3 Data Dilemmas Advertisers Must Overcome
THE MAGAZINE FOR WEBSITE SUCCESS JULY 2016
Lead Generation Making it Great Again! INSIDE THIS ISSUE... Start Here for Website Personalization Hierarchy of Conversion Tools Creating a DDoS Response Plan
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Lead Generation Making it Great Again!
New customers and clients are what keep businesses moving forward and thriving – there’s no debate about that. They are who make companies great, but each company must understand that the same acquisition strategies won’t work on new, self-directed buyers who are basing their decisions on the content presented to them on every conceivable channel.
THIS MONTH IN WEBSITE MAGAZINE Considerations for Mobile Optimization
Cool Tech for Bloggers
Websites that aren’t adequately optimized for the mobile experience risk being left behind, but designing for this channel presents a new set of challenges.
Those who are struggling to earn revenue and drive traffic to their blogs should consider these seven tools to create monetization opportunities.
Ideas for Creating Engaging Email Content
Creating a DDoS Response Plan
With so many marketers competing for consumers’ attention, it may seem nearly impossible to have someone read an email from start to finish – it’s not.
Companies without a distributed denial of services strategy should move it to the top of their list because attackers are becoming more persistent.
Hierarchy of Conversion Tools
Data Dilemmas Every Advertiser Must Overcome
Online marketers running split tests to optimize a particular set of pages should take an honest assessment of where they are and what tools they should really be using.
Regardless of personal views on data collection, it’s an area of online display advertising that has many challenges to overcome – both from the business and user side.
EXPLORE WEBSITE MAGAZINE’S DEPARTMENTS Stat Watch: The Costs of Loyalty
Quiz Time:
E-Commerce Express: Capturing Reviews from Gift Givers
Design & Development:
Demanding Digital Consumers
Typography’s Role in Branding
Enterprise Ready:
Mastering Search:
A Website Personalization Starting Plan
Top 50: Affiliate Marketing Networks
Small Business Lab: Customer Service Challenges for SMBs
On-Page SEO Checklist for Newbs
Insights on Analytics: Going Beyond Last-Click Attribution
Web Commentary: Why IT Can’t Keep Up
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EDITOR How Today’s Buyers “Vote” Love him or loathe him – for many there is no in between – Donald Trump provides clues for enterprises about what it takes to run a successful lead generation program (although he may not actually know it). When it comes to acquiring new customers (and keeping existing ones), brands are required to hold their attention regardless of where they are in their conversion (albeit fragmented) path and on whatever channel or device of their choosing. The “message” or the “noise” (depending on one’s viewpoint) that Trump offers his “customers” helps them decide which way to vote and what to share with their peers, and the same is true of how enterprises influence buying decisions based on the content they put out in the digital world. This content – and the easy access to it thanks to the ’Net – is one of the biggest reasons lead generation has changed so dramatically over the years. It has led to what is now known as the “self-directed buyer” who researches what they plan on buying, or the service they plan on signing up for, long before the company can typically uncover their intent. In this month’s feature of Website Magazine, appropriately titled, “Lead Generation: Making it Great Again,” we explore how to develop content to meet those buyers’ needs and the new techniques and technology that can help enterprises nurture, qualify and score leads as well as how to get them into the pipeline to begin with. Content is such a power player in today’s digital experience that it shouldn’t be surprising that several other articles within this issue address creating, analyzing, sharing, monetizing and even optimizing it. For instance, readers will want to check out an article on where to start with website personalization, which presents practical personalization ideas based on easiest to most difficult to achieve as well as articles on monetizing blogs, capturing product reviews from gift givers and improving content for better email engagement. For when organic efforts aren’t enough to acquire and retain customers, this issue also explores new attribution models within Google AdWords and data and privacy dilemmas all advertisers face – in addition to other information on Web security, testing and design. We hope you enjoy this issue and join us on the Web, where our editors and contributors provide daily coverage of what matters most to your Web success.
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successful ’Net customer service strategies. After all, it’s not enough to acquire customers, of
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A LOOK AT WHAT’S COMING UP course, you also have to keep them and increasingly that’s through the experience that brands provide before, during and after there’s a problem. See you next month!
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BRIEFS
NET NEWS Keyword-Rich Domains Get the Clicks New data from Verisign shows that keyword-rich domain names matching a search query are more likely to receive clicks on the search engine result pages (SERPs). Verisign looked at the click-through rates of the top 20 search results for 11 million search queries. Results that did not have any matching keywords in the second-level domain had a 12.44 percent click rate. Those with one matching term were clicked 21.79 percent of the time, and two or more words 25.30 percent.
Amazon Battles Fake Reviews Retailers: don’t try to pull a fast one on Amazon by buying fake reviews. The e-commerce juggernaut is reportedly suing three of its sellers for doing just that. According to Amazon, the fake reviews made up 30 to 45 percent of the sellers’ total reviews. These lawsuits shouldn’t come as a surprise, however, as Amazon has sued more than 1,000 people who posted fake reviews for cash over the past several years.
(Interactive) Content is King “Content is king” is a common phrase in the marketing world, but new research suggests that a specific type of content may be taking the crown. According to the Content Marketing Institute, interactive content is better at attracting attention and engaging consumers. Although 53 percent of content marketers are already using this content type, 75 percent plan to increase their use this year. What’s more, 79 percent agree that interactive content enhances retention of brand messaging when combined with traditional marketing tactics.
Learn more about the most effective types of interactive content at wsm.co/movecontent.
$ WHO GOT PAID? $2.8 Billion
Salesforce is entering the cloud commerce space, as the customer relationship management (CRM) company forged into a definitive agreement to purchase Demandware in a transaction worth approximately $2.8 billion.
$1.79 Billion
Marketo entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $1.79 billion, which turns the public company into a private company once again.
$45 Million
Mobility solutions provider Syniverse announced a $45 million investment for a minority stake in mobile marketing technology company Vibes.
$40 Million
Glassdoor has raised $40 million in a Series H funding round, which values the company at approximately $1 billion.
TECH UPDATES Automatic Experiments for AdSense Google’s collection of optimization tools is expanding with the introduction of Automatic Experiments for AdSense publishers. The feature allows Google to run automatic experiments on a small portion of a publisher’s traffic and provide data about which ads perform best on a website. The data could prove to be rather useful for those looking to optimize their ad inventory and increase revenue and user engagement.
What’s New in Font Awesome 4.6? Font Awesome released a new version (4.6) of its popular font and CSS toolkit that puts accessibility front and center. With 8.4 percent of the total world population experiencing blindness, low vision or some visual impairment, Font Awesome made some improvements including a new accessibility section in the documents that includes specifics of how to mark up icons depending on how they are being used. Plus, every Font Awesome icon now has a more “accessibilityminded” default block of code that users can copy and paste, and there is also a new accessibility icon category with 15 icons.
Amazon Offers Product Recommendation Tech to the Crowd Amazon has spent well over a decade (closing in on two) modifying how it produces relevant suggestions, and now it is seeking the assistance of developers to make it even better, taking its Deep Scalable Sparse Tensor Network Engine or DSTNE (pronounced destiny), a machine learning technology, open source. DSSTNE is an Amazon developed library for training and deploying deep neural networks using GPUs. Amazon engineers built DSSTNE to solve deep learning problems at Amazon’s scale. DSSTNE is built for production deployment of real-world deep learning applications, emphasizing speed and scale over experimental flexibility.
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WATCH
Affiliates, Loyalists 25% and Referrers
Other notable affiliate, loyalty & referral stats:
Affiliate marketing has certainly faced its fair share of criticism over the years but it’s an area ripe with opportunity. In fact, 84 percent of publishers recognize this and include affiliate marketing as part of their overall acquisition strategy and create content for this channel according to a Rakuten and Forrester report titled, “Networks Help Drive Affiliate Marketing into the Mainstream.” Of the affiliate advertisers in the study, nearly 9 in 10 said that affiliate programs were important to their overall marketing strategy, and more than 80 percent said they were devoting over 10 percent of their marketing budgets to their affiliate programs. The Feb. 2016 report also revealed most costs associated with affiliate marketing include placement, commissions, network fees and paid bonuses. On the revenue side, over half of the affiliate publishers in the study reported their programs accounted for more than 20 percent of their annual revenues. With affiliate marketing spend growing (Forrester projects a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent through 2020 to reach over $6.8 billion), however, publishers must compete aggressively for advertising dollars on various channels. The study found that publishers are most likely to market themselves through social media (68 percent leveraged organic social; 54 percent used paid social) and cross-promotions with other publishers. With so many publishers to choose from, advertisers are selecting which affiliates to work with based on (1) vertical expertise, (2) overall quality of an affiliate’s site, (3) number of followers/visitors, (4) look and feel of affiliates’ content and (5) mobile optimization capabilities – to round out the top five. This is in contrast to how publishers prioritize what to promote. Despite being the top selection criteria by advertisers, publishers don’t give “vertical expertise” the same weight, ranking it sixth when indicating how they promote themselves to potential advertisers.
Referred customers are 25 percent more profitable than non-referred customers, have higher lifetime values (25 percent more) and are 19 percent less likely to churn. (Extole, 2016)
52%
More than half of consumers (52 percent) have switched providers in the past year due to poor customer service, with banks, retailers, and cable and satellite television providers being the worst offenders. In the U.S., the estimated cost of customer churn due to poor service is $1.6 trillion. (Accenture, March 2016)
62%
Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of millennials feel that online content drives their loyalty to a brand. The content they're receiving, however, is turning them off by not helping them navigate their everyday problems, being too long, sales-driven and not tailored to their individual cultural interests. (NewsCred, Feb., 2015)
#1 The brands with the highest level of customer loyalty include Jet Blue (airlines), Wells Fargo (banks), Avis (car rentals), NFL (major league sports), Amazon (online retailers), UPS (parcel delivery), Google (search engines), Apple (smartphones), Facebook (social networking sites) and AT&T (wireless phone services), among others. (Brand Keys, Feb. 2016) J U L Y 2016
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Is It Time for a New Digital Customer Service Plan? Consumers are so frustrated with bad customer service experiences that a whopping 42 percent of them would rather clean a toilet than contact customer service according to data from the Aspect Consumer Experience Index, which exposes a significant opportunity for brands trying to gain a competitive edge. Capitalizing on this frustration, however, isn’t easy
1. On average, how long do brands keep customers waiting when responding to a message on social media?
(check out this issue’s Small Business Lab for more).
a. 30 minutes b. 2 hours c. 11 hours d. 20 hours
While it used to be enough to simply feature a live chat
Cheat sheet: wsm.co/qtsocial
for many reasons. For starters, the customer service industry is changing – particularly in the digital world
button on a website, brands now have to offer customer service options across channels. What’s more, companies must be able to answer customer inquiries quickly in these channels, as consumers don’t like to be kept waiting and are not shy to voice their bad experiences with a brand on the ’Net (specifically on social and review sites). This is why brands must set aside time to put a strong digital customer service plan together that takes into consideration the growing expectations of digital consumers. This plan should not only include customer service solutions for websites and popular social channels like Facebook and Twitter, but also customer service through native and messaging apps on mobile devices. Before you set a plan in motion, discover how
2. True or False: 75 percent of consumers prefer to use mobile customer care inside of an app because it reduces time and hassle. Cheat sheet: wsm.co/qtengage
3. What is the top reason why consumers do not use social media for customer service purposes? a. The time it takes to address issues b. Limited functionality c. It’s not feasible for complex tasks d. Privacy concerns Cheat sheet: wsm.co/qtsadstate
4. True or False: 47 percent of customers will leave for a competitor within one day if they experience poor customer service. Cheat sheet: wsm.co/qtpoor
much you currently know about the evolving industry by taking Website Magazine’s July Quiz Time.
Get the results of Quiz Time at wsm.co/qtjuly16 or by scanning the QR code on the left.
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5. When should a proactive chat be launched? a. To immediately welcome new website visitors b. To ask a visitor to sign up for an email newsletter c. In critical moments of the buying process d. To make small talk that resembles an in-store experience Cheat sheet: wsm.co/qtproactive
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Enterprise
READY Start Here
FOR WEBSITE PERSONALIZATION By Corbin Murakami, Business Strategist at Liferay
Personalized marketing has become a vital differentiating factor for many businesses. Increasingly, marketers are using their knowledge of the consumer to provide an experience that is unique and relevant to their preferences. As a result, companies are seeing an increase in conversions and higher customer retention rates. Where should you start with Web personalization? Below are some practical ideas and examples of methods implemented by various companies. The examples are grouped by category, and presented in order of difficulty from easiest to most challenging to achieve.
EXPLICIT DATA Explicit data is information that is intentionally given or provided by customers, such as a name and email address submitted through a form. Other examples can include date or details provided in surveys and membership applications. With explicit data, the info is ready and available for immediate analysis and application. E-commerce ads With explicit data, perhaps the easiest and most natural route is to manually create or designate content based on known data like directing visitors to certain sites or channels that are most relevant to them. For example, Old Navy dynamically changes the homepage banner based on its ability to identify visitors as men, women or parents. Email content (based on explicit data) A wedding brand, Paperstyle.com, discovered that most of its visitors fell into either one of two categories: getting married or friends/family of those getting married. Those two groups have different interests and purposes, so Paperstyle.com designed an email campaign that seg12
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mented for those two types of people. Whenever someone would sign up, it simply sent an email that asked which category they belonged to and directed them to the appropriate place. Another example is delivering content around important dates. Baskin-Robbins does this with its “Birthday Club” program, celebrating birthdays with coupons for free scoops of ice cream — and apparently with great success. JetBlue also sends special flight offers to customers based on their birthdates: “Treat yourself to a flight and get $50 off.” Persona Identification This can be done by having a system that automatically identifies a visitor’s persona, or by explicitly offering various role options on a site and allowing the visitor to choose. In either case, the goal is to tailor a site which provides messaging that appeals to visitors in certain roles.
DEVICE TYPE People tend to engage with content differently depending on the devices they’re using. Equipped with this knowledge, companies can personalize their marketing to prospects and customers in several ways. Calls-to-action (CTAs) Featuring different actions for users depending on the devices they’re using to browse can increase sales. Marie Curie, a charity, recognized that mobile users are more likely to donate by text, while desktop users are better served donating online. It addressed this by offering a different experience based on device (taking into account the wording and CTA), which resulted in more donations (e.g., “give a gift now” for desktop users versus “tap to donate” for mobile users).
BEHAVIOR Understanding what actions users take and how they engage with content is crucial. If marketers are able to
apply analytics to their data, they will discover patterns that certain groups of users exhibit and be able to leverage that for more personalized marketing. Download history A person’s download history can reveal certain patterns or tendencies that can help influence their engagement with future offers. For example, Intuit tracks when someone has downloaded an e-book, thus allowing them to offer the second e-book in the series or a similarly related asset. Past open behavior If brands have a system that can analyze when an individual most frequently opens an email (or if they’re willing to manually do the research themselves), enterprises can determine when it’s best to send emails to certain prospects or clients in the future. Virtual reality L’Oreal executed a personalized marketing program, but ran into the problem of getting reliable data to understand a user’s preferences (e.g., people don’t want to complete a survey with their makeup preferences, or preferences change over time). Their solution was to develop a virtual reality (VR) app. Using the data of which makeup a user commonly tries on, L’Oreal then makes personalized product recommendations.
GEOLOCATION Geolocation involves having profile and situational data. If users have logged in and expressed some sort of data point about their location, or if it’s accessible otherwise, a company can tailor the user experience to a particular region or area. Banner ads One of the more basic techniques in personalization is to serve up ads on Web pages that attract traffic based on the location. The Pennsylvania tourism website tends to execute on this strategy. For example, if a visitor living in California visits the Pennsylvania tourism site, the page might display content and images that promote its colorful seasons. Language setting Websites can set the default language based on geolocation. This can also be done automatically, based on IP address. A word of caution when determining language by geolocation: the user might be connecting through a virtual private network (VPN) or proxy, in a distant location away from that of the intermediary, and/or the user’s IP address might also be disguised.
Email delivery Configuring systems to send emails based on time zone is a simple, but effective personalization tactic that could be instrumental in improving email engagement. (Most automation tools like Eloqua or HubSpot provide this option.) Email content (based on local weather) This might sound exclusive, but AutoTrader UK recently based emails on geolocation data and weather reports. They were able to send newsletters with driving tips related to the recipient’s local weather. The campaign experienced a 93 percent increase in click-through rate. IP address look ups Determine within a given database or company dataset what companies users are working at. With this information, sales reps can understand the size of the companies that they’re targeting. If they access this information, they’ll also be able to determine factors like revenue and employee base, in turn enabling targeted content in emails or personal conversations.
LIFECYCLE STAGE This type of personalization takes objective data gathering a step further. Not only does it involve knowing a person’s explicit data, but it also requires having an accurate understanding of their current stage in the conversion journey. Calls-to-action Vendors can provide an original CTA button on their websites and switch it up depending on what type of lifecycle stage the prospect/customer is in. This type of marketing is personalized without being intrusive, and it can be highly effective. Campaign enrollment (based on lead buyer stage) This is the future of personalization, and what all companies can ideally move toward: funneling prospects toward specific campaigns based on their buyer stage. If brands know where someone is in the process of buying a product, they can target emails based on that info. Note, this might require customer relationship management software like Salesforce or ZOHO or a marketing automation system that can identify these values.
Final Thoughts There’s no formula in personalization that guarantees optimal engagement; the key to improving personalization is to keep testing and comparing the results. Bearing in mind these principles, you’ll be able to provide a convenient and personal experience for customers.
Next Steps! Discover technology solutions to develop a more convenient and more personalized experience for customers at wsm.co/1on1tech.
Top
50
RANK WEBSITE
Emerging & Established Affiliate Marketing Networks Affiliate marketing has not always had the best reputation but the digital times seem to be changing. In early May 2015, social media platform Pinterest announced a policy change that will now enable its users to insert or append their own affiliate links within pins they submit. This is a somewhat dramatic reversal from its decision in Feb. 2015 to automatically and completely remove all affiliate links, redirects and trackers on submitted pins. Website Magazine suggested at the time that Pinterest was playing a “dangerous and somewhat stupid game” with its decision to ban affiliates (read “The Real Reason Pinterest Banned Affiliates” at wsm.co/pinbans) and it may indicate that the popular site’s advertising program hasn’t met expectations and overall growth has slowed. Affiliate marketers are an important part of the digital ecosystem; but some brands continue to ignore or ban them at, ultimately, their own peril. Pinterest isn’t the only large social network interested in how affiliates impact their ecosystems and revenue. Reddit just announced a deal with Viglink (wsm.co/affdeal) that will enable the social sharing site to automatically rewrite links to some 1,500 online merchants so they include a Reddit affiliate code. While it is only a test, the initiative is meant to “transform Reddit into a sustainable long-term business” but – just like Pinterest – it may ultimately alienate affiliates who use the platform to generate traffic and revenue. Affiliate marketing is an effective way for enterprises to raise awareness, drive website visits and increase revenue, and there is no shortage of solutions available to make that possible for publishers and advertisers/sellers. In this month’s Website Magazine Top50, readers will find many of the top affiliate networks in operation today. While many are very well-known and recognizable names from the ‘Net (including Google, eBay and Amazon) there are many others who have earned their rightful place on this list and are worth exploring as well.
Become an Affiliate Insider Stay up to date on important developments in the performance marketing space in Website Magazine’s Affiliate Insider channel at wsm.co/affiliate16.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.
Google.com Amazon.com Rakuten.com CJ.com Clickbank.com ShareaSale.com Avangate.com Criteo.com ConversantMedia.com W4.com Avantlink.com Offervault.com ImpactRadius.com Flexoffers.com Amobee.com MaxBounty.com Clickbooth.com AffiliateWindow.com PeerFly.com 7Search.com AdMedia.com VigLink.com CPAlead.com GlobalWideMedia.com Skimlinks.com Tradedoubler.com Zanox.com LinkConnector.com WebGains.com AdscendMedia.com Convert2Media.com MundoMedia.com Matomy.com OneNetworkDirect.com RevenueWire.com CPAWay.com AffiliateFuture.com Crakrevenue.com ShareResults.com EbayPartnerNetwork.com ExclusiveCPA.com AboveAllOffers.com CPATrend.com DiabloMedia.com ClickDealer.com Mgcash.com AffiliateCrossing.com A4d.com AdPerio.com Envyusmedia.com
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Small
BUSINESS LAB
3 Questions to Manage Customer Service Expectations By Allison Howen, Associate Editor
The digital customer service landscape is changing rapidly, and it’s making it difficult for small businesses (SMBs) to keep up. Not only are consumers’ expectations higher than ever, but emerging channels like social and mobile are becoming an integral part of the customer service industry. In fact, 2016 data from call center software provider Aspect shows that 38 percent of consumers would rather use messaging apps, like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, for their customer service needs over phone calls. Although this percentage isn’t the majority, it is still quite high considering that customer service through messaging apps is a fairly new strategy. Unfortunately, many SMBs don’t have the manpower to offer round-the-clock service in all of the digital channels their customers are in. Even so, that doesn’t mean they can’t still satisfy customers, and it all starts by managing expectations with answers to these simple questions:
1. Where are you available?
Live Chat for SMBs Discover five SMB live chat providers at wsm.co/chatsmall.
The first step in managing expectations is to let customers know where they can find a business. This can be done by displaying clear and complete contact information on a website. Although many businesses will only include a phone number and email contact form in this area, it is important to empower customers by letting them decide where they want to contact the company – whether it be on Twitter or through a messaging app. It is also a good idea to include a link to the FAQ page on the contact page, as this will prompt some customers to find the answers to questions on their own (more on this below).
2. When can customers expect a response? In addition to letting customers know where to find a customer service team, it is essential to let them know when representatives are available. Take live
chat as an example. Since most SMBs don’t have the resources to offer 24/7 live chat service, they should manage customer expectations by adding hours of availability to the live chat window and offer customers the option to leave a message when a customer chat agent is unavailable. Along with managing expectations for live chat, SMBs should do the same for non-traditional customer service channels. Social, for instance, is a big area of opportunity for brands of all sizes, as Q2 2016 data from Sprout Social found that brands send 23 promotional messages for every one response given to a customer. What’s more, brands that do respond keep customers waiting an average of 11 hours. Fortunately, managing the expectations of social customer service can be as simple as updating a Twitter bio. On Twitter, for example, brands can include customer service information in the bio, such as the handle of a dedicated customer service account and the hours customers can receive real-time responses. Customer service on the world’s largest social network, however, requires a different strategy. For tips on how to manage customer service expectations on Facebook (and Facebook Messenger), check out Website Magazine’s “Become a Customer Service Pro on Facebook” at wsm.co/cspro16.
3. Is self-service an option? Forrester’s Dec. 2015 Customer Lifecycle Survey found that for the second year in a row, respondents reported using Web or mobile self-service more than speaking with agents over the phone. Luckily for SMBs, empowering this growing customer service channel can be as easy as sprucing up a FAQs section. Brands can take inventory of their customers’ most common questions and feedback, add this information to their FAQs content and make the page easily accessible. An additional way SMBs can encourage self-service is by creating tutorials and featuring them where they will be the most useful. For instance, if a pet store retailer receives several inquiries about kennel training for puppies, the retailer could feature a blog post or video titled “A Guide to Kennel Training” on his or her kennel-related product pages.
Exceed Expectations Managing customer expectations makes it easier for customer service representatives to exceed expectations. This is because customers are not left wondering how to contact a brand or when they will receive a response. What’s more, satisfied customers are more likely to be repeat customers, and every savvy business owner knows that retaining a customer is more cost effective than acquiring a new one.
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E-Commerce
EXPRESS
Best Practices
for Capturing Reviews from Gift Givers
“
By Matt Parsons, PowerReviews
The more feedback retailers can obtain to shed light on the motivation for purchase, the better success they’ll have in marketing their products and building buyer confidence.
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When it comes to making a well-informed and confident purchase decision, consumers look to ratings and reviews as the most authentic voice about a product. In fact, almost all (95 percent of shoppers) consult reviews before buying. Typically, review collection focuses solely on gathering insight from the product’s end-users, but being so focused on this group alone can lead brands and retailers to miss out on valuable insights from shoppers who have purchased an item as a gift and won’t be the actual user. As merchants continue to make review collection a priority, it is important they expand their efforts to attract all shopper feedback including gift givers. Although gift givers can’t provide the same depth of insight as the product’s end-user, they can provide valuable information about why they purchased a product. In the 2015 holiday season alone more than
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$626 billion was spent on gifts, meaning there’s huge potential to generate feedback from this segment. Here are some best practices for capturing reviews from gift givers.
Rework your call-to-action (CTA) Since 70 percent of reviews originate from postpurchase emails, it’s essential to implement this channel in a rating-and-review strategy. If retailers don’t ask the right questions, however, they risk alienating gift givers and missing out on their feedback. Instead, e-commerce merchants should frame their CTA to capture feedback from all buyer types by asking questions like, “Why did you purchase [X product]?” and “Who was this for?” Retailers should also consider including a section on the “Thank You” page that appears immediately after an order is placed, asking why the consumer purchased the product. This makes it easier for shoppers to provide feedback while still in the brand’s ecosystem and allows retailers to display that insight directly on the product page.
Keep it simple Make the feedback process as simple as possible, because gift givers have likely already spent a lot of time looking for that perfect present. Too many clickable banners, links and CTAs in a review request may distract – and even overwhelm – customers. It’s important to keep asking for a review as short and simply as possible; retailers will want to stick to straightforward messaging and make sure their design is visually appealing and uncluttered. They’ll also want to consider allowing respondents to provide just a couple quick pieces of information (e.g., a star rating, answers to a few direct questions) rather than requiring an in-depth review. Additionally, for those retailers using a tag-based review system, which outlines a product’s most commonly cited pros, cons and best uses, they will want to allow customers to choose “great gift” as one of the product’s best uses. This information can be used for product badges or search filtering.
Keep context in mind If merchants aren’t asking in-store shoppers for feedback, they’re missing out on a significant segment of customers. According to a Total Retail study, 73 percent of shoppers say that while they tend to browse for products online, they still complete their final purchase in-store. Reviews from online shoppers might be easier to collect (because they’re already there), but retailers shouldn’t make the mistake of leaving in-store shoppers out of their review strategy. To solicit feedback from these in-store gift givers, they’ll want to tap into their existing rewards program database or ask customers to share their email addresses at the register by offering additional incentives like coupons or sweepstakes entries.
Rework review strategy Ultimately, the more feedback retailers can obtain to shed light on the motivation for purchase, the better success they’ll have in marketing their products and building buyer confidence. Merchants will want to consider reworking their review collection strategy to capture gift givers, as these shoppers hold insights that are just as valuable as the product’s end-user. Matt Parsons is the chief customer officer at PowerReviews, which helps brands collect, display and syndicate customer reviews and answer customer questions.
Design and
DEVELOPMENT
Typography’s Role in Branding By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor
The average website visitor is likely very unaware of how much typography (fonts, line spacing and other elements) impacts their online experience – everything from initial reaction to likeliness of returning. Designers can’t be as oblivious, as their typography choices make or break key performance indicators like bounce rate, time on site, number of pages visited and so on. Not only do visitors judge a website within seconds (high quality versus low quality, trustworthy versus untrustworthy) and choose whether to stay or go just as fast, but they’re also picking up on the clues left for them (what does this brand offer, who is it for and what do they stand for). As one can imagine, typography plays a huge role in subtly answering those questions. To keep your visitors Using WhatFont, designers can see which interested and clicking, explore how typography can be used to set your typography elements are in use on the brand apart. Web pages they visit.
FAMILIARITY Designers draw inspiration from a number of sources – even competitors – and when they find something they like, it can be useful to look under the hood to see what is actually in use. WhatFont can be added as an extension for Chrome to see what typography elements are being used such as fonts (and font families), font sizes, line heights and colors on any website. Aside from WhatFont, other Chrome extensions include Fontface Ninja (which even shows how to buy the fonts), WhatTheFont and WhatFontIs. Let’s take Facebook as an example. Using WhatFont, it can be observed that the third most visited website in the world (behind Google and YouTube according to Alexa rankings) uses Helvetica-regular at 14 pixels with a 19 pixels line height. While there is nothing overly intriguing about Facebook’s typography elements, Web users spend a lot of their digital time on the network each day so if a brand is looking to establish trust through familiarity, these elements might serve them well as a starting point. In addition to using a blue color palette, which instills calmness and is said to convey stability, the elements that Facebook
uses could do the same for companies that are in the financial space or the publishing world because of its familiarity (albeit subconscious) and its readability.
CONSISTENCY Mobile now accounts for more than half of website traffic, so designers will want to keep typography choices consistent across mobile and desktop devices – not doing so could impact the user experience and perceived brand quality. To see how their peers are tackling mobile typography, designers may want to download the WhatFont app for iOS to conduct the same research mentioned above, but on mobile. When comparing the fonts of desktop and mobile sites, users will likely see smaller font sizes on desktop than mobile and larger line heights on mobile than desktop. It’s important to not change much else.
stated giving more prominence to its product photography. The pulled-together outfits it offers for subscribers, matches its typography choices. So, despite offering similar services, Dollar Shave Club and Bombfell use typography to represent their brands in different ways.
TYPE ON! There are many important choices to be made when designing or updating a website and typography elements should top that list as they play a big role in the first impression a visitor makes, the last one and every one in between.
STATEMENT Most enterprises are able to get and keep people’s attention without rocking the boat through unfamiliar typography choices. Emerging brands (or those with new offerings), however, can use website typography to make a statement and quickly share their brand story. Check out three sites using statementmaking font at wsm.co/funwithfont. While not the most “out there” example, Dollar Shave Club’s choices are interesting and further establish its brand. It uses three fonts on its homepage (AvenirNext, ThunderSubset and PrumoSlab) with varying sizes, weight and positioning to create interest on the page. Immediately, users know what Dollar Shave Club does (razor subscription service), who it’s for (clearly branded for men) and what they stand for (a certain boldness). The typography choices here complement the brand’s value proposition and its ruggedness and sarcasm. In contrast, the typography elements chosen for Bombfell, a men’s clothing subscription box, are under-
Find Your Fonts Despite similar services, Dollar Shave Club (subscription for razors) and Bombfell (subscription for clothes), have very different typography styles.
Check out the top resources for getting free and fee-based fonts at wsm.co/findyourfont.
Mastering
SEARCH Back to Basics:
On-Site SEO Checklist By Allison Howen, Associate Editor Thanks to always-changing search engine algorithms and stiff competition, search engine optimization (SEO) is a never-ending task for successful Web professionals. For help keeping up, take a look at Website Magazine’s back-to-basics SEO checklist below:
Check Sitemaps – Using Google Webmaster Tools, SEOs can check their sitemaps to identify issues with their website, including crawling errors that may be a sign of broken links. Discover three broken link discovery tools at wsm.co/findbroke. Remove Bad Links – Since Google’s 2012 Penguin update, many websites have been penalized for “bad” or “spammy” links, which results in lower rankings and perceived authority. After other tactics have been exhausted to eliminate these links, brands can use Google’s disavow tool. Explained more at wsm.co/notwithme.
Take a Look at Title Tags – Titles describe what a page is about to search engines and consumers, which is why it is important that they contain relevant and informative keywords. What's more, SEOs can look at the HTML suggestions page in Search Console to view missing or potentially problematic title tags on their site.
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Leverage ALT Image Tags – Not only are descriptive image file names important, but so is the ALT image text; both image file names and ALT image text help search engines identify the content of an image so it can be displayed for relevant searches. Learn more about optimizing images for SEO at wsm.co/seopic. Remove Duplicate Content – Google penalizes duplicate content as it is often used to manipulate search rankings. SEOs can avoid penalties by monitoring instances of similar content and using Search Console to instruct Google how to index pages with similar content (e.g., canonicalization).
Examine Analytics – SEOs should look to their own analytics to see what type of content is driving the most traffic – over the long- and short-term. This data will provide insights that can help businesses optimize future content strategies for better search rankings and increased traffic.
Manage Meta Descriptions – SEOs should ensure that every page on their site has its own meta description (which appear in search results below the title tag); they can check for pages that are missing descriptions on the HTML suggestions page in Search Console.
strategy not only helps businesses increase time-on-site and page-view metrics, but also helps create a hierarchy that shows the search engines which pages on a site are the most important.
Site Speed Matters – Fast sites deliver a
Ensure Mobile Friendliness – It’s been
good user experience and that’s exactly what the search engines are committed to providing. Learn how to speed up your site at wsm.co/speedsix.
more than a year since “Mobilegeddon” went into effect and if a site is not mobile friendly it is definitely being ranked lower on the SERPs.
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Link Internally – Having an internal linking
Insights on
ANALYTICS Give Credit Where Credit is Due
New Attribution Models to Explore By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor
Web professionals only have to think about their own online behavior to understand just how complex their journey to purchase is – moving from search and social to marketplaces and mobile to learn more, engage and find the perfect product. Even so, many advertisers and the networks they leverage have been slow to adopt an attribution model that gives appropriate credit for sales across the many touchpoints in modern conversion paths; rather, assigning “100 percent credit to the final touchpoints (e.g., clicks) that immediately precede sales or conversions,” as Google describes “last-click attribution.” Since consumers’ research and shopping behaviors are more fragmented than ever – increasing the odds of coming into contact with the same brand across different channels – Google is now offering an Attribution Modeling Tool in AdWords so users with sufficient data can integrate one of six different attribution models to give credit where credit is due. These models include last click, first click, linear, time decay, position-based or data driven (in beta). So, how does it all work?
AdWords users can now select their attribution model to credit beyond last-touch attribution, even assigning partial credits.
Let’s say a shopper reaching a small retail business in the U.S. (with less than 500 daily e-commerce transactions) follows the typical path to purchase (as shown by Think with Google). This shopper starts on organic search and then interacts with other channels, including (in order) social, generic paid search (e.g., a search for “tablet reviews”), email, brand paid search (e.g., an “iPad reviews” query) and direct, before ultimately buying. If that direct visit results in the sale and the advertiser has chosen “last click,” then the direct channel would receive 100 percent of the credit for the sale (a familiar model). “First click” is of course the complete opposite, giving 100 percent credit to the first ad clicked. If, how-
These channels tend to influence purchase decisions when shopping online with a small retail business in the U.S.
ever, the “linear” model was chosen, each touchpoint in the conversion path (all seven here), would share equal credit for the sale, roughly 14 percent each. In contrast, with “time decay,” the touchpoints closest in time to the conversion would get the most credit. In this case, the payout is stacked; if the direct channel and branded paid search were “touched” within a few hours of the sale, they would get a significantly higher credit than a channel that was interacted with days or weeks earlier. The position-based attribution model also distributes credit rather than being all-in at 100 percent in that it will commonly assign 40 percent credit each to the first interaction and the last interaction, while sharing the remaining percentage with the interactions in the middle. The point here is for advertisers to get a better idea of the value of the keywords in use in order to set bids as well as adjust ads and landing pages based on those findings. The new (and in beta) data-driven attribution model, which Google seems to favor, shows this idea more clearly – giving “more credit to those valuable clicks on the customer’s path.” For example, if customers click on an ad for “boat rentals in Nevada” first and then click on “discounted boat rentals in Tahoe” later and reserve from there – but don’t often purchase when selecting “discounted boat rentals in Tahoe” by itself – the model redistributes credit in favor of the first ad, “boat rentals in Nevada” because it’s shown to provide more conversions than just the second ad alone. Advertisers will want to look at whether the landing pages are different and need to be modified or if more emphasis needs to be put on certain keywords over others. This has, of course, barely scratched the surface of what these new attribution models mean to advertisers, but Website Magazine has put together a comprehensive guide to analyzing, implementing and optimizing for these new attribution model choices at wsm.co/paymodels.
Lead Generation Making it Great Again! By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief
New customers and clients are what keep business moving forward and thriving. In many ways, it is what will make your enterprise great. Without a constant stream of fresh, interested prospects, enterprises simply can’t grow. For that reason, it’s essential to concentrate at least a portion of your attention and investment on the practice of lead generation. For many businesses, attracting new clients is the hardest thing they will ever do in the digital realm. Not only is it necessary to leverage various channels, but also craft messaging (and further, the entire digital experience) in a way that drives interest in the company, the brand, and its product or services. No easy task, of course, even for the savviest and most experienced. Lead generation is essentially the practice of initiating interest (and inquiry) into the product or services of a business by a potential consumer. These “leads” can be 24
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acquired for any purpose really – to build a larger email newsletter recipient list or to be followed up with by a member of the sales team. In many ways, every business (and each individual within that enterprise) is responsible for and ultimately engaged in the practice of lead generation – from the Web designer to the copywriter and pretty much every position in between (access lead generation advice from other ‘Net professionals at wsm.co/genroles). Lead generation, however, most often falls under the responsibilities of the marketing, promotions and advertising departments, so the guidance included herein caters almost exclusively to those Web workers. While lead generation is often paired or associated with lead management – the practice of actually moving a lead through the purchase funnel – the aim in this month’s feature article of Website Magazine is to focus exclusively on acquiring more leads and the means by which that can
be achieved. What happens after (customer service and nurturing leads) will actually be addressed in next month’s issue – so stay tuned! You might be curious about the title of this article and the use of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s likeness on the cover, wondering about the association. Whether you agree with his politics or not, it is hard to deny the impact Trump has had; when it comes to lead generation an “impact” is exactly what enterprises should be after. Regardless of if you love or loathe him, he can actually provide some useful insights into the practice of lead generation and Website Magazine has included a few quotes throughout the article from the real-estate mogul that readers can use to frame their initiatives. Let the following, however, serve as a genuine foundation for an effective lead generation strategy – the best practices and mechanics of putting more sales-ready prospects into the buying funnel. “Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”
THE EVOLUTION OF LEAD GENERATION A New Kind of Buyer Lead generation has changed dramatically over the years thanks to the abundance of information available and has led to what is now known as the “self-directed buyer” and the emergence of new techniques to develop and qualify leads before they officially enter the sales pipeline. In many ways, the practice of marketing itself has changed, and in pretty much every conceivable way. THE MISSION: Where marketers were once responsible for representing a company and finding new customers, today they are charged with representing the customer and being found as a result of their efforts. THE APPROACH: Instead of engaging in mass advertising and employing broad demographics to do so, today’s marketers engage in one-on-one marketing and employ behavioral cues to gain insights about their prospects. THE METHODS & TACTICS: Brands have traditionally engaged in a few isolated channels and blasted their message out. Today, however, lead generation is more about continuously managing relationships and taking a more integrated approach to marketing. THE MEASUREMENT: The digital marketing industry is now taking advantage of big data and using fact-based decision making as opposed to third-party data and their own intuition.
The result of all this “change” has been more efficient and effective lead generation initiatives and it has driven unprecedented shifts in buying behavior among consumers. Today, buyers do their own research through search engines, social media and other channels and can learn a great deal about a product or service well before ever speaking to a salesperson (who may actually know less than the customer themselves in some instances). In fact, according to Forrester, buyers might be anywhere from two-thirds to 90 percent of the way through their buying journey before they even reach the vendor. The reason this is happening more and more is because buyers have so much access to information that they can delay talking to sales until they are experts themselves (an armor of sorts against traditional sales tactics). Fortunately, creating a solid lead generation strategy will help brands build trust and capture buyer interest before they are even ready to contact sales. What marketers are seeing today is a different kind of buyer – one that is more informed in general, pre-qualified and ready to enter the funnel of their own volition. Just because a lead enters the top of the funnel (TOFU), however, doesn’t mean they are ready to buy. Enterprises must also optimize the relationship with those in the middle of the funnel (MOFU) and take advantage of what is today the single greatest asset for a business outside of behavioral data: content. Without content, brands will be hard pressed to ever get any prospect into their sales pipeline.
CONTENT MATTERS Breadth & Depth Whether an enterprise is B2B or B2C, the challenges to lead generation success are likely the same: a lack of resources (staffing, budgeting, time), a lack of sufficient insight into an audience of prospects and, of course, a limited ability to develop content.
Rank ‘Em If You Got ‘Em Lead scoring is a shared sales and marketing methodology for ranking leads in order to determine their sales-readiness. Leads are “scored” based on the interest they show in the business, their current position in the buying cycle and their fit in regards to the products or services being sold. Lead scoring helps companies know whether prospects need to be fast tracked to sales or developed with lead nurturing over time. Lead scoring ultimately drives greater efficiency and effectiveness, but how can today’s enterprises get started? Read more about lead scoring and ranking prospective customers at wsm.co/leadpoints.
Content, however, is the proverbial fuel that drives profitable customer action and interaction. Creating relevant and valuable material can be used to attract, acquire and engage a target audience; today, it serves as the best available opportunity companies have to gain a buyer’s trust. So, where should a content development and marketing team begin? There are, of course, many questions that arise when the conversation turns to content. “How much content do we need,” and “Who will create it,” being just two of the most common. The first step should be to explore competitors’ efforts to understand not just the volume, but also the type of content being developed. Web professionals often need to look no further than companies that foster and support brands’ existing business marketing efforts including social tool providers like HootSuite, Buffer and SproutSocial. These companies regularly post useful, compelling content that is engaging and personalized to the needs of their audience. The best practice is to first know what type of content is most attractive to a company’s potential leads. For information publishers and service providers in particular, that tends to be e-books and guides, presentations, research reports, whitepapers, webinars and videos, but there are an endless variety of approaches that can be taken by today’s digital marketers. What about for e-commerce merchants? There are solutions for this breed of ’Net professionals as well. ZMags, a digital catalog software provider that enables sellers to make content from a PDF shoppable, recently branched out with its Zmags Creator product. Using rich images most associated with print, sellers can now add interactive elements like fade-ins, animations and videos that can play “on scroll” via the Web. Essentially, anything that can be done from a design perspective can be done with Zmags Creator. The difference is that, previously, creating more visual experiences took months to develop. The Creator solution, however, makes it possible for a creative (not technical) person to develop a custom digital experience with dragand-drop functionality that mirrors it. In the case of Marks & Spencer, the UK-based retailer saw a 90 percent increase in
Where Do Leads Come From? An Oct. 2015 study from eMarketer found that 89 of respondents cited email as the most-used channel for generation of leads, followed by content marketing, search engines and events. The practice doesn’t really change all that much from year to year – or at least the sources of leads. A study from Bizible, for example, from early March 2014 found that direct traffic, search engines and Web referrals were the three most popular online channels for lead generation, accounting for 93 percent of leads.
engagement and 50 percent increase in conversion with their use of Creator. Essentially, marketers can move from a sterile product page to one that is rich in interactivity, bringing together creative, context and commerce in immersive ways. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Learn more about the intersection of ecommerce and content with a Q&A from Zmags CEO Brian Rigney at wsm.co/zmags16.) Looking for more content inspiration for your enterprise? Website Magazine has put together a “Master List of Digital Content Ideas & Tech” for Web professionals to consider using at wsm.co/mlcontent.
ACQUISITION TACTICS Mind the Channels “Sometimes the best investments are the ones you don’t make.” Once a variety of content, in a variety of formats, is developed, the next phase in any lead generation initiative is to actually start acquiring the leads. Fortunately, there is no shortage of opportunities. The traditional digital method used to acquire leads is through the website itself, but backing up a little, marketers need to consider the channels they will use to attract users in order to eventually convert them. So, take the website off the proverbial table for a moment, and let’s focus on those opportunities that today’s savviest brands are using to attract potential leads. The first step in acquiring leads is to raise awareness – without it there is simply no way you’ll ever convert an interested potential buyer. Marketers will need content to make it all happen, but once they have it (and enough quality content at that), the chances to convert a prospect to a lead grow exponentially. Email: While it is one of the most effective marketing channels, email doesn’t receive the attention it should in the realm of lead generation primarily because brands must first have a list of possible prospects for it to work at all. It might seem counterintuitive to think of email as a lead generation method, but there are some rather effective approaches. Say for instance that existing clients or partners possess a list of potential leads. If a marketer can convince them to deliver a message on their behalf (either in exchange for a discount or a co-promotion to the marketer’s own existing list) the enterprise will be on the fast track to generating more leads. Another email-related option to consider is that of co-registration – learn more about this practice at wsm.co/coemail. Organic Search: The holy grail of lead sources is, of course, the search engine. These valuable resources crawl
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and index content (in its variety of forms) and often top the list of marketers’ preferred channels. Optimizing content for search requires brands to make several important considerations, understanding the makeup of their prospective leads, the depth and breadth of content that ranks on the search results pages and more. Content is what search engines are after and it is the responsibility of every enterprise to create it. Social: While still a digital mystery to most brands, social media has quickly become a valuable channel for those that can leverage its innate power. What makes social so interesting is that audiences self-select somewhat, defining their interests, aligning themselves with both their wants and needs. If marketers can identify the optimal audience, develop in-demand content and craft messaging that compels prospects to convert into leads, social media can provide immense value. So, what resonates with each brand’s prospects? Learn how to find out at wsm.co/contentso. Advertising: Enterprises willing to spend money to make money often turn to advertising before any other channel and for good reason. Today, performance-based advertising offers an opportunity to employ data, leverage content and drive measurable results – a trifecta of lead generation goodness. It can be cost-prohibitive, of course, but well-managed campaigns can make all the difference to the success of an enterprise over the near and long term. The very well-known downsides are the complexities associated with the practice, like those addressed on page 23 and 38 of this issue. Content Syndication: Prospective buyers don’t always start their purchase journey at a search engine or social network so it’s important that marketers attempt to establish a presence wherever they may show up. The best way to deliver high-value content to the correct prospects is through content syndication – a strategy that can be used to promote content on other websites for greater reach and engagement. Through content syndication (and its lesser cousin guest blogging), a brand’s content appears on thirdparty sites and newsletters. And because most content syndicators deliver leads directly to a company’s inbox, it’s a great way to keep leads coming in the door. Discover the basics of content syndication at wsm.co/contsyn.
FROM PROSPECT TO LEAD The Final Step Just because a prospect was drawn to a website does not mean that the website will aid in conversion. In addition to paying attention to the type of content and the sources of traffic used to drive a consumer visit and ultimately a lead, marketers must also concentrate on the website and
its components and the means by which it is possible to convert a prospect to someone that becomes a customer. There are many elements which convey to users that a company can be trusted enough for them to willingly enter the sales pipeline including indicators such as reviews, trust seals or payment methods. While every enterprise is different, creating landing pages for each buyer persona (learn how to create them from SEO data at wsm.co/buypersona) goes a long way toward generating more leads as can forms that are optimized for mobile and are easy to complete. Landing page development and optimization is an important practice for today’s ‘Net enterprises; discover how to build and refine these essential assets for the purpose of lead generation at wsm.co/landgen.
METRICS FOR LEAD GENERATION Measurement Strategies “In the end, you are measured not by how much you undertake, but by what you accomplish.” Knowing what to measure, when to measure and how to do it is useful for companies of any size. Let’s take a quick look at some of the most common measurement approaches. Companies track a variety of metrics related to their lead generation efforts but for the most part they do so to understand the contribution to revenue (as well as the health of the sales pipeline itself), the quantity of leads (qualified/nonqualified), the cost (per inquiry/per lead), as well as the various stages of leads. Measuring leads can be quite complicated depending on where prospects are in their buying journey. Since we’re more concerned here with the generation of leads as opposed to the nurturing of prospects, focusing on the quantity, the quality and the cost will be sufficient for most enterprises – particularly those that exert control over their message and where their message appears. Every enterprise is different of course, with varying demands and expectations, and as a result the manner in which they measure will vary. Check out Website Magazine’s “Big List of Lead Generation Metrics” at wsm.co/genmetric.
Making Lead Generation Great Again Acquiring new users is challenging – there’s no doubt about that. Fortunately, when enterprises and marketers understand the shift that has taken place in relation to the buying process, concentrate on creating content that resonates with users and leverage the many channels available (measuring the performance of each phase accordingly), it is possible – and profitable – to make lead generation great again. “As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.”
Mobile
MATTERS 7 Considerations for
Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Users By Pete Peranzo, CEO of Imaginovation
Mobile is now the norm. The number of people relying on their mobile devices to get them through the day – check email, browse the Internet, chat with friends, update social media and shop – has skyrocketed over the past few years.
No Pop-Ups or Flash
It is expected by 2017 that 63.4 percent of users worldwide will access content via their mobile devices instead of personal computers. Websites that aren’t adequately optimized for the mobile experience risk being left behind. Designing for mobile, however, presents a new set of challenges. Brands want to deliver the best possible user experience (UX) via their mobile site while keeping intact the most important features of their website. It’s a delicate balance to strike and the challenge is significant. Businesses today are choosing between creating responsive sites and standalone websites for mobile experiences. Regardless of their final decision, the following checklist will help companies optimize their digital presence for all of their mobile users.
Easy-to-Find Information
Fast Load Time A website should load fast on desktop as well as mobile, but even more so on mobile given the limitations of the hardware supporting such devices. Not everyone uses phones and tablets with fast processors and rarely do people have the patience to wait for a site that takes forever to load.
Well-Structured A website that looks great on a desktop computer may not be as eye-pleasing on a mobile device. For instance, companies have greater screen space to make use of with desktop, so they can afford to introduce a number of menus, loads of quotations, heavy homepages, plenty of images and a ton of content, with special effects that are presented throughout the user’s journey on the site. All of this, however, will have to be handled carefully when optimizing the site for mobile devices. Too many drop-down menus will negatively impact the mobile experience as will a lot of content in one place. A website should look uncluttered and minimalistic on mobile, which might mean not including all the features from the desktop version. It’s a tough call to make, but it’s necessary to deliver a smooth and lean mobile UX.
Pop-ups are intrusive and annoying. They are also difficult to close on small screens. Similarly, not all mobile devices are able to support Flash. If features are included that are not universally supported or well-received on mobile, it will just lead to users abandoning the site. Form is important, but not at the cost of function. The most important and relevant information should be easy to find. Also, the structure of the mobile-optimized website should not sacrifice the usefulness of its content.
Prominent Calls-to-Action A clean and intuitive layout aids users in navigating through a website smoothly, but calls-to-action (CTAs) should be easy to spot and click on. These could be blog subscription buttons, shopping cart icons or buttons representing any action the company wants users to take.
Tackles Fat Fingers Browsing the Web on mobile leads to a lot of accidental clicks, which can annoy visitors and lead to skewed metrics for businesses. The ergonomics of a mobile site should minimize the occurrence of users clicking on buttons or ads they had no intention of accessing. Instead of the little ‘X’ in the corner, ads should display broad tabs that are easier to click on for the desired action.
Optimized for SEO Since mobile devices are increasingly being relied on for searching and carrying out all kinds of tasks online, it becomes equally important for them not to hinder SEO efforts but rather aid them. Pay as much attention to how the search engines will read and rank the mobile site as the desktop site.
Combining Functionality and UX A mobile site requires a precise design and be intuitively laid out to facilitate an easy and memorable UX. For new site owners, or those on a tight budget who cannot afford to hire an agency, there are a number of responsive frameworks that lend themselves beautifully to the mobile experience. A little DIY effort and customization will help companies take advantage of all of the mobile possibilities. J U L Y 2016
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Use Mobile Loyalty to Woo Millennials Get a program off the ground at
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EXPERIENCE
TACTICS & TECH
Tips for Improving Email Engagement By Neil Berman, Delivra
One of the biggest challenges facing marketers is how to engage with email subscribers. With so many marketers competing for readers’ attention, it may seem nearly impossible to have someone read an email from start to finish - but that certainly doesn’t need to be the case. If an email contains compelling content throughout, it will drive subscribers to a higher level of engagement. Below are ways marketers can create and incorporate engaging content in an email campaign, from attention-grabbing subject lines and calls-toaction (CTAs) to interactive content and videos.
Start with the subject line
If a marketer wants to grab subscribers’ attention amid a sea of other marketing emails, they need to craft a great subject line. It’s important to know that the majority of people read emails on a mo30
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bile device, and most mobile phone displays truncate subject lines at roughly 35 characters, so the subject line must be brief. Avoiding redundant or irrelevant information in headlines will save valuable subject line space. The best approach is to use the subject line to highlight a few items from the email and separate them with a vertical bar. For example, “2016 Email Marketing Tips | Social Media News.” The character cutoff also means marketers must put the most important information first. So, instead of saying “Purchase our newest products 50% off,” try “50% off our newest products.”
Write content that gets noticed
The body of the email is just as important as the subject line, so be sure the content lives up to the hype of the subject line. In addition to abiding by the basic grammar rules, here are some tips for writing engaging content that will get recipients clicking.
Don’t forget details. Assuming most people skim emails, including relevant details in the opening sentence is key to keep subscribers reading. Be concise. Similar to the subject line, it’s important to keep the body of the email concise. No one wants to spend a lot of time reading through an email. Include a CTA. Informing readers about a new product, whitepaper or program is great, but telling them to purchase the product, to download the whitepaper or to register for the program is even better (see image A).
Videos How-to and tutorial videos are a great way to find a new audience, but there are many other ways marketers can use videos, as they allow companies to humanize themselves and ultimately better connect with their audiences. Videos showing employees engaging in some fun activity around the office or explaining their culture and corporate values are great examples.
Surveys Surveys are particularly useful in B2B marketing, especially if the majority of a company’s subscribers operate within the same industry. For example, marketers could conduct a survey about challenges in the service industry and share the results with those who participated.
Infographics Infographics are perhaps the most versatile type of content, because the format works well in newsletters, on social media and on company websites. Infographics also allow marketers to present statistics and survey results in an appealing, concise manner.
Guides A. Don’t just tell recipients about a free course, encourage them to start it by including a strong call-to-action.
Keep it casual. A conversational tone is almost always the best choice for marketing emails. For those not sure how to write in a conversational tone, the easiest way to get started is to read writing aloud. If it sounds like a robot or a college professor, the tone is too formal. The best way to achieve a conversational tone is to use contractions and write short sentences. Get a second pair of eyes. Marketers should always ask someone else to read their work. Pick someone who can proof for grammatical errors and who’s not afraid to say, “This is boring.” Then use that feedback to write better.
Mix it up
Adding a variety of content in emails enables marketers to connect with a broader audience. Here are some tips on how to best use different types of content.
Consumers are sometimes faced with an overwhelming number of product choices, and buying guides or a collection of relevant material (see image B) can help them compare and contrast products without conducting multiple Internet searches. Include a link in the email to a guide on the website, and this can help keep a potential customer in the brand’s ecosystem, rather than them leaving to find better info. Creating engaging content takes time. Successful email marketers not only listen to feedback from their peers, but also monitor how their subscribers respond to the content, and are willing to make changes accordingly. Neil Berman is the founder and CEO of Delivra, an email marketing service provider and strategic consultancy. With nearly 20 years in the software industry, Berman continues to be driven by a passion to find innovative solutions that help clients win in their industries.
B. Pulling together helpful and relevant info provides a value add for consumers to continue interacting with a company.
Conversion
CORNER
How Far Along Are You in the Hierarchy of Conversion Tools? By Marty Greif, SiteTuners
Some digital marketers believe that the sooner you can get to testing, the better. There’s a reason for that belief; traffic monitoring tools like Google Analytics and voice of customer (VoC) tools like Qualaroo look at past data. That’s a little like looking at just your rearview mirror while driving at 60 miles per hour. That said, the opposite scenario – jumping right into split and multivariate tests – is a little bit like having no rearview mirror at all. Neither scenario is ideal. That’s why optimizers should carefully pick the tools and processes they should be using at any given point. To do this, enterprises will need to understand the hierarchy of tools in online marketing. Keep in mind that the tools listed below represent the type of tool rather than the specific tool. Professionals can swap out ForeSee for iPerceptions, for example, but only if a survey tool is needed at that point. They can also swap out Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) or Google Optimize for Optimizely, but only if they need a testing tool at that stage.
1. Google Search Console If a company doesn’t have enough traffic, it won’t be running any tests. Enterprises are not going to be analyzing much for that matter, or getting many users to take their surveys. Google Search Console (GSC) is a baseline, these days. There are a few key components within GSC that optimizers need before they get to the next stage. 32
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They know enough about the tool to load sitemaps that Google can read, making sure the most important pages can get indexed. They can see the keywords people type in to get to the website. For those with an international site, they know how to assign URLs to the right locations, so they serve the right pages to the right people. Optimizers are pretty much blind to what happens to the website at this stage, so they shouldn’t stay here very long.
2. Web Analytics Tools As soon as brands have optimized how much their site can get “spidered,” the real work begins. Optimizers can use WebTrends, Core Metrics or other tools instead of Google or Adobe offerings, but the important thing is that they know a few core things about their site: Which pages get a lot of traffic, and where is that traffic coming from? Which pages get a lot of engagement? Which pages convert? This gets marketers the “what” about a site, and once enterprises have learned enough about seg-
mentation, the tools in this stage can tell them which pages they can test to get the most out of their optimization plans. That said, optimizers will also want to leave this stage pretty quickly; they need to go from someone who understands “what” happened on the site to someone who understands “why” something happened.
Stage 1 – familiarity with GSC ensures that the site can be found on search engines, so the site has the potential to get enough traffic for tests.
3. Survey Tools
Stage 3 – understanding voice of customer allows marketers to drill down to intent, focusing on the actions that users want to do on the site, and the tasks that users fail at a lot. This feeds the “why” of the site, and it’s a critical component of knowing “how” to test the pages that need to be tested.
Once marketers have the “what” of the site down, it’s time to answer a few questions that are a little more advanced but provide important insights: What are people looking for on the site? What percentage of the users can find what they need?
Stage 2 – knowledge about Web analytics tools can later inform optimizers which pages drive a lot of traffic, which pages drive a ton of engagement and which pages need to be tested to get the most out of the optimization process.
What tasks are visitors failing most?
Once marketers have all that down, it’s time they pick a testing tool. It can be Optimizely, it can be VWO or it can be Google Optimize within Google Analytics.
How satisfied are users with the website experience?
Putting It All Together
Brands will not be able to answer these questions using tools like Google Analytics. For these types of questions, they need a VOC tool – because they need to ask their users about these directly. Before users exit the site, marketers can ask them to select the task they were trying to accomplish from a list. Companies can ask them whether they were able to do what they came to the site to do, as well as ask them how satisfied they were with the site. Brands can pick up Google Consumer Surveys or Qualaroo instead of iPerceptions or Qualtrics, but companies need to be able to ask users about their intent. Once marketers can use both quantitative tools like Google Analytics and qualitative tools like iPerceptions, it’s time to run the tests.
4. Testing Tools The reason it takes a while for companies to get to this stage is two-fold: Problems about the site uncovered in stages 1 to 3 keep online marketers occupied The specialization required keeps marketers from unlocking optimization techniques
Taken together, that’s the hierarchy of tools (see image on the right). Optimizely Marketers can’t jump straight to survey tools without getting their site indexed; nor can they Qualtrics/ go straight to split tests without first maximiziPerceptions ing Web analytics tools. Every stage marketers get familiar with helps them get the next stages right. There’s very little incentive in Google Analytics/ skipping stages, as optimizers need the Adobe Analytics skills they pick up in the early stages when they’re testing. If you’re an online marGoogle Search Console keter considering running split tests to optimize a particular set of pages for your brand, it’s time to have an honest assessment about where you are in the tools hierarchy. If you’re getting a ton out of GSC, your Web analytics tool and your survey tool, go right ahead and use those tools so you can set up champion and challenger pages in Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer or Google Optimize. If you are not, it’s time to brush up on the stage that you’re missing to make the most out of your tests when you get to that stage. Martin Greif brings 25-plus years of sales and marketing experience to SiteTuners, where he is responsible for driving revenue growth, establishing and nurturing partner relationships and creating value for SiteTuners’ broad customer base.
Software
EVERYWHERE
7 Digital Tools Bloggers Should Try Right Now By Jane Hurst
These days, everyone is a blogger but not everyone knows how to drive traffic to their blog, generate ideas effectively and monetize their content. Those who are struggling may not be using the right tools. There are loads of great digital offerings bloggers can leverage to improve content, and to improve the experience of visitors – all while creating monetization opportunities for themselves. Let’s take a look at seven picks for digital tools that all bloggers should try right now.
1. Upitch App This is a tool that lets media outlets and bloggers really connect. Bloggers can pitch their stories to journalists all over the world, with just one upload. As a blogger, the benefits are two-fold: (1) they can find story ideas and products to write about and (2) they can pitch their blog to journalists. By developing relationships with journalists, bloggers can possibly get more ongoing press coverage (and more eyes can mean more money).
2. Hemingway App
How to Create a Perfect Blog Design Get tips at
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Here is a great editing tool that will help writers hone in on their craft. Hemingway will let them know if they have a sentence that is too long, too complicated or needs attention for some other reason. It will then highlight that sentence in different colors based on what should be changed, such as red for sentences that are difficult to read, green for phrases that are written in a passive voice and other areas where an alternative might work better.
3. Title Generator Sometimes, the most difficult aspect of writing a blog is coming up with a catchy title, but there are tools to help. For instance, by simply entering a topic into Title Generator by Tweak Your Biz, and checking off whether the word is a noun or a verb, bloggers will be given a list of various title ideas to use. This tool also offers a thesaurus that bloggers can leverage to get even more ideas that will resonate with their audience. .com
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4. Coschedule Daily marketing tasks can take up a lot of time that could be better spent writing. This tool is one of the best bloggers can use for planning material and to save time. Features include a marketing calendar, social media scheduling, workflow management, WordPress and Google Docs integrations, a headline analyzer and more. Currently, more than 10,000 bloggers, editors and social marketers use this offering.
5. Edit Flow This tool will make it a lot easier for WordPress bloggers to collaborate with their team thanks to features including a calendar, custom statuses, editorial comment support, meta-data control, notifications, story budgets, user groups and more. For a list of other valuable plugins for WordPress, visit wsm.co/presscontent.
6. Meet Edgar This is a social media queue that actually fills itself, enabling bloggers to engage audiences with ease. Bloggers just tell Edgar what social networks they wish to post on (and when), and the solution does this mundane but important task for them. What’s more, Edgar takes the updates that are saved in their library, posts them and then puts them at the bottom of the list, so they can be posted again later. Bloggers never have to worry about making social updates again.
7. Post Planner In order to get engagement with others on social media, bloggers need to be publishing the right posts. This can often be difficult to figure out, because interests seem to change at the drop of a hat. Post Planner helps bloggers find the best content, and posts it for them. Rather than wasting valuable time searching the Web for content to share, bloggers can find all of the content they need within this service. Additionally, bloggers can add their favorite accounts from social media networks, along with popular and relevant hashtags, to start selecting the best content to curate based on their specific niche.
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Hosting
PANEL Creating a
DDoS Response Plan By Robert Hamilton, Director of Product Marketing at Incapsula
You’ve probably heard about distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, or maybe you’ve even been hit by one. If you’re like most organizations, you’ve already been “DDoSed.” Perhaps the attack was minor, a wakeup call, but then the attack subsided without causing damage and you just left DDoS protection on your “to-do list.” If you don’t have a DDoS attack plan, it’s time to move it to the top of your list. That’s because attacks are getting bigger, more persistent and increasingly harmful. They inflict serious cost in terms of lost revenue, damaged systems and broken consumer trust. DDoS is no longer just a Web server problem; infrastructure is now a target. The attacker’s ambition is clear: take down your online existence and harm your organization. The attackers have a stash of attack methods from which to choose. Simple, low-cost DDoS toolkits and botnet-for-hire services that cost as little as $50 for an attack leave no online network, application, service or website immune to danger. First and foremost is the volumetric or network level attack that tries to clog your pipeline to the Internet. Protocol attacks can succeed at consuming the resources of servers, routers, firewalls and even load balancers. Attackers can also launch application attacks that try to overload Web servers by mimicking real users. These attacks can cripple a mid-sized website with as few as 50-100 requests per second. So the question is: What can you do before an inevitable attack to ensure you have adequate defenses in place? Two things: (1) develop a plan and (2) adopt a DDoS mitigation solution. 36
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7 Steps to Building a DDoS Response Plan Every organization should have a DDoS response plan in place so that when the inevitable attack occurs, response is swift, damage is minimal and their good reputation remains intact. Here are seven steps to building a DDoS response plan.
1. Build a DDoS Response Team The first step is to identify the various people and departments within an organization who will be in charge of both planning and execution. This team must fulfill a range of tasks – from identifying and mitigating an attack to coordinating with Internet service providers (ISPs), notifying customers, communicating with the press, and minimizing potential reputation and liability issues.
2. Create a Response Plan The purpose of a response plan is to define various resources, tools and procedures required to minimize the risks and costs of a DDoS incident before it happens. The response plan should include topics such as risk assessment, organizational roles and responsibilities.
3. Assess the Risk of an Attack In preparing an organization to deal with a DDoS incident, it’s imperative to understand the scope of a company’s risk. Which infrastructure assets need protection? What is the cost of a given asset becoming unavailable? The cost of an extended outage can be measured in terms of lost revenue and resources required to recover an asset. This risk of an outage needs to be evaluated against the cost of implementing DDoS protection.
Another important part of risk assessment is the identification of single points of failure, such as a DNS server or routers and how to minimize potential issues related to them. For example, today many DDoS attacks are targeted against DNS servers – often an Achilles’ heel of network security. Even if online systems are protected, a successful attack against a DNS server can render it unavailable.
5. Strategize with an ISP It’s important to clearly communicate with an ISP as part of a DDoS response preparation. In large attacks that can completely strangle a company’s bandwidth, ISPs have no choice but to intervene. Massive DDoS attacks targeting one ISP customer can result in service degradation for all its other customers and may even result in service-level agreement (SLA) violations with respect to availability. In extreme cases, the ISP can pull the plug on connectivity altogether.
6. Check DNS TTLs Time to live (TTL) is the value determining how long a piece of data is valid. In the DNS world, TTL limits how long current DNS settings are cached with ISPs. This means that if a website’s TTL is set at three hours, other DNS servers won’t bother checking for a DNS update for the domain over that duration. For enterprises using an on-demand, DNS-based DDoS mitigation solution, their TTL needs to be lowered prior to experiencing a DDoS attack. A lower TTL equates to a faster reaction; this is the time it takes to get traffic routed through a DDoS solution.
7. Test and Maintain Those companies using an on-demand DDoS mitigation solution don’t want to wait for an actual attack to discover whether everything is in working order. As time goes by, enterprises introduce new websites and applications, and their DDoS protection provider periodically updates its systems. It’s important to check the impact of these changes on a company’s readiness. For testing purposes, one should turn on their DDoS mitigation measures for a two-hour period every three to four months or once a year at an absolute minimum. They’ll want to test to certify their systems and applications continue to function properly, traffic continues to arrive and there is no negative impact on users.
Adopting the Right DDoS Protection Solution When it comes to selecting a DDoS protection solution, the good news is that there are many technolo-
gies, products and services available. The bad news is there are a lot of options to choose from, each representing a different approach. These options include homegrown solutions, cloud-based services and appliances deployed within the data center. There is not one right answer for everyone, as each type of IT setup requires a different DDoS solution. When evaluating a DDoS mitigation solution, ask these questions:
Attack Detection Does the solution support automatic attack detection or does it require manual intervention? Does the solution scale on-demand to mitigate large attacks? In addition to network attacks, will the solution mitigate application attacks?
Time to Mitigation Does the solution’s time-to-mitigation match my business and operational needs?
User Classification Can the solution distinguish between legitimate users and bots?
“
What can you do before an inevitable attack to ensure you have adequate defenses in place?
How does it handle legitimate users when a DDoS attack occurs?
Web Application Firewall Does the solution include a Web application firewall to protect Web applications?
Always-On or On-Demand Will I always be protected by the solution? Do I need to engage it each time an attack occurs?
Deployment Mode Does the solution deployment model make sense for my architecture? Malicious DDoS attacks have become a fact of life for almost all organizations, but a well-organized plan and a DDoS mitigation solution will keep the attackers from causing you significant harm.
“
4. Identify Single Points of Failure
Net
ADVERTISING
3 Data & Privacy Dilemmas Advertisers Must Overcome By Maciej Zawadziński, CEO of Clearcode
As long as companies have the ability to track, collect and use consumer data for their advertising efforts, privacy issues will loom large. Consumers are being tracked online more than ever before, as opportunities abound for the display ad industry to turn data into dollars. All of this opportunity, however, comes with a price. Advertisers must engage in a tricky balancing act between better-targeted ads and consumer privacy. Companies need to use data in certain ways to optimize campaigns and ensure they deliver the most personally relevant ads, an increasingly important goal in this age of consumer-led marketing. This, however, raises considerable privacy concerns and creates many dilemmas for advertisers to deal with.
Deduplication
In ad tech, removing duplicate data entries typically refers to audience deduplication. Running a campaign on multiple platforms (ad servers, networks, demandside platforms) or delivering to multiple devices (online and mobile) creates different cookie IDs for the same visitor. Deduplication stitches this data together and provides the true unique visitor reach of the campaign. The problem lies in storing multiple device/ cookie IDs, which may continue to track consumers who intentionally deleted cookies. Ever-cookies (undeletable cookies) are forbidden and have been the root of several industry lawsuits. One solution would be a universal “device graph” platform. In practice, companies like Facebook and Google won’t expose their data to other vendors for obvious reasons, and only they have large enough data sets that are deterministically mapping devices to consumers. For now, the best approach is to use first-party data and encourage users to sign in. This will allow enterprises to create a device graph for a particular visitor. Advertisers could also look to build partnerships for second-party data, which will enable them to enlarge their device graph. 38
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Data Usage & Sharing
Most consumers know that their online activity is being tracked, usually via cookies, and used for advertising and marketing purposes – but that’s about all they know. A majority of these people don’t know just how much of their online data is being collected and is flowing through the online advertising ecosystem. Recent regulations, most significantly last year’s EU General Data Protection Regulation, require advertisers to get “unambiguous” consent from consumers before using their data for marketing purposes. This is having a significant impact on data providers and the exchange of data between parties as large potential fines are at stake. Most Web pros will agree that it’s OK to give away a free Web or mobile app service in exchange for displaying ads. It’s also permissive to use the data for marketing, but the user has to be aware of and agree to it, as well as understand with whom the company is going to share the data with and how to opt out in the future. Regulations mandate advertisers make all of this clear. Go beyond the letter of the law, and try to use the data to add value for visitors versus strictly to add them into more audience segments, feed them more ads or monetize the data.
Personally Identifiable Information
Although the meaning of “personal data” may seem selfexplanatory, it’s more complex than that, affecting both the type and amount of information businesses are allowed to collect, store and process. There’s actually debate about what PII is and how it’s defined. PII stands for personally identifiable information, and in general includes any data that may lead to identification of an individual. A single data point may not be PII, but combined with other data collected about the same user may become PII (e.g., year of birth, postal code). When collecting PII, advertisers must abide by certain requirements. Ensure users have a way to “reset” their identifier and start a new identity without being linked to an earlier behavioral profile or user ID. Ensure that a set of data points collected doesn’t identify a specific person (like you can’t go find the person). Ensure there is a data retention policy and comply with privacy regulations (it’s never OK to keep the data forever) and that the company stays up to date with any new privacy regulations. Regardless of personal views on data collection, it’s an area of online display advertising that has many challenges to overcome – both from the business and user side.
CONNECT WHEN “THEY” UNCONNECT Print captures and keeps the attention of today’s millennial business buyer more than any other medium.* Reach these motivated ’Net professionals by exploring Website Magazine’s many acquisition opportunities.
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Web
COMMENTARY
IT, Integrations & Intricacy By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor
Nearly three-quarters of organizations do not have enough resources or staff to keep up with demand for information technology (IT) projects according to a recent Innotas survey (wsm.co/itpleas), which is a 61.3 percent increase from last year. As Web professionals might imagine, there are plenty of people and products wanting to help specifically around getting one software system to talk to another. While these numbers bode well for IT job security, it doesn’t look good – nor is it to any enterprise’s advantage – for projects to fail of which 55 percent of them do. For Innotas, these survey results benefit what they’re selling – project portfolio management – but it only takes minimal industry awareness to understand just how much pressure IT departments are under to make their brands more digital, and this is true regardless of where a company is in that process as software to sell more, personalize further, analyze deeper and optimize better becomes more accessible and appealing to all enterprises. Someone, however, has to manage all those integrations, licenses, relationships and more but don’t expect the rate at which new technology is onboarded to slow down because of it. The proliferation of software (most notably as a service) only stands to get more complex, according to Andrew Leigh, VP of marketing and alliances at Jitterbit with whom Website Magazine spoke with at NetSuite’s annual conference. This complexity is the reason, according to Leigh, why half of today’s companies won’t make the transformation to digital business because, in short, they can’t connect the thousands of services they’ll need to. Jitterbit has lived in that space for the last 10 years and with certifications for all the major applications, a repository of best practices and strategic relationships, it connects applications and websites to each other. For instance, Skullcandy (a music accessories retailer) used Jitterbit to connect SAP By Design with Salesforce, Magento, SPS Commerce, Amazon, UPS and DHL. Think that’s complex? Going forward, Leigh believes there will be hundreds of applications within businesses that will need to be con40
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nected and disconnected to achieve business goals and those companies have to be able to do that without bringing IT in every time. There is, of course, the worry that those integrations won’t scale with the company using them, which is why some companies like SAP Hybris, according to Johann Wrede, its global head of audience, brand and content marketing, take the position of offering a broad portfolio of solutions it can simplify and personalize to each company regardless of industry. While the large, multifaceted software companies typically integrate with anyone (or at least try to) it’s their common goal to be an enterprise’s single vendor (even promising scalability), as can be seen in recent acquisitions (most notably Salesforce’s pickup of Demandware for $2.8 billion). When that transition is made, however, it doesn’t have to be a rip and replace, rather companies can slowly replace systems in one area like the front office, before moving on to the next. Wrede believes that, “by doing so, [companies] can shift their resources from integration work to innovation work.” This can make anyone’s head spin; the complexity and explosion of services and opinions about how those services should be managed to work independently or together, is why projects can fail and, well, IT can lag. Wrede makes a good point that IT was once structured for internal customers (accounting, finance, sales, human resources) and now chief information officers are serving the actual customers of their business, as these people demand intuitive e-commerce shopping experiences, expect questions asked over social media to be answered there while still being recognized as the same person on another channel and much, much more. What do marketers do? They turn to IT, but “in B2C the customer moves at warp speed,” and IT has a difficult time keeping up. This is why, says Wrede, there is a disconnect between vision and actual experience – just think about all the promises of omnichannel versus what happens out in the real world. Clearly IT professionals need help to meet all the digital demands, but the options – go at it alone, use an integration vendor, move to an “all-in-one” suite or some sort of combination – seem to be their only routes at this point and each have their pros and cons.
THE WAIT
IS OVER
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