Web Engagement News & Articles

Last December experts from around the globe predicted that 2011 would be all about Customer Experience, and boy was it. As a result we've seen huge shifts in every major area of B2C. Here's a look back at our related trials and tribulations, as well as some key advice for overcoming challenges in 2012. 

I have been thinking about this column for weeks: what will be the big trends in 2012 in content, content strategy and content marketing? You know what?

My crystal ball is cloudy, my tea leaves are clumped together and my tarot cards are ripped.

I just have no idea. Do you?

Like most of the Internet Giant’s social networking efforts, the reception of Google Plus has been up and down. After a long-awaited debut and a surprisingly positive initial reaction, the smoke is clearing away to reveal a growing nugget of doubt. After all, compared to Facebook, Plus is a ghost town. But wait, should we even be comparing the two? A closer look indicates Google has something different -- and potentially way more powerful -- up its sleeve.

We all (hopefully) use cloud services in some form, but with more apps starting to rely on them, expect Windows 8 to have cloud at the core, along with the endless possibilities of Kinect's motion, audio and lip-reading skills.

The more you integrate your content strategy with other disciplines within digital strategy -- SEO, social media, usability and information architecture -- the more successful it will be.

A colleague, Francesco Gallarotti recently brought the following video to my attention. Take the 9:05 minutes to kindly watch the video first before reading below. 

I found this video to be very interesting and it got me to thinking about personalization and targeted content. Is personalization good? What sort of targeting works best? What about content filtering?

Creating a website structure and defining successful user journeys is an ongoing activity. It is a continually developing process as new technology changes and customer habits, expectations and norms evolve. For example, the variety of websites in the car insurance industry illustrates how each organization arranges their website and user journeys differently.

The first place to start is to identify your top tasks, then create an Information Architecture before defining user journeys.

At the giant search and social media conference Pubcon in Las Vegas, Google’s top Spam cop Matt Cutts said in his talk the company is getting out the knife again.  He reported Google is looking to discern “…what are the things that really matter, how much content is above the fold.”

You may remember the last time Cutts’ team went after low-quality content was with its Panda algorithm, also known as Farmer, that targeted content farms gaining top search hits on “shallow” content.

 We’ve definitely seen many uses for crowdsourcing. From designing to human intelligence tasks to collaboration, crowdsourcing has been a reliable method for getting things done on time and under budget, provided you’re engaging the right community. Recently, we learned about another way to employ crowdsourcing in a way that’s mutually beneficial for all parties -- usability testing.

SugarCRM sweetened things up a bit with today’s release of version 6.3. The latest iteration of the customer relationship management platform demonstrates deeper integration with third party apps, faster feedback for real-time collaboration and tighter admin control.

Twitter has caught a lot of flak over the years for sticking strong to its 140 character limit, but this week the platform showed a bit of flexibility with Stories. The spin-off site showcases interesting tweets and ways users are communicating via the platform. 

Forget about making Forrester's list of the top online customer experience platforms, that's a nice to have. Look instead at Ektron's latest financial report and the launch of its new global community practice to get an idea of where this Web Experience/Web Content Management vendor is headed.

Denmark-based Sitecore is on a roll.  The company said it’s experiencing concurrent expansion in product development, geography and revenue gains that make this a banner year for the web content management system company, which made an early bet on the Microsoft .Net platform. 

Check out our Exclusive interview with Darren Guarnaccia, Sitecore Senior VP of Product Marketing, who speaks about customer engagement taking center stage.

This week in Google Land we talked about some easy ways to engage with your audience via Plus, as well as Chrome's significant growth and a nifty Blogger integration. 

Are you taking full advantage of engaging with customers via social media channels?