Web Experience News & Articles

There’s perhaps been no influence more profound in shaping the customer journey than the social web. I say the social web because influence extends beyond social networks to really account for the wealth of information that your buyers use to become educated customers. In the words of one IBM senior marketing manager: “Buyers have gotten really good at answering their own questions.”

Widen's Four Phases of the Customer Decision Journey

Customer journeys are getting a lot of attention these days. That’s largely because, in designing customer experiences, many companies find it’s helpful to understand the customer’s path to purchase and possible brand loyalty, from a customer’s point-of-view (POV). But a company has its own POV, trying to determine the likelihood that someone will become a customer. As digital asset management (DAM) vendor Widen looks at both POVs, CMSWire asked it to provide some insight on its approach.

There are two competing approaches to marketing analytics, but only one points to the future.

As smartphones and tablets become the device of choice for many online shoppers there's also a e-commerce movement for retailers to adopt an app-based shopping model. As a result, more businesses should reconsider how they engage and connect mobile customers.

This week we continued our exploration of customer journeys and took a look at making the most of our customer data. Over in social business we talked narrative building, while in information management we went over the ways to build confidence in your SharePoint governance strategy. And remember, Memorial Day weekend means more time to read!

By anyone’s standards Salesforce has had a very good quarter in difficult economic times, reporting a growth in revenues over the quarter of 28% to US$ 893 million, just US$ 100 million shy of its first US$ 1 billion quarter, which CEO Marc Benioff says is on the way.

With only a couple of weeks until Apple's big developer event, the company has to match Google's feature-heavy Android and app updates from I/O, Microsoft's new media-friendly Xbox One and keep generating hardware magic in what is becoming a highly predictable market. 

A sales response within five minutes of obtaining an online sales lead can make or break a sale, but only five percent of companies actually respond within that time and many companies mis-estimate their own response times. Those are among the key takeaways from InsideSales.com's report on the speed of sales responses in the Internet age.

The first time I heard the term Big Content, I thought “Oh brother, Are Web CMS and ECM vendors actually sticking the word 'Big' in front of 'Content' in an attempt to jump onto the Big Data bandwagon?” 

This month’s Tweet Jam sought to learn more about the value of the customer journey and the impact that big data may have on the way we develop and evolve the customer journey. In part one, we learned that it isn’t so much how you define your customer journey or the tools you use to map it, but rather it’s important that your customer journey map advances how your company deliver customer experiences. 

Discussing the customer journey is never boring. And this month’s CXMChat was no exception. We learned that the customer experience can be wiggly, there are no obvious answers and that it always helps to “get out of the building” to experience new perspectives. Let's take a closer look at how the discussion unfolded. 

Online marketers spend a ton of time and money collecting visitor data under the pretense of figuring out who their customers are and what they’re looking for. Armed with these insights, they have all they need to make significant strides in improving the customer experience. Instead, many make a couple of tweaks here, a couple of updates there and feel they've sufficiently managed the experience.

When it comes to a Web content management system, there's no end to the amount of features and services customers want or may need in the near future. Bridgeline Digital has released version 5.0 of its iAPPS WCM system, and it's added key features many businesses truly need like mobile authoring, translation and personalization.

The rollercoaster success story of Mailbox, acquired by Dropbox after barely a month in existence, should get heavy email users excited as the iPad version of the app arrives to save their in-box. 

The last decade has seen major disruptions in software, completely reversing the power roles between vendor and user. It’s been said many times that the customer is king, and it couldn't be truer.