Website Magazine November 2014

Removing the Web’s Greatest Barriers, page 20

Scan to read this issue online.

THE MAGAZINE FOR WEBSITE SUCCESS NOVEMBER 2014

SOCIAL MEDIA

Magic Tricks INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

Smart KPIs for Internet Retailers An E-Commerce Guide to Replatforming Last-Minute Conversion Tips for the Holidays TOP 50: Email Marketing Solutions

WEBSITEMAGAZINE.COM

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

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Web Personalization 101: Create Personalized Marketing Experiences

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SEO 101: The Basics & Beyond

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Download free at www.WebsiteMagazine.com/resources

SOCIAL MEDIA Magic Tricks

24

Those responsible for social media within their enterprises are struggling to answer some fundamental questions about their time spent on social. Despite this, companies willing to learn and apply the tricks of socially savvy brands can analyze and optimize their way to the top – and experience some of the much-hyped social media magic.

THIS MONTH IN WEBSITE MAGAZINE

Explore Website Magazine’s

DEPARTMENTS

Can 30 Retailers Ship from Any Store

Savvy merchants should mimic the omnichannel success of global retailers by using every location as a store, warehouse and shipping center.

10

Enterprise Ready: The Online Store of the Future

12

Small Business Lab: Web Conferencing in Focus

Holiday 32 Last-Minute Conversion Tips Believe it or not, there are still a few ways e-commerce sites can optimize their way to increased holiday revenues this year.

34

13

Quiz Time: Tech Year in Review

14

Top 50: Email Marketing Solutions

16

E-Commerce Express: Smart KPIs for Retailers

The Digital Key to Keyword Research

18

Mastering Search:

For greater paid search success in the future, capitalize on competitors’ keywords with these powerful digital solutions.

20

Design & Development:

40

Web Commentary:

Web Design Trends Impacting SEO Removing Web Barriers Are We In Another Bubble?

36 Not Big Data

Precise Data,

Adapt to increasing operational pressures by combining social media intelligence with other marketing insights.

Online Merchant’s Guide 38 An to Replatforming

Take a measured approach to switching ecommerce platforms with this practical guide for Web-based retailers.

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

Contact 773.628.2779 info@websitemagazine.com

2015 Content NEWSLETTER

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Email Power Strategies

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Get Rich Quick (Affiliate Marketing)

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Web Software Matchup

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The Local Web is Everywhere

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Essential & Edgy E-Commerce

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Social Tricks & Media Magic

E-Commerce KPIs

Web Design for SEO

What is Accessibility?

Email Service Providers

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10/1

DECEMBER

Analytics for Everybody

Email for Online Merchants

Today's SEO Basics

Design Makeover

SEO Tools

TOPIC E-EDITION/ PRINT/IPAD

Personalization

MARCH

APRIL

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

SEO Troubleshooting

Considerations

Enterprise Ready

Wealthiest Mobile Webbies Marketing N OV E M B E R 2014

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From the

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

999 E. Touhy Ave. Des Plaines, IL 60018 Toll Free: 1.800.817.1518 International: 1.773.628.2779 Fax: 1.773.272.0920

A Dash of Social Media Magic

GENERAL MANAGER:

Social media success is an illusion for many online enterprises. Promises of increased brand awareness and deeper customer loyalty are alluring, but brands often find themselves caught in between perceived benefits and the harsher reality.

David Ruiz druiz@websitemagazine.com

An overwhelming number of digital marketers are questioning the basic fundamentals of social media for business – the right tactics to use, the best ways to increase engagement and how to measure their return on investment. Even so, some of the most socially savvy brands are providing compelling examples of how to analyze social initiatives and optimize time spent on networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others. Fortunately for Website Magazine readers, some don’t guard their success stories as closely as a magician does his secrets. This month’s feature article highlights how several top retailers like Hard Rock, Alex and Ani, ProFlowers and UPS are making social media magic through the use of compelling content, third-party platforms, social listening and much more.

Internet retail gets the lion’s share of attention in, “Social Media Magic Tricks,” but the tips and tactics provided can certainly be deployed by service providers and information publishers as well. Being just weeks away from the official start of the holiday season does, however, give the November issue of Website Magazine an e-commerce slant. Articles within these pages include advice on e-commerce replatforming, last-minute holiday conversion tips, optimized order fulfillment and a smarter approach to key performance indicators (KPIs) for retailers. Other topics covered include guidance on the future of online retail, removing the Web’s greatest accessibility barriers and how to ensure Web design trends don’t interfere with organic search visibility on the ‘Net, and much, much more.

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

Peter Prestipino peter@websitemagazine.com

PUBLISHER:

Susan Whitehurst EDITOR-IN-CHIEF:

CONNECT ON YOUR MOBILE Access the November 2014 issue online at

wsm.co/wmnov14 or by scanning the QR code below.

WEBMAG.CO Check out Website Magazine’s new virtual pinboard highlighting infographics, videos, events and more.

Best Web Wishes,

MANAGING EDITOR:

Amberly Dressler adressler@websitemagazine.com ASSOCIATE EDITORS:

Allison Howen ahowen@websitemagazine.com

Derek Schou dschou@websitemagazine.com *CONTRIBUTORS:

Ian Goldman Tim Ash Rich Pasewark Scott Houchin

GRAPHIC DESIGNER:

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Abdul Umer a.umer@websitemagazine.com

Peter@WebsiteMagazine.com

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Website Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 14, November 2014, (ISSN# 1942-0633) is published 12 times a year, January through December by Website Services, Inc., 999 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018. Periodicals Postage Paid at Des Plaines, IL and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Website Magazine, 999 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018.

Canada Post: Please send undeliverable items to: 2835 Kew Drive, Windsor ON, N8T 3B7 Copyright 2014 by Website Magazine. All rights reserved. Materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission. For reprints of any article, contact the editor. *The opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of Website Magazine.

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’’

The Authenticated Testimonials seal lets people know we can be trusted.

And trust has its advantages such as increased website conversions & sales.

’’

-Alan J. www.SupplyHero.com

How AutHenticAted testimoniAls work: We contact your customers to verify each statement.

Authenticated testimonials provides a verification seal to display on your website.

Prospects are more inclined to trust and purchase your products or services!

Phone: 1.866.904.5414 InternAtIonAl: 1.773.272.0998 AuthentIcAtedtestImonIAls.com N OV E M B E R 2014

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Net

BRIEFS

Double Down on Conversions E-commerce merchants looking to increase conversions this holiday season should consider adding video to their websites. A new report from Invodo reveals that

online shoppers who view video are nearly two times more likely to make a purchase than shoppers who did not watch a video. The numbers for mobile users are

even more convincing, with the study finding that almost a third of all video views on commerce websites occurred on mobile devices in Q2 2014.

Flashy Sites Ahead Google announced the expansion of its Flash warning alerts in the mobile search result pages. Google initially rolled out the warnings for English search results in the U.S. back in July. The warnings let mobile searchers know when Google detects Web pages that may not work with their device (those which include Flash). Now the warnings are being rolled out across the globe, including for Spanish searches on google.es, Japanese searches on google.co.jp and English searches on google.co.uk.

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Amazon Teams Up with Twitter...#Again Amazon is betting big on social commerce, unveiling another integration with Twitter in Oct. 2014. Amazon initially released the #AmazonCart integration back in May, which allows consumers to add items to their Amazon shopping cart by using the #AmazonCart hashtag when responding to tweets that include an Amazon.com product link. Now consumers can also add items to their Amazon Wish List without leaving the social network thanks to the new integration, which requires consumers to use the #AmazonWishList hashtag when responding to relevant tweets.

Resource Center FINELY FOCUSED INFORMATION FROM INDUSTRY SPONSORS Website Magazine’s Resource Center presents white papers and webinars from our sponsors that provide information, specifics and metrics to help you make decisions for website success. Download free at WebsiteMagazine.com/resources

Critical Rules for SEO Success in 2015 Thursday, November 20th, 2PM EDT / 1PM CDT / 11AM PDT FREE WEBINAR!

REGISTER NOW AT: http://wsm.co/2015SEORules Search engine Optimization (SEO) remains one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website. But the rules are always changing, so it is important that you stay ahead of the game. Discover the latest rules and strategies for successful upcoming SEO tactics in 2015 and explore best practices to optimize your site and content, to boost your search rankings and attract more leads.

THIS SESSION WILL COVER: SPEAKER: BIO:

• How to write for your audience and speak the language of your searchers • Adapting to Google’s changes • Optimizing your sites content for search • Building better quality links to boost your rankings Martin Laetsch Director of Online Marketing Act-On Software, Inc. Martin Laetsch is the Director of Online Marketing at Act-Software. Act-On Software is the world’s fastest growing marketing automation company; its cloud-based marketing automation platform is the foundation of successful marketing campaigns everywhere – from small, simple and direct, to complex globally implemented programs. Act-On was recently named to Forbes’ Annual Ranking of America’s Most Promising Companies. Martin is a marketing strategy leader with more than 15 years of experience with prominent companies guiding product management and marketing. While at Intel, Martin defined, built, and managed the world’s first enterprise-class search marketing program that became a standard for managing digital marketing programs for many of the Fortune 500 companies including Dell, IBM, HP, and P&G. Sponsored by N OV E M B E R 2014

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Net

BRIEFS MOBILE APP WATCH

Goes Local Facebook is making it easier for businesses to connect with local audiences, thanks to the social network’s new Local Awareness offering. The new ad formats enable businesses to deliver targeted messaging to groups of people that are within a certain proximity of a company’s brick-and-mortar store. Merchants and service providers also have the option to add a callto-action button to their ads, such as “Get Directions.”

OF RETAILERS FAIL EMAIL COMPLIANCE AUDIT The good news is that the majority of retailers are compliant with email marketing laws, the bad news is that 10 percent are not. This according to data from the Online Trust Alliance, which found that upward of 70 percent of the top 200 online retailers are essentially following the rules and demonstrating a commitment to letting users control their inboxes. Ten percent of retailers, however, were found to be in direct violation of the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2013 and Canada’s new Anti-Spam legislation (read more at wsm.co/caslsteps).

Adobe is making it easy for designers to work on projects whenever inspiration strikes, as the company unveiled a variety of updated and new mobile apps at its annual Adobe MAX Conference.

The suite of iOS apps offer new design tools and feature improved syncing with the company’s Creative Cloud. Learn more about a few of the company’s updated mobile app offerings below and discover more at wsm.co/appsadobe.

Photoshop Sketch Photoshop Sketch provides designers with natural drawing tools so they can sketch ideas on the go. Drawing tools include a graphite pencil, ink pen, brushes and more. The app also features a Behance integration and enables an integrated workflow with Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC.

Lightroom Mobile In addition to letting users edit and organize images, the new Lightroom Mobile app now enables a user’s friends and family to select favorites and leave comments on images shared online.

Plus, GPS information from iPhone photos now sync with Lightroom desktop.

Premiere Clip Adobe has begun dabbling in mobile video editing with Premiere Clip. The app enables users to trim videos, add color filters, transitions and slow motion effects. Plus, Premiere Clip features Smart Volume, which evens out audio levels across clips. Users can also send their videos to Adobe Premiere Pro CC for advanced editing.

MORE ‘NET NEWS

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Times are a changin’ and so are the viewing behaviors of search engine users. Learn more at wsm.co/serptrack

•

LinkedIn is helping college students map out their future in the workforce. Find out more at wsm.co/linkclass

•

Bing is shedding light on the methods it uses to detect keyword stuffing. Discover the search engine’s secrets at wsm.co/spambing .com

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Shape CC Designers can capture and create vector shapes while on the go with Adobe Shape CC. With the app, users can capture high-contrast photos, from fonts to a picture of a pet, and turn them into vectors that can be accessed immediately in Adobe Illustrator CC and Adobe Illustrator Line.

Stat

WATCH

The Wealthiest

Web Tech Companies The world of Web technology is vast and, like our universe, expanding every day.

In the technology space it is a challenge to stay a mega-hit (just ask Myspace). Those that have achieved megastar status can, however, withstand the ravages of time if they focus on evolving, creating and updating products and services to meet new challenges and expectations.

Google presents the perfect example of a company that shows no signs of slowing down. The powerful conglomerate has reached its seemingly never-ending arms into numerous ventures including driver-less cars, wearable technology and a line of smartphones, which all contribute to its nearly $400 billion market value.

Facebook is not to be forgotten when discussing the wealthiest Web tech companies. Through its constantly evolving experience for end-users and innovative ad programs for brands large and small, Facebook’s commitment to innovation has led to the company’s impressive $202.9 billion market value.

By comparison, Amazon’s market value is estimated at $148.2 billion – far behind Alibaba’s worth.

Even though it’s a newcomer to the public market, Alibaba is one of the most valuable Web technology companies in the world with a market value of $224.2 billion. The Chinese online retailer, which provides a service much like Amazon, is now worth more than the two most popular e-marketplaces in the U.S. (Amazon and eBay), combined.

With new technology being introduced every day, there is no guarantee that in 10 years all, or any, of these companies will retain their elite status. The only surefire way to stay ahead of the motivated competition is to constantly innovate. Otherwise, brands risk falling by the wayside.

$33 BILLION With a market value of $33 billion, Twitter has been able to more than double its worth since its initial IPO of $14.2 billion.

$37.7 BILLION

(Google Finance, Sept. 2014)

With 400 million shares, Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba is now worth around $37.7 billion (nearly as much as its own market value of $40.1 billion).

(Google Finance, Oct. 2014)

$36.1 BILLION Salesforce has carved out a spot for itself among the Web’s most valuable tech companies with a market value of $36.1 billion.

$3.4 BILLION

(Google Finance, Sept. 2014)

When AOL and Time Warner merged in 2000 the once popular Internet provider had a market value of $166 billion.

Since then, its market value has tumbled more than $160 billion down to just $3.4 billion.

(Reuters, 2009; Google, 2014)

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Enterprise

READY

A Brighter Digital Tomorrow

The Online Store of the Future

By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

To see what’s in store for the future of the Web, look no further than the e-commerce industry. Digital retailers know firsthand that the technology currently in play within that vertical almost always defines what happens outside of it – from information publishing to Web-based service providers.

Stay In the Digital Know...

The digital world of online retail moves fast, but if you don’t stop and look around once in a while you may miss something really important. Stay up to date on the most interesting trends, tactics and technology developments in Website Magazine’s E-Commerce Express channel on the ‘Net at

wsm.co/channele.

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The needs of those in e-commerce in many ways drives technology development as online sellers are perpetually looking for greater efficiency, deeper engagement and loyalty from consumers and, of course, more conversions. Retailers are employing a variety of interesting new technologies and capitalizing on some innovative development to do so. Let’s explore what is shaping the future of the online store and guide your e-commerce enterprise to a brighter tomorrow.

The Data-Driven Retailer The pace of data creation is phenomenal. Domo released an infographic (wsm.co/1s9qqNu) in early 2014 highlighting what happens in an Internet minute and it reveals the role that data will inevitably play within the future e-commerce enterprise. For example, Pinterest users today pin nearly 35,000 images every minute, over 4 million search queries are conducted at Google and more than 204 million emails are sent.

As you might imagine, that’s a lot of data and it’s only going to increase with time.

Fortunately, companies have for years aggregated, cleansed and stored vast quantities of data about user interactions and other e-commerce variables (e.g. preferences), but it remains a cumbersome process. In the .com

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future, the savviest online retail enterprises will aim to not just use big data, but also make more intelligent decisions faster in the scope of the user experience.

In essence, big data presents the opportunity to influence every decision made within the enterprise. For example, retailers will know how much to spend on a keyword during a brief 10-minute window, or which customer to offer a discount/promotion based on his or her propensity to convert.

Discover several leading big data solutions for the everyday e-commerce retailer at wsm.co/ebigdata.

Experience & Expectations It is not just retailers that are becoming more sophisticated, but consumers as well. Today’s online shoppers engage in a far more rigorous journey in researching and purchasing products on the Web. Consumers are moving freely between channels, which makes creating the optimal experience far more complicated (and a major reason why big and better data is playing an ever more important role for retailers).

While it is nearly impossible for even the most experienced e-commerce professional to predict how users behavior patterns will change, those that are building out richer profiles of customers and more detailed histories of activity right now are those that will be best positioned to develop digital experiences for consumers regardless of how their expectations may change in the future.

See seven creative and compelling e-commerce experiences from lesser-known retailers at wsm.co/7ecommexp.

MASTER AFFILIATE MARKETING Affiliate 360: Fundamentals of Performance Marketing provides a foundation for understanding the challenges and opportunities in affiliate marketing, so you can shorten your road to Web success.

Affiliate 360, published by Website tomers at that valuation are needed to growth the Magazine, anand action plan for With more (and better)isdata more engaging ex- achieving business. periences, the future online store will simply not look success as an affiliate marketer. You’ll find much like the one from today.

The Future is…Coming Think for a moment about how your own enterNo matter how hard you might try, the future is coming. yourself highlighting and earmarking prise has determined digital success (or failure). It’s While it’s safe to assume that retailers in 10 or 20 years theforpages, you started discover practical common those justasgetting to measure will betools able to take greater advantage of the data they col(anything everything)strategies in aggregate,from maturing use it toin shape customer experiences and measure the andandeffective top lect, minds their approach into a more refined view over time. To success of their enterprises, no one really knows what the marketing. excel inperformance the future, however, online merchants must future will be like. While it’s certainly possible that each Metrics & Measuring Differently

shift the approach they take from measuring only the and every consumer will be equipped with a virtual reality key business and operational performance metrics headset (complete with tactile sensors to better experience (read more this month’s E-commerce To inlearn more, visit Express column goods) and ordered products will be received near instanon page 16) into an analytics framework that puts each taneously thanks to locally dispatched delivery drones, customer at the center. When a value is placed on what should not change is the focus that sellers put on WebsiteMagazine.com/Affiliate360 individual consumers, it is easier to determine what buyers – retailers that put consumers first today will aleach specific customer is worth and how many cus- ways be those closer to achieving success tomorrow.

NEWS OF NOTE...

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Digital Wallet MasterPass Comes to 3dcart Stores

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BigCommerce Get Realtime with Analytics

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Small

BUSINESS LAB

WEB

CONFERENCING

Putting the Working Lunch Out of Business

By Allison Howen, Associate Editor

Web conferencing is replacing the “working” lunch meeting.

Instead of scheduling meet-ups so employees, clients and partners can get together and discuss projects in person, businesses are increasingly turning to Web conferencing platforms to collaborate. These platforms enable key groups and audiences to communicate via audio and video conferencing technology from any location, enabling businesses to connect with stakeholders at a moment’s notice and save resources associated with traveling.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that not all Web conferencing platforms offer the same functionality. The challenge is knowing what you are looking for before making a commitment. Here are a few things to take into consideration during the critical decisionmaking process.

Ease-of-Use Regardless of whether a business is leveraging Web conferencing technology to set up a virtual meeting with a coveted prospect or to collaborate with a group of remote employees, brands must ensure the chosen solution is user-friendly, as is the case for national staffing and consulting firm Messina Group.

“We use Web conferencing to interview clients, present decks and record seminars. For us, the most important feature is an intuitive format,” said Michael Parks, CEO of Messina Group. “Most people on staff are not technical, so an easy-to-use operating system takes precedence.”

GoToMeeting, for instance, offers a straight-forward interface that enables users to launch and/or schedule meetings with just a few clicks. Once the meeting is created, users can send out email invitations, which include a meeting link and dial-in number, directly from the platform. Attendees can then join the meeting directly from the email invite.

Even though ease-of-use is a top priority, it is also 12

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important for businesses to compare the features and functionality offered by Web conferencing platforms.

A Visual Feature Set It is essential that companies select a Web conferencing solution that offers both video conferencing and screen-sharing functionality. These features are important for every user-case scenario, from demonstrating a new product to employees to hosting a brainstorming session.

Among the Web’s most popular video conferencing solutions is Skype, which offers a multitude of features including screen sharing, audio calls, file transfers and instant messaging. It is important to note, however, that the number of people who can attend a group video call on Skype is limited to 10. Conversely, a platform like AnyMeeting, which can be leveraged for a variety of purposes, from hosting team meetings to webinars, enables users to create a meeting (with screen-sharing capabilities) for up to 200 participants.

Aside from video conferencing and screen sharing, businesses should also evaluate the collaboration tools that each Web conferencing platform offers. In fact, collaboration functionality can be the point of difference when comparing platforms.

Collaboration Functionality It’s easy to overlook collaboration features like chat and content sharing, but these features often become the most valuable aspects of a platform. This is particularly true when a business is leveraging Web conferencing technology for meetings with remote employees.

The ClickMeeting platform, for instance, offers private chat, moderated Q&A functionality and chat translation. The latter supports 52 languages and displays each attendee’s location along with their name, and shows both the original and translated chat in real-time. That said, other platforms, such as Fuze, offer collaboration features like annotation tools for cloud content and whiteboards.

Plus, Fuze integrates with apps like Box and Dropbox. According to Michael Riley, the co-founder of content marketing platform Boxter, these types of collaboration features make it easier for teams to share ideas and information.

Let’s Do Lunch Web conferencing platforms may be reducing the amount of lunch meetings that business professionals are scheduling, but in return, this technology is providing a more accessible and less resource-draining experience for teams.

Quiz

TIME

Did You Pay Attention in

1)

How much has overall inbound message volume increased for brands on social networks in the past year? a. 100 percent b. 39 percent c. 77 percent d. 12 percent

2) It has already been 11 months since the ‘Net was flooded with digital resolutions and virtual business predictions for the year ahead. Fortunately, 2014 didn’t disappoint.

The Web technology world saw many changes, innovations and trends this year, including the arrival of new generic top level domains (gTLDs), Foursquare’s surprising decision to split up its mobile app into two separate ones, eBay spinning off PayPal, and Google and Facebook rolling out more changes than most Web professionals can keep track of. In fact, 2014 brought so much change that anyone who took a week off may have quickly found themselves out of the virtual loop. Discover how well you were paying attention to the year’s biggest and most important developments by taking Website Magazine’s quiz on this year’s top tech moments.

Which new gTLD went live in 2014? a. .bike b. .school c. .trust d. .rsvp

3)

What is the name of the new app Foursquare announced in May? a. Hopper b. Swarm c. Flock d. Habitat

4)

What is the name of Google’s local algorithm update that launched in July 2014? a. Macaw b. Cardinal c. Blue Jay d. Pigeon

5)

Which social network did Amazon team up with in May 2014 to enable consumers to add items to their shopping carts via hashtags? a. Instagram

See how well you did on this month’s quiz by visiting wsm.co/qtnov14 or by scanning the QR code.

b. Facebook c. Pinterest d. Twitter N OV E M B E R 2014

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Email

Marketing Solutions Email, as a business practice, has matured. No longer do marketers “batch and blast;” they understand the value the medium has in relationship building and generating conversions — increasingly leveraging technologies, tactics and techniques to make it work.

Social, SEO and digital advertising still manage to capture the majority of ‘Net professionals’ attention, but the evidence is clear – you should send more (and better) email. In its State of Search Marketing Report, Econsultancy and SEMPO revealed that 66 percent of marketers rate email’s ability to deliver a return on investment (ROI) as “excellent” or “good,” while only 41 percent feel the same way about social media marketing. What’s more, Marketing Sherpa found that companies sending more than 100,000 emails per month see a 94 percent return on investment. Even more impressive, companies sending less than 100,000 emails per month see a 139 percent return. Whatever the volume of messages sent, know in your digital heart that email works.

The email channel/medium has remained an essential component of an online presence because it is effective, so it’s time enterprises start taking what is delivered to their audiences more seriously. One of the main reasons that digital marketers tend to look down their virtual noses at more sophisticated email strategies is the concern related to overstepping their boundaries in relation to personalization (e.g. the “creepy” factor). A survey conducted by Harris Interactive, however, found that people actually like emails based on their previous shopping behaviors and preferences. In fact, 81 percent of U.S. digital shoppers said they were at least somewhat likely to make additional purchases, either online or in a store, as a result of these targeted emails.

Today’s digital marketers have a variety of solutions to consider for use in their own enterprise. While many will turn to traditional email service providers including Constant Contact (#1) or MailChimp (#2), others will opt for inbound marketing, CRM and sales software solutions such as HubSpot (#4) or ExactTarget (#5), a Salesforce company, with powerful email solutions that serve as a core part of its offerings. Whatever role email plays within your organization let this month’s Website Magazine Top 50 serve as an introduction to the vendors shaping the digital future.

Digital Tricks of the Email Trade YesMail’s Q1 Benchmarks (released in mid-May 2014) revealed that even though there is a 21 percent positive difference in click-to-open rates for emails with a responsive design, only 1 percent of marketers surveyed send responsive emails exclusively. Learn more digital tricks of the email trade in Website Magazine’s Email Experience channel at

wsm.co/EmailExperience.

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ConstantContact.com MailChimp.com Zoho.com HubSpot.com ExactTarget.com Deluxe.com Infusionsoft.com Dyn.com BenchmarkEmail.com iContact.com CampaignMonitor.com VerticalResponse.com AWeber.com GetResponse.com Act-On.com MyEmma.com Maropost.com Silverpop.com SendGrid.com Bronto.com ActiveCampaign.com Campaigner.com Responsys.com StreamSend.com Interspire.com EmailDirect.com MailerMailer.com Lyris.com ReturnPath.com SMTP.com WhatCounts.com SimplyCast.com BlueHornet.com JangoMail.com Listrak.com CheetahMail.com Boomerang.com ReachMail.net Emailbrain.com YesMail.com StrongView.com GraphicMail.com Contactology.com Pinpointe.com dotMailer.com EliteEmail.com Mailigen.com SubscriberMail.com SailThru.com SmartFocus.com

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E-Commerce

EXPRESS

S.M.A.R.T.

KPIs for Internet Retailers

By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

The single most important time of the year is weeks away – the holidays – and the smartest merchants have everything in place; from their advertising creative to their product shipping plans.

Many online retailers, however, will not be as efficient or effective as their competition, being more reactive to the pressures of the season rather than proactive when it comes to identifying the barriers to conversion and an optimal user experience. The reason? Ignorance of their key performance indicators (KPIs).

Key performance indicators are simply the measurements that reveal the performance and progress of a digital enterprise. One of the most tangible benefits of

Monitoring E-Commerce KPIs The savviest retailers make a habit of closely monitoring their key performance indicators, but the most successful make it easy for all the stakeholders within an enterprise to stay in the loop. Website Magazine recently published a list of many of the most popular data visualization dashboards (wsm.co/dataviz14), which place complex performance data into a far easier-to-read (and consume) format.

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working on the ‘Net is the ability to accurately, and in realtime, measure website performance, using that data to then optimize business operations, user experience and conversion paths.

It’s likely that ‘Net professionals are familiar with analytics and establishing key performance indicators (and are probably even keeping track of just how well they’re doing), but have a question that, believe it or not, is very common – what’s normal? How do I know if my performance is acceptable? If these questions have crossed your mind, change your thinking. KPIs are baselines from which a brand is meant to improve over time. It doesn’t matter where an enterprise is, just that it’s headed in the right direction. Develop the baselines, become familiar with the typical ranges, and engage in processes that improve operational and business performance.

START SMART

It is not enough to just acknowledge that analytics are important, tag a site and let the virtual chips fall where they may. Key performance indicators are powerful mechanisms in supporting enterprise objectives, but they are meaningless if stakeholders aren’t on the same virtual page about how success should be defined and what the enterprise goals are. That’s the first step – know what should be accomplished and how the enterprise will get there – but it is far from the last.

The next step is to make sure those goals and objectives are S.M.A.R.T.

S

pecific

One of the more dangerous practices of those analyzing key performance indicators (along with strategy and operational teams) is failing to be specific about goals and objectives. For example, instead of measuring site-wide conversion rates, consider tracking the conversion rate for visits from specific mediums such as email, social media, organic search or advertising. Take it a step further and measure conversion rate by the source and the medium. This enables retailers to not only understand the performance of a particular type of initiative (e.g. social media), but also how well individual sources (e.g. Twitter or Facebook) are performing and performing against each other – which ultimately empowers marketers to spend time and resources in areas that generate the best return.

M

easurable

Keep in mind that the data gathered from websites rarely reveals “why” something happened. For this reason, it is essential enterprise stakeholders quantify the most important KPIs to their goals or objectives. It’s not enough for a stakeholder to say “let’s increase brand awareness,” he or she needs to provide direction on metrics that can be measured to indicate that awareness is increasing/decreasing. For example, if greater awareness is the objective, establishing a KPI that tracks the number of instances when a product page was shared through email or on social media would be appropriate. If a goal is not measurable, it’s impossible to know whether a team is making progress.

A

chievable

It’s not uncommon for enterprises to set lofty goals that are often impossible to achieve without an immense amount of cost/effort (e.g. “double the average order value”) when what is often needed is a more attainable goal (e.g. “increase average order value by 5 percent each month”). Digital teams won’t be inspired by a goal that is unlikely to happen, but they will invest all their energy and resources in making sure they get close, which only makes other key performance indicators suffer. Discover five achievable goals your e-commerce enterprise should aspire to in 2015 at wsm.co/ecomm15.

R

elevant

“

“

Without a smart approach to analytics (and optimization), e-commerce enterprises risk being quite dumb about their approach to digital success.

Retailers might be wondering why any enterprise would have an irrelevant KPI in place – but it definitely happens. Companies don’t always know what they need to measure, so they will often measure everything. Are goals and objectives (and the KPIs used to measure them) relevant? If they seem worthwhile (e.g. increasing time on site) and can be achieved in the existing environment (e.g. the current infrastructure supports the features or functionality that will be tracked), the answer is likely yes.

T

ime-Bound

Above all else, goals and objectives that have an end or target date, a deadline and a timeframe are those that will be most meaningful.

Establishing time-bound objectives enables an enterprise to look past the day-to-day tasks and at the bigger picture, creating a sense of urgency that will serve as a virtual measuring stick for digital improvement.

FINISH SMART

Keep in mind that there are likely hundreds of appropriate key performance indicators that an e-commerce enterprise should be monitoring. The basics including unique visitors, page views, total orders, time on site and others (a detailed list of advanced KPIs for online retailers can be found at wsm.co/kpislist) are fundamental and must be monitored regularly. That said, without a S.M.A.R.T. approach to analytics (and optimization), e-commerce brands risk being quite dumb about their approach to digital success.

Why Does Pricing Matter?

Optimize your KPIs by first getting a pricing strategy that works at wsm.co/2014price.

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Mastering

SEARCH For Better or Worse

WEB DESIGN TRENDS THAT IMPACT SEO

By Derek Schou, Associate Editor

With more than 1 billion searches conducted every day on Google, it’s clear that today’s designers are not just developing websites for consumers, but for the search engines as well.

Enterprises that employ designers count on them to do their part in getting their websites indexed by the search engines.

Oftentimes, however, designers want to try out the latest design techniques, which can ultimately hurt discoverability.

Here are two such current Web design trends that are impacting SEO, for better or worse, today.

For Better: Responsive Design When Google talks, most times people listen, but this is not necessarily the case when it comes to responsive Web design (RWD). Although the search engine officially states that responsive design is its recommended approach, only 9 percent of the top 100 Web-only retailers use RWD, according to The Search Agency, which also found that 59 percent use dedicated mobile sites and the remaining 32 percent only offer a desktop site. Similar to what Website Magazine revealed in its Sept. 2014 feature, “Follow the Mobile Leader,” this could be because responsive isn’t always the best choice for every business case. The alternative is to take a hybrid approach, leveraging adaptive and responsive Web design (read more at wsm.co/hybrid101). Still, when it comes to SEO, responsive design should reign supreme.

Google’s reasoning behind its support of RWD is simple.

Since developers/designers only have to create one site, Google only has to crawl and index one site (rather than both mobile and desktop websites). For users, enterprises leveraging responsive Web design give them the freedom to move from device to device and have the same experience.

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mographic is young men. In fact, 64 percent of millennials expect a brand experience to be the same across channels, according to 2014 research from SDL. By using RWD, Burton reduces the chances of its customers “bouncing” off its site, and a low bounce rate signals to the search engines that the site provides a good user experience.

For Worse: Parallax Design When new design styles become popular with consumers it is important that designers don’t immediately flock to these trends until they fully understand what the advantages and drawbacks are. Take parallax design as an example. It enables designers to create an immersive experience by creating page depth as well as a sense of movement through layering background and foreground images and having them move at different speeds as the user scrolls. While this can help designers tell a brand’s story, it can also harm their SEO initiatives.

One of the potential problems with parallax design is that because one page is telling the entire story, subpages can be an afterthought. Subpages play multiple important roles in SEO, like creating another page for the search engines to index. Perhaps the most important role subpages play, however, is hosting the keywords that reside on them.

Keywords alert search engines to the subject matter of the specific Web page, which determines whether or not the page is relevant to search queries. One of the dangers with fewer subpages is that designers might try to “stuff” as many keywords onto the pages to make them as relevant for search engine results as possible, a practice both Google and Bing take steps to punish (read more on how Bing identifies keyword stuffing at wsm.co/spambing).

Wait, There’s More From fixed navigation to images and animation, there are quite a bit of other Web design trends that reduce the findability of an enterprise on the ‘Net. See what other fads are getting designers in SEO trouble at wsm.co/seowebdes.

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Affiliate 360, published by Website Magazine, is an action plan for achieving success as an affiliate marketer. You’ll find yourself highlighting and earmarking the pages, as you discover practical tools and effective strategies from top minds in performance marketing.

To learn more, visit WebsiteMagazine.com/Affiliate360 N OV E M B E R 2014

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Design &

DEVELOPMENT

Breaking Down

WEBSITE BARRIERS

By Allison Howen, Associate Editor

The most successful brick-and-mortar businesses create a welcoming experience for their customers. Take Apple for example, which makes sure its employees greet every customer that walks through the door.

Not only does the Apple Store offer impeccable customer service, but it also maintains organized storefronts that make it simple for customers to find exactly what they are looking for. Online businesses should take note.

In fact, it is arguably more important that businesses remove barriers for their online customers because anything that disrupts the user experience results in site abandonment, because Internet shoppers are less committed than their offline counterparts. The challenge, however, is creating a Web presence that is accessible for every audience member and user type.

What is Website Accessibility?

Traditionally, the phrase “website accessibility” refers to removing any barrier that prevents people with disabilities, such as the sight or hearing impaired, from having equal access to information and functionality on a website (learn more at wsm.co/equalaccess14).

In the last few years, however, the phrase has taken on additional meanings. Developers must also address mobile (and its barriers), along with many other obstacles standing in the way of good website experiences. If making your digital presence available to as many as possible is your 20

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aim, the first step is to know who that audience is.

Designing for Your Audience

A website’s design shouldn’t be determined by the likes and dislikes of the C-Suite. After all, the website with the most bells and whistles rarely wins the conversion race.

Instead, learning who a website’s target audience is can positively affect the site’s development.

“If you’re selling trendy sneakers, you might be able to get away with some more innovative design elements while pushing the boundaries of readability, as a majority of your audience would be young users with steady hands and clear/good vision,” said Marie Sonder, developer at Web design company EZSolution. “Whereas if your were selling diabetic shoes online, your target audience is most likely going to be older and need a larger font and larger buttons or icons that are easy to read.”

Fortunately, there is a simple way for businesses to get to know their digital audience better – website testing. Website testing platforms, such as Monetate and SiteSpect, enable users to target and segment visitors to better understand their behaviors, habits and preferences. By conducting tests, developers are able to optimize sites for better performance based on test result data that reveals the design preferences of visitors.

Before getting started on your business’s testing initiatives, check out Website Magazine’s “Big List of Testing Tools” at wsm.co/10testtools.

In addition to optimizing sites based on an audience’s

vCita’s online scheduling solution makes it easier for local service providers to do business on the Web and can even reduce no-shows.

design preferences, companies need to focus on offering a consistent Web experience across screens.

Avoiding Massive Mobile Mistakes

The growing popularity of mobile devices has undoubtedly been among the biggest changes in the tech world over the last decade. The increasing use of these devices, however, has brought upon many accessibility challenges for developers.

Sites that aren’t optimized for mobile simply don’t cut it. In fact, the 2014 Mobile Behavior Report from ExactTarget found that 83 percent of consumers want a seamless experience across devices and 37 percent are more likely to make a purchase when brands have a mobile-optimized site. However, BrightEdge data reveals 27 percent of websites are still not properly configured for smartphones.

“Making websites accessible on mobile and tablet devices is probably the largest step toward removing barriers,” said Chris Rovin of mobile developer and strategy consultancy company PwrdBy. “We live in a time of splitsecond access to information. People want things now, even if that means they can only access a site through their mobile device. Letting consumers access your site when they want to and how they want to puts your brand or service in the best position.”

Sites that are prepared for mobile customers should offer common mobile calls-to-action, such as click for directions and click to call. While Google notes that many modern mobile browsers automatically detect phone numbers and converts them to links, it is still a good idea to manually tag phone numbers for click to call. Also, developers can leverage the Google Maps Embed API to include location directions on sites.

Even with a site that is optimized for its users’ preferences and mobile devices, there still may be barriers that prevent customers from conducting business with the company online. Luckily, the Web is full of tools that can help.

Equipping Your Site

Online customers typically like to do things themselves,

which is why businesses should offer self-service tools whenever possible.

A business in the service industry, for example, such as a chiropractor or salon, should offer scheduling functionality on its website to make it easier for clients to set appointments. According to Ran Oelgiesser, CMO of Web engagement software provider vCita, online scheduling is the core of the service industry. Fortunately these solutions abound on the Web, including vCita’s online scheduling software that integrates into both traditional and mobile websites and is even available as a WordPress plugin. The solution reduces no-shows with automated confirmations and reminders, as well as alerts business owners via email or text message when there has been a scheduling change or request.

Another tool that removes accessibility barriers for site visitors is live chat, which is provided by platforms like TouchCommerce and BoldChat. This feature can be integrated into sites, enabling online businesses to emulate the offline experience with customer service agents that can answer questions and help visitors navigate the website (for a big list of live chat solutions, visit wsm.co/livechat2014).

Ready for Business

Even in 2014, brick-and-mortar businesses still have the advantage over online businesses. To neutralize this advantage, online businesses must break down design and development barriers and work toward creating truly accessible websites.

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SOCIAL MEDIA Magic Tricks

By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor

What social media tactics are most effective?

Marketers struggling to provide a response are not alone.

In fact, it is the number-one question that more than 90 percent of marketers want answered. According to the 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, the other top two questions marketers have are, “What are the best ways to engage my audience with social media” and “How do I measure the return on my social media marketing?”

Despite the fact that those responsible for social media within their enterprises struggle to answer some pretty basic questions about their time spent on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other popular networks, companies willing to learn and apply the tricks of some of the most socially savvy brands can analyze and optimize their way to the top – and experience some of the much-hyped social media magic.

REVEALING ROI SECRETS The most important element of any good social media initiative is being able to measure the business value that it provides, yet upward of 70 percent of companies are unable to show the ROI of their efforts – even those that have adopted social media analytics solutions (for more, see wsm.co/missingroi ).

This isn’t for lack of trying, but even in 2014 – 10 years after Facebook received its 1 millionth registered user – the majority of large, successful brands are relying on unsophisticated metrics to warrant the time and money 24

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they allocate to social marketing.

When Forrester Consulting and Spredfast asked enterprises with more than $1 billion in revenue how they measure the business value of social media, they responded that “reach” and “resonance” are the top two measurement areas.

More specifically, 76 percent of these organizations use volume metrics (the number of individuals reached by social messaging) to measure performance and 73 percent also indicated they use resonance (engagement metrics such as responses, comments and shares) to attach business value to their social participation. Volume and engagement are not only two basic and accessible metrics to monitor, but they also work well with the respondents’ top business objectives of social marketing programs: brand awareness and customer loyalty.

The idea of increasing brand awareness and customer loyalty is all well and good, but more revenue-focused goals, like driving conversions and website traffic, can also be accomplished by analyzing and optimizing volume (or reach).

When Volume Disappears Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest present some rather intriguing social commerce opportunities (see four examples of social shopping in action at wsm.co/scommerce4) but a brand’s website still presents the most conversion opportunities. Take Hard Rock for example. Regardless of its millions of Facebook likes or hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers, HardRock.com is where the global

Using Olapic, Hard Rock brings social content to its website, where conversion opportunities abound.

brand can truly activate its audience, because that is where consumers can book rooms, shop for Hard Rock swag and sign up for its popular rewards program. (To read about how Hard Rock recently launched a mobile version of its rewards experience with Usablenet visit wsm.co/mobilerocks.)

In order to get social users to its website Hard Rock fans need to see posts, which often contain links to the site. Like many brands, however, Hard Rock was hit hard by Facebook’s late 2013 algorithm change, which sent organic reach into a tailspin. A Social@Ogilvy study showed that of 106 brand pages it had administrator access to, organic reach declined from about 12 percent to roughly 6 percent in a four-month period (Oct. 2013 to Feb. 2014). This is in line with what many other brands reported as well.

With single-digit reach, brands struggled to achieve any of their goals for the organic content they were sharing.

Bring the Conversation Home Despite Facebook disappointing (and downright frustrating) social media managers, many faced no other option than to analyze and optimize their efforts to increase organic reach, as was the case with Hard Rock. Of their many tests, Kim Matlock, senior director of digital marketing and CRM at Hard Rock, and her team, found that by posting directly on Facebook, rather than scheduling its Facebook posts from its social media management tool Hootsuite, the company’s organic reach started to increase. This may be because by scheduling posts directly within Facebook social media managers can edit posts that contain links. When posting directly on Facebook, social media managers can edit descriptions and add images to make posts look more appealing to end-users, possibly resulting in an increase in engagement and therefore volume. Website Magazine took Hard Rock’s advice and also started to see organic reach increase when posting and scheduling posts directly on Facebook – rather than through Sprout Social. Sprout Social is a highly effective tool for scheduling Twitter and Google+ posts, as well as brand monitoring, customer service and more, but it, like Hootsuite, lacks the ability to granularly edit Facebook posts.

The deep dive in organic reach on Facebook, however, was enough to push Hard Rock to explore other social options. For starters, Matlock and her team started to invest more time in Instagram – a smart move for a company that

seemingly has a very millennial audience, which is a group highly active on Instagram. The foreseeable problem with Instagram, however, is that it’s owned by Facebook. It wouldn’t be a stretch to speculate that it’s only a matter of time before the visually based social network adapts a more monetized approach for allowing businesses to reach customers on its network. In the past few months alone, Instagram has released a suite of business tools for advertisers (read more at wsm.co/grambiz). As Facebook looks to collect on some of the $1 billion it paid for the social network, early partners like Macy’s and PayPal have already started to advertise on Instagram.

Rather than wait until Instagram becomes a highly monetized channel, savvy brands are finding ways to bring the social conversation back to their own website.

Hard Rock, for example, deployed a service called Olapic (to supplement its other social efforts), which curates all the user-generated content (UGC) that is being shared on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Vine and brings the content to HardRock.com, where (again) people can book rooms, shop and sign up for its rewards program. Olapic also allows for social users to upload pictures directly to HardRock.com, bringing the social conversation home (where it really belongs).

PULLING ENGAGEMENT OUT OF A HAT As seen in Forrester’s previously mentioned research, marketers put a high priority on engagement, which indicates the level of interest and interaction from social audiences.

Engaging today’s socially savvy consumers often comes down to creating and sharing original, high-quality content.

The good news is that ‘Net professionals don’t need to be a designer, writer or billion dollar company to create compelling content that increases engagement.

Magic Trick: Sales & Social Brands with more than $1 billion in revenue may be overwhelmingly using volume and engagement metrics to measure social’s ROI, but some brands are doing more (a lot more). See which platforms are in use by savvy enterprises that are tying sales to social, users to CRM profiles and more at wsm.co/4ssales.

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Nordstrom encouraged users to share their “steals” from its anniversary sale with the hashtag #NSALE.

Every Magician Needs an Assistant Marketers are strapped for time. Not only are most managing social media on top of other job responsibilities, but they are also trying to analyze their time spent on the network (to prove their worth and optimize posts based on that analysis) – leaving little time for actual content creation. This is one of the many reasons that brands love user generated content. Better yet, UGC is one of the most influential forms of content there is, as it is seen as more authentic than content that brands create. In addition,

Alex and Ani uses a mix of branded posts and user generated content to engage its loyal audience.

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more than half of those born between 1977 and 1995 leverage UGC to help them make purchasing decisions (read more at wsm.co/ugclove).

Encouraging UGC Alex and Ani is one company effectively using the content that its brand advocates are creating on social, as UGC plays a major role in Alex and Ani’s social presence. For the unfamiliar, Alex and Ani is an ecofriendly jeweler that enjoys revenue in the hundreds of millions of dollars and is a case study in digital marketing done right. Its products are made sustainably, made in America and all of its popular charm bracelets offer positive messages about the things its shoppers care about, like friends, family and football (see images). Further, those who wear Alex and Ani charm bracelets border on the fanatical in their desire to get the newest bracelet to stack on their arms and show off to their peers.

UGC like this is free, ready-made content that is sure to resonate with an audience, because viewers are likely a lot like the people who originally shared the content. UGC is also a good indication of an engaged audience, as users willingly share pictures of products and brand messaging with their network of peers and influence their purchasing decisions in the process.

Hashtag Magic One way brands can encourage their followers to create UGC is by launching hashtag campaigns. Hashtags of course group similar messaging on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter. For Alex and Ani, the hashtag #CharmedArms serves as a calling card of sorts for people who stack their charm bracelets, take a picture of their charm bracelets and post that picture to social media with the hashtag.

How do brands create a hashtag campaign? For that answer, let’s turn to Nordstrom. When Nordstrom’s anniversary sale came around this summer, it included a postcard-sized flier in each of its packages that had items from the sales event. The flier included the hashtag #NSALE, which essentially asked customers to “show them their stuff.” And share they did (see image above). Not only did users get in on the action, showing off all their “steals,” but

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influential bloggers also shared their bargains on both social media and within their blogs (earning Nordstrom highauthority links in the process).

Nordstrom was smart in asking people to share their products, because both moms and millennials (two sought-after demographics for retailers) are actively sharing products on social media. Plus, when customers share products, they are influencing the buying decisions of others. So what did Nordstrom do right with its #NSALE campaign? Not only did its marketers keep the hashtag short (definitely a best practice), but they also promoted the hashtag (on marketing collateral like fliers, social media posts, website copy) and monitored its use. What’s more, marketers responded to users who were sharing their purchases and using #NSALE – another best practice, as it’s not enough to simply promote a hashtag campaign, but a brand must also be prepared to actively participate in the conversation that it started.

Stealing the Spotlight Even when a marketer does follow all of the best practices, some hashtag campaigns will just never catch on.

Alex and Ani obviously has a good thing going for it with its #CharmedArms hashtag as does Nordstrom with #NSALE, but there will be times when brands need to simply follow the crowd and use already-popular hashtags that are relevant to their audiences. There are a few ways brands can research hashtags for their campaigns. Services like bottlenose.com and hashtagify.me allow marketers to find the best hashtags to reach their audiences, while

Sprout Social’s new “Smart Inbox” prioritizes customer service on social networks by giving marketers the number of messages they haven’t responded to and the ability to assign messages to their colleagues.

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Twitter always reveals which hashtags and subjects are trending in a particular location. Brands may also want to steal some of the spotlight from their competitors by seeing which hashtags they are using. If they aren’t clearly branded hashtags (like Nordstrom’s #NSALE), marketers should consider them fair game. For example, two popular hashtags are #OOTD for outfit of the day and #FridayFavorite. Associate Editor Allison Howen lists these hashtags and 28 others in her popular post, “30 Days of Social” at wsm.co/socialthirty.

Now You See It The majority of the social content mentioned here (with the exception of hashtags) has a common theme: images.

Social posts with pictures nearly always receive more engagement. In fact, posts with images generate 100 percent more engagement than text-only posts on Facebook. On Twitter, Tweets with images generate 35 percent more retweets than those without (according to the social networks themselves).

Luckily there are free tools like Pagemodo that can help. It allows marketers to create custom images to share on social media for free (or it has a paid version) without the need for hiring (or bothering) in-house designers.

Pagemodo offers dozens of templates that marketers can use to add images, change the copy and customize the visual content in many different ways. The result is beautiful creative assets that can be shared on social media to increase engagement. It’s really as simple as dragging and dropping design elements around. Marketers can even schedule the posts from within Pagemodo, but if we’ve learned anything from Hard Rock, organic reach may increase when marketers post the image directly on their Facebook accounts because they can take advantage of the social network’s editing features. The benefit of sharing custom content is worth the extra step.

AUDIENCE CHEERS & JEERS For all the ways brands can reach customers on social media – both organically and paid – social isn’t just a one-way conversation. Brands that are actively analyzing and optimizing their social media efforts are the ones that know that customers are talking about them on social media – both negatively and positive – so they are using social media as a customer service channel, particularly on Twitter where people expect a near-real-time response. .com

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Magic Trick: @CustomerCare?

Despite the fact that customers expect immediate replies from the brands they are doing business with, many large brands fail to respond to their customers on social.

In fact, Sept. 2014 findings from Sprout Social indicated that 5 out of 6 messages to brands go unanswered on social media – numbers that surely back up the importance of the social media management platform’s new “Smart Inbox” feature, which shows a marketer how many messages they need to respond to and lets them assign messages to appropriate team members (read more at wsm.co/smartinbox). It’s important to note that marketers do have the ability to remove certain social messages from their inboxes (like new followers, retweets, etc.) in order to organize their to-do tasks on Sprout Social.

Brands that are optimizing their digital presence by treating social media as a customer service channel, however, are providing some pretty easy-to-follow best practices to do so.

Customer Service Wand – UPS & ProFlowers UPS presents a near-perfect example of how to leverage social media as a customer retention channel. Despite all of UPS’s many resources, it would be a lot easier for the shipping and logistics company to ignore complaining customers on social media – dismissing the networks as online retention channels. Instead, UPS has created a dedicated customer service support handle on Twitter, which lets it keep all of the customer service inquiries on that Twitter handle rather than its main profile, which it can reserve for positive brand messaging.

Additionally, UPS always takes the conversation off of the public forum by asking the consumer to email them more specifics and even keeps hours of operation on its Twitter account (to do what it can to manage user expectations).

By including hours of operation that the UPS support account is manned, UPS humanizes its brand, showing that there are real people with real working hours on the other side of the screen.

Of course sometimes there’s really nothing a brand can do to calm an angry customer, but managing the situation as best they can is always better than the alternative – not doing anything. ProFlowers, for example, also takes a proactive approach to social customer service.

This past Valentine’s Day, customers took to Twitter in droves to complain about delayed deliveries (see “5 Twitter Takeaways from Valentine’s Day Disasters” at

Before deciding to launch a dedicated customer service support handle, answer these three questions at wsm.co/twittercare.

wsm.co/0214twitter), and ProFlowers shined.

“When Winter Storm Pax arrived over Valentine’s Day this year, we got ahead of the chatter on social media and proactively sent an email to our customers informing them that the weather may upset their delivery,” said ProFlowers Chief Consumer Experience Officer Greg Chapman. “We also tweeted to let our customers know that they could take a full refund or $20 toward their next purchase.”

ProFlowers took its proactive approach one step further tweeting a picture of its office with the caption, “Tough day.

Agents working overtime. Employees across our company, including our CEO, are assisting customers.”

“That tweet was a part of our overall strategy that entailed genuine, transparent and constant communication of all forms to our customers,” said Chapman. “We continuously monitored the situation in real-time, 24 hours a day, and kept communicating—not only responding to each and every person on social media, but also proactively communicating to show them that we care. We tried to really humanize our responses to show that we are people too and that despite the storm, we are here for them.”

Twitter was just one platform that ProFlowers used to listen to its consumers and to show them how it was there for them. Chapman said his team created brand loyalty out of a very challenging situation. Read the entire interview with Chapman at wsm.co/smproflowers.

BE MAGICAL Nothing a brand does online is independent of another, which is why brands need to think holistically about their Web success. It’s only when brands look for a return on investment on all channels they are on, they engage their audiences with relevant, meaningful content and they treat all touch points as a way to support customers, will brands truly find social media magic.

Magic Trick: Pay for Play As social networks look to monetize their platforms more and more, brands need to be ready to pay for play. Get a quick guide to advertising on the top social networks at wsm.co/socialadsqg.

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Technology Enables Retailers to Ship From Any Store

By Ian Goldman

The promise of omnichannel fulfillment has finally become a reality, and many of the largest retailers in the world are positioning themselves to better optimize order fulfillment.

FASTER DELIVERY FOR ALL See how your e-commerce business can offer same-day or two-day delivery with these four powerful and accessible fulfillment solutions at

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That means things like second-day delivery for the same price as standard shipping for most customers and even same-day delivery are on the way. This will usher in a new world order of the already lofty expectations from e-commerce customers, and retailers without sound procurement strategies, that use multiple stores as shipping centers, will lag behind.

This is great news for retailers dealing in merchandise affected by seasonality, changing trends or advancing technology, because satisfying increasingly quick shipping times relies upon keeping inventory out of warehouses - and on store shelves. Whether a merchant has an established network of distribution centers around the country or has never shipped an item before, tying up inventory in warehouses is no longer a necessary component of running a successful e-commerce business. In fact, warehouses are quickly becoming hurdles to omnichannel success.

Tapping into existing “warehouses” Every retailer with multiple locations has an existing network of warehouses because each store keeps inventory, even those that lack storerooms and display every item on sales floors. Omnichannel fulfillment makes this inventory available to any customer, .com

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whether shopping in person, by phone, computer or mobile device. The barriers to entry for leveraging this inventory on every channel is technology and training.

Lines between sales channels are blurring as more customers shop on multiple channels. Those channels are merging to form more complex shopping journeys as single customers touch each SKU many times on several different channels before making a final purchase. That’s why it’s more important than ever to integrate every channel into a software platform that can manage them together seamlessly.

When brick-and-mortar POS systems are integrated into e-commerce sales, they can be engaged to actively fulfill orders received from online sources.

Having the capability is only the first step in successful fulfillment; the question then becomes, which store (or “mini-warehouse”) should ship which products to which customers?

Optimized paths from here to there Using automated business logic, integrated retail management systems can execute an automated process that then selects the best location to fulfill each order.

The decision is based on simple prioritization parameters set by the retailer. For example, imagine a customer orders a blouse from a website and the SKU is in inventory at five different locations. Which one should fulfill the order? Based on a determined set of parameters, the software will automatically select the most appropriate location and update the entire system to

reflect that one less item is now available in inventory.

The business logic used to select an order fulfillment location is determined by overall strategy and influenced by market conditions. If the retailer in the example above has determined that speed of fulfillment is the most important parameter, the system will fulfill the blouse from the location that is geographically closest to the customer.

But what if the customer is located in California (where the blouse is a top seller) and it is barely moving in Ohio and the store there has an abundance of them in inventory? If the retailer has prioritized sell-through highly, the system may fulfill the blouse from an Ohio store instead. This logic can be updated seasonally as well, so more lightweight blouses may start to fulfill from locations in cooler climates as winter approaches to get them out of inventory and keep them off of clearance racks.

Prioritization of fulfillment parameters can be changed at any time and can fluctuate to reflect seasonality, changing customer preferences or any shift to business goals. The software always looks for the best routing option, so if an item turns out to be unavailable at the first location due to an inventory mistake or loss, the next-best fulfillment center is automatically chosen and receives the order.

Your network of fulfillment centers Any store can be used as a warehouse, but many retailers do not have shipping capabilities at each location.

Integrated retail management platforms that have shipping built in can quickly transform every store into a mail order fulfillment center by simplifying the process. The system provides a list of orders, automatically calculates shipping, and prints out prepaid package labels. For most small to mid-sized retailers, it only takes one employee trained on the system to pack and send online orders, providing huge operational efficiencies and dollars saved.

Talked about for years, the reality of true omnichannel fulfillment is creating opportunities for small and large retailers alike. As established retail leaders shift their strategies away from large distribution centers, emerging merchants can craft their models similarly from the ground up and begin using every location as a store, warehouse and shipping center.

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

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WebsiteMagazine.com/Web360

Ian Goldman, president and CEO of Celerant Technology, is an expert software engineer and entrepreneurial enthusiast with an extensive knowledge of point of sale systems, CRM and inventory management.

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Conversion

CORNER

Last-Minute Conversion Tips for the Holidays

By Tim Ash

Here’s an inconvenient truth: It’s November. Ready or not, the holiday shopping season will be entering full swing, and e-commerce sites are about to experience another record-breaking volume of online transactions from all sorts of devices.

Is your site ready? Hopefully the answer is “yes,” but if not, there are still a few things you can do to try to increase your share of holiday shopping revenues this year.

Optimize Email Lists and Targeting According to the BizRate Insights/Forrester Holiday Flash Survey 2013, email was the second most popular way customers learned about holiday products last year.

This means retailers banking on holiday sales should get their email lists cleaned up and segmented so they can send people email offers that will be relevant to them.

Those merchants with the time and resources to do so can append their email marketing data with whatever information they have available: gender, past purchases, purchase dates (are they last-minute shoppers or planners?), Web visit history and other data points that can help brands really get the timing and message of their email promotions right. It’s important to also make sure that emails are formatted to render well across devices.

Businesses will need to hire a good HTML designer to make all their emails responsive so that their important messages and conversion-driving calls-to-action don’t get lost on the small screen.

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Optimize Post-Purchase Messaging Once someone has decided to purchase from a specific retailer, they’ve overcome significant trust and security concerns that will pave the way for easier buying decisions in the future. One of the best ways to leverage this is by using post-purchase messaging to drive additional sales and build engagement.

For example, retailers can use a new customer welcome email to offer a discount off their next purchase and suggest related items that other customers have shown an interest in after making a similar purchase.

Or, if a customer made a purchase from a desktop site, brands can use the welcome email to incentivize him or her to download the store’s app or sign up for emails or SMS alerts.

Ensure the Safety of Customer Data With all the data breaches making headlines in 2014, consumers are more wary than ever to enter credit card details online, especially on a site they haven’t previously purchased from. If a retailer can do only one thing before the holiday shopping season gets into full swing, have it be a thorough security audit that checks all access points to a network. This means hiring a security professional to try to hack into the company’s system, and then shoring up any vulnerabilities that are identified. Then, merchants can reassure visitors by displaying recognizable safety and security seals, especially those from third-party trust and safety organizations.

Finally, retailers should consider adding information to their FAQ sections about the steps their company takes to encrypt data and protect the privacy of

customer data. With so many people concerned about data breaches, this reassurance could become a point of distinction between their site and their competitors’.

Make Paying Simple One of the ways consumers might be guarding their credit card details this season is by using an online wallet, so that they can avoid the risk that exists whenever payment details are entered online. E-commerce sites that haven’t yet incorporated PayPal, Google Wallet and ApplePay, should do so now – before the holiday rush begins. Offering these alternate payment methods has conversion benefit that goes beyond transactional safety. For most people, selecting one of these options simplifies and speeds up the checkout process. Instead of having to dig out their credit card from their wallet and strain to read the well-worn numbers, shoppers can simply log in to their online wallet account, pick one of their previously stored payment methods, select their already entered shipping details and complete the transaction with far less hassle than entering all their details on the merchant site from scratch. This is especially useful for shoppers using non-desktop devices – a segment that is growing year after year.

Beef Up Online Customer Support Holiday buyers have all sorts of questions and anxieties that don’t exist in retail stores, like where the item will be shipped from, whether a specific delivery date can be guaranteed, how fragile items will be packaged, whether a promotional code can be used on sale items and how the sizing on certain item works. Retailers should be asking themselves: When was the last time I reviewed my FAQ section to make sure it has the most up-to-date answers to these questions?

For many digital marketers, their FAQs were written when the last site redesign was done and haven’t been updated since. Enhancing an online help center is something anyone can do in just a few hours that can increase sales this holiday season. One way is to talk to their telephone service staff and get a list of all the questions that come in. Those should all be answered in a website’s FAQs. Include information about returns, exchanges, gift receipts, transactional security and shipping policies, and make sure that customers can easily find that information. Additionally, site owners should add a “need help?” link at key points along a site’s conversion path,

linking to the FAQ section and including a telephone number for those who are interested in calling. If time and resources permit, retailers may also want to add a live chat feature to give buyers another way to connect.

Finally, don’t forget to let visitors know what hours a customer support team is available to answer questions.

Have a Plan for Bringing Shoppers Back People coming to a site are all at different stages of the buying cycle, and there are lots of reasons they might leave before making a purchase. Whether they leave after browsing a few items, or abandon a cart during the checkout process, there are some fairly simple tactics that brands can put into place before the holiday rush to help customers complete their purchases.

First, they should consider adding a behavior-based email capture form or last-chance offer that will appear as a light-box popover, triggered by specific exit indicators like the movement of the mouse to the top of the browser. Companies like Bounce Exchange can get this technology set up on a site in very little time, giving site owners the chance to capture visitors’ email addresses before they leave the site. Once visitors’ emails are collected, marketers can send them a link back to their shopping carts, reminding them to return and complete their purchases. If time and resources allow, businesses can set up an abandonment recovery email series that nudges the visitor back to their site with timely reminders and incentives.

Gather Data and Track Success (and Shortcomings) While these tips can help improve conversions this holiday shopping season, none of them can be a substitute for good planning. The big e-commerce heavyweights spend 10 months gathering data, profiling visitors and customers, optimizing conversion paths and running tests. Come November, their sites are locked and loaded, with no unplanned changes going live until after the holiday rush. Learn from them by gathering as much data as you can about your visitors and their purchase behavior this holiday season, so that you can start 2015 armed with the data you need to plan for an even better holiday shopping season next year.

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

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Holiday Retargeting in Focus Get the most out of each website visitor with these holiday retargeting tips for Google, Facebook, Twitter and more at

wsm.co/rtarget2014 .com

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Net

ADVERTISING THE DIGITAL KEY TO

KEYWORDS Keep an Eye on the Competition

By Derek Schou, Associate Editor

With so many competing products in the digital marketplace, the difference between success and failure often comes down to how a product is advertised. More than ever before, keywords are making the difference.

When deciding upon the optimal terms and phrases for advertising a product (or service) it is important to not only understand which keywords are currently being used to promote similar products, but also which have been used successfully in the past, by both the advertiser and its competition. Luckily, there are a variety of solutions to help.

SEMrush

Big List of Free Keyword Tools Just in time for the holiday rush, Website Magazine has updated its exhaustive list of great keyword research tools that won’t cost Internet professionals a cent at wsm.co/ktools14

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Competitive research is a key component to successful business today.

SEMrush’s keyword capabilities not only enable users to find the most relevant and actionable keywords for their SEO and PPC campaigns, but also allows search marketers to see which keywords are performing best (and worst) for their competition.

It is, however, important for companies to understand that keywords that excel for organic search may not have the same success in the PPC realm. SEMrush’s Keyword Research feature delivers in-depth analysis on all keywords in their system in regard to their usefulness for both PPC and organic search.

Cost: SEMrush has five plans available to users: Enterprise ($499/month), Guru ($149.95/month), PRO: recurring ($69.95/month), PRO: 1 month ($79.95) and Custom.

Further reading: Check out “Weekend Warrior: Spy on the Competition (Using SEMrush)” at wsm.co/spybiz. .com

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SpyFu Like SEMrush, SpyFu also analyzes a company’s competition for their keyword use, but what separates the platform is SpyFu’s ability to go back in history and provide a list of more than eight years of Google AdWords and organic ranking history. Considering the amount of influence that keywords have in SEO and advertising, understanding what has been successful as well as what has been unsuccessful in the past can position a brand for success in the future.

Cost: SpyFu has three plans available: Basic ($79/month or $599/year), Professional ($139/month or $899/year) and Agency ($999/month or $9,995/year).

Further reading: Discover, “10 Amazing Results of Combining SEO & PPC) at wsm.co/10seoppc.

KeywordSpy Similar to the previous two keyword tools mentioned, KeywordSpy analyzes which keywords a brand’s competition is using as well as how they are performing, delivering detailed reports back to the user. Where KeywordSpy excels is in the amount of detail that each report provides.

In order to make the best decisions, companies need as much information as possible. KeywordSpy delivers detailed reports with critical keyword insights including the highest cost per click, cost per day as well as most clicks per day and largest cost per click change.

Cost: With five total packages available for companies to purchase, KeywordSpy has a wide variety of options that vary within each package. Packages start as low as $89.95/month and range north of $995/month for the most expensive one.

Further reading: To see what America’s fastest growing companies spend on Google AdWords each year, check out “PPC Nation” at wsm.co/ppcnation.

A Never-Ending Watch While a great deal of the general public may not realize that what they are typing into their favorite search engines are indeed keywords, it’s vital that companies analyze not only which keywords are working for them but also for their competition. After all, if you don’t stay one step ahead you risk falling two steps behind.

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Social Media

MAVENS

Social Media Intelligence:

IT’S NOT BIG DATA, IT’S PRECISE DATA

By Rich Pasewark

Social media data continues to grow at enormous rates each day, month and year. In fact, Facebook indicates that its system alone processes 2.5 billion pieces of content and 500-plus terabytes of data daily (and counting). That growth, however, contributes to the challenge of capturing, measuring and extracting insights from the big data produced on social networks.

After all, both the sources from which the data originates and the existing processes to gather the insights don’t always fit the same mold as other customer data, such as sales figures or customer relationship management (CRM) records.

So what is the right approach for social media intelligence? The answer is counter intuitive: thinking about precise insights versus pure big data.

Leading marketers realize that insights gained from social media are not a result of capturing every post, tweet or blog mention, but rather zeroing in on the conversations that matter. With more than 400 million tweets being produced each day, it is essential to determine which ones meet an enterprise’s set criteria – like about its brand, profile, sentiment or influence – in order to generate meaningful insight.

What’s more, it isn’t necessary to store every mention to derive context or meaning for a brand. Identifying and analyzing only the content that matters should be the number one priority as it enables marketers and 36

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customer support teams to respond efficiently and effectively in the real-time model of social.

Marketing’s X-Factor As marketing teams evolve, the key drivers of change are the increasing prominence of customer data and the rise of marketing automation. To inform datadriven decision making and program execution, marketing teams are responding by adding new tools and staff that understand how to work on large-scale automation initiatives.

For traditional CRM systems the focus is on the customer record. For marketers the goal of compiling this information has been to create a unified view of the customer from multiple records, including opinions from surveys, purchase behavior, demographic and even psychographic elements. Tying this information together is not easy, but the customer is still the common denominator.

Social media intelligence, however, changes this dynamic, as the data is more voluminous, anonymous and unprompted. Today, these same marketing teams have instant access to customers and customer segments, and understand immediately how they are feeling or reacting to something related to that company’s brand or product. That means with proper information, marketing teams can determine what immediate action the brand should take, if any.

Harness the Value While the promise of social media intelligence is clear, it does create a challenge from a data perspective.

Why? Social media data is unstructured. It doesn’t follow a traditional pattern of customer records, and it doesn’t follow the same construct as traditional market research data. For a long time, marketing teams have simply allowed this data to exist in a vacuum — failing to communicate and act on these customer records for the betterment of their enterprises.

Today, however, there is increasing pressure to combine social media intelligence with other forms of marketing data. This is where the sheer volume of content becomes a challenge.

With social data increasing exponentially, IT and marketing teams don’t have the infrastructure within their organizations to process and categorize this vast amount of data to drive decisions.

Thus, the emergence of software as a service (SaaS) marketing platforms, which constantly capture and categorize that information for ready access, make a great difference for the data-driven marketer. These tools enable precise focus on the content that matters – without the overhead of systems, storage and support.

“

lytics platform to capture information about the product and the brand at specific timeframes before and after launch. Doing so enables marketers to find insights that come from specific market segments such as moms, millennials, geo-located customers, advocates, detractors, and other categories and combinations.

Once this information is captured, it is important to be able to quickly showcase it in a dashboard or report that the marketer can leverage for internal and executive audiences. Frequently, this is done through the use of a social intelligence dashboard. Because marketers have many campaigns and programs in place at any given time, it is important to set up many of these intelligence dashboards in order to match a specific business objective or answer a specific business question. Again, the key is to get relevant insights that can drive action in a timely manner, using tools and best practices that help show meaningful results.

Today, there is increasing pressure to combine social media intelligence with other forms of marketing data.

IT and technical marketing experts have an awesome opportunity to educate marketers on how to harness relevant insights from social media. Many marketers initially focus on data counts and basic measurements, instead of focusing on the rich data that matters. Proper tools and practices can enable marketers to hone in on the most influential and insightful data, and add timely support to modern customer relationships.

In order to focus on acquiring precise data, marketers must understand how to harness key information.

By adapting social intelligence to business practices, it is easier to illuminate the most valuable information. For example, a marketer focused on an upcoming digital marketing campaign should configure their social ana-

“

Zero-In on Relevancy

Get the “Right” Results

While marketers are shifting spend to social media intelligence, now is the perfect time for data experts and marketing savvy technologists to step in and guide enterprises to optimize the tools and best practices that can deliver actionable insight.

The most important thing to remember is that social marketers should create specific examples of leveraging social listening and analytics platforms with use cases, and determine which type of precise data will drive insights. Once that practice is established, take advantage of integrating those insights with other customer data, such as CRM or research results. This will drive more successful campaigns and programs – enabling efficient and effective management of the promise of big data and the necessity of precision.

Rich Pasewark is the former CEO of Visible Technologies, where he brought more than two decades of experience as a business leader, strategist and software visionary for industry leaders such as Quark, Adobe and EDS.

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READY TO BE SOCIALLY INTELLIGENT? Discover the top platforms to gather and act on social media intelligence at

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Software

EVERYWHERE

TIME TO REMODEL A Retailer’s Guide to Replatforming

By Scott Houchin

Platform obsolescence is top-of-mind for online retailers. With digital channels driving sales growth, rapid mobile adoption and an impetus on customer experience, new consumer touch points create a wealth of opportunities but also present serious challenges.

Replatforming, the migration of content, data and digital assets from one website platform to another, is a seemingly insurmountable task but is a necessary process for e-commerce organizations to keep pace with current technologies. Replatforming alone can reduce product launch times, ensure product data quality across channels, simplify and standardize customer experience and preserve brand reputation through improved catalog operations.

A replatforming lifecycle is a constant agenda item for CMOs, CTOs and their digital teams in order to keep from falling behind the technology curve. If you’re like most retailers today, you fall into one of three categories: just completed, in process or considering a replatforming.

What Drives Replatforming?

According to a 2013 survey conducted by Forrester, 66 percent of e-businesses planned to increase technology investments in 2014, and more than half of respondents identified their e-commerce platform as a 38

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top investment priority. Clearly, organizations understand the need to make faster decisions in this global environment, but also need the underlying platforms to support the same urgency.

The technology drivers for website replatforming are threefold. Mobile has become a priority, and for many, the “mobile first” channel drives all other e-commerce channels. Personalization and dynamic content are also “must haves” in the next-generation digital purchase experience for brands that seek to provide personalized and relevant experiences that customers expect. Finally, social channels are also driving website replatforming.

It’s a requirement today to integrate customers’ various social interactions with a site’s products, services, support and community engagement.

Forgotten Science and Art The question becomes: What’s the best approach to replatforming? First, recognize that most client-side digital marketers and IT organizations embark on this journey only a few times in their career. Replatforming is immensely rewarding, but it is a taxing effort to launch a new website so missed timelines and unmet expectations are common with inexperienced, nonintegrated teams. Historically, marketers embraced the art (e.g. design and content) of websites while IT teams delivered the science (e.g. the technology). It’s the

common left-brain/right-brain chasm that frequently leads to replatforming failures.

Too often, current customer-facing systems (e.g. retail stores, customer service centers, etc.) require Web and data integration, which often bring replatforming programs to a much larger scale, budget and delivery schedule. Staying focused on the balance of marketing and IT for the core digital purchase experience is a key tenant to keep a program on-task.

Old-school approaches to replatforming and inexperienced staff lead to suboptimal planning for modern replatforming programs. To ensure your replatforming project is air-tight, utilize a team of technology, design and operations specialists who grasp the needs and constraints of digital marketers and work closely with the client-side digital team to ensure that any chasm is bridged.

A Lot Rides on the Remodel Recently replatformed e-commerce sites often see a dip in key metrics as users familiarize themselves with the new layout and purchase path. However, a replatforming-gone-bad triggers even greater negative consequences. Search rankings dive, bounce and exit rates increase, revenue and conversion numbers slide, average order size drops, orders are lost and customers look to the competition for a better buying experience.

For many, organic search is likely among their key traffic drivers and indirectly affects conversion rate. A misstep with replatforming could result in a website becoming invisible to Google, Bing, et al. SEO-unfriendly content and URL restructuring would do twofold harm – content would appear irrelevant to Google and Bing, and users directed from search listings would have a greater exit rate. Similarly, exit and bounce rates directly impact the overall conversion numbers. It is important to ensure a new website’s product content is migrated and maximized for search, without losing relevant, natural traffic.

Conversion and revenue might take a hit because of poor on-site search performance as well. Suboptimal business rules for on-site search functionality reduce click-through rates and increase bounce rates. Poor content indexing and high “null” search results lead to customers not finding relevant products, which will reduce conversion and revenue. To avoid these pitfalls, define the strategy to sustain the KPIs during replatforming and use the replatforming effort as an opportunity to improve SEO and on-site search experience

for better search rankings, conversion and revenue.

Lessons Not Learned Working with replatforming specialists who have established best practices can help identify potential pitfalls and mitigate problems that arise, and typically only represent a small percentage of the replatforming budget.

These specialists help assess the existing website, compare it to the needs of the new website and help determine a content strategy. It is likely an enterprise’s entire content archive won’t move to the new website due to information architecture changes, underlying data schema changes or simple brand redesign elements. Some content will be rewritten, some retained as-is and some simply retired. This triage process is referred to as the 3R Strategy (rewritten, retained and retired). In action, it differentiates the content specialist from the systems integrator.

Best Practices for Successful Replatforming Here are several tips to assist in a relaunch: Remember that the critical task of content migration can easily become a disaster. Make sure the marketing team understands the difference between platform execution and site optimization.

Consider using a vendor that specializes in content migration, possesses a strong track record of replatforming and has experience working with systems integrators.

Prepare a replatforming game plan or use a replatforming specialist who helps determine priorities.

Recognize that a replatforming generally takes 12 months to plan and 12-18 months to implement.

Understand that replatforming also presents an opportunity to look at the bigger picture and identify areas aligned to business KPIs that need improvement.

Before you “go it alone” to replatform an e-commerce website, remember that it’s a long process and partners with expertise and a track record in the various aspects of replatforming should be the people site owners are talking with during this on-going replatforming lifecycle.

Scott Houchin leads the digital services and cable and telecom business units at eClerx, ensuring that its clients maximize ROI from their sales, marketing, digital and customer contact organizations.

N OV E M B E R 2014

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EXPERTS SPEAK:

Replatforming Hits & Misses

From which platforms they started on to where they ended up, get first-person accounts of replatforming from retailers just like you at

wsm.co/ecommredo .com

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Web

COMMENTARY

BUST

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By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

Are we in the middle of another tech bubble?

MOVERS & SHAKERS See which tech companies and executives were noted and quoted in this issue of Website Magazine at

wsm.co/nqnov14 40

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Everywhere you look in the digital world, there seems to be another million dollar venture round for a “somewhat” innovative technology, another multi-billion dollar valuation for a company without an actual business model, and another skyrocketing price during an IPO for a company that has never, ever made a penny.

What’s going on?

Second-quarter (2014) venture capital investments totaled $13.8 billion, the most since the fourth quarter of 2000, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. You might just remember what happened back in those heady days of the early ‘Net - they called it a bubble and everything eventually came crashing down. Not all of the stories you may read in Website Magazine’s Movers and Shakers channel (wsm.co/moveshake) are fueling the bubble, but some are - causing many to pause and wonder, if, in fact, this is a bubble, how soon it will pop?

Companies are offering up enormous signing bonuses to developers (or simply acquiring their companies outright), providing insane perk packages for new hires, building lavish offices and throwing grandiose events to amplify the buzz about their products (just see Managing Editor Amberly Dressler’s Oct. 2014 commentary “Drunk on the Keynote Kook-Aid” to understand the severity of the problem). Fortunately, despite often wildly optimistic

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NOVEMB ER 2014

valuations and feel-good perks for new-hires, many in the technology industry are actively encouraging a step back and a more realistic view.

Benchmark Capital’s Bill Gurley recently told the Wall Street Journal, “The venture capital community or start-up community is taking on an excessive amount of risk right now … unprecedented since ‘99,” — an ominous date in the tech world as it marked the peak of the dot-com bubble. Gurley is not alone in his sentiment.

Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson noted in a blog post that “we have multiple portfolio companies burning multiple millions of dollars a month,” and adding that he is urging his CEOs to cut back on spending and double down on their business models. Valley investor and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz also joined in, warning of how the recent spate of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) would cease.

“When market turns, M&A mostly stops,” he tweeted, a reference to big buying sprees such as Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp and Microsoft’s recently announced $2.5 billion deal for Minecraft. “(Then) nobody will want to buy your cash-incinerating start-up.

There will be no Plan B. VAPORIZE.” If there is a bubble, it will likely be far less severe than the previous one. Why? More attention is paid today to the business fundamentals, and many startups are encouraged to focus more on the quality of product rather than the efficacy of its marketing. There is also better technology today, it’s in higher demand and there’s greater digital usage in general. There are many things different this time around and we’re in a far more stable place than 1999 and 2000. Perhaps those in the Web and technology industry really did learn something from the last bubble-induced crash, not to mention from the recession.

Oftentimes, however, it’s common to see companies take a massive funding round just to expand, going into international markets just to show a strong business (taking on an increasingly optimistic tone with each dollar) to keep their virtual head above water for another funding round. Perhaps a bubble is exactly what’s needed. Just maybe it will shake out the fakers and drive another exciting round of innovation, a Web 3.0 if you will, focused on solutions that better serve digital customers, employees of those brands and the VCs that fund them. Will history repeat itself?

Maybe, but by focusing on the fundamentals, at least it can be delayed.

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