Website Magazine March 2016

5 Web Design Myths

THE MAGAZINE FOR WEBSITE SUCCESS MARCH 2016

Bright Ideas in Digital

ADVERTISING INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

Personalization Mistakes to Avoid A Simplified Approach to Structured Data .FEEDBACK & The Fastest-Growing nTLDs

PLUS

0 5 P O T ing Market tion a Automions Solut

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3 Pillars of Social Login, Page 38

The Link to Local SEO Success, Page 18

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

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YEARS

DECEMBER 2015

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NOVEMBER 2015

The Web

Everyday & Everywhere

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

IS ALIVE

BUSINESS OPERATIONS

INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

What Makes a Difference in SEO Today?

Hitting a Customer Service Homerun

Branding Basics for Marketers

Smarter, Faster, Stronger Website Redesigns

Last-Minute KPIs for Retailers

The Tricks & Treats of Transactional Email

TOOPT5oo0ls

TOP 50

TOP 50

IA L MED SOCIAGEMENT MANA TIONS LU SO ge 14

EMAIL CE IEN EXPERTIONS SOLU

Page 14

Pa

Page 14

4 Steps to Stronger IT Security, Page 34

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AUGUST 2015

Fundamentals of International SEO

How to Spot a A Greedy Marketer

PASS OR FAIL: Tips for Grading Your Customer List

The IoT’s Impact on Customer Lifetime Value

Why is Your Content Not Converting?

TOP 50

6 Ways to Maximize Customer Loyalty Programs, Page 34

Digital Ad Creative Checklist

PLUS TeObPCo5nte0nt

W nt geme Mana ems Syst

AND

TOPom5ain0 D s Service

SEO Troubleshooting for Google Newbs, Page 16

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Super Pack for jQuery Junkies

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10

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How to Compete Against Amazon

People Problems in Conversion Optimization

3-Steps to Get More Product Reviews, Page 18

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

Summer Email Fitness Guide

RCES RESOU

Page 14

SOFTWARE

Structured Data for the SERPs

TOMPOB5ILE0

ECIFIC BIZ-SP WARE SOFT ONS SOLUTI

The Stars of Digital

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JUNE 2015

LOCAL WEB

EDGY

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Email Personalization through Segmentation

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JULY 2015

The Race for the

E-COMMERCE

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ESSENTIAL

MOBILE SURVIVAL GUIDE

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3 Strategies to Increase Organic Reach on Facebook, Page 30

How to Set Up an Email Highlight Reel, Page 36

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OCTOBER 2015

Disruptive

Predictions for the ‘Net’s Future

INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

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THE MAGAZINE FOR WEBSITE SUCCESS MAY 2015

PERFORMANCE MARKETING And the Affiliate Flow INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

Today’s Top 3 SEO Trends How to Compete for Leads Conversion Rate Optimization for Startups PLUS: Top 50 Software Solutions for Web Professionals

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APRIL 2015

DIGITAL

DESIGN FOR OPTIMAL INTERACTION INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

Create Value Propositions That Work Common Project Management Pitfalls Is CRM Failing the Digital Enterprise?

PLUS: Top 50 Monetization Networks for Web Publishers

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Bright Ideas in Digital

ADVERTISING

There’s never been a better time to engage in digital advertising thanks to advances in targeting and tracking. The future is bright for enterprises willing to face the challenges head on and leverage the many powerful technologies available to accelerate enterprise success.

THIS MONTH IN WEBSITE MAGAZINE Web Data is Killing ASO

Death of the Password

Developers looking to rank their apps in the app stores often turn to Web data to boost visibility, but that could be a mistake.

Thanks to social networks and biometrics, consumers are one login or fingerprint away from accessing a site without friction.

Must-Have Tech for Everyday Biz

Easy Ways to Speed Up Your Site

Retailers have created a roadmap for B2Bs on the technology they need to acquire and retain customers online.

With customer satisfaction and conversions on the line, it’s important to ensure all Web pages load quickly.

How to Create a Great-Looking App

Fastest-Growing New Top-Level Domains

Follow these practical tips to create a mobile application that will keep users engaged time and again.

Knowing which extensions are growing and falling in usage and popularity is key to making smart decisions about digital branding.

It’s a Celebration...Email!

The Programmatic Ecosystem

With higher-than-average engagement rates, celebratory emails are worth a marketer’s time if they are sent strategically.

While many think the advertising industry is broken, the savviest marketers have found success in programmatic.

EXPLORE WEBSITE MAGAZINE’S DEPARTMENTS Net Briefs:

Top 50:

Firefox, Facebook & Funding

Marketing Automation Solutions

Stat Watch:

E-Commerce Express:

Maximize Social Engagement

Personalization Mistakes to Avoid

Enterprise Ready:

Mastering Search:

Acquiring & Retaining Talent

Structured Data Simplified

Small Business Lab:

Design & Development:

Tips to Keep Customers Longer

Web Design Myths Busted

Quiz Time:

Web Commentary:

The Relevancy Test

Time to Pivot?

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From the

EDITOR The Bright Future of Advertising Despite popular belief, the advertising industry is, in fact, not broken.

Need proof? Digital advertising revenue in the U.S. reached $15 billion in Q3 2015, making it the single highest quarter on record according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). And it’s not just dollars being traded; advertisers are swapping outdated strategies for better opportunities to engage consumers and guide them through the brand and buying journey. What’s more, they are leveraging the myriad channels and technologies available to support their initiatives – one of which is programmatic, and it’s quickly becoming the norm in advertising.

In this month’s feature of Website Magazine, readers will discover how programmatic is capturing the attention (and dollars) of today’s enterprises and is increasingly being used for greater measurement and accountability in the industry. Programmatic is, of course, not the only advertising trend as of late.

Advertisers and publishers are becoming increasingly aware of the potential of native ads, and many technology companies are positioning themselves to capitalize on the trend, some of which we explore starting on page 24 of this issue, among other advertising resources and ideas.

As the 100th issue of Website Magazine, the March 2016 edition pays homage to some of the fundamentals of what it takes to succeed online such as a reliable and fast infrastructure (check out six ways to speed up your site on page 36), a solid customer acquisition and retention strategy (discover three ways to keep customers longer on page 12) and a commitment to continuous analysis and optimization (find a simplified look at structured data on page 18). A lot has changed since the first issue of this publication, of course, but 100 issues later, those principles remain regardless of how or where they are implemented today.

Just one of the many evolutions of the Web is in the form of mobile’s popularity and importance – a subject well-covered in this issue by our editors and industry contributors as well as on the ’Net on our Mobile World channel (wsm.co/mobilematters16). As always, we encourage you to read through this issue packed with takeaways for all professionals across all verticals and then join us on the Web, where we publish information daily that matters to your online success.

Best Web Wishes, Peter@WebsiteMagazine.com

WM Resource Center Updated frequently with whitepapers and webinars from our industry sponsors, Website Magazine’s Resource Center provides information that is timely,

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Website Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 3, March 2016, (ISSN# 1942-0633) is published 12 times a year, January through December by Website Services, Inc., 999 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018. Periodicals Postage Paid at Des Plaines, IL and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Website Magazine, 999 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018.

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Net

BRIEFS

QUICK HITS Quora Hands Out Knowledge Prizes Q&A site Quora is moving in a unique direction – enabling companies to pay cash to incentivize answers to questions.

The cash rewards program, dubbed Knowledge Prizes, allows a sponsor to signal that they think a question is particularly important by offering a financial prize for the best new answer. This will likely encourage topic experts to more actively participate on the network.

A Social Login Shakeup Facebook’s virtual stronghold on social login seems to be loosening according to data from Gigya’s Q4 2015 Landscape of Customer Identity report. The study revealed that although Facebook credentials accounted for 62 percent of all social logins on websites in Q4, the social network did see a slight decline from Q2 when it peaked at 66 percent.

Logins with Google credentials are likely the reason for the Facebook decline. Google came in at 24 percent in the Q4 Gigya study, which is an increase from the second quarter of 2015 when its social login share was at 20 percent.

SSL for All Adding encryption to a website has always been more complex than it should be, but Amazon is simplifying the process for its AWS users with its new Certificate Manager offering. The new service automates the registration and renewal of SSL/TLS certificates for AWS Elastic Load Balancers and Amazon CloudFront distributions. There are no charges incurred by using AWS Certificate Manager itself, and the certificates cost nothing. At launch, Certificate Manager is available in only one region – the Eastern United States – but the addition of other regions is expected to follow.

$ WHO GOT PAID? $250 Million

Microsoft shelled out a reported $250 million to acquire popular predictive-typing keyboard application SwiftKey.

$50 Million

SMB reward program platform FiveStars raised a $50 million Series C funding round, which was led by HarbourVest Partners.

$45 Million

Instart closed a $45 million Series D funding round led by Geodesic Capital, which will be used to accelerate product capabilities and sales expansion in the U.S. and globally.

$14 Million

Cyber-situational awareness company Digital Shadows has closed a Series B funding round at $14 million, which was led by Trinity Ventures.

?OF THE MONTH

QUESTION

How does your business plan to use marketing automation in 2016?

To answer this question and possibly be included in an upcoming issue of Website Magazine, visit wsm.co/marchqotm.

.Shop Gets Bought Japanese domain name company GMO Registry will control the .shop top-level domain name after winning an auction with a whopping price of $41.5 million. GMO’s bid for the hotly contested top-level domain beat out several others including Amazon and Google. GMO says .shop will be an open, unrestricted namespace, but the company is forbidding speculation and trading of domains under the TLD. Will online retailers adopt the new extension for their brands? Stay abreast of this and other important e-commerce topics in Website Magazine’s E-Commerce Express channel at wsm.co/ecommerceexpress.

More Budget for UX A new study from user research platform UserTesting reveals that user experience (UX) budgets are on the rise. The UX Industry Report shows that in 2014 the largest segment was the $1 to $500 monthly budget range, but in 2015 that number rose to the $1,001 to $5,000 monthly range. What’s more, there was a rise in the frequency of testing with the percentage of respondents who ran tests daily doubling from 2014 to 2015.

Firefox Gets Pushy Mozilla unveiled a Firefox update for Windows, Mac and Linux that enables users to choose to receive push notifications from websites. The update is similar to Web notifications, except now users can receive them for websites even when they’re not loaded in a tab. The feature is especially useful for websites that someone may check frequently for updates, such as email, weather, social networks and shopping.

POPULAR WITH WM READERS Should You Hire an SEO Firm or Do It Yourself? +

wsm.co/diyseo16

There are two ways to get seen on Google. You can either pay for ads that will display on top of search results, or invest in search engine optimization (SEO) to appear organically below the ads, but who is the best person to manage these strategies for a small business?

8 Tips for Hiring a Web Design Agency + wsm.co/hireweb

Selecting the right partner for Web redesign endeavors can be a real challenge. This is especially true when it’s a startup, where there is a dire need to hire a Web design agency that can create the website and manage redesigns as the need arises.

Google, Facebook & Others: The Race for Virtual Reality +

wsm.co/race4vr

In the past, execution of virtual reality has been difficult for most with high costs and less-than-stellar effects. In the new millennium, however, well-known companies like Google and Facebook have made strides to make VR more affordable and more realistic.

Net

BRIEFS WEB TECH WATCH

APP FOCUS

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

Ptengine 3.0 All-in-one heatmaps and analytics.

Nova

If you make a habit out of hitting the “snooze” button every morning, it may be time to start waking up the first time your alarm goes off by downloading the Mimicker Alarm app by Microsoft. The app requires users to leverage their surroundings to complete a game in order to dismiss their alarm. The games, which Microsoft calls “Mimics” range from snapping a selfie to repeating a tongue twister and even getting out of bed to match a certain color.

Discover additional apps at ApplicationMagazine.com.

Content intelligence engine for email messaging.

Instabug 3.0 CallerZen

Stop Hitting Snooze

Grommet Crypho

Customer support system for SMS and phone calls.

In-app conversations and bug reporting for mobile applications.

Open-source UX framework for enterprise applications.

Notarize

Restdb

Castle

Envisage

Real-time security analytics for Web and mobile apps.

Contextual help/tips for website users.

A notary app that is legal in all 50 states.

A plug-and-play database service.

Encrypted enterprise messaging, chat and file transfers.

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

Tweet us @WebsiteMagazine

Stat

WATCH

Maximize Social Engagement

By Andrew Caravella, VP of Marketing at Sprout Social

E-commerce brands’ highly visual and lifestyle-based content lends itself well to taking advantage of opportunities for social engagement.

Retailers, however, often focus too much of their social efforts on pushing promotions rather than developing content and conversations that foster meaningful customer relationships. In fact, the Q4 2015 Sprout Social Index found that while about 40 percent of messages received by retailers from consumers warrant a response, only 17 percent (about 1 in 6) actually receive one.

Unfortunately, this imbalance often leads to people disengaging with a brand. Promotional messages can be much more persuasive if brands cultivate relationships with their customers first. According to Rosetta Consulting, people are seven times more likely to respond to a brand’s promotions after that brand interacts with them in some meaningful way.

According to the Sprout Social Index data, the retail industry sees 19 percent more messages across Facebook and Twitter than it did a year ago. Cleary the demand is increasing, yet most retailers are stuck in broadcast mode and missing their opportunity to participate with customers on social. Here’s why: They straight up ignore people on social.

Eighty-three percent of brands don’t respond to customer questions on social, while the rest wait an average of 12 hours before responding.

They prioritize promotions over customer service. Instead of addressing people’s concerns, retail brands send out three times as many promotional messages — deals, coupons and product merchandising — as they do helpful responses.

They misplace their social attention. While retailers are sending three times more messages on Twitter, incoming messages to retailers on the site have trended downward while messages on Facebook have increased.

Promotions are a necessary part of any retail strategy — and they do have a place on social — but it’s time to take a

hard look at the proportion of effort and resulting engagement, or lack thereof, when it’s the bulk of created content. Stronger customer relationships and repeat business is fostered by understanding wants, pre-emptively meeting needs and responding through the right channels in a thoughtful and authentic manner.

For many brands, this means redefining the term “social listening” and potentially allocating more resources to active monitoring and responding. It’s important to employ staff dedicated to monitoring and responding to inquiries on social, and to equip them appropriately.

Lacking the right social media tools is akin to a brick-andmortar company operating short-staffed and without a point-of-sale system. When shoppers don’t receive the attention they need from a brand, regardless of the channel, they’ll turn to competitors.

Appropriately allocated staff and the right technology in place gives marketers better opportunities to listen to what customers are saying about their brands, their category and their competitors — and respond accordingly and in real-time. By actively listening to what people are discussing, marketers gain important insight into their preferences and priorities. Discussing those preferences and priorities and building a rapport leads to trust and loyalty, the components that make promotional messages matter.

It’s crucial that brands understand where their customers are most vocal. Social monitoring enables brands to stay on top of industry trends, which can help shape marketing and product development efforts in the future. Conversations happen on a number of networks and, while prioritizing Twitter is natural, it may not always be the best platform to reach people who require a response. Some shoppers might prefer Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest for expressing concerns or starting conversations, so it’s imperative to be present and persistent in improving response rates on a specific community’s platform of choice.

It’s understandable for retailers to adopt a promotional approach to social, but they must remember that many customers view and use social as a customer service and communication channel. Only when brands have gained the trust of shoppers through active monitoring and engagement will promotional content have maximum impact.

M A R CH 2016

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Enterprise

READY

TALENT MAGNET

By Michelle M. Wicmandy, CMO of Collective Changes

In today’s marketplace, every organization should make finding and keeping talent a high priority.

This is important since employee turnover is estimated to reach 25 percent by 2018 according to HR research group Hay Group Atrium. Why the concern? Employee turnover is expensive monetarily and also results in work disruptions, lost knowledge and skills, and extra recruitment and training costs.

Acquiring Talent

Employee Engagement Tips For a big list of ways to engage team members, go to wsm.co/keepstaff.

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Job seekers flock to reputable companies known for offering a good work environment, stimulating work and a future. How does one make this happen? First, hiring managers must understand the company’s needs. This helps ensure the company fills the gap with the right talent and increases the odds of keeping them. The job description is the first place to start; include non-salary benefits too like the opportunity to work with the latest technology, join an award-winning creative team or rub shoulders with influencers.

Also, be mindful that first impressions matter for the hiring firm, as well. Employers should make every touchpoint counts (e.g., social channels, website, office setup, etc.). To arrange the interview, send candidates a warm invitation rather than a canned note. During the interview, be positive and inspiring. After the meeting, send a follow-up note. Further, assign one caring contact to the candidate who can answer questions and provide support throughout the process.

Once the pool has been narrowed to a few candidates, it’s time to make a decision. A good rule is to hire people with the right attitude first, followed by the right skill set. Motivated people can always learn new job skills but changing attitudes in work ethic, loyalty and working with others can be challenging.

Understanding Motivation Today’s workplace spans five generations of employees: .com

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MARCH 2016

traditionalists, boomers, generation X, millennials and gen Z. This may cause confusion as managers try to meet each group’s specific needs and understand what motivates them to stay. For example, most employees need to feel valued and respected; get stimulating and challenging projects; have opportunities for career growth, learning and development, as well as collaborate with others. For millennials, in particular, achieving a work-life balance is the primary consideration for joining and staying with an employer. When managers fail to cater to their employees’ needs, they risk losing them. After all, according to Samara Donald, director of business strategy and management for Microsoft, people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. In fact, the Society for Human Resource Management confirms that more than half of work satisfaction is determined by the employeesupervisor relationship.

Leading with Vision An excellent retention tool is a great manager. Jackie Hiddlestone, change director for Sydney Water in Australia, suggests companies invest resources to develop staff, deliver transformational programs and encourage innovation while creating an inviting work environment. To achieve this, managers should listen to staff to reduce stress and improve productivity, provide “stretch” assignments to prepare employees for the next promotion, encourage work-life balance, create social groups based on shared hobbies and more (see sidebar). Hiddlestone adds that during these “downtime” moments, greater insights are born.

Sharing Knowledge Many agree that silence is retention’s greatest adversary, so employers should be sure to keep information moving. Technology can enhance harmony in the workplace by facilitating communication. Tech giant Microsoft employs a variety of collaboration tools including SharePoint, Yammer, Sway, Skype, an intranet portal, traditional email and other technology. Collaboration and communication are key components of Microsoft’s culture of a ‘growth mindset’ and continuous learning.

Measuring Up How do all these efforts measure up? Companies can measure employee work satisfaction by asking employees their opinions via surveys, as well as explore solutions that track productivity, sentiment and more. For a list of employee monitoring tools, visit wsm.co/watchwork.

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Key Business Metrics for Online Retailers FREE WHITEPAPER Sponsored by Windsor Circle Access this guide to see how retailers can leverage data-driven marketing to create campaigns that resonate with customers and grow their value. Within the guide you’ll learn four top metrics that help online businesses increase customer retention and revenue: retention rate and lift, average order value, customer lifetime value and latency.

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M A R CH 2016

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Small

BUSINESS LAB

OWN THE EXPERIENCE

It is not enough, for example, to simply hand out a member ID number and tell someone that they are part of a loyalty program. Rather, businesses must treat each customer like they are a valuable asset – because they are. For some help with maximizing your current customer base, consider these three retention strategies:

data from Microsoft’s Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report. What’s more, 56 percent of U.S. consumers’ customer service expectations have grown in the last year, which means that businesses must keep pace or risk losing the customers they have already spent resources on to acquire.

It is important to note that heightened customer service expectations are likely due to the rise of channels in which consumers expect to receive service in, including social and mobile. Fortunately, serving customers in these channels is becoming easier for businesses of all sizes. Not only can live chat solutions often be integrated into mobile websites and apps, but businesses can also leverage their current social media management tool, such as Sprout Social or HootSuite, to manage and respond to customers across social channels. Facebook has also made social and mobile customer service easier with the launch of its Businesses on Messenger solution, a platform that enables customers to have a conversation with a company, receive order conformations, shipping status updates and more. For additional insights about Businesses on Messenger and how to become a customer service pro on Facebook visit wsm.co/cspro16.

1. Trade Perks for Loyalty

3. Strengthen Relationships with Personalization

Many businesses offer loyalty programs, but these programs are frequently used as a way to grow email subscriber lists or collect customer data instead of actually fostering loyalty and repeat purchases. If a business falls into the former category, it is time to rethink the structure of the program.

Marketers should start by asking what type of perks or rewards a business would have to offer to earn their personal loyalty. The answer is likely incentives, discounts and/or some type of gamification element (e.g., buy five times for Silver status).

Services like Belly, for example, are created specifically for small businesses and make it simple for users to implement a loyalty program with custom rewards. In addition, businesses that leverage Belly are able to track customer activity, generate wordof-mouth marketing via social integrations and reach new customers through Belly’s network of users.

Belly isn’t the only loyalty option for SMBs, of course, others include FiveStars, Perka and Loyalzoo.

The unsung hero of customer retention is arguably personalization. After all, the best way to foster loyalty is by establishing a strong relationship with a customer, which can be done by showing interest in them.

For instance, if a beauty retailer keeps track of customers who made a recent eyeshadow purchase, they can serve this customer segment relevant marketing campaigns based on that purchase, such as an email campaign that promotes a sale on eyeshadow brushes or makeup remover. In fact, the more data a business can collect from current customers the more personalized and relevant they can make their marketing campaigns. Check out this month’s E-Commerce Express article for more details.

3 Ways to Improve Customer Retention

By Allison Howen, Associate Editor

Every savvy business owner knows that it is more cost-effective to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. Despite this well-known fact, many brands’ retention efforts tend to fall flat.

How to Predict Churn Stop customers before they leave at wsm.co/nochurn15.

2. Provide Stellar Customer Service Ninety-eight percent of U.S. consumers recognize that customer service is important in their choice of loyalty to a brand or organization according to 2015

A Holistic Approach Although each of the aforementioned strategies can boost a company’s customer retention efforts when implemented alone, they are even more effective when combined. By personalizing communications with customers, offering impeccable customer service across channels and rewarding loyalty, businesses can get a better return on investment from customers already acquired.

Quiz

TIME

Attention Marketers

#BeRelevant Consumers are overwhelmed by irrelevant marketing according to an Oct. 2015 study from Forrester.

In fact, 40 percent of the study’s respondents said that most of the marketing promotions they receive don’t deliver anything of interest.

This is a problem for marketers who are essentially sabotaging their own campaigns by not leveraging consumer data properly. Information like a consumer’s Web-browsing behavior or purchase history, for instance, can be all that is needed to create personalized marketing campaigns that attract attention and foster engagement.

Although collecting consumer data can be a challenge, especially with the rise of the non-linear path to purchase, marketers can keep up with all of the latest technologies and strategies to help them uncover useful consumer information by regularly visiting Website Magazine’s ’Net Advertising channel at wsm.co/netads16.

In the meantime, discover how much you know about behavioral marketing by taking March’s Quiz Time.

1. What percentage of consumers claim to purchase more from retailers that leverage shopper interests and buying behaviors to personalize the customer experience across channels? a. 21 percent b. 48 percent c. 73 percent d. 92 percent Cheat sheet: wsm.co/csdemand

2. True or False: Sending personalized email campaigns can result in open rates being lifted by nearly 150 percent.

Cheat sheet: wsm.co/emailcs

3. What percentage of marketers leverage behavior-based data for their campaigns? a. 9 percent b. 26 percent c. 48 percent d. 75 percent Cheat sheet: wsm.co/datacs

4. What is the most popular method for segmenting site visitors? a. Content Viewed b. Location c. Time on Site d. Gender Cheat sheet: wsm.co/cssegment

Get the answers to this month’s Quiz Time on the Web at wsm.co/qtmarch16 or by scanning the QR code on the left.

5. True or False: Receiving coupons is the top reason why consumers agree to share their personal information with a mobile app.

Cheat sheet: wsm.co/csperks M A R CH 2016

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Top

50

RANK WEBSITE

Marketing

Automation Forged in the age of the digital experience and the product evolution of customer relationship management (CRM) and other businessfocused technology solutions, marketing automation offerings have quickly become an essential part of the enterprise software stack and are enabling companies and brands to deliver and drive positive results more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

Marketing automation products essentially refer to software platforms that automate tasks associated with the customer journey – the path from initial awareness to the conversions that result over time. The benefit of their use is that they enable today’s enterprises to specify certain criteria and outcomes for consumer tasks and processes (e.g. what happens after downloading a sales brochure, sharing an update on social media platforms or purchasing a product), which are then interpreted, stored and executed by the software.

This ultimately increases efficiency and reduces human error, improving the relationship between consumer and brand and accelerates the success (and happiness) of both.

The goals of using marketing automation for enterprises are often to increase and improve lead generation efforts through lead nurturing, campaign targeting, performance measurability, customer engagement and general productivity. Success with marketing automation is not without its challenges, of course. Despite the obvious value they provide, most brands suffer from lack of an effective strategy and struggle with the often complex nature of these systems. They also lack relevant content and have insufficient data as well as budget constraints. These are a few of the reasons adoption has yet to reach critical mass. For example, marketing automation (including CRM and sales automation) is used by 42 percent of companies, while email marketing technology is used by 82 percent according to an Aug. 2015 study from Ascend2.

For those enterprises looking to optimize the customer journey and maximize their investment in marketing (digital specifically), however, marketing automation arguably provides the best opportunity to do so today. Explore 50 of the most powerful and popular offerings in this month’s Top 50 list and then download Website Magazine’s Marketing Automation Buyer’s Guide at wsm.co/buyautomate to discover which of the many solutions is best suited to your enterprise.

Inside Top 50: Tech’s Big Role Acquisition and retention is increasingly driven by technology. Find out how at wsm.co/future411.

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Salesforce.com Adobe.com Oracle.com IBM.com HubSpot.com Infusionsoft.com Marketo.com Teradata.com Icontact.com Wishpond.com Act-On.com Percolate.com Signpost.com Azalead.com Bronto.com ActiveCampaign.com Ontraport.com GetSpokal.com AutopilotHQ.com Aptean.com Aurea.com SimplyCast.com ThriveHive.com CallidusCloud.com SnapRetail.com Salesfusion.com GreenRope.com ConvergeHub.com NowBlitz.com Net-Results.com Iterable.com LeadSquared.com ClickDimensions.com Etrigue.com Marketing360.com V12GroupInc.com Hatchbuck.com Attentive.ly SignalEngage.com RightOnInteractive.com SharpSpring.com Agillic.com CommuniGator.co.uk Genoo.com Distribion.com ConnectAndSell.com Leadliaison.com Inbox25.com ActiveDemand.com SalesPanda.com

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E-Commerce

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Creepy vs. Cool & Other

Personalization Mistakes

By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor

Today’s retailers have access to powerful platforms that can track, target and talk to individual shoppers – personalizing the shopping experience seamlessly across different online (and offline) channels.

There are myriad offerings available (for a list of popular personalization platforms visit wsm.co/retail1to1) to help e-commerce enterprises leverage customer attributes, behaviors and intent to make individual interactions more meaningful (and profitable), and many enterprises are eager to give the practice a try. In fact, 58 percent of senior marketing decision makers indicated they will be adding more personalized experiences in 2016 according to the CMO Council. Marketers need to know that the user experience (and a brand’s bottom line) can be negatively impacted when personalization efforts come off as more creepy than cool, however. So, what are the most common personalization mistakes?

Miss: Giggle.com users freely provide information about their children to complete their profiles, but there is no indication as to what benefit they receive (e.g., promotions relevant to their kid’s age or gender).

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Not Asking for Permission Topping the list of common mistakes brands make in relation to personalization, according to RichRelevance CMO Diane Kegley, is the failure to enter into a partnership of sorts by asking consumers to opt in to the omnichannel experience (where info is tracked and leveraged regardless of device being used or channel being accessed) in exchange for some benefit. While it’s been well-reported that consumers are willing to give up some anonymity to receive an improved experience or direct benefit, consumers still want to be in control of who receives what.

When it comes to permission-based personalization, retailers can simply ask users to identify themselves based on demographics, interests or other identifiers that will aid in more relevant messaging.

Giggle.com visitors, for instance, can register for the site with just an email and a password with the option to fill out their profiles more completely later on.

The retailer, however, does not explain that when a parent provides information about their child, they’ll receive more and better personalized offers, search results and the like. For many, this could be a missed opportunity to get a higher percentage of completed profiles and increase conversions and engagement (e.g., a buy one, get one free offer for a customer who has indicated she is expecting twins).

With a focus on transparency, a better example of permission-based personalization comes from Sephora in that the beauty brand states how it will use the information provided – to recommend prod-

ucts that fit that person’s style profile. According to Adobe, Sephora’s loyalty program, Beauty Insider, enables the brand to convert anonymous visitors to recognizable entities. Adobe writes, “When a customer becomes part of the Beauty Insider program, a profile is created that can be accessed through mobile and desktop devices—and through the iPad located at counters throughout its stores. This connectivity enables Sephora to link, for example, a customer’s skin tone with products for sale within the store.”

Hit: Sephora indicates that completing a beauty profile will enable it to provide recommendations.

Using a Fragmented Customer View Brands must first establish this consumer “partnership,” and then they need the technology to connect consumer actions in-store, on the Web and over the phone into a single consumer profile.

“Without this technology in place, shoppers struggle to understand why brands treat them like different people in each channel (and at every sales point),” said Kegley of RichRelevance. “If brands don’t engage with the shopper to create the omnichannel experience and use a personalization platform to tie the experience together, both engagement and sales suffer.”

Jason Fordham, vice president of strategic solutions at SmarterHQ, agrees that brands must understand the context of what their shoppers are doing – otherwise personalized messages can become intrusive. For example, after visiting a popular home good retailers’ site, Fordham browsed five products and added the bundle to his cart, abandoned the site and ultimately bought the products in-store.

Meanwhile, the brand sent him seven emails in 11 minutes including browse emails, cart abandonment and a mass audience message.

“This brand understood what I was doing on its site, but didn’t understand the context of interactions,”

said Fordham. “If a brand doesn’t understand the lifecycle of its customers it creates a less engaging experience and can be seen as over stepping boundaries.”

Over-Personalization While a fragmented customer view can be confusing to consumers who engage, research and shop across channels, an over-personalized experience can be downright creepy. This can happen when a brand focuses on everything that personalization can do, according to Kegley of RichRelevance, instead of the capabilities that matter most to a brand’s unique customer base.

RichRelevance recently surveyed more than 1,000 consumers to understand what personalization is “Creepy vs. Cool” in the store. The survey found that consumers welcome personalized product, content and offers when they are ready to engage. They may not be ready for personalized messages the moment they walk in the door but they welcome it when it comes time to purchase.

“Cool” capabilities include scanning a product on a mobile device to see personalized product reviews and recommendations and location-based personalized product recommendations, promotions and coupons within the store.

“A related issue is finding the right balance between relevance and creepiness,” said Kegley. “Shoppers are sensitive to being over-watched. The stakes are high: Brands that overstep risk a significant consumer backlash.”

The Creepy & Cool Future Although personalized product recommendations, specifically, have been around for quite some time (some companies dating back well over a decade), more advanced personalization has come to many of retailers’ fundamental technology stack, which includes their e-commerce platform – indicating the importance of understanding users across all interactions. Moving forward, Fordham of SmarterHQ predicts there will be a more unified approach in online and offline sales channels and that brands will concentrate on timing the offline experience with desktop and mobile experiences.

“There is already a customer expectation that a brand knows how that customer is engaging, what their sentiment is, what their in-store responses look like and how it pertains to the digital experience,” said Fordham.

Did You Know?

Barneys has shown that customers who interact with personalized content convert at double the rate of its site average.

Shoppers who type products into the site search box convert 10 times more than other online visitors.

(Source: RichRelevance)

Mastering

SEARCH

Structured Data Simplified

By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

If you’re like most Web professionals, your eyes gloss over at the mere thought of “schema” and rich snippets. That could be corrected, however, if Web professionals could simplify the approach they take to structured data integration.

While it will always be somewhat complicated to those not truly code savvy, it will undoubtedly remain the responsibility of search engine optimization professionals (and others) within the digital enterprise for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, it’s never been easier to start simplifying how content and digital assets are presented to search engine crawlers and, ultimately, to end-users as well.

For some reason, however, most websites just don’t take advantage of structured data markup today. That is likely due to the complexities of the practice, as well as software solutions not simplifying the process of automatically adding such markup for their users, and the modest impact (if any) it has had on search marketing in general (although the influence on the user experience is undeniable).

The digital choices a company makes today however, most certainly influence its future path; and this likely holds true in the case of structured data as well. As search engines become more sophis18

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ticated, and modify and evolve the way in which they present listings to users, it’s time for enterprises to get serious about using structured data regularly in their development.

Structured data is simply a type of markup (code) that makes it possible to annotate content so search engines (or, really, any “machine” for that matter) can understand (and more importantly process) it. Using structured data essentially makes it possible for search engines to understand larger or broader concepts – and, ultimately, helps them index website content in a way that it can be presented effectively (e.g., more prominently) in the search results (specifically in Google’s Knowledge Graph, or as a rich snippet).

There are many different types and methods for integration of structured data, including: RDFa & Microdata: The more traditional/established markup types and methods of integration, RDFa and Microdata are the most common formats used to describe elements on a page – indicating which schema field names correspond with the on-page text. In issues past, Website Magazine has covered both markup types, showcased the required code and even offered up a few tools to help developers and SEOs get started easily. For a visual guide to structured data and more, visit wsm.co/structurevis.

JSON-LD: The newest way of expressing rich markup, JSON-LD describes elements of a Web page without having to hand code the markup into HTML. Thanks to its ease of use, JSON-LD is particularly appealing to developers, and may just be the tipping point structured data needs as a practice to reach critical mass. In early February, in fact, Google announced JSON-LD support for reviews and products structured data markup.

Manually integrating structured data into Web pages can be a herculean task (particularly when sites have numerous – hundreds or thousands – pages). There are a variety of tools, thankfully, to simplify development to a point where it’s more a “cut-and-paste” job and less hardcore coding. The good news is that many of the best content management and e-commerce systems on the market today offer some form of module, extension or plugin to make structured data a reality – and it’s time to fully consider their use.

Magento, in fact, provides several extensions for those getting started with rich snippets. The Rich Snippets Suite (costing approximately $70 U.S.) from MagModules, for example, provides online retailers an opportunity to use structured data for Google, Bing, Twitter Cards, Pinterest Pins and more (including Yotpo reviews) according to the Schema.org markup. The newest version of the module, released in Dec. 2015, offers support for organization snippets, sitename snippets, custom breadcrumb titles and JSON-LD even works on Enterprise versions of Magento and within multistore environments. There are some popular free alternatives for retailers on Magento using structured data, as well, including the Rich Snippets extension from MagPleasure (available only for the community edition).

Magento isn’t the online e-commerce system to offer support for structured data – see what other platforms are doing to support their retailer customers at wsm.co/richstore.

While a great deal of attention is paid to how online retailers can use structured data, Web publishers and service providers can also get in on the action, and their content management systems do provide some support in this regard. The Google

SEO Pressor for Rich Snippets from SmackCoders (wsm.co/gseopress), for example, can help publishers automate structured data for WordPress sites from an SEO and social perspective. The plugin supports all the snippets recommended, from the basics like events and people, to the advanced like breadcrumbs and reviews.

While WordPress might be the most popular solution for publishers, there are many other content management systems (and in many instances, more powerful too). See how the top offerings compare in terms of their support for structured data at wsm.co/ecommdata.

Leveraging structured data is not going to rocket a website to the top of the search results, but it will (and does) improve the appearance of a listing. While taking advantage of rich snippets can be a cumbersome process, it is an important one – and it’s getting easier. Take advantage of the features, capabilities and opportunities offered by your existing software system – be it e-commerce or publishing focused – and a better digital presence will result.

“

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Structured data essentially makes it possible for search engines to understand larger or broader concepts – and, ultimately, helps them index website content in a way that it can be presented effectively.

SEO QUICK HITS + Link Building in the C-Block: Should an enterprise’s website be kept separate across different IP blocks? While there has been a long-held belief that this practice is useful, turns out, it’s not.

Read more at wsm.co/seoblock + Link Networks & SERP Penalties: Google announced it has penalized a Japanese-based link network, leaving many search engine optimization professionals to wonder if a link-related update is imminent.

Read more at wsm.co/nonetworks + The Influence of Anchor Text: A new study from Ahrefs reveals that pages that rank higher tend to have a bigger percentage of exact-match anchor text link in their backlink profiles.

Read more at wsm.co/anchoraway

Design and

DEVELOPMENT

Web Design Myths

By Sam Tribble, Senior Designer at Metia

Have you inadvertently bought into website design myths? It is easily done, but you could be losing out on sales, traffic and other metrics that improve a brand’s bottom line as a result.

ing powers of search and paid links that users often click on, visitors may never actually see a homepage at all. Putting all the design focus on the homepage is counterproductive. Having a consistent design throughout the website is a more effective strategy.

Website design is at the heart of great user experiences. How a website is laid out, functions and what colors, fonts and images a brand uses can mean the difference between success and failure. Apart from creating an eye-catching Web design and balancing a huge amount of information, an effective Web design can improve the perception of a brand.

A solid understanding and implementation of a balanced design process should be the motivating force to achieve the results a company desires. There are various beliefs of what a website should and should not be, and while brands need to customize their websites to meet their needs, the subjective part of design leaves plenty of room for opinions leading to some design myths that simply aren’t true.

Myth #3:

Myth #1:

Newbies’ Guide to A/B Testing From making a plan to testing variables, here’s what you need to know about A/B testing at wsm.co/testabcs.

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White space on a page should be filled with something.

Fact: The opposite is true. Open space is an excellent way to separate content and give items breathing room for an easier read. It can be overwhelming to try and trudge through a crowded parking lot of content and images.

Myth #2: The homepage matters the most.

Fact: Unless one is going directly to a website, current and prospective customers will probably not land on a site’s homepage. In fact, due to the increasingly exact.com

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More features means better design.

Fact: There are too many websites that make user experience unnecessarily complex because of superfluous features. Bells and whistles are wonderful – if they have a purpose. Web professionals should ask themselves how each feature will contribute to driving conversions.

Myth #4: Design cures all.

Fact: Design is more than colors, graphics and fonts; it is an experience that facilitates interactions and provides a function. A great design can help solve difficult challenges, like user journeys and brand experiences. Design alone, however, cannnot fix everything. Content concerns, low traffic, poor engagement or low conversions require more than just a design update. Successful experiences are created by teams – from editorial to development, and everyone in-between.

Myth #5: Site owners view their website like users.

Fact: As owners and employees of businesses, it’s easy to assume new and current customers understand and use the same terminology, but this is hardly ever the case. A website needs to communicate with customers wherever they’re at in the buying journey and not where a business wants them to be.

Do’s & Don’ts of the Digital Experience WEB DESIGN DO’S

Successful Web design must reflect evolving user preferences, needs and expectations. Demystifying the pervasive myths of great design and following the suggested design do’s and don’ts will lead to better user experiences and stronger customer-brand relationships.

WEB DESIGN DON’TS

Ensure the website can be accessed via mobile devices (through responsive design techniques for example).

Ignore search engine optimization; content should always be discoverable.

Use sprites to reduce page load times, instead of using individual image assets.

Forget analytics and ignore reporting solutions; even simple tools are better than nothing.

Include a “Rate Us” or “Write a Review” component on every app.

Spam users with update notifications over the same channels a company uses for in-app functionality.

Test mobile properties using a variety of mobile devices and operating systems.

Include a “Rate” or “Review” component that pops up even if the user has already rated the app.

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Insights on

ANALYTICS

How Web Data Kills App Store Optimization

By Dave Bell, CEO of Gummicube

The App Store may seem like a black box to many developers.

What is the best way to drive downloads for an app?

How does App Store Search really work? Where should I invest? These are the questions that many marketers have when evaluating how to approach app store optimization (ASO).

Unfortunately, the truth is that while the App Store can be difficult to navigate (without the right help or knowledge) the biggest obstacle to success can be bad data and “free” advice about how the App Store works.

A. While Web analytics show low competition for the keyword “Flappy,” there is high demand on app store search.

Why Web Data Ruins App Store Optimization Looking at data points from the Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends and comparing this data to even publicly available information exposed by Apple’s App Store and Google Play clearly illustrates

that user behavior across the Web and mobile platforms is very different. In fact, it is so different that using Web data to optimize an app may seriously harm an app and its surrounding business.

The Web and mobile are not the same The Web and mobile have always been different platforms – with different user behavior and expectations. Going back to the days of feature phones (way before the App Store existed) people used the phrase “made for medium.” It meant, in short, that when one develops a product for a mobile device he or she needs to tailor the experience to the device. This is still true – and it applies to app marketing as much as it does the development strategy.

Keyword popularity and competition are not the same The keywords that are used to search on the Web and those that are used in mobile are different. Relying on data from Google Web search to optimize an app is kind of like relying on a map of Canada to traverse the United States. The traveler may end up in the time zone that he is looking for, but he may be several states away from the intended destination.

B. Google Analytics is unable to identify the high competition for “Fruit Ninja” on the app stores.

C. While “flappy” is associated with pancakes on the Web, app store searchers are looking for the popular game.

D. The keyword “mall” is very different depending on where a user is searching.

As shown in Image A, Google’s keyword tool would lead a developer to believe that the keyword “Flappy” is low competition and has low search volume. No reason to target this keyword for an app, right? Wrong. Anybody who has been breathing for the last 18 months knows that the game Flappy Bird took the App Store and Google Play by storm, making Flappy one of the most searched and highly competitive keywords in either of the two major stores. Let’s look at some additional data.

Fruit Ninja has been a staple of the App Store and Google Play for years, yet Google Keyword Planner indicates that this is a low competition phrase with relatively low search volume (see Image B).

Many tools that seem like they are made for the purpose of ASO in fact leverage this kind of commodity Web data as their directional indicator for what people are searching for in the App Store. Marketers always need to ask where the data that they use for app store optimization really comes from.

Once a marketer knows how basic search is very different across the Web and mobile, he or she can start to understand why traffic volume can be drastically different for keywords across the Web and mobile. Trying to catch a keyword trend like Flappy (think “Flappy Bird”) would only be relevant for mobile, so using a tool that provides a broad and generic data set from the Web will have serious inaccuracies – causing serious missed opportunities.

in the App Store, but if the content or intended use of the app isn’t what people expect to find when they search for that keyword, the developer will reap no rewards from the visibility. When targeting a keyword it is important to understand what a mobile user would be searching for with the keyword.

Let’s use the example above, but zoom in on the context of a Web search for the keyword “flappy” (see Image C).

As shown, most people searching for “flappy” on Google Web search tend to be searching for flapjacks and other pancake-related contextual information.

This is obviously not true for the App Store, where a search for flappy results in hundreds of mobile games that are related to or based on the Flappy Bird trend.

Let’s look at another example. The keyword “mall” is a very popular keyword in both Google Web Search and the App Store – however the context and user intent of the search is fundamentally different. When a user searches the App Store for “mall” the most relevant apps tend to be simulation games – in fact 70 percent of the results are games (see Image D).

Know Where Your Data Comes From

Understand mobile user intent

While app store optimization is a critical part of the mobile marketing pie, it is critically important that mobile data is used in the optimization process.

Apple and Google do not share exact search volume metrics with anyone, so as a marketer, it is important to always ask where the data that you use for ASO actually comes from.

Earn More From Your Apps

What end-users are looking for when they search with a specific keyword is also different on mobile than it is on the Web. This fact is incredibly important to understand. An app could be ranked #1 for a keyword

Dave Bell is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Gummicube. In this role, Dave is responsible for overseeing the business strategy for the company, driving growth and market development.

Make eCPM work in your favor at wsm.co/masearn.

Bright Ideas in Digital

ADVERTISING

By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

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Digital advertising revenue in the U.S. reached $15 billion in Q3 2015, making it the single highest quarter on record according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) – a 23 percent increase compared to Q3 2014.

Supported by powerful technologies and some rather bright ideas, the advertising industry is strong, and is providing enterprises a better opportunity to improve performance and generate revenue than ever before. Digital advertising is not without its challenges, of course.

Promoting an enterprise and its products and services by advertising on the ‘Net requires more than just deep pockets.

Today, a blend of technical savvy, industry expertise, an eye for compelling creative and a vast amount of channel-specific knowledge is also essential. What’s more, when enterprises fully understand and actively leverage the available advertising opportunities and address the challenges, they are in the best position to chart a positive course for their business.

In the feature article of Website Magazine this month, explore what is making digital advertising an essential business process and discover some bright ideas (and resources) along the way to accelerate the success of any enterprise, product and service.

The Programmatic Norm in Advertising As digital advertisers are being held to increasingly higher standards of measurement and accountability, programmatic is capturing the attention of the industry.

Programmatic buying refers to the use of software to purchase digital advertising, as opposed to more traditional processes that include requests for proposals, negotiations and insertion orders (not to mention all the necessary tracking and reporting). Essentially, programmatic means we’re using machines, and not people, to buy ads. Interest in the practice among today’s advertisers has reached fever pitch.

According to AdRoll’s research, 87 percent of marketers are seeing greater return through programmatic advertising compared to traditional media buying. As a result of that positive return on investment (ROI), 32 percent of marketers spent more than 50 percent of their budgets on programmatic in 2015 (see more stats from AdRoll’s study at wsm.co/prog411).

Programmatic is quickly becoming the primary way advertising is bought and technology solution providers are doing everything they can to capitalize on the interest and future investment from advertisers.

Programmatic advertising technology company, OpenX, for example, just launched Real-Time Guaranteed (RTG), a solution to enable direct, guaranteed deals executed over programmatic technology complete with audi-

ence syncing and forecasting. The RTG offering essentially combines the business terms of direct-sold deals with the benefits of real-time bidding technology, giving publishers the certainty of guaranteed demand and advertisers priority access to premium inventory through a programmatic channel. This will enable publishers (who have been kept pretty much out of the loop in programmatic) to secure guaranteed volume commitments and introduce a new revenue stream for their premium inventory.

Engaging in programmatic buys can be challenging, of course, but the more that is understood about how it works, the better off advertisers will be.

BRIGHT IDEA: Discover how programmatic really works at wsm.co/quickprog and find out who the key ad tech players are in the digital landscape.

The Rise of Native Ads Native advertising refers to a form of paid media where the advertising experience is in line with the existing form and function of the user experience in which it is placed.

Native ads essentially match the visual design (the form) of the experience they are placed within and look and feel like any other content, behaving in a way that is consistent with the user experience (the function). They come in a variety of formats including in-feed ads, search and promoted listings, content recommendation widgets and even custom content units.

Just like programmatic, interest in native ads has exploded of late and advertisers and publishers are becoming increasingly aware of the potential. And as one would expect, plenty of companies are positioning themselves to capitalize on the trend. Nearly every social platform and publishing outlet has some form of native ad offering today – from Twitter to the Wall Street Journal – and are leveraging technology from well-known names to capitalize on native.

Yahoo, for example, recently announced that advertisers can now access native inventory from app publishers on its BrightRoll Exchange. Advertisers will still be able to buy native ad inventory on Yahoo-owned and operated sites via Yahoo Gemini and Gemini ad tech partners but Yahoo’s (and others) expansion into the mobile realm proves the opportunity’s efficacy.

BrightRoll Exchange essentially provides additional sources for native inventory on apps that use Yahoo App Publishing for ad monetization. Cheetah Mobile, Pinger and WeatherBug are among those using Yahoo App Publishing and Yahoo revealed that more than 100 demand-side platforms (DSPs) are integrated with BrightRoll Exchange.

The reason there is so much interest in native advertising is because it works – and works very well in fact. For example, 25 percent more consumers were measured to look at in-feed, native ad placements more than standard banners.

What’s more, consumers looked at native ads two percent more than editorial content and spent the same number of seconds viewing them.

Native ads, of course, have their vocal detractors (the argument being they mislead users), but the practice remains effective for today’s advertisers and doesn’t look to disappear from the digital landscape in the foreseeable future.

BRIGHT IDEA: Find out what type of native content resonates most with today’s consumers; check out Website Magazine’s guide to native content and native advertising success at wsm.co/nativead16.

The Mobile Influence in Advertising It’s necessary for today’s brands to understand that the patterns of digital consumption are changing – and in many respects, it’s more mobile than ever before.

Facebook announced a $5.8-billion quarter, the majority of which is ad revenue ($5.6 billion). The company also reported that an astounding 80 percent of that ad revenue ($4.5 billion) was generated by mobile advertising, representing revenue growth of 81 percent year over year (YOY).

Mobile ad success isn’t limited to Facebook in-feed offerings, of course. In fact, more than 1-in-5 consumers purchased or browsed for products online via a mobile device when holiday shopping for themselves or others, according to global information company The NPD Group. That number was double among millennial consumers, between the ages of 18 and 34.

What is becoming clear is that in order to drive measurable sales growth and long-term success, today’s digital brands need to find new ways to engage shoppers by using a cohesive omnichannel and omni-present approach, while giving those users the product offerings they demand. What that requires is a greater focus on all things mobile – including advertising.

For enterprises to make the best use of their investment in mobile advertising, however, they are going to need real-time data in order to optimize their campaigns. Technology solutions are, fortunately, emerging that are making this a reality.

Mobile marketing attribution analytics platform AppsFlyer, for example, recently unveiled a new real-time reporting feature that enables enterprises to track the performance of their app-install ad campaigns.

Dubbed “Right Now,” the feature provides advertisers with powerful insights to optimize campaigns and monitor the impact of changes down to a perregion basis. Understanding performance at this level makes it possible to make wise decisions about campaigns moving forward.

There’s simply no doubt that mobile has become part of the digital experience. The savviest advertisers, those that take

an omnichannel and omni-present approach to their advertising, will be those positioned those for the greatest degree of success in the years to come.

The Social Influence of Advertising As consumers increase their use of social platforms, advertisers are following.

Brand Networks, a provider of native social advertising and content marketing, released findings recently of a study that tracked a variety of metrics related to spend and performance throughout the second half of the year on Instagram and discovered that advertisers, as expected, are flocking to the platform and driving competition (and costs) particularly in the consumer package goods, fashion and retail verticals.

CPM (cost-per 1,000 impressions) surged with Instagram’s opening of its API in Aug. 2015, growing from $5.21 in Sept. 2015 to a peak of $7.20 in Nov. 2015, before coming down to $5.94 the following month. Advertisers, racing to create and deliver compelling content into the feeds of Instagram users during the holidays, also increasingly began experimenting with video ad formats – video ads as a percent of total ads served by Brand Networks increased from 9.54 percent in Sept. 2015 to 22.52 percent in Dec. 2015.

Nearly every social network has some form of advertising offering – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others. Advertising to social users isn’t for the faint of digital heart however.

BRIGHT IDEA: Ensure digital advertising is effective by focusing on audience segmentation and targeting.

Read Website Magazine’s Accelerated Guide to Social Ad Targeting at wsm.co/adtarget16.

Start Focusing on Video Advertising It’s time for advertisers to embrace the opportunities provided by video.

While the benefits are numerous, advertisers still find that is difficult to generate attention and conversions through the use of video ads. Fortunately, many best practices have emerged over the years, and revisiting them can result in positive developments for brands employing the format.

Using attractive thumbnails (those which are rich in visual appeal or action), featuring in-video calls-toaction (e.g., spoken, shown as a popup, a clickable URL at the end of the video, etc.), and showcasing the most compelling content and images early on are just some of the best practices, and using them often results in lower cost per action and higher click-through and conversion rates.

Advertisers are clearly accelerating their investment in video. For some context, in Q4 2015, advertiser spending on

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Facebook video ad units, according to HubSpot, went up by more than 40 percent from the previous quarter.

One of the challenges for today’s advertising is that video is simply difficult to track and buying on a cost-perimpression basis is a fool’s errand in the age of autoplay.

Fortunately, technology companies are addressing this issue. Digital video advertising platform Videology, for example, is enabling its advertisers to buy using viewability as a metric.

Buyers on the platform essentially have the option to buy impressions on a viewable impression basis (vCPM), with all impressions verified as viewable by third-party vendors DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science or Moat. What this means is that advertisers will pay only for impressions deemed viewable and at a guaranteed price. Advertisers can also choose to measure viewability based on the MRC viewability standard (at least 50 percent of the video player must be in view for at least two seconds) or the so-called extended viewability standard devised by GroupM (100 percent of the player is in view, and at least half of the ad plays with the sound on after a user clicks on it).

BRIGHT IDEA: Learn what tools other digital advertisers are using to create compelling video experiences for their prospects and customers at wsm.co/videoplay16.

The Return of Display Advertising An estimate from research firm eMarketer is circulating that indicates this could be the year that display ad spend surpasses search spend in the US. Surprised? Join the digital crowd.

Emarketer is suggesting that display ad spend, spurred by the growth in video and native ad formats, will reach $32.17 billion in 2016 compared to $29.24 billion in search spend. You can almost hear the collective wail of search engine marketers.

The research firm says one in five dollars will go to banners and other display formats, including native social ads on sites like Facebook and Twitter, with spend reaching $13.39 billion in 2016, up from $11.57 billion in 2015. Video is expected to grow from $7.46 billion in ad spend in the U.S. last year to $9.59 billion in 2016. Video’s share of the digital ad pie will grow from 12.8 percent in 2015 to 14.3 percent in 2016, according to eMarketer. Rich media and sponsored brand ads make up the remaining formats in the display market; each are expected to see an increase in ad dollars in 2016.

What the preceding should indicate is that thanks to increased targeting capabilities, improvements in personalization (throughout the customer journey) and retargeting, diversification of channels and tactics and

integration of more sophisticated technologies to help advertisers optimize their spend, there has never been a better time to start advertising on the Web. BRIGHT IDEA: Find out where today’s most successful advertisers are running their display advertising campaigns and through what networks at wsm.co/display16.

Threats to Digital Advertising It should be clear by now that advertisers, and the myriad technologies and channels that support them, are getting better at what they do – finding opportunities to engage consumers and guide them through the brand and buying journey.

Unfortunately, digital advertising is under attack and from pretty much every angle and the most significant threat comes from ad blockers. Ad blocking has arisen chiefly because publishers, technology providers and advertisers have largely taken users for granted, as simply eyeballs, conversions or audiences ready to be tracked and harvested at will.

Ad blockers are capitalizing on user frustrations including slow page load times, ad clutter, malware and privacy issues. It’s being done, however, in a way that is quite destructive to the publisher-advertiser ecosystem and ultimately to consumers themselves. While some will argue that ad blocking has not had a meaningful impact on the industry to date, other disagree. Adobe and PageFair, for example, recently asserted that more than $22 billion in global ad revenues were lost in 2015 due to ad blocking. What’s more, a survey from Digital Content Next (the former Online Publishers Association) found that 33 percent of U.S. consumers were “very likely or somewhat likely to try ad blocking software in the next three months.”

Ad blocking is just one of the many threats to digital advertising. The vast amount of data, consumers’ increasingly cross-channel behavior, online compliance and affiliate fraud, as well as other issues are severely threatening the status quo.

While technologies and providers will always improve the manner in which these challenges are addressed, it’s important that every advertiser understands how these issues could impact their bottom line and to what degree.

BRIGHT IDEA: Stay on top of new threats to digital advertising in Website Magazine’s ’Net Advertising channel at wsm.co/netad16.

The Ad Future is Bright There’s never been a better time to engage in digital advertising. Thanks to advances in targeting and tracking, advertisers are in greater control, and the future is bright for enterprises willing to face the challenges head on and leverage the many powerful technologies available.

Software

EVERYWHERE

Must-Have Technology for Everyday Businesses

By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor

Retailers have long paved the way for those in other industries to step up their digital games.

Increasingly, consumers carry their e-commerce experiences and expectations to other parts of their online journey, such as when visiting a publishing website or researching critical services for their employers. Similar to when business buyers are shopping for clothes or home goods on their own time, they expect self-service options (e.g., live chat, FAQs), social proof (e.g., peer reviews), flexible payment options (e.g., PayPal, subscriptions) and other elements when making business purchases.

While this is bad news for those service providers who have yet to digitize their brands beyond a website, there is good news in that savvy retailers have created a roadmap for their B2B counterparts on what key pieces of technology they need to effectively acquire and retain customers online.

The following is a list of must-have technology for any company serious about growing their brand (assuming a CRM, CMS and other fundamental tech is in place):

A Competitive Research Tool Whether it’s SEMrush, SpyFu or another competitive research tool, brands across industries must actively monitor the strategies used by their competitors. For example, SEMrush can provide enterprises with invaluable information on which to base decisions specifically around search engine marketing, such as the paid search ads their competitors are running to acquire similar audiences, the keywords they’re using to win business, how much they’re allocating to certain keywords and how effective their organic search engine optimization (SEO) efforts are.

A Social Media Management Platform Most retailers understand the importance of providing content to social users, but the really successful ones understand the need to listen to their users on social as well. With a variety of options to choose from – Buffer, Sprout Social, Hootsuite and others – businesses across industries would be wise to select a social media management platform that allows them to publish compelling content to current and prospective customers as well as listen and respond to the conversations

being conducted online. A social media management platform worth a company’s money will allow for this, as well as the ability to track various metrics to prove a return on investment (ROI) from their efforts.

An Email Service Provider AWeber, Listrak, MailChimp, Campaigner, Constant Contact…the list of email service providers is long and filled with impressive offerings (for a list of the top 50, go to wsm.co/50email ). Since email consistently provides the highest ROI of any channel, enterprises should invest accordingly with a technology partner that allows them to segment audiences (by attributes like demographics, location, behavior), test content and delivery options (such as subject lines, time of day), use beautiful templates with simple drag-and-drop features (or more sophisticated coding options depending on their staff’s experience), automate certain campaigns (like based on when a subscriber signs up) and integrate with other marketing technology such as a CRM.

An Analytics System Google Analytics is, of course, the most popular and widely used analytics system, but there are other options. Whether it’s a heatmap provider (like Crazy Egg), an open-source platform like Piwik or a tool that builds customer profiles like Woopra, every company needs to see how someone got to their site, how they are behaving once there and the reasons they performed certain actions (e.g. left, bought, returned).

A Personalization Tool(s) With more information than ever before about who is on a site and how they are behaving, all companies must put this information to work in the form of personalization. Retailers use personalization in a variety of ways, such as changing landing pages based on previous purchases or what’s left in a shopping cart. Service providers can use personalization similarly in that, at the most basic level, they can welcome back a returning visitor, store information that was previously filled out (such as in a form to download a whitepaper) and alter homepages based on what the user had previously shown interest in.

Retailers will continue to provide the roadmap for what consumers expect from their online experience, but companies across verticals won’t want to fall too behind because without these must-have technology items, they risk never catching up.

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Mobile

MATTERS

Building Awesome How to Create a Great-Looking Mobile App

By Diwiyne Johnson, Vanity Point

When most businesses decide it’s time to build a mobile app, they know they want it to be good looking and function well, but when asked to be specific, they are usually short on details.

To help with the process, here are a few tips to create an app consumers will enjoy using time and again.

Consider functionality first Simplicity demonstrates sophistication. Some of the most popular apps on the market appear quite simple to the end-users, but are really quite robust on the backend. Take the app for the fitness tracker Fitbit as an example. Depending on the Fitbit type, a person can track their activity, nutrition and even heart rate from the application, as well as join competitions with friends.

While this requires heavy backend development, the complexity goes unnoticed by the end-user who sim-

ply goes about his or her business in a streamlined way thanks to clear categories, icons for quick visual recognition of navigation items, and use of color to excite and help with organization.

Choose the right color scheme Using the right color scheme can attract the attention of users; in fact, the proper selection of colors for use in an app can take it from something uninspired and bland to something that appeals to a customer’s psyche.

It’s important to remember that colors have meanings, which can vary depending on one’s culture. These meanings influence the way customers perceive an app, even if it’s subconsciously. Therefore, the colors one chooses can work for or against their purpose. For instance, in the U.S., people often associate the color green with “go ahead” due to traffic signals. This extends into business with phrases like “green lighted.” Further, the color blue is used to instill trust. Knowing this, the payment-sharing app, Venmo, is wise to use the color blue

Popular social payments app, Venmo, uses the color blue to instill trust.

Fitbit’s use of imagery, color and icons make it a great-looking app that’s easy to interact with.

prominently as people conducting financial transactions will want reassurance that their funds are secure.

Color can also be used to define a hierarchy within the app. With proper color choices users know right away which button is most important, which is less important and so on. This will reduce indecision on the user’s part and improve their overall experience.

Improve iconography Icons that convey meaning will move users further through an app and help them explore features they may not have known about otherwise. It’s always a good idea to use icons that clearly show what action a user will take once clicked/tapped rather than include ones that are more creative.

ESPN does a good job of identifying different actions a user can take through the use of icons, such as a person icon with a plus sign indicating someone added a player to their fantasy team while a minus sign indicates they dropped a player.

Define & repeat elements A lack of consistency can not only be confusing for users

Icons should immediately convey meaning as to what action a user is taking once clicked.

but beyond that it can also dramatically hamper an app’s appearance. Changing button styles or spacing throughout an app is noticeable to users and will chip away at the user experience and could impact usage rates.

Without consistent use of elements, users will struggle to understand what they are looking at within an application. Consistent use of elements such as shape and color will create an environment where the user can anticipate what will happen when they perform an action. Brands don’t want to make users think when it comes to using their app; it should be as intuitive as possible.

Function Over Form Remember that form should never be allowed to come before function. Before companies start thinking of all the modern styles they can use to wow users, they’ll need to make sure that their app will serve its primary objective first.

Diwiyne Johnson works with Vanity Point, a mobile app design company based in Phoenix.

Email

EXPERIENCE

PARTY TIME

A GUIDE TO CELEBRATORY EMAIL MARKETING

By Allison Howen, Associate Editor

There are many things people look forward to on their birthdays, but not all of them include candles or gift wrap.

spiration, check out Website Magazine’s three-step guide to special day email marketing below:

Birthday emails, for example, are one of the unexpected surprises that most consumers find in their inbox on or around their special day. While some of these well-wishing emails come from close friends and family, most typically come from the consumer’s favorite brands – and for good reason. According to data from Experian Marketing Services, birthday emails receive 179 percent higher unique click rates than promotional emails, 342 percent higher revenue per email and 481 percent higher transaction rates.

In order to reap the rewards from this marketing tactic, however, brands must not only collect the right information from their email subscribers, but also put a marketing plan together for this initiative. For some in-

In order to implement a birthday email marketing plan, marketers must first collect the birth dates of their subscribers. As most marketers know, collecting this type of personal information can be challenging.

One way to collect birthday information is by asking subscribers when they sign up for an email list. Although some sign-up forms simply require consumers to enter their email address, marketers can create a short form that asks subscribers for additional information, such as their first and last name, birth date, gender and shopping preferences.

What’s more, marketers can offer incentives to new subscribers in exchange for this information. Adidas, for instance, asks new subscribers to enter their date of birth and gender when signing up for its newsletters. In order to motivate subscribers to fill out these questions the retailer offers incentives, including a 15 percent-off voucher, as well as access to special deals, offers and news (see Image A).

Another way marketers can collect birth date information is by asking subscribers for this data after they have already signed up for a newsletter.

This can be done by sending out a welcome email that thanks the subscriber for signing up for newsletters and includes a link to a form that subscribers can fill out at their convenience.

A. Marketers should ask for birthday info at email sign-up to ease data collection later on.

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Step 1: Collect Information

There is another approach to consider, which appeals to recipients who have a fear of missing out.

Instead of sending a welcome email, for example, marketers can simply send out an email telling their subscribers that they are “planning a birthday surprise,” and then ask the subscriber to take a few minutes to add a birth date to their account.

Step 2: Make a Marketing Plan Once marketers have collected the information needed from their subscribers it is time to put the birthday marketing plan together. Obviously if you are wishing a customer a “happy birthday” it is also a good idea to give them some sort of “gift,” such as a discount, free gift with minimum purchase, extra loyalty points, etc. It is also worth noting that birthday promotions are typically valid for the subscriber’s entire birthday month (anything short of that may make the recipient upset).

Marketers should keep in mind, however, that people are usually pretty busy on their actual birthday, so reminder emails can be beneficial. In fact, Experian Marketing Services reveals that birthday reminder emails typically generate rate increases of at least 20 percent for open, click and average order value (see Image B).

type of “special day” that marketers can create campaigns around. In fact, depending on the data a marketer has collected, they can create campaigns to celebrate a variety of other events.

For example, in addition to collecting a subscriber’s birthday, a restaurant or jewelry retailer may also want to ask the subscriber for his or her wedding anniversary information. By doing so, the marketer can leverage this information to send out relevant promotions around the time of the subscriber’s special day. That said, it is important to note that marketers can also take advantage of their own data to create “special day” campaigns.

By recording a subscriber’s sign-up date, for instance, marketers can send a “happy anniversary” email to subscribers to celebrate each year of email interactions. On the other hand, marketers can leverage loyalty card information to create a campaign that celebrates each year of a customer’s loyalty.

When all is said and done, it is important that marketers simply think outside-the-box and find something to celebrate when it comes to their email campaigns. For instance, marketers can create campaigns that celebrate their company’s anniversary, a subscriber’s half birthday, belated birthdays (see Image C), a consumer’s first online order, etc.

At the end of the digital day, finding something to celebrate via email may just lead to a ROI worth celebrating too.

Re-Engagement Emails that Work B. Birthday email reminders like this one from Ulta have a higher-than-average open rate.

Step 3: Identify Other Special Days The data shows that birthday emails are definitely a winning strategy for brands, but birthdays are not the only

C. Stand out from the crowd with belated or halfbirthday email promotions.

A large percentage of a brand’s email list decays each year. Bring those recipients back at wsm.co/emailagain.

Social Media

MAVENS Networks & Biometrics

Death of the Password

By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor

With so many obvious benefits, businesses would be wise to explore a social login solution that will work for them currently (for a list of the top social login options, visit wsm.co/signon16 ), as well as those providers taking identification methods to the next level.

As far back as 2014, Gigya CEO Patrick Salyer gave an interview to <re/code> saying that the future of identity is beyond social; it’s about payments and it’s about seamless biometric login (fingerprints), too.

The benefits of offering social media login, also known as social sign-in, are well-known.

First-time and returning users, for example, have the ability to sign onto a website with credentials they remember and trust (e.g. Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or Twitter) – saving them time and eliminating frustration. For businesses, social login reduces friction in the conversion process and allows marketers to collect customer data that may not have been available otherwise (e.g., friends list, work info).

There are, fortunately for Web professionals, numerous technologies that exist to make social login a reality.

Gigya, for example, offers deep integrations with a variety of marketing technologies that allow enterprises to take user information captured by social sign-in and apply it to actual campaigns to increase conversions and deepen engagement. Gigya integrates with A/B testing leader Optimizely, for instance, to give marketers the ability to leverage social data (like gender, location, age) to deliver personalized experiences by creating unique marketing assets (e.g., landing pages) tailored to audiences based on available information.

While this type of data collection may be a red flag for some, end-users actually feel their personal information is better protected when using social login (this was among the top five reasons to use the feature according to a 2015 report from Gigya).

Further, the number of U.S. consumers claiming to have logged into a website or mobile app using an Gigya makes data attributes like age, country, existing digital identity from a social gender, language, religion and other info network is rising, with 88 percent available to Optimizely users through their having used social login last year – integration, so mutual users can create audiand this is true of both younger and ences and deliver relevant website experimore mature audiences. ences to them.

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PayPal leverages Apple’s Touch ID to allow users to authenticate themselves with their fingerprint – providing easy login and a secure environment for its users.

The future is already here. Looking at PayPal’s app as an example, it allows for mobile payment transactions and provides the ability to verify identity with a fingerprint. As many Web pros know, Apple released Touch ID to recognize fingerprints on iPhone devices several years ago and Google followed up recently with Android M. As a result, more apps are likely to implement biometric login very soon.

Other types of biometric authentication include face, retina, voice and typing recognition, but since many businesses have yet to embrace traditional social login, widespread adoption of these identification methods will be delayed. Regardless, with simplicity and increased popularity, it should be clear that social and biometric login provide ease and engagement for registration and beyond while passwords suffocate the user experience.

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Hosting

PANEL

DIGITAL ACCELERATION Tips to Speed Up Your Website

By Jack Dawson, Web Designer at Big Drop, Inc.

Every time a Web page delays by one second it results in: • 18 percent decrease in customer satisfaction • 12 percent fewer page views • 10 percent loss in conversions Both Amazon and Walmart confirmed these observations; for every 100 millisecond improvement in Web load speeds there was a corresponding one percent revenue increase. Whether it’s an online retail shop or a local service provider, no website owner wants to miss the opportunity of generating more revenue because of slow website loading speeds. Let’s look at proven ways to speed up a site for better experience and conversions.

1. Minimize HTTP Requests Yahoo has reported that 85 percent of page loading time is spent downloading the various Web page parts including the images, flash, scripts and style sheets. Decreasing these elements on a website makes it easier for the individual Web pages to load faster. To achieve this, developers can reduce the number of scripts on the site or relocate them to the bottom of the page.

In addition, site owners can make use of CSS as opposed to images whenever possible. Subsequently, they can also consider the option of combining the various style sheets and reducing the number of elements evident on the page.

2. Activate Caches and Cookies Every time a user visits a new website, the details of the visited website are stored on his or her hard drive. In subsequent visits, the user will be able to access these pages without the browser sending other HTTP requests to the server.

In order to benefit from this, site owners should adjust settings in a way that allows users to accept cookies and enable caches while accessing the site. As a result, they will be able to view pages faster and experience shorter load times after the first visit.

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3. Optimize the Website Images One of the greatest contributing factors of slow website loading is images. To attain faster Web loading times, images must be optimized within the site to facilitate this function. While doing this, site owners need to take into consideration essential image features like size and format. Various image-editing tools can be used to crop the images, in order to attain the perfect size for the Web page.

As for the image formats, there are a lot of considerations to be made. Access a handy sheet to know which formats to use and when at wsm.co/format411.

4. Limit the Number of Plugins The essence of plugins in efficient operation of a site cannot be overemphasized. On the flip side, too many plugins slow down the Web loading speeds and may contribute to security and uptime issues. Occasionally, developers can check their website plugins and deactivate or delete the unnecessary ones.

They will want to locate the plugins responsible for slower Web loading speeds, disable them, check the loading speeds and then decide a course of action.

5. Encourage Compression Large pages take more time to load because of their bulkiness. Site owners can limit the size of these pages by zipping or compressing them. By compressing the Web contents, the bandwidth of the pages is reduced, which reduces the time taken by HTTP to respond. The Gzip tool can help achieve this effect by allowing Web servers to compress files before sending them for download.

6. Minimize Web Redirects Web redirects enable mobile users accessing a website to shift from the main site to one optimized for their device, but not without impact to page time. This action takes additional HTTP requests, which in turn increases the server response times.

Instead of using different redirects to take mobile users from the main site to the responsive alternative, site owners should use the HTTP redirect, which takes shorter loading times. They can also explore other options of switching to mobile-friendly websites in order to minimize usage of redirects.

Make the Right Choice Faster Web loading speeds are necessary for any business owner or blogger who wants to make the most out of his or her site. As such, they should do everything within their capabilities to enhance the loading speeds, which can help increase their profit margins and client satisfaction as a result.

Domain

MASTERS

The FASTEST-Growing New Top-Level Domains

By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

The new generic top-level domains (or nTLDs) provide an opportunity to stand out from the digital crowd and as a result have quickly captured the attention of marketers. In fact, just over 12 million have been registered to date, according to ntldstats.com, and industry interest just keeps growing.

While the .COM extension certainly is not going away any time soon (particularly with nearly 300 million currently registered at the end of 2015), big brands and small businesses alike are not ruling out using one of the many alternative extensions available today.

Understanding which extensions are growing the fastest, however, provides the best opportunity to make a smart branding decision for the digital presence of a business moving forward – and there are many reliable resources that can be used to determine which extensions are a must, and which (at least so far) have been a bust.

NameState (namestate.org), for example, provides a running list of the biggest selling nTLDs as well as those that are the fastest growing. It’s the latter that is most important to monitor for marketers and ’Net professionals because it relates directly to what is happening right now in the domain name landscape and how the industry will likely move forward.

Currently at NameState, .XYZ remains the fastestgrowing (and most popular) nTLD. There are now 2 million-plus .XYZ extensions and nearly 40,000 are added each week on average (most consequently through Chinese registrar Chengdu). There are, of course, many other options if that particular extension doesn’t match a brand’s demands or expectations.

Other fast-growing extensions that have captured the attention of ’Net professionals include .CLUB (615,000 currently registered and averaging over 6,000 new registrations weekly on average at the time of writing), .TOP (1 million domains registered and 2,600 added weekly on average), .LOAN (161,000 registrations with 1,000 added weekly on average) and .WIN (600,000 registrations and 1,000 added weekly on average). .SCIENCE, .LINK, .PARTY, .CLICK and others are also experiencing decent growth.

One of the reasons that domains often grow so quickly is because of the promotions that are offered by registries and registrars alike. This encourages domain name speculation, which could inflate the potential and the perceived long-term importance of the extension. There are some top-level domains that are planning for the future, however, and which should be on the virtual radar of ’Net professionals.

New generic top-level domain .FEEDBACK, for example, entered into general availability recently and the extension could definitely be a contender in the competitive domain name space and prove appealing to brands for a few reasons.

Not only is the .feedback extension being priced rather competitively (less than $30 at many registrars) but every domain comes with a free feedback platform. The available features are somewhat basic at this point (limited to submissions, voting and sharing capabilities, and some standard performance metrics), but it’s the novelty of having a ready-made feedback platform that will likely be attractive to brands.

Another interesting aspect of .feedback is that the registry has a policy that all registered domains need to resolve to a Web page that takes feedback. That should eliminate domain squatting as well as the scourge of inactive websites. In comparison, nearly 65 percent of .xyz extensions resolve to a parked domain.

This focus of encouraging the actual use of domains (rather than just registration for the purpose of speculation) is not unique to .feedback. Japanese domain name company GMO Registry, which recently won an auction for the rights to the new .SHOP top level domain (for a whopping $41.5 million price tag), is also forbidding speculation and trading of domains under the TLD. “Registration of a .shop domain name,” according to the company’s charter, “solely for the purpose of selling, exchanging, trading, leasing the domain name shall be deemed as inappropriate use or intent.”

The domain name space is an exciting one and is important for today’s digital enterprises to monitor.

Knowing which extensions are emerging and which are falling flat (or which are prone to speculation) provides an opportunity to make smart decisions about the branding of a digital presence.

Domain Authority Stacking Is this strategy worth it for SEO value? Find out at wsm.co/dastack.

Net

ADVERTISING The Programmatic Ecosystem:

Not Perfect, but Still a Smart Investment

By Craig Teich, Executive VP of Global Sales at Connexity

Although a couple of publishers have made recent headlines by backing away from participating in the programmatic ecosystem, they will find themselves members of a tiny minority.

Why? There is a lot to like about programmatic and marketers will continue to shift budgets to programmatic as they uncover its potential.

For example, programmatic technology is making it easier than ever to seamlessly connect consumer insights to actual media programs.

There no longer needs to be a disconnect between a marketer’s insights team, which identifies their best potential customers, and the media activation team that buys and targets media based on these insights.

Instead, consumer insights can be directly linked into audience management systems and become the basis for finding customers programmatically online.

Properly leveraged, data opens the opportunity for true one-to-one marketing. Some programmatic platforms are capable of evaluating and targeting audience members on an individual basis. Advertisers don’t have to buy standard onesize-fits-all audience segments that aren’t a perfect fit for their brand. Instead, programmatic audience systems can prioritize targeting ad impressions to audience members that are the best fit for the advertiser.

Ad creative can also be dynamically adapted to the person’s interest – so advertisers can deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.

In addition, programmatic eliminates many of the manual cycles (and delays) of manual transactions. As campaigns run, data science can interpret what signals matter most and optimize a marketer’s campaign almost instantaneously. Programmatic campaigns can be optimized by audience, website, ad size, position on

the page and more. In the days before programmatic, the agency or advertiser would manually evaluate campaign performance and contact the publisher to ask for optimizations, which the publisher would then execute. Now with programmatic, technology captures performance data and optimizes campaigns in realtime; thus eliminating the need for time consuming back and forth between the advertiser and publisher.

Even still, the major challenges facing marketers across all online media today also exist in the programmatic space.

For example, accurately attributing performance to the ads that influence performance remains difficult. As campaigns optimize across devices how can marketers be sure they are giving credit where credit is due? They want to focus ads on the best performance, but how does programmatic fit in best with their mobile, search, social, offline campaigns, etc.?

Viewability is also a lingering challenge for the industry. Marketers want to make sure their ads are displayed in placements where the viewer can see them, but viewability doesn’t necessarily lead to performance. Some of the best-performing placements on a campaign may have low viewability but still deliver a highly qualified audience who drives the advertiser’s key performance indicators (KPIs). Optimizing campaigns on viewability alone is too simplistic of an approach. Instead, viewability should be one of many considerations when optimizing campaigns toward the best possible performance.

In addition, some proefssionals fear that since marketers are not negotiating with a human in programmatic exchanges, they could be buying ads on sites that only have bot traffic or that the targets demand-side platforms are bidding on may actually be bots in disguise. Still, it is important to remember that bot fraud isn’t limited to programmatic. One way marketers can reduce the risk of bot fraud without hiring an ad verification company is to target audiences with rich-data profiles. If there are multiple data points on an audience member from a range of online activity, then there is a lower risk that the ad will be shown to an impression bot. If marketers don’t have confidence in the data they are using to target their campaigns, then at that point they may want to contract with an ad verification vendor.

These challenges, however, are only minor obstacles that pale in comparison to the potential of programmatic. There should be no doubt that the marketing and ad tech communities will continue to find solutions and uncover new opportunities to deliver value through the programmatic ecosystem.

“Do You See Me?” “So do your customers!”

Promote Your Brand & Products to WM’s Audience of ‘Net Professionals If you want to reach a tech-savvy audience, advertise in the industry’s top publication. Over 50% of our subscribers are C-List executives, and overall, 84% of our subscribers influence purchases at their organizations. It is an opportunity that is hard to miss.

Website Magazine offers advertising opportunities: • Content marketing • Lead generation • Job board advertising • Email newsletters • Website placements • Sponsored webinars • Website listings

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Web

COMMENTARY

#WM100

Don’t Fear the Pivot

By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

In his popular book “Outliers,” author Malcom Gladwell says that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field of endeavor.

How to Pivot & Win in Business Get an empowering guide to changing a culture, product or service at wsm.co/chachanges.

Looking back on what it has taken to produce 100 print issues of Website Magazine, far more than 10,000 hours have been required. So are we masters yet? Nope – not by a long shot.

That might come as a surprise to hear, particularly from an enterprise that does everything it can to help its readers “accelerate” ’Net success, but it is, without question, very much the truth. The reason is simple – our staff knows, and we hope you know too, that working on the Web (or in any professional capacity) requires continual development, an uninterrupted focus on learning more about what motivates, excites and compels others to take action and achieve personal success, and as much patience, time and, of course, intelligent effort as can be mustered to see it through on a hour-to-hour, day-by-day basis.

A “best effort,” however, is not an indication a big idea has any merit, a solution or service is actually needed or even wanted or that there is a place for an enterprise in the broader digital business landscape. Often, it’s necessary to pivot – change course

if you will – and doing so should not elicit fear or trepidation, regret or a sense of failure that the prior approach hasn’t worked out. In fact, doing so might yield better results than expected. Twitter, seemingly everyone’s favorite digital whipping boy of late, provides the perfect example.

While the company’s efforts have previously focused on providing a unique “experience” for its customers, supporting developers (sometimes) and building advertiser relationships, these initiatives ultimately miss the target. Why? Because as pointed out in “Reversing the Course (and Fortunes) of Twitter” (published on the Web at wsm.co/tweetpivot ), its core product has no obvious purpose. Twitter is excellent for what it is (a consumer-focused messaging platform), but that mastery is not enough, and it never will be. Fortunately, there’s a solution – and it likely applies to many of our readers’ enterprises – pivot.

What if a version of Twitter were to be repurposed as a messaging or team communication tool for the enterprise? While there are numerous tools in the market currently (e.g., Slack), taking this approach would enable the company to use the technology it has already developed and roll out integrations over time to build it into an even bigger and better solution for internal and external messaging, something along the lines of a customer relationship management (CRM) solution or even a marketing automation platform. That would bring in more businesses (and revenue), right? You know it.

Pivoting from the core or fundamental mission of an enterprise is certainly no easy task, but adding feature upon feature on a solution or service – despite the energy and time invested in it – isn’t working for Twitter and it is likely not working for other brands either. Take a moment to consider how an enterprise might pivot – not pivot in a different direction, but rather a better one.

Like you, we at Website Magazine have more work to do and will just keep moving forward.

There is always something new to learn and master, and always a new industry development that could change our digital futures in the blink of a virtual eye. We will pivot in new and exciting directions over our next 100 issues and encourage you to continue joining us as we accelerate down the course of ’Net success.

THE WAIT

IS OVER

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