Web Experience News & Articles

For many years, there has been an unwritten rule in business that while the customer may be king your number one objective should be to turn them into a pauper.

The long, sordid history of web content management system (Web CMS) complexity is finally catching up with us. End users are revolting and demanding an easier way to manage content because the old ways are just too hard. At the same time, some in the industry are instead touting this complexity as “inherent” or “OK” because that is “just the way it is.”

I disagree, and I’ll bet you do too.

"Techmeme has redesigned," Gabe Rivera founder of the popular technology news site wrote in January 2012. "Drudge Report is now indisputably the web's ugliest news site."

A recent HP Labs study examines how to predict the popularity of an article prior to publishing it online or promoting via social media. The researchers were able to estimate ranges of popularity with an overall accuracy of 84% by considering only article content features.

CMOs and Marketing VPs are primarily focused on 3 goals:

• Connecting to new customers
• Building customer loyalty
• Clearly demonstrating the value of marketing

These goals are not new -- the tactics used to achieve them are.

SurveyMonkey is a great web brand because it is both very reliable and extremely easy to use.

‘Tis the season to reflect on the year that’s quickly coming to a close. Definitive lists of all kinds abound, from Facebook Top 10’s, Amazon’s 10 Best-Selling Books and, of course, Baby Center’s 100 Most Popular Baby Names (hello Sophia and Aiden).

In that spirit, I offer up my own list of sorts: The Content Management Surprises of 2011. So without further ado…

We have some good news, and some bad news. Your website is the top source of new sales leads -- second only to personal connections and referrals, and more than seven times more effective than social media. However, your website still underperforms in terms of lead generation. All of this is according to a new survey by Demandbase, which aimed to learn more about how B2B corporate websites act as lead generation tools.

For digital marketers, creating relevancy is crucial. There are too many channels and too much content that is blindly directed to the masses, and especially with the increased use of mobile phones and tablets, consumers are expecting a personal experience. While the concept of personal computing was somewhat personal, a mobile device is highly personal. Now more than ever, it is critically important for digital marketers to be able to give consumers the right information, in the right format, at the right time and most importantly -- on the device of choice.

Change is the premise of next week's featured event with Forrester Analyst Stephen Powers. To quote Powers, "Enterprises need to forget the single vendor customer engagement dream and wake up to the multi-vendor reality."

There was a time when Web CMS (WCM) platforms were selected based on the needs of IT. It was a technical decision. But today, many marketers are under pressure to deliver more intelligent experiences across more devices, all while integrating with social media channels and numerous other enterprise systems. 

To get a better idea of what you need to consider when defining your Web CMS and Engagement strategy, join Stephen Powers, Principal Analyst at Forrester, and e-Spirit next Wednesday May 18th at 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST / 17:30 GMT for a free webinar entitled Reinventing Your Web CMS Strategy to Support First Class User Experience.

During the event, Stephen will discuss:

• How the Web Content Management maturity model has been changing
• Forrester's market research on the functionality critical for a modern Web CMS -- specifically the "The Seven Cs": content, creation (tools for content contributors), context (personalization), consistency (across online experience), community, channel, and customer intelligence
• How to intelligently approach a customer experience ecosystem that includes DAM, CRM, OMS and Web CMS systems
• Your next steps for defining a best of breed Engagement and CMS strategy

If 2011 promises big changes in your digital strategy, or if you're facing mobile or other engagement challenges, then sign up for this event and benefit from the latest Forrester intelligence.

Web Content Management is, and will continue to be an important component of your web strategy. Who uses it and how it's used is evolving, but that doesn't change the fact that this technology is key to building and maintaining your online customer experience.

The top task identification approach helps you separate the chocolates from the salads and discover what customers really want when they come to your website.

You might recall that in our Open Source Alert at the end of July we mentioned that Squiz (news, site)  said it was working on something top secret.

The secret is out. Squiz is joining the Web Engagement Management (WEM) bandwagon. 

If FatWire’s (news, site) H1 numbers are any indication of Web Engagement's staying power, then we’d say the fans have nothing to worry about. Thanks to strong product delivery, new customers and a strategic partnership, the company reported an exceptional first half of 2010.  

Next time you have a chance to watch someone reading a map, look for the first thing they do. They'll likely do the exact same thing everyone else does: find themselves on the map.

It doesn't matter what kind of map it is, whether it's of their neighborhood or an amusement park. They'll open the map and find something that is personally meaningful, such as their house or their favorite roller coaster.

Psychologists call this 'grounding'—the natural behavior of initially finding a known reference point in a foreign information space. Once the person has grounded themselves, they can then use the starting point to understand the rest of the space.

While grounding helps people adjust to complex situations, it can be detrimental when it happens during the design process. If, while conjuring up an interface, designers ground themselves in the design, they run the serious risk of creating an interface that only they can use.