increasingly selective with the type of mail they allowed in the inbox. This year, Web professionals can expect increasingly stringent criteria and more obstacles to overcome in order to reach their users. To make sure messages arrive in the inbox safe and sound, distribute content that is useful, interactive and interesting. Consider employing new and exciting types of content such as videos, quizzes and contests to drive engagement and build stronger relationships with contacts.

5. Evolve with Emojis With texting and instant messaging solidified as the new universal form of communication, emojis have become much more than a passing trend. Since they are already a familiar part of everyday conversations, emojis in email resonate well with contacts and establish a sense of ease and recognition with a brand and its messaging. Emojis can also help messages stand out from a crowd of monotonous, text-heavy emails. Make it a 2016 resolution to test out emojis in subject lines to give them more of a punch and increase overall interaction with users (see sidebar). If a company’s marketing tactics aren’t garnering the results its staff wants, the New Year is an excellent time to regroup, re-evaluate and rejuvenate. Committing to these email marketing resolutions will help marketers and brands prosper in 2016. E.J. McGowan, general manager of Campaigner, has more than 25 years’ experience in the software industry with expertise in building highly available, scalable SaaS-based solutions.

Affiliate

INSIDER

Share User Data to Gain Incremental Revenue & Audience Insight By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

Companies like Facebook and Google have an immense advantage over independent publishers thanks to their impressive scale and massive data stores. It is currently difficult for small and mid-size publishers to create their own predictive models of shopping intent and that ultimately limits their ability to command advertising dollars. Fortunately, there are solutions emerging that hope to create at least a little more balance in the digital landscape. Audiences by Skimlinks, for example, is a new targeting service that advertisers can access via programmatic buying platforms to improve their campaigns. Digital advertisers are charged to target “segments” of users highly likely to buy their products. What this means is that in addition to the affiliate revenue publishers earn with Skimlinks currently, they now have the opportunity to earn additional incremental revenue for the intent signals their publisher sites collect and share with the Skimlinks data cooperative. Skimlinks captures and analyzes more than 15 billion “intent” signals across its network every day, including what products and brands people are reading about, clicking on and buying. The data from all of these content-to-commerce experiences – coupled with its existing product intelligence layer – enables Skimlinks to create a taxonomy of audience segments that are highly predictive of purchase behaviors. Audience segments that can be monetized more effectively for publishers. “What excites me the most and the thing I’m incredibly proud of is that Skimlinks can act as the platform through which publishers, large and small, can gain enough scale as a data cooperative to benefit from audience revenues and insights,” said Alicia Navarro, Skimlinks CEO and co-founder. “We’re thrilled to be launching a product that will help publishers be properly rewarded for the role they play in creating shopping intent.”

So, how much can publishers expect to earn from the new program? Skimlinks is a little short on details in this regard but did provide some useful insight, indicating it will distribute revenue between publishers based on their “relative contribution” of intent signals used to create each audience segment (clicks and purchases) for a particular audience. What this means essentially is that small publishers in more niche market segments have the potential to earn higher revenues since the Skimlinks algorithm rewards sites and pages that produce the strongest signals of purchase interest and intent. As a digital publisher, would you be willing to share data on your users’ online behavior in exchange for additional revenue? Share your comment on the ‘Net at wsm.co/audinsight.

AFFILIATE TOOL IN FOCUS ClickMeter – Monitor, compare and optimize marketing links from one dashboard. The solution enables affiliates to cloak affiliate links, track conversions (via cookies, conversion pixels, postback URLs and serverto-server tracking), create vanity links, separate real visitors from bots, access real-time reports and even A/B test with multiple destination URLs.

ClickMeter provides a “World Map” report which indicates where clicks and conversions happened in various geographic areas.

Conversion

CORNER

It’s Not Enough!

The New Conversion Optimization Imperatives By Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners

What a year; 2015 has finished with massive changes yet again in the Internet arena and the future of conversion rate optimization (CRO) is coming into sharper focus. This year, pay particular attention to transcending assumptions and limitations, regardless of whether they are in your head, your conception of your job function or in the hidden shared belief systems of your whole business. The old way of doing things simply will not get you very far.

“Landing Page” Optimization Is Not Enough When I wrote the first edition of my book in 2008, I used a term popular at the time for the title: Landing Page Optimization. This unfortunate name has stuck, and has often created confusion in the minds of people regarding the scope of the optimization 32

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activity. Even “CRO” is too narrow of a term in many circumstances – implying a focus exclusively on online campaign performance. Many mistakenly believe that the main focus should be on direct-response landing pages. This is wrong – any part of the online experience where significant traffic lands on the way to valuable business goals is ripe for optimization. Such customer experiences may involve redoing the whole customer-facing Web experience. If a company timidly tweaks only campaign-specific landing pages, it is missing the larger opportunity to create compelling end-to-end online experiences with user-centered whole-site redesigns. Reach out beyond the landing page to consider your whole Web experience.

Surface Knowledge Is Not Enough Web professionals fill their days with tactical activities and are always busy fighting the inbox. When time for education or self-improvement is found, they often follow a link posted by a friend to a blog post, or a top-10 list of must-do tactics. Everyone wants the silver-bullet – something for nothing. Of course it also needs to be foolproof and work under all circumstances. When one is in the day-to-day operational realities of his or her work, they can’t fundamentally learn anything new. A different place and headspace are required for real learning. CROs don’t do it to solve immediate problems, they do it to fundamentally shift their perspective. In order to improve at the deep discipline of CRO, team members need to have larger chunks of learning time without the distraction of operational responsibilities. Everyone should allow themselves one afternoon per week outside of the office to read a book (ideally a physical book – not a laptop, which is still connected to the Internet and buzzes with seemingly important notifications). Or better yet, get out of the city to a workshop or conference. Professionals will not only benefit from the change of location (proven to enhance learning and creativity), but will also get great value from the social relationships they will strengthen with like-minded peers. Get out of the office; read some books and attend a conference.

Landing Page Testing Is Not Enough Let’s start with a disclaimer – landing page testing is a critical part of CRO. Unfortunately, too often it is equated with CRO. Yes, it is important to validate ideas and make sure that they have actually led to better results for the business. However, testing cannot become an end onto itself. There are companies consumed with testing velocity, and how to crank out more tests with fewer resources. This assumes that CRO is just a welldefined process, and that they only need to improve the efficiency of it. In reality, this kind of thinking will lead to a production-line mentality that will eventually lead to stagnation. After a while, there will be a consistent lack of positive test results, as a limited number of important landing pages get over-tested. The over-reliance on testing stems from the need to work only with quantitative CRO. This is often at the expense of softer qualitative research and insights. The best agencies, for example, spend the vast majority of their time on tasks like understanding the business environment, defining the psychology and

beliefs of the audience, user research (both in their native environment and with online session recording), website exit surveys, and actually interviewing customers and front line support staff. These findings are then incorporated into the site experience (and only validated by testing when appropriate). Stop thinking that only split-testing is CRO, and go get some qualitative insights.

Static Content Is Not Enough Most of the Web experiences that we are designing are meant for one monolithic “audience” somewhere out there on the inter-Webs. So marketers create mediocre and unfocused stuff – mainly designed not to offend anyone. Yes, through testing they can come up with better on-average experiences, but that does not mean that they are squeezing the most value possible out of each person visiting their site. The reality is that customers (or prospects) are individuals. The closer a business can get to addressing their needs, the higher conversion rates will be. In order to capture as much value as possible from an audience, marketers need to remember and take advantage of all information about the people coming to their site. This might include the history of their past visits (including very granular detail of their behavior on the site), additional third-party demographic data used to flesh out our picture of them or their peer group, a record of all communications that the company has had with them and how they have reacted to it (opening email, downloading content or consuming videos). If a company can fuse together this kind of information, it will get laser-focused one-to-one experiences for every visitor coming to the site, and conversion rates will skyrocket. In order to capture the full value of this, marketers will need top-level support at their company to create the proper marketing technology stack. This might include elements such as personalization, third-party data append, behavioral targeting and lead scoring. Use marketing technology to create compelling personalized experiences. If all of the above sounds like a lot of work, it is. Regardless, you have to do it anyway. I assure you, doing the same old thing in 2016 is simply not enough. Tim Ash is the CEO of SiteTuners, Chair of Conversion Conference and bestselling author of “Landing Page Optimization.”

Employee Happiness & CRO Disengaged employees are not conversion focused. Check out these stats about the high costs of unhappy employees at wsm.co/blahstaff.

Software

EVERYWHERE WordPress Theme Watch:

DIGITAL DEATH TO PRODUCT HUNT By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

Product Hunt, a Y Combinator-backed website that enables users to share, discover, vote and discuss new products, is arguably one of the most popular digital destinations available today for those in the technology sector. With such a relatively simple concept, however, it is somewhat surprising that similar offerings have not emerged. That could change at any time, however, and the fall of Product Hunt could be swift. The reason? It’s not a very complicated platform. There’s really nothing truly unique or sophisticated from a technology standpoint about this digital darling – its success relies exclusively on the interest and loyalty of its users; something in often desperately short supply in the tech industry. The simplicity of Product Hunt means that clones will come; and they will come quickly and in droves. In fact, Website Magazine recently featured a rather unique WordPress theme which offers up pretty much the exact same functionality as Product Hunt. With WordPress having a 25 percent market share of all content management systems (CMS), it’s not too far outside the realm of possibility that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of clones (on any and every conceivable topic) could emerge.

The Plugin Hunt theme for WordPress, developed by Epic Plugins, is easy to install, is highly customizable and, most importantly, offers functionality including front-end posting for users, voting capabilities and more (like user-submitted categories). Plus, the theme costs just $79 USD. Product Hunt’s success, of course, won’t be easy to mimic, but Web professionals around the world should know that they too can create a destination site with the exact same functionality. You never know, with a little hustle, you too could be the next darling of the digital world.

WP Plugins to Explore + GIVE: Accept donations on WordPress; features include goal tracking per form, zero commission charges, PayPal support, customizable emails and robust reporting features. + QUERY MONITOR: View debugging and performance information on database queries, hooks, conditionals, HTTP requests and redirects. + SWIFTY: Add a sticky bar at the bottom of posts that show category, post title, author, time required to read, share buttons and previous/next buttons. + TESLA LOGIN CUSTOMIZER: Easy modify the look for a WordPress login page (register and forgot password pages as well) with no coding required. + COMPACT ARCHIVES: Display a monthly archive of posts/articles in a more compact form than the usual long list. + REQUIREMENTS CHECKLIST: Allows administrators to require content including title, featured image, excerpt, categories and tags be entered before a page or post can be published. + AUTOPTIMIZE: Speed up websites and save bandwidth by aggregating and minimizing JS, CSS and HTML.

One of the most popular digital destinations for Web professionals, Product Hunt’s relatively simple concept could easily be duplicated.

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