Despite a steady stream of changes and often volatile shifts in ranking/position, the state of the search marketing industry remains strong. According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization’s (SEMPO) 10th State of the Industry report, which surveyed more than 500 digital marketers and agencies about their online marketing activities across
digital channels, search engine optimization (SEO) is the most prevalent marketing activity for 94 percent of individual marketers/clients and 92 percent of agencies – significantly higher than when the survey was conducted in 2013 http://withDrDavid.com Search-based advertising is also top of mind with today’s enterprises, with 84 percent of agencies/consultants and 83 percent of marketers/clients indicating they run paid campaigns.
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Top 50 SEO Utilities to Boost Your Traffic and Sales
1. 3 Pillars of Social Login
The SMB Content
Marketing Checklist
SEO
Tools
PLUS
TOP 50
INSIDE THIS ISSUE...
Solving the Web’s
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Build Business Models
with a CRO Focus
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Back in the Hopper: The
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Top 9 Tips to Consider When
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Executing a multi-channel business
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4. GET THE
DIGITAL SCOOP
Check out Website
Magazine’s email news-
letters covering search,
e-commerce, social,
design and more at
wsm.co/webscoop.
Stat Watch:
Wealthy Webbies
Enterprise Ready:
Big Data’s Impact on Revenue & Marketing
Small Business Lab:
Content Marketing Checklist
Quiz Time:
This Year’s Biggest ‘Net Developments
Top 50:
SEO Software
Mastering Search:
SEO Roles by Department
E-Commerce Express:
Shopping Cart Recovery
Design & Development:
Solving the Web’s Cruft Problem
Web Commentary:
The Attention Economy
Explore Website Magazine’s
DEPARTMENTS
09
10
12
13
14
16
18
20
40
Payingregularandrigorousattentiontowebsiteperfor-
manceandanalyticsisconsideredfundamentaltothesuc-
cessofeachandeverydigitalenterprise;butit’sonlythe
firststep.Webworkersandtheenterprisesthatemploy
themneedtoknowwheretolookandhowtousethatinformationonceithas
beenfoundtocross-sell,upsell,planandmostimportantly,innovateandmake
measurableimprovements.
THIS MONTH IN WEBSITE MAGAZINE
A Call for New
Visibility Practices
Publishers everywhere are at the mercy of the
“domain average” metric used to establish view-
ability scores, but there are better options.
CRO-Focused Business Models
To create a distinctive advantage over competi-
tors, it has to be done with portions of the busi-
ness they cannot easily inspect or duplicate.
Post-Holiday Email Retention
With bargain and gift hunters galore, the win-
ter months improve retailers’ email lists but the
focus should then shift to retention.
3 Pillars of Social Login
Using social login to build complete customer pro-
files and create seamless experiences requires that
brands understand these key elements.
Using Psychology
to Improve Conversions
While there is no magic formula for content or
design, it is possible to understand a target audi-
ence and which elements prompt their action.
30
32
34
38
36
24
Everyday & Everywhere
Web Analytics
6. GENERAL MANAGER:
David Ruiz
druiz@websitemagazine.com
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF:
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peter@websitemagazine.com
MANAGING EDITOR:
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adressler@websitemagazine.com
ASSOCIATE EDITOR:
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ahowen@websitemagazine.com
*CONTRIBUTORS:
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EJ McGowan
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Stefan Koenig
GRAPHIC DESIGNER:
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ADVERTISING:
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From the
EDITOR
Changing Perspective
on Web Analytics
It’s OK to admit – Web analytics can be confusing (and a bit of a bore).
Except, it’s not; actually, it’s one of the single most important activities today’s
enterprises and marketers can engage in as there is no better (data-based and
repeatedly proven) way to correct what’s wrong and set a business on the
course to success. If your company is serious about making improvements,
analytics is where to start.
What many fail to understand about the practice of analytics is that it
requires detailed attention every day and from every corner of the enterprise.
There needs to be a culture that supports such initiatives, and personnel
committed to its success. Those that do adopt a data-driven culture (focusing
more on the successful completion of goals rather than aggregating vanity
metrics), enable access to meaningful data among key personnel and set
consistent performance benchmarks are those able to make optimal use of
their digital presence.
It’s time to change the industry perspective on Web analytics. In this month’s
featureofWebsiteMagazine,thefocusisonhelpingreadersengageinausefuland
productiveanalyticsinitiative,discovertherighttoolsandtacticstouse,andlearn
how to overcome the implementation hurdles to capitalize on the true power of
analytics. It’s time to start putting analytics to good use in every enterprise.
This issue also includes guidance on many other topics essential to ‘Net
success. Website Magazine readers will learn how to improve their big data
performance, understand how search engine optimization roles vary by com-
pany department and discover ways to eliminate the cruft from their digital
experiences. There are also other very insightful contributions on email mar-
keting, lead generation, viewability and more that should not be missed.
As always, we hope you enjoy this issue and invite you to join us on the
‘Net where our editors and industry contributors explore the topics that mat-
ter most to digital success.
Best Web Wishes,
Peter@WebsiteMagazine.com
Website Magazine
is Growing... Digitally!
In the December 2015 digital “flipbook” edition, ‘Net professionals will have
access to more content than ever before. Expanding our coverage area sig-
nificantly to include additional contributors, special interviews, and software
product and application reviews, as well as a preview of Website Magazine’s
2016 Digital Power Players Awards. Readers can access this special edition (and
the available archive) in its entirety at wsm.co/digitalwm15.
Find Website
Magazine at these
Internet industry
tradeshows.
AffiliateSummit
Jan. 11-12
Las Vegas, NV
NRFBigShow
Jan. 17-19
New York, NY
eTail
Feb. 22-25
Palm Springs, CA
dig
i
t a l
p l a y e r s
c
lub
8. Net
BRIEFS
QUICK HITS
The Perfect
Marketing Email
The perfect marketing email includes percent-off
deals, question marks and 6-10 word subject
lines. This data comes from a Retention Science
report, which shows that 38 percent of custom-
ers are more likely to click an email with a percent-
off deal, while 47 percent are more likely to convert
when compared to emails with dollar-off deals. What’s
more, punctuation marks can have an impact on open
rates, with data showing question marks increase opens
by 44 percent when compared to exclamation points.
The Best Customer
Service Channel Is…
Millennials favor the online world while baby boomers prefer
the offline – at least when it comes to customer service. Ac-
cording to a recent study from Sitecore, millennials are almost
three times more likely to believe personal technology brands
are best in treating their customers, while baby boomers are
nearly 80 percent more likely to believe brick-and-mortar
retailers treat their customers best. Regardless of channel,
businesses need to make customer service a priority, as 89
percent of the study’s respondents said they would switch
brands if they received poor customer service.
QUESTION
OF THE MONTH
$33 Million Social intelli-
gence company Brandwatch has complet-
ed a $33 million Series C funding round led
by new investor Partech Ventures. The fund-
ing will be used to accelerate the develop-
ment of the company’s core technologies
and products.
$2 Billion In an acquisition re-
portedly valued at $2 billion, IBM is purchas-
ing The Weather Company’s B2B, mobile and
Web-based properties including Weather.com.
The acquisition is expected to be used for
IBM’s new Watson IoT (Internet of Things) Unit
and Watson IoT cloud platform.
$5.9 BillionIn a blockbuster
acquisition in the mobile gaming indus-
try, Activision Blizzard has entered into an
agreement to acquire King Digital Enter-
tainment (the maker of Candy Crush) for
$5.9 billion. Activision Blizzard expects the
acquisition will position the company as a
global leader in interactive entertainment
across mobile, console and PC platforms.
?
$ WHO GOT PAID?
Whatisyourcompany’sdigitalresolu-
tionfortheNewYear,andwhy?
To answer this question and possibly be
included in an upcoming issue of Website
Magazine, visit wsm.co/decqotm.
Data Scientists
Winning at Life & Work
Data from Glassdoor reveals that data scientists have the best
work-life balance with a rating of 4.2 out of 5.0, followed by SEO
managers (4.1) and talent acquisition specialists (4.0). That said,
work-life balance has actually decreased in recent years, with
data showing overall work-life satisfaction ratings falling from 3.5
in 2009 to 3.2 in 2015.
10. Have tips, stories, or funding or acquisition news to share?
Tweet us @WebsiteMagazine
7 Plugins Every WordPress
Site Should Use
wsm.co/7plugins
A fast, secure and user-friendly
site is crucial for better search
positioning, user engagement
and to drive conversions. These
WordPress plugins can help Web
professionals achieve just that.
Communities for Care,
Content and Conversions
wsm.co/sapcare
Ratings and reviews are an inte-
gral part of today’s shopping ex-
perience. To help retailers gener-
ate the content they need, SAP
Jam unveiled a new Communi-
ties solution in October.
Need More Customer Data?
Improve Your Design
wsm.co/desdata15
For most businesses, customer
data is as good as revenue. Not
every enterprise knows, however,
just how much a website’s design
can impact the personal informa-
tion a visitor decides to disclose.
WEBTECHWATCH#
+ LaunchKit:
The new Super User Dashboard (https://launchkit.io/users) from
LaunchKit provides mobile developers visibility into the users who are
opening/engaging with their app the most. Just install the open-source
SDK, define the “Super User” and LaunchKit will track their activity
including app opens, total time in app, taps on screen and screens
loaded, all without fingerprinting or advertising identifiers. Develop-
ers can also group their users by quality and target those users with
specific messaging.
POPULARWITHWMREADERS
+
APP FOCUS
Instagram
Unveils
Boomerang
Instagram is making images even better with
its new mobile app, dubbed Boomerang. Us-
ers can leverage the app to stitch a burst of
photos together into a high-quality mini video
that plays forward and backward. What’s
more, users have the ability to share their
Boomerang videos to Instagram and Face-
book directly from the app.
DiscovermoreappsatApplicationMagazine.com.
Net
BRIEFS
+ +
11. DECEMBER 2015 | | 9.com
U.S.-baseddevelopersearnmoreannuallythananyother
country($89,631.68),butdonothavethemostpurchasing
powerastheycanonlybuyroughly20,000BigMacswith
thatamount,whiletheirpeersintheUkrainecanpurchase
about22,000hamburgerswiththeir$26,190.48salary.
(StackOverflow,2015)
MicrosoftCorp.,AppleInc.,GoogleInc.andfive
othertechfirmsnowaccountformorethana
fifthofthe$2.1trillioninprofitsthatU.S.
companiesareparkinginlow-taxcountries.
(Bloomberg,2015)
Dell’s2015purchase($67billion)ofdata
storagecompanyEMCisthelargest
tech-specificacquisitionever,followedby
Facebook’s2014acquisitionofWhatsAppfor
$19billion.
(Dell,2015)
$139,500
AverageannualtechwagesarethehighestinCalifornia
($139,500),followedbyMassachusetts($121,000),
Washington($119,300),NewJersey($111,600)andthe
DistrictofColumbia($105,600).
(CompTIA,2015)
1
20,000
$2.1 Trillion
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has the tech world’s
highest ratio of CEO pay to median worker pay –
earning 615 times (or about $85 million) an average
Microsoft worker’s salary (or roughly $137,000) ac-
cording to 2015 Glassdoor data.
While Nadella is not yet one of the richest peo-
ple in tech (his initial pay package likely skewed the
ratio), Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison’s pay
ratio isn’t far behind at 573:1.
Oracle’s Ellison also sits second on a list of 100
tech billionaires and millionaires – with an estimated
net worth of $50 billion. Microsoft Co-Founder Bill
Gates tops the list ($80 billion).
While tech titans like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($48
billion), Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg ($41 billion)
and Google’s Larry Page ($33 billion) round out the
top five wealthiest people in tech, there are some
industry disruptors on the list who weren’t there as
recently as a year ago.
Uber Co-Founders Garrett Camp and Travis Ka-
lanick, for example, have a reported net worth of $6
billion each, but were not on any Forbes list prior to
2015, proving the tech industry is still quite lucrative
for upstarts. This is especially true for software.
In fact, Q3 2015 data from Pricewaterhouse Coo-
pers indicates that despite being down 17 percent in
the number of funding deals, the software industry
receives the highest level of funding for all industries,
receiving $5.8 billion going into 412 deals.
Wealthiest
Webbies
615:1
Stat
WATCH
12. | DECEMBER 201510 | .com
Consider this: According to an IBM report on big data,
nearly 15 petabytes of data are created each day – that’s
eight times more than all of the information in all of the
libraries in the United States. Facebook alone processes
10 terabytes of data daily. For perspective, the entire
Cornell Law Library is only one terabyte of information.
With this influx of information, it’s no wonder ex-
ecutives are overwhelmed, with publications running
headlines like “BIG Data Equals BIG Headache For Ex-
ecutives” (Forbes) and surveys showing that companies
still aren’t applying data adequately. A report by the
Economist Intelligence Unit, for example, cites that 35
percent of executives lack the understanding of how to
apply big data, and 62 percent of chief information of-
ficers (CIOs) report that big data buzz has resulted in
unrealistic expectations from executives.
However, harnessing big data – especially the ex-
ternal factors that impact business performance – is
critical to maintaining a competitive advantage in to-
day’s rapidly changing business landscape. The trick
is being able to take the extraordinary amounts of data
and boil it down to the information that truly affects
business performance and operating decisions. Under-
standing how these key micro- and macro-economic
factors can improve financial performance and deci-
sion making is critical for companies seeking to come
out on top in today’s highly volatile market, and the
good news is that new technologies are making it easy
to pinpoint the factors that correlate directly to a busi-
ness – without the need for statistical degrees or a so-
phisticated understanding of economics.
Armed with critical information on how external
drivers like foreign markets, commodity prices, manu-
facturing activity, consumer behavior, online traffic
and weather data impact performance, businesses
are poised to improve decisions in several key areas,
including sales and demand forecasting, identifying
marketing opportunities and threats and ultimately
enhancing financial performance.
Sales and demand forecasting
Accurate sales and demand forecasts are imperative to
making smart decisions companywide, yet most quar-
terly forecasts miss the mark by 13 percent, accord-
ing to research from KPMG International. That means
decisions on supply purchases, product offerings and
availability, pricing, promotions and more are based on
erroneous assumptions.
Typically, such forecasts have been created using
internal insights into sales and demand from previous
quarters, but correlating those internal insights with
the external factors that truly drive demand is crucial
to improving these forecast measures.
For example, Tiffany & Co., which obtains half of
its sales outside the U.S., attributes nearly seven per-
cent of its May-July losses this year to changing cur-
rency rates. Additionally, the global demand for luxury
diamonds declined significantly during the month of
August thanks to a slowdown in China, the world’s
second largest economy. By integrating such informa-
tion into sales and demand forecasts, companies are in
a better position to plan for and react to such changes
in the global economy.
RaceTrac Petroleum, for example, was able to pre-
dict its foot traffic with 99 percent accuracy by exam-
ining how external factors impacted its sales, finding
that weather was a particular determinant to traffic
patterns and sales of key items. By incorporating its
sales and vendor data with external drivers of perfor-
mance, RaceTrac now stocks its shelves based on a
more complete picture of business performance and
has improved its forecast accuracy and financial per-
formance as a result.
Big Data’s Impact
on Revenue & Marketing
By Rich Wagner, President & CEO of Prevedere
Big data has been a hot topic for years,
butfewcompaniesknowhowtoharness
the unprecedented amount of available
information for bottom-line benefits.
Enterprise
READY
13. Marketing opportunities and threats
Incorporating big data in the form of external
insights into sales and demand forecasting also
drives smarter marketing decisions. Knowing how
demand changes in light of changing weather,
changing consumer confidence levels and chang-
ing disposable income levels allows companies to
price more competitively – running promotions
when interest wanes and keeping prices steady
during strong markets.
Likewise, such analysis is vital for determining
when to introduce new products. For example, a car
manufacturer that knows it can expect declining sales
three months after housing costs start to fall may want
to hold off on introducing a new model until housing
prices start to rebound. If at the same time it knows
that used car sales surge in similar conditions, it may
want to encourage dealers to stock up on used inven-
tory to meet increased demand.
A clearer picture of companywide performance
Internal performance data plays an important role
in helping executives better understand how their
company performed year over year (YOY). Yet with-
out incorporating external drivers into this analysis,
financial teams will only understand a portion of the
factors that impact bottom-line revenue.
Today, there are millions of data sets from orga-
nizations and governments available. Companies must
make sense of this big data and integrate it into their
internal forecasting process to create a reliable set of
economic indicators that reveal the ebb and flow of
customer demands. With this data, they can better plan
for “what-if” scenarios, predict performance and com-
municate potential changes.
A seamless forecasting process
Businesses large and small are constantly faced
with the challenge of how to better predict com-
pany performance. With the vast amount of exog-
enous data available, executives now have access
to the information they need to make smarter
decisions regarding sales and demand forecasts
and budgets. Making sense of that data and cor-
relating it to business performance is the critical
challenge now faced by corporate executives, but
smart technologies are making this information
more accessible than ever before.
14. | DECEMBER 201512 | .com
In fact, The Content Marketing Institute reveals there has
beena10percentincreaseinbusinesstoconsumer(B2C)
marketers who document their content strategy over the
lastyear(37percentversus27percent).What’smore,48
percent of B2C marketers meet with their teams either
daily or weekly to discuss their content plan.
In order for small business (SMB) owners to keep
pace with the competition it is imperative that they are
equally as strategic as their big-brand counterparts. With
the New Year right around the corner, there is no better
timetostartplanning,andthechecklistbelowprovidesa
great starting point:
TakeInventory– Begin by taking a look at 2015’s
content. What type of campaigns garnered positive
results and which were virtual flops? When taking
inventory of previous initiatives, look at the content
of each campaign as well as the format and channel
it was distributed in. For example, did infograph-
ics resonate better than videos? Did lists work bet-
ter than informative topics in email campaigns? Did
Facebook posts get more shares at night?
Scope Out the Competition – The competition
can be a big inspiration. Research, however, must
go beyond a competitor’s blog. Don’t forget to look
at email campaigns (this is why it’s a good idea to
signupforyourcompetitor’semaillist),socialposts,
video content and more. For instance, did the com-
petition have success with a social contest? How
often did they create videos? Did their blogging rely
on contributor posts?
What Does Your Audience Want? – Audiences
leave clues everywhere about the type of content they
prefer, but it’s up to marketers to discover them. One
channelsuretoofferusefulinsightissocial.Simplytype
in business-related keywords on networks like Twit-
tertofindoutwhatconsumersaretalkingabout,then
create content around those topics. Moreover, look to
frequently asked questions that could be repurposed
into an informative blog post. A pet store owner who
getsalotofinquiriesaboutthebestwaytoremovepet
stainsfromcarpets,forexample,maywanttoconsider
writinga“HowTo”articleonthetopic.
Brainstorm – After conducting the aforementioned
research it is time to brainstorm. Think about new
contentideas,angles,formatsandchannels,anddon’t
forget that some content can be repurposed. In the
previous example of a “How To” article for remov-
ing pet stains, the business owner could repurpose
the topic by creating an instructional video, and/or
makinganemailcampaignthatfeaturestheproducts
needed for the process.
Lackinginspiration?Foravarietyoftoolstohelpbrain-
storming sessions, visit wsm.co/stormtools.
CreateaContentCalendar–It’stimetoputideas
on paper and create a content calendar for 2016; and
don’tforgettotakeholidaysandcompanycelebrations
into consideration when making one. Keep in mind
thatwhileitisimportanttofilloutthecalendarascom-
pletelyaspossible(especiallythefirstquarter),itisalso
necessary to leave a little room for flexibility, as cam-
paignsmaychangeastheyearprogresses.
Assign Tasks – Once the content calendar is cre-
ated,itistimetoshareitandtentativelyassigntasksto
team members. This makes each colleague aware of
whatisrequiredofthemsotheycanstartbrainstorm-
ing ideas for their assignments.
Track Results and Revaluate – To truly succeed
in2016itisimportanttotrackresultsastheyeargoes
forward.Byreviewingcampaignresultseachquarter,
marketers can continuously optimize their strategies.
Don’t know what to track? Check out this list of 29 es-
sentialcontentmarketingmetricsatwsm.co/basic29.
It can be easy to get inundated with tasks during the
holiday rush, but it is important for SMB owners to set
aside time to prepare for the upcoming year. Creating
a content marketing plan is a good starting point be-
cause it can help shape everything from email to social
(and even search!) campaigns.
The SMB Content
Marketing Checklist
By Allison Howen, Associate Editor
Brands have become very strategic with
their content marketing plans.
Small
BUSINESS LAB
15. DECEMBER 2015 | | 13.com
Every year is a big year in the tech industry – the ideas
become more innovative, the strategies get savvier and
theunthinkablebecomesareality;2015wasnodifferent.
From the introduction of numerous new generic top
level domains (gTLDs) like .tech and .sex to the unveil-
ing of “Buy” buttons on major social networks like Face-
book and Twitter, each week of 2015 had more than
one headline-making story.
Although it may be difficult for busy Web profession-
als to keep up with all of the latest digital developments
when occupied with their day-to-day business tasks,
Website Magazine is here to keep ‘Net professionals in
the loop. In fact, by visiting WebsiteMagazine.com, visi-
tors can find a daily roundup of each day’s top tech sto-
ries and get this news delivered to their inbox by signing
up for weekly email newsletters that cover the topics of
e-commerce, search, social, design and more.
In the meantime, find out how in the loop you
actually are by testing your knowledge of the top
tech developments in 2015 with Website Magazine’s
December’s Quiz Time.
Get the answers to this month’s Quiz Time
by visiting wsm.co/qtdec15 or by scanning
the QR code on the left.
1. What is the name of Google’s new parent company?
a. The Search Justice League
b. Zebra
c. Alphabet
d. Online Architect
Cheat sheet: wsm.co/googleparents
2. Which commerce plugin did WordPress’s parent
company, Automattic, acquire in 2015?
a. OrderStorm
b. WooCommerce
c. Ecwid
d. SalesCart
Cheat sheet: wsm.co/wmbigmovers
3. Whichsocialnetworkgaveemojisthehashtag
treatmentin2015?
a. Instagram
b. Facebook
c. Twitter
d. All of the above
Cheat sheet: wsm.co/emojipound
4. Which big-name tech company unveiled a stock
photo service?
a. Adobe
b. Microsoft
c. Twitter
d. Yahoo
Cheat sheet: wsm.co/stocknew
5. What is the name of Amazon’s new product discovery ser-
vice that features a pinboard-style design (similar to Pinterest)?
a. Amazon Closet
b. Amazon Inspires
c. Discover by Amazon
d. Amazon Stream
Cheat sheet: wsm.co/amazonpin
Quiz
TIME
TopTechDevelopments
of2015
16. Despite a steady stream of changes and often volatile shifts in ranking/
position, the state of the search marketing industry remains strong.
According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization’s
(SEMPO) 10th State of the Industry report, which surveyed more than 500
digital marketers and agencies about their online marketing activities across
digital channels, search engine optimization (SEO) is the most prevalent mar-
keting activity for 94 percent of individual marketers/clients and 92 percent of
agencies – significantly higher than when the survey was conducted in 2013.
Search-based advertising is also top of mind with today’s enterprises, with 84
percent of agencies/consultants and 83 percent of marketers/clients indicating
they run paid campaigns.
What’s interesting about the report is that it reveals marketers are gradu-
ally diversifying their digital efforts. In relation to social media, for example, 65
percent of marketers and 66 percent of agencies managed social media (with
Facebook Ads and Facebook Promoted Posts garnering the most use). Email also
remains an important channel and is used regularly by digital marketers.
What stands out in the report, however, is the intense focus the digital
business world places on all things SEO. While it remains one of the most ef-
fective channels, the practice of search engine optimization can be challenging.
Respondents to the SEMPO report revealed the most significant challenge is
managing the ROI of SEO efforts, staying abreast of search engines’ indexing
algorithms and technology, as well as optimizing destination pages. With so
much competition, and the degree and volume of change in the way search
engines return sites, enterprises are actively seeking solutions that can provide
a surer way to accelerate their SEO success.
In this month’s edition of Website Magazine’s Top 50, readers will find many of
the leading software solutions to support SEO initiatives on any scale. While this
is not a comprehensive list by any means, it will serve marketers and agencies
well as they pursue solutions to enhance effort and performance.
Search Engine
OPTIMIZATION
SOLUTIONS
Top
50
Get a preview of Website Magazine’s upcoming
2016 Digital Power Player Awards at wsm.co/powerplay16.
Digital Power Players
Moz.com
Wordstream.com
KeywordSpy.com
Majestic.com
Raventools.com
SEMrush.com
Conductor.com
Serps.com
Woorank.com
ScreamingFrog.co.uk
SpyFu.com
BrightEdge.com
UpCity.com
Ahrefs.com
Ubersuggest.org
AdvancedWebRanking.com
Searchmetrics.com
Link-Assistant.com
Webceo.com
CognitiveSEO.com
AuthorityLabs.com
Traffictravis.com
BrightLocal.com
HitTail.com
KeywordDiscovery.com
BuzzStream.com
Positionly.com
RankRanger.com
Rioseo.com
Analyticsseo.com
Rankwatch.com
seoClarity.net
Seoadministrator.com
WebPosition.com
Ontolo.com
KeywordEye.com
Axandra.com
Serpfox.com
WebMeUp.com
Linkdex.com
Ranktrackr.com
Seosuite.com
GeoRanker.com
Colibri.io
SheerSEO.com
Trendmx.com
GinzaMetrics.com
Lotusjump.com
Seoeffect.com
Linkfool.com
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RANK WEBSITE
dig
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p l a y e r s
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SERIES
18. | DECEMBER 201516 | .com
Despite the evidence proving SEO’s importance (see
sidebar), not everyone believes it is their personal re-
sponsibility to optimize for placement on the search
engine result pages (SERPs). Although there are so
many front-end and back-end factors accounted for
in Google, Yahoo and Bing’s algorithms as related to
search results page placement, all Web professionals
should know how their individual work may impact
their enterprise’s overall “findability.” While the fol-
lowing will serve as a high-level view of SEO roles
by department, it will help brands encourage (and
educate) their team members to start thinking like an
SEO professional.
Content Writers
There has never been a better time to be a writer. Com-
panies are rapidly hiring both staff writers and guest
contributors (read, “Thanks Content Marketing, Writers
Have Jobs” at wsm.co/jobcm) to develop content at
a rapid clip in hopes of improving user engagement,
lead generation and, ultimately, search rankings.
The problem with asking a writer to write for
SEO, however, is that many of them have to speculate
as to what that means. This could result in an article
stuffed with keywords, for example.
Let it be known: A writer should not change for the
sake of SEO. They should develop content that solves
By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor
SEO
ROLES
byDepartment
The role that search engines play in the
ability for an enterprise to be found online
iswell-known.
Mastering
SEARCH
Sites listed on the first Google search results page generate 92
percent of all traffic from an average search (Chitika).
Onaverage,71percentofsearchesresultinapageoneorganic
click(Moz).
Searchaccountsfor34percentofwebsitetraffic,secondonlyto
direct(Yotpo).
On average, users conduct 12 billion searches per month on the
Web in the U.S. (Comscore).
Organic Matters
19. a problem, is easy to consume (e.g. subtitles, graphics,
etc.), is timely, links to relevant sources, offers a com-
pelling headline and ends when the problem is solved.
It is these elements that will lend themselves to good
content that will be visited often and linked to from
other sites. Headers, keywords, metatags and other
SEO tactics are secondary to good content (addressed
further at wsm.co/seodeets).
That is not to say, however, that there aren’t
ways to improve content’s engagement and viral
potential, like including numbers in headlines,
colorful images above the fold, etc. (read more at
wsm.co/viralboost). There are also ways to make
informed decisions as to what to write about.
What’s trending on Twitter, for example, can
spark a writer’s creativity, while frequently asked
questions (see sidebar) from a support ticket sys-
tem can fuel problem-solving-type content. These
real-time topics should be on top of a set editorial
calendar. Creating an editorial calendar will en-
sure there is always fresh content for users and the
search engines to index and that an organization
covers the breadth of topics it needs to persuade
and engage users.
Further reading, “Why Businesses Should Combine
Content Marketing with SEO” at wsm.co/seowrite.
Social Media Managers
The impact social networks have on how a company
ranks in the search engines may still be up for de-
bate, but at the end of the digital day all good con-
tent needs to be shared. When shared, the chance
of getting more clicks increases – and that is always
beneficial to an enterprise. A social media manager
should use a variety of insights into what to share
and when. Buffer, for example, offers its clients
the Optimal Timing Tool to recognize when posts
should be shared depending on location, number of
posts a day and levels of engagement throughout the
day (see image).
Optimal timing can also be determined within
Facebook Insights (as it shows when a brand’s users
are most active on the social network), but it’s not the
only way to use social to improve SEO.
Further reading, “Quick List of Social Media Best
Practices for SEO” at wsm.co/qlsocial.
Designers & Developers
Website Magazine recently published, “Web
Design for SEO: Building a Strong Foundation” at
wsm.co/seodevs and “SEO Design Lessons from the
Pros”at wsm.co/prodevs, which go into greater detail
about the major impact design and development has
on SEO initiatives. Even still, it bears repeating that
the decisions these digital professionals make impact
everything from how a search engine crawls a website
and how a user is able to interact with it to its device
friendliness and page speed.
Software Buyers
Even though some executives are out of touch with
the day-to-day operations of an enterprise’s SEO ini-
tiatives, they are typically the ones relied on to pur-
chase critical software for a company. Choosing the
wrong content management system, for example,
can hinder a company’s SEO efforts if it has a poorly
developed code base or features archaic default nam-
ing conventions.
Further reading, “A Software Buyer’s Checklist for
SEO” at wsm.co/seocheck2.
Technical SEO is as important as the topics
mentioned above (and addressed frequently at
wsm.co/mastersearch), but different employees in a
company need to know what impact they can have and
are currently having on their employer’s bottom line. The
basics of search is as good as a place to start as any.
Customer
Service&SEO
While service reps aren’t
usually tied to website
content, the service that
they provide can have
a huge impact on SEO.
Read more at
wsm.co/csandseo.
By using Buffer’s Optimal Timing Tool, social
media managers can ensure they schedule posts
for when they are most likely to be shared, clicked
and liked – impacting a piece of content’s traffic
numbers and possible rankings.
+
+
+
20. | DECEMBER 201518 | .com
On one hand, it can signal friction in the checkout
process (e.g. lengthy forms, slow load times, high
shipping costs, login issues, etc.) but on the other,
shopping cart abandonment can merely indicate a
shopper is in the research phase of their buying ex-
perience. Retailers need to look to their analytics to
understand the differences.
This is because the majority of con-
sumers use online shopping carts as a
place to store products and, further, 37
percent of consumers who expect a shop-
ping cart reminder also expect to receive
a coupon to motivate them to finish their
purchase (source: Bronto, 2015).
According to Kahuna’s (a commu-
nication automation company) Doug
Roberge, the issue is that items sit in
shopping carts and fail to get purchased.
Roberge advises that in order to over-
come this, marketers need to be aware
of what’s waiting to be purchased and
leverage tools that help highlight the
best time for a conversion push (see
sidebar). For example, if the item is a
larger purchase, the brand might allow
the customer a bit more time before re-
minding her of the unpurchased item.
“Overcoming e-commerce friction is a
delicate equation that shouldn’t be rushed
or pushed too aggressively, but marketers
can’t wait on the sidelines just hoping cus-
tomerswillmaketheirforgottenpurchases
on their own,” said Roberge.
For luxury or big-ticket items brands
should consider developing content that
informs the potential buyer about the product. An
email about the cost- or energy-saving benefits of a
new washing machine can keep the product top of
mind for the person who left it in their shopping cart.
If opened, this message could serve as the perfect segue
for an email containing a promotional offer (e.g. free
delivery). The re-marketing of products with longer
lifecycles should be more sensitive to the investment
the user will have to make.
When it comes to smaller, more everyday pur-
chases, retailers can increase the frequency in which
they serve retargeted campaigns. While nobody
wants to be bombarded with ads, they are expected.
When best practices are followed (check out, “3 Retar-
geting Best Practices for Retail” at wsm.co/3retarget),
retargeting is a highly effective way to get shoppers
to recover their shopping carts. In fact, a 2014 study
from Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) indicated
that 72 percent of millennials (age 25-34) will pur-
chase products left in their cart if they are offered
them again at a discounted price.
The problem, however, is that the majority of that
same demographic are using ad blocking, according to
Charles Nicholls, SVP of product strategy, marketing
solutions at SAP and, “when they go dark, they go dark
forever.” (For further insights, read, “How Marketers Can
Overcome Ad Blocking” at wsm.co/adblocksos.)
When marketing messages are contextual,
consistent and relevant (the three elements of fix-
ing a broken marketing system as discussed at
SAP hybris Summit in October), however, brands
have a fighting chance.
Relevancy goes beyond retargeting with the
products in a user’s cart. It also responds to user
intent and hybris Profile has a rather unique method
of addressing the natural decay in intent that arises
when someone abandons a website, shopping cart
or other brand experience. For example, if a per-
son is looking at a camera, leaves the site and then
comes back to look at the camera again, the “intent
score” goes up and so too does the frequency of per-
sonalized emails, landing pages, etc. If they come
back to the website without ever viewing the camera
again, the intent score goes down. If someone buys
a different camera altogether, the Profile solution
ends the retargeting entirely.
While retailers think abandoned carts were per-
vasive in 2015, they will likely increase in the New
Year as sites remember carts for longer (see images)
and modern shoppers test which companies will in-
centivize them to complete their purchases. Retailers
not leveraging retargeting are behind the curve, but
simple strategies won’t be enough to lure modern
shoppers to purchase. Creating wishlist capabilities,
intent scores and more will set the bar in 2016.
E-Commerce
EXPRESS
There are two sides, positives and nega-
tives, to shopping cart abandonment.
By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor
Getting Shoppers
to Recover their
CARTS
Oriental Trading Company keeps
shopping carts for 30 days and uses
them to retarget instantaneously
across the Web.
22. There isn’t an exact term for what Simpson
means, but the sentiment is agreed upon by
many in the Web development community.
Between modals, app-install prompts, mo-
bile Web fails, ads, mobile redirects and Eu-
ropean Union (EU) cookie prompts, Web
developers (just like average users) increas-
ingly hate using the Web.
The term that this article will use to describe
thephenomenais“cruft”:thepoorlydesigned,
unnecessarily complicated or unwanted code
and page elements that the average website
includes, which does not contribute to what
the user is trying to accomplish (e.g. read an
article,buyaproduct).Toputthisintocontext
let’s look at an example.
Visitors to the CNN article in Image A wanted to
learn about psychopaths, but before reading they were
required to view and experience social buttons, the
temperature and a terms-of-service modal. That’s cruft.
Loading the article took 200-plus HTTP re-
quests and used approximately 2MB of data, tak-
ing about three seconds to load using Wi-Fi. A test
of this Web page actually indicated that it would
take about 13 seconds to load on an average mobile
network. This example wasn’t selected to single out
CNN, but because it is now representative of the av-
erage Web experience.
So, what is causing the cruft in the CNN example?
A deep dive into code reveals some 200-plus HTTP
requests (ad related and serving tracking/analytics
functions); 25 of which are to different domains.
Since minimizing HTTP requests is a well-known
best practice for mobile Web performance, why do
many mobile websites violate this rule? Money.
Why does CNN show ads? To make money.
Why does CNN include tracking services? To learn
more about the reader, to show targeted ads, to make
money. Why does CNN use social media buttons? To
By TJ VanToll, Developer Advocate at Telerik
Open Web evangelist Kyle Simp-
son recently opined on Twitter
about whether there was a term
for hating the Web more and
more as a user but liking it more
as a developer.
The Web’s
CRUFT PROBLEM
Design and
DEVELOPMENT
A. User engagement can be
impacted negatively when cruft
distracts users from their goals.
23. encourage sharing the article, to get more page views,
to get more ad views, to make money.
Again, this isn’t intended to call out CNN as the
“bad example,” but rather to show a specific model
that has become pervasive for content on the Web.
Developer Brian Rinaldi argued that the content
model of the Web is broken because Web users thor-
oughly devalue content and writers. He contends
that because users refuse to pay for content, publish-
ers must resort to drastic tactics to make money from
their writing.
Many people are attacking the cruft problem, but
interestingly the innovation is mostly coming from
outside the browser world.
Flipboard was perhaps the first successful attempt
at fixing cruft. Flipboard takes content from around
the Web and provides excerpts and links to the full
content. This provides a pleasant browsing experience
without all the cruft.
Flipboard has gone beyond this content pre-
view role and now partners with certain content
providers to display full articles directly within the
Flipboard app — foregoing the browser entirely.
Image B shows the same CNN article in the Flip-
board iOS app. The same content is visible, yet un-
like the browser version, the Flipboard article is
cruft free and loads nearly instantaneously.
Flipboard’s success hasn’t gone unnoticed. Its
business model has been more or less copied by oth-
ers, including Facebook’s Instant Articles and Apple’s
Apple News. The way Web users experience and con-
sume content is changing, so how is the technology
and development community reacting to the cruft
problem and what is being done?
HTTP/2: The HTTP/2 specification offers to sub-
stantially decrease latency on the Web by serving
compressed HTTP headers and loading resources in
parallel over a single TCP connection. Once imple-
mented in browsers, HTTP/2 should substantially
lower the load times of sites relying on a large number
of HTTP requests.
Mobile-friendly: Last year, Google announced that
it will penalize sites that aren’t mobile-friendly in their
search results, and display a “mobile-friendly” label next
tosearchresultsthatmeettheirguidelines.Thisisasmall
tweak, but one that early research shows is having a no-
ticeable impact on how digital experiences are built.
Proxy browsers: Opera Mini has long been acting
as a proxy browser, caching resources on its servers
to reduce the amount of data that needs to be sent
to each individual device. Chrome for Android and
iOS now includes a similar option to help users in-
crease speed on the Web.
Ad blockers: Ad blockers are the primary tool for
attacking the Web’s cruft on desktop devices, but
they have yet to make their way into users’ mobile
workflow, largely because mobile operating system
vendors have actively prevented them. Google has a
fair reason for actively discouraging ad blockers, as
it derives 80-90 percent of revenue from online adver-
tising. Apple has also prevented ad blockers, but now
allows ad-filtering extensions in iOS 9.
A Cruft-Free Future?
Despite these existing cruft-reducing features, this
is still an area ripe for innovation. Why is it that for
publishers the only real monetization option is to
inject bulky ads that produce a worse experience
for everyone? There’s no clear answer here, though
many have spent years searching. While this is by
no means the end of the open Web, it’s time to
clean up the mess.
B. The same article displayed in
Fliboard is now “cruft free.”
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26. Asaresult,payingregularandrigorousattentiontowebsiteper-
formanceandanalyticsisconsideredfundamentaltothesuccess
ofeachandeverydigitalenterprise;butit’sonlythefirststep.
While most view the default graphs, statistics and charts
available in the myriad technology solutions used by ‘Net
professionals daily as sufficient (be they marketing automa-
tion, customer relationship management, Web experience
or e-commerce platforms), it is possible to dig far deeper
into an enterprise’s available data pool and gather insights
and answers into what may just be the primary issues web-
sites are experiencing and, more importantly, what can be
done about it. Web workers and the enterprises that employ
them simply need to know where to look and how to use
that information once it’s been found – and do so from a
mature and sound perspective.
Mostofthedatacompanieshaveattheirdisposalissimply
ignored. Regular performance reports are out of reach com-
pletely(unavailableentirelyinsomecases)fromkeypersonnel.
Data is discarded at crucial moments of the digital experience,
or was never collected in the first place. It is difficult to deny
that customer data is not being used to its fullest potential
within many enterprises and it is preventing companies from
cross-selling, upselling, planning, and most importantly, inno-
vating and making measurable improvements.
It’s tough, if not impossible, to retain customers, plan
inventories, personalize experiences and/or eliminate rogue
actors in relation to fraud and security, without a deep un-
derstanding of customers and the information that results
from their online activity. Those that do take advantage of
the available data tend to have a significant competitive edge
(and greater revenues as a result) and that’s reason enough
to pursue the practice with a great deal more rigor. And it
should start now.
According to a new study by the Economist Intelligence
unit, commissioned by Wipro, there is a strong relationship
betweenearningsgrowthandthestrategicuseofdata.Adapt-
ingtothisnewrealitywillnot,however,beeasy.Seventy-four
percent of executives surveyed expect the range and types of
data they collect to expand in the next two years. While it
couldprovetobeabreakoutmomentandvalidatetheinvest-
ment into analytics offerings up to this point, to maximize
data use, today’s brands need to find opportunities to cope
with the overload, the worries about quality and the general
lack of skills within their enterprises now as well as in the
future. They need to prioritize analytics and business intel-
ligence (BI) initiatives every day, and everywhere.
The goals for any enterprise’s analytics initiatives are
relatively straightforward – assist in delivering growth and
identifying growth opportunities, control costs and manage
risk. In order to make sense of the vastness of information
available, analytics solutions and enterprise processes must
be in place so the delivery of those goals becomes a reality.
Collecting, understanding and acting on
business-related “intelligence” is critical to
digital operations today.
By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief
Everyday & Everywhere
Web Analytics
27. DECEMBER 2015 | | 25.com
Not everyone is comfortable with diving into some of the complexities of analytics and lucky for them,
there’s another way to get a decent understanding of how users are interacting with a website (and its
content) thanks to visual analytics solutions. Heatmap software solutions, like the oft-mentioned Crazy
Egg, do an excellent job of revealing action and interactions taken by users, but there are also numerous
other solutions. Discover five powerful visual analytics solutions at wsm.co/visanalytics.
Visual Analytics
28. The Right Tools
(and Tactics) for the Job
What Web professionals really want to know (the rea-
son they are even moderately interested in analytics and
intelligence tools in the first place) is if their efforts and
resources are resulting in some positive effect – revenue,
awareness, engagement. To get the most useful informa-
tion, however, requires using the right tools for the job
to reveal the right data (at the right time and for the right
people during their brand journey). Fortunately, there is
no shortage of solutions available.
Google Analytics, which offers a suite of powerful fea-
tures and benefits, is arguably one of the most popular
(just over 69 percent of the top 10,000 sites use Google
analytics according to BuiltWith), but there are many oth-
ers worthy of closer examination. Its closest and most
significant rival at the enterprise level is that of Adobe
Analytics. While the company’s Marketing Cloud offer-
ing is considered pricey in relation to similar offerings,
Adobe’s real-time data and reporting functionality, as well
as its advanced segmentation capabilities (and integration
with other Adobe products including its development and
testing tools, and new Audience Marketplace, which will
allow advertisers and marketers to buy and sell second-or
third-party data), make it an ideal solution for those with
more sophisticated demands or those who are planning on
scaling their enterprise up and expanding the capabilities
of their analytics and data initiatives.
Adobe and Google garner a great deal of attention
among business-focused consumers of analytics solutions
(and for good reason), but there are, as most likely know,
plenty of other powerful options that do not nearly receive
the awareness they merit. Piwik comes highly recom-
mended among Internet retailers thanks to the platform’s
strong e-commerce tracking capabilities, integration plugins
for leading providers including Magento and PrestaShop,
as well as its advanced reporting mechanism. Kissmetrics
is also a very popular business analytics tool lauded by the
digital community and known to be particularly good at
making it easy to build and interpret funnels. Its path report,
for example, identifies the most common steps between the
first visit and a conversion. With integrations available for
numerous third-party tools, it too (if not always) tops the
list of considerations of analytics tools often among Web
professionals (particularly Internet retailers).
These are just some of the most utilized website ana-
lytics solutions on the market and they serve Web profes-
sionals well in their pursuit of insights that matter when
the aim is delivering improvements and growth. No enter-
prise is alike, however.
INDUSTRY OPTIMIZED
There are solutions available that were designed for specific
types of companies, industries and markets. Fuel’s new Fuel
Gauge marketing Dashboard, for instance, provides a good
example of a solution that serves a niche industry segment
well. Hotel and resort mangers using the platform can gain
insights into their website, booking engine, email market-
ing, social media, online reputation, guest satisfaction, or-
ganic and paid search and more, in one system. Brittain
Resort Management & Hotels (BRM) is the first to utilize
Fuel Gauge to for its 14 properties and will track each re-
sort’s marketing efforts, as well as conversion, occupancy
and revenue tracking in real-time.
Geo-MARKET OPTIMIZED
While Fuel’s industry-based approach will be logical for
hoteliers, location-based marketing technology provider
SIM partners approaches the analytics opportunity from
another perspective. The company recently launched
Velocity Insights, a suite of features for its local market-
ing automation platform that aims to help companies
move beyond simple performance metrics to provide
actionable analysis of their local presence. The solution
provides insights into the visibility and performance of
a brand’s location pages, measuring “listing health” by
applying a proprietary scoring algorithm that assesses
factors such as location data accuracy and reach across
influential data publishers and aggregators. The system
also provides demographic, Web and ranking insights to
help companies optimize performance.
OPTIMIZED FOR SCALE
As analytics technology solutions become increasingly more
sophisticated, enterprises are focusing on the value it pro-
vides across the enterprise. Amazon Web Service (AWS), for
example, launched QuickSight in early October, a solution
to make data analytics available and understandable to any
employee making business decisions, no matter how tech-
nically advanced their skill level.
One of the most significant mistakes that Web professionals
make is viewing all of their analytics at once but it is more useful
to view the data in smaller batches and groups and there are nu-
merous, incredibly useful ways to do so. For example, traffic can
be segmented by the source of traffic, by device type or browser,
by returning versus new visitors and a whole lot more. Segment-
ing traffic in this way offers an opportunity to understand how
well a website is satisfying users. Discover more creative ways to
segment website traffic at wsm.co/6segments.
The Power of Segmentation
29. 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
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Phone: 1.866.904.5414
InternAtIonAl: 1.773.272.0998
AuthentIcAtedtestImonIAls.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!
30. QuickSight is an aggressive player in the cloud data
analytics software market as Amazon can likely offer
more advanced, less expensive tools that will enable its
customers take advantage of insights from data analyt-
ics at every level of the organization. QuickSight will
start at $9 per user, much lower on average than the
cost of the traditional BI services. The new tool also in-
tegrates with AWS’s data services, so organizations can
scale to hundreds of thousands of employees to crunch
data, run search queries and create data visualizations
quickly. The new tool uses a new “Super-fast, Paral-
lel, In-memory Calculation Engine” (SPICE) to perform
calculations and render visualizations.
The point of profiling the variety of analytics and intel-
ligence solutions is to reveal that there are offerings avail-
able, powerful ones, which can provide an enterprise the
information it needs to make decisions that will benefit the
bottom line. Even with the best approach, however, other
challenges remain.
Hurdles & the True Power of Analytics
When Website Magazine launched 10-plus years ago, it
was not uncommon to hear the word “hits” used as a
means to convey website performance (as if it were an
accurate representation, which it wasn’t). Today, the
industry has become far more sophisticated (moving
from elementary activity reporting in the past to ad-
vanced event-based performance tracking and predic-
tive intelligence functionality today) and there are many
challenges to overcome in the course of a brand’s digital
life as a result.
The first challenge is often in understanding the indus-
try terminology as well as the broader concepts and theo-
ries of analytics and BI. As enterprises begin their journey
toward success with these initiatives, however, the follow-
ing are the basic terms and phrases that will serve as the
foundation for most analytics efforts. Yes, industry veter-
ans should already know these, but a regular revisiting will
ensure initiatives are staying on course (and improving).
Visits, Sources, Bounce Rate, Time on Site, Pages
per Visit – these are the fundamentals of website analytics.
These relatively self-explanatory metrics can provide an im-
mense amount of insight into campaign and business per-
formance. It is when they are used in association with each
other (and in tandem with supplementary data), however,
that their true power becomes apparent.
One of the most significant problems in the realm
of analytics today is that those responsible for these ini-
tiatives tend to group all website data together, instead
of segmenting by source, referral, demographic or de-
vice. The sheer number of variables in aggregated data
makes it incredibly difficult to see patterns, which can
reveal potential tactics, channels or processes. The aim
that should ultimately be pursued is one of action. The
whole point of gathering and examining analytics data
is to be able to act on the real information available and
that can’t be done without knowing what is causing ac-
tion and activity.
The reason Web professionals struggle with Web data
analysis is because they tend to act quickly, instinctively
and (as are all humans) often subject to emotions, jump-
ing to (often incorrect) conclusions accordingly. There is,
of course, a better way. It is necessary to connect data at
a deeper level by focusing on the metrics that ultimately
matter most to an enterprise’s goals. As a result, it’s exceed-
ingly important to communicate what’s happening – and
those basic metrics outlined previously do not suffice. The
solution is to build in key performance indicators from the
outset that will satisfy analytics initiatives.
Start & End with Goals & Events
Today’s businesses work in a performance-driven world;
a world no longer content to measure unique visitors and
page views, but rather with the satisfaction of goals and the
occurrence of events. As acquisition costs continue to rise,
this shift was inevitable.
Goals can be pretty much anything that indicates a con-
version – such as making a payment or donation. Not all
goals defined by an enterprise, of course, must be so closely
tied to revenue; goals can also be set up for indirect revenue
actions including creating an account or making a form-
based inquiry. Say for example that a website offers an email
newsletter; with a confirmation/thank you page in place,
tracking the success of marketing and promoting that asset
and channel is possible.
Goals are essentially specific actions that when tracked
can provide an opportunity to produce improvement –
more revenue, more registrations, etc. Whether for direct
or indirect revenue, tracking activity through the goal fun-
nel provides an opportunity to analyze the entrance and exit
points that impact a goal.
Analytics systems can often do much more than this
though; it’s actually possible to measure any and every action
thattakesplaceonawebsitethroughtheuseofeventtracking.
Web pages, just like the companies that create them, are
made of many parts. There are links within content, calls-
to-action (CTAs), sidebar navigation, the list is long. While
clicks on these links may not always tie to some measurable
goal, they do and can provide an opportunity to understand
performance on a more granular level.
Sayforexamplethatamarketerwantstotracktheperfor-
mance of on-site content marketing efforts in relation to the
numberofpeoplethatexpressinterestinanewsletter.Aform
maybesetuponthecompany’sownpage,butitisimportant
to track how strong CTAs are in generating a response. Event
tracking those CTAs can be done quite easily by appending
31. some unique event tracking code to each, which will provide
data on the effectiveness of every click. If a form is getting
plentyofvisits,butnotconversions–theCTAsinthecontent
are working, but it’s the form that may need work.
Event tracking can be used to track a variety of activ-
ity, from file download and video plays, to link clicks
on interactions on embedded AJAX page elements. Since
there can be so many different events that can be tracked,
Web professionals should consider grouping events by
category or type (e.g. link or file), defining the action
(e.g. click or download), labeling it appropriately (to
know which event it is specifically) and adding a value
depending on its worth.
Events are really meant for tracking activity on any
page element that does not have a destination URL (such
as a thank you page). That being said, some incredibly
useful insights can be gathered from using events (that just
are not possible with goals). Say for example that there are
videos on a website and a marketer is interested in measur-
ing if users are skipping through them (because they are
insufferably boring). By appending event tracking code on
forward and rewind buttons, this insight can become very
clear, indicating whether videos are engaging or not.
Hopefully enterprises have moved beyond basic activity
reporting and are investing their time and resources into
capitalizing on the true power of analytics – understanding
on a finite level what’s making a difference. With a clearer
picture of how well an enterprise is performing, it’s time to
put that analytics data to use.
Developing an Analytics Initiative
The real problem with Web analytics is that it is a real chal-
lenge to make good use of the data collected.
Calculatingreturnoninvestment(ROI),forexample,isno
easy task as most fail to include the costs associated with the
entire production and deployment of a project. It can prove
useful however when there is a plan in place. If enterprises
want to convert as many visitors to customers as possible, and
are tracking goals in addition to key metrics like sessions and
pageviews,followthisthree-stepplantoensureanalyticsefforts
mean something to the success of an enterprise.
Define the Audience Need
Consumers want a specific product or service because
it satisfies a need. When brands know what need that
is, they are able to craft experiences that address their
wants and desires. Analytics systems are useful in that
they provide cues and clues about the audience includ-
ing their interests, the manner in which they access a
site, not to mention how well an enterprise is at captur-
ing their attention. Do users consume more long-form
or short-form content? Do videos produce greater time
on site than other assets?
Establish Baseline Conversion Rates
Conversion rates will be different for every enterprise,
but when you know what it is (and for every referring
source and channel) it is possible to emphasize the ef-
forts and processes that yield the greatest result. Web-
sites don’t often have one conversion rate, but rather
many. Group similar offerings on a site to determine
what, if any, discrepancies exist. Employ testing (A/B,
multivariate) to identify what works.
Assign & Calculate Revenue
Each action and interaction can be given a value. While
an actual sale should be given a greater value than a
click-through, as one requires further nurturing, analyt-
ics can be used to help assign and calculate or determine
real-world value. From there, it’s just a matter of assign-
ing dollars to action. When you know what is working
and what is not, it is possible to prioritize decisions for
the benefit of the bottom line.
Managing improvements spurred on by a rigorous ana-
lytics initiative is made much simpler thanks to the influx
of business intelligence tools, solutions that aggregate es-
sential data, analyze information from disparate sources,
and help executives make sense of the data and more
importantly, to drive change more quickly.
Analytics Everywhere… Every Day
Analytics can be a full-time job and it can often take a dedi-
cated professional to wade through the volumes of data
available. If you know where to look and what to look for,
only then can your brand be on the fast track to ‘Net suc-
cess. Enterprises must adopt a data-driven culture, enable
data access to all business users, and create a consistent un-
derstanding and interpretation of data.
To help guide Web professionals through the business
intelligence landscape, Website Magazine has developed
a whitepaper exclusively for our readers, which can be
downloaded at wsm.co/bidollars.
Business Intelligence:
Generating Dollars
from Analytics Change
32. | DECEMBER 201530 | .com
Media buyers typically measure ad views based on the
average viewability of a website domain. That means
they monitor a website but don’t account for how key
issues — such as load times, ad placement, website lay-
out and historical averages — can distort the metrics,
leavingthepublisherwithawatereddownscoreandthe
advertiser with a less than optimal experience.
Using a domain average is not an effective way to
measure viewability.
The good news is that advancements in viewability
are being made. For example, several vendors such as
OnScroll have emerged that won’t even load an ad unit
unless they know it will appear in view, while others
differentiate through demonstrated higher viewability
metrics. Still, the antiquated domain average metric re-
mains the norm. The truth is that in-view ads are worth
a lot more than the out-of-view ads.
As an industry, online ad buys should use the view-
abilityofindividualunits,notthehistoricalaverageofall
ads on websites.
A Closer Look at the Problem
Today, viewability rates are calculated by the average
load percentage of all ad slot positions (top, side and
bottom) over a period of time.
For most viewability measurement companies, the
evaluation process looks something like this: ad slot
number one loaded 90 percent, while ad slot number
three only loaded 20 percent of the time. When these
two numbers are averaged, this website receives a 55
percent average viewability rate. However, slot one is
way more valuable than slot three. Publishers that are
engineering high viewability into their sites may not be
getting enough credit for this effort and other publish-
ers may be propping up slot threes with higher than
actual average scores.
Whyareweevaluatingtheentiredomainversusthe
individual ad? It may be easier, but the easiest path isn’t
alwaysthebestpath.Whatdoesthisaveragescoremean
to publishers and advertisers? Not much.
Solutions: A Lens into the Future of Viewability
As the industry demands higher viewability stan-
dards, publishers will need to ensure they can deliver.
Here are three ideas for improving on the viewability
benchmark today:
Make the shift from buying via domain aver-
agemeasurementtobuyingviaadunitmea-
surement. It delivers a much truer ad view metric
that benefits the industry as a whole. It benefits
advertisers with more specificity for better targeting
and measurement. For publishers, it boosts cred-
ibility through viewability. By supporting a pricing
model that drills down into the ad unit level as op-
posed to the domain average, publishers will attract
more and higher level advertisers.
Find good viewability partners. Publishers
should work with viewability vendors like Integral
Ad Science that make publishers more attractive by
scoring the overall and specific ad unit viewability
score for their site.
RedesignforWebandmobile. Publishers need
to redesign their sites to fully monetize them. The
good news is that this is already starting to happen.
AdAge recently reported that facing pressure from
advertisers, dozens of media companies, such as
Conde Nast, are re-evaluating where display ads ap-
pear to ensure viewability.
Publishers should think about new placements, not
just the standard placements in the same content
blocks. They should be creative with how ads are
inserted into the natural flow of content as viewed
on various devices.
Let’s clear up a popular myth: People often per-
ceive their ads will perform better if they are above
the fold. This is not necessarily true; it depends on
what the site visitors are doing. Scrolling down is
actually a sign of an engaged audience, so test basic
assumptions during this redesign phase. Above-the-
fold metrics will quickly cede to currently “in view”
and we’ll all be better for it. An ad that’s never seen
is not worth much.
Billions of dollars are at stake for publish-
ers’advertisingrevenue.Thereason?They
are at the mercy of the “domain average”
used to establish viewability scores.
By Eric Wheeler, CEO of 33Across
Net
ADVERTISING
Average is Never Good:
A Call to Embrace
New Viewability
Best Practices
33. To order your copy, go to:
www.domains360book.com
THE WAIT
IS OVER
What’s Inside
Domains 360?
Readers will discover...
+ A Brief History of Domains
+ Details on the Technical Landscape
+ Guidance on Mastering
Domain Management
+ Tips for Establishing Domain Portfolios
+ Insights on Buying & Selling Direct
+ And Much More!
Order your copy of Domains 360
Website Magazine’s latest book by Editor-In-Chief Peter Prestipino is
available for purchase at www.domains360book.com.
10YEARS
CELEBRATING
34. By Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners
UNLEASHING
CONVERSIONOPTIMIZATION
THROUGHYOURBUSINESSMODEL
Sure, testing is important as a way to validate changes
to a Web experience, and make sure that changes are
not actually making things worse. On the other hand,
one of the problems with testing is that it operates on
the Web experience. This creates inherent limitations.
Testing is just like the drunk person looking for
their lost keys under the streetlamp at night because
the light is better there. Similarly, many CRO practi-
tioners never wander far from the cozy and comfort-
ing routine of repeatedly running tests, which at least
on the surface produce some kind of clear measurable
results (whether good, bad or inconclusive). They get
comfortable in the repeatable nature of the testing ac-
tivity itself, and familiar with the process. This is a false
sense of security, and will often result in a myopic out-
look that leads to stagnation.
YourownnarrowviewofCROwillseverelylimit
theamountofbenefityouwillderivefromit.
So how does a CRO professional break out of this rut?
Thekeyistolookbeyondthewebsiteorlandingpagefor
additional leverage by thinking of a website as the part of
theicebergvisibleabovethewaterline.Mostofthepower
willcomefromthevastportionthatliesbelow.Thisisan
importantpointinthecontextofcompetitors.Ifanenter-
prise wants to create a durable and defensible advantage
againstthem,itismucheasiertodoitwiththeportionsof
the business that they cannot easily inspect or duplicate.
Test, test, test! This common refrain has
come to dominate the perceptions and
activities of the conversion rate optimiza-
tion (CRO) community.
Conversion
CORNER
35. As a CRO, the job seems pretty clear – squeeze
more value out of existing traffic arriving on a website
or landing page. So that’s what they spend their time
doing – looking for increased efficiencies. This may in-
volve digging into analytics, optimizing traffic sources
hitting the site, segmenting an audience to achieve a
better fit or testing alternative content.
Some things, however, are either implicitly or
explicitly out of bounds. One of the most common
sacred cows is the actual business model. In other
words, CROs are not allowed to change the calls-to-
action (CTAs), or the format and sequence in which
they are collected.
An online educational business, for example, has
the goal of generating leads for their sales force. Typi-
cally the CTA on the site will be some sort of long and
involved form (for a free information kit or something
similar). Once the form is completed, the sales person
will relentlessly try to “close” that prospect. What’s
wrong with that? Although it seems like a perfectly le-
gitimate strategy, it is not.
The company is requiring someone to give up a
lot of information early in the process (severely re-
stricting the number of people willing to invest the
effort to fill out the form). Then it is trying to hard-
sell them on the phone (even though in all likelihood
they are not ready to act). In other words, the business
model requires a standing broad-jump on the part of
a website visitor, and herculean effort on the part of
the phone sales force.
Imagine the following instead. A website visitor
arrives on a site, self-selects (via properly constructed
user-centered site navigation) into a specific role,
downloads a relevant e-book (without any informa-
tion required in exchange except for an email address),
receives a targeted email follow-up sequence that es-
tablishes thought leadership and provides helpful infor-
mation over time, eventually follows an email link back
to a targeted landing page on the site where they get
an opportunity to chat live with a knowledgeable rep
(while still remaining anonymous), the chat rep then
schedules (in real-time) an appointment to talk to a ca-
reer counselor (the sales rep) on the phone (collecting
the information needed during the chat), the sales rep
reviews the info collected and calls at the agreed-upon
time to try to close the sale.
Now at first glance, this may seem like a concep-
tually more-complicated business model, but looked
at from the standpoint of both the prospective student
and the business it has many advantages. From the per-
spective of the prospect, the relationship unfolds slowly
and naturally. The value received along the way is more
than what is being asked for in return. The steps are
incremental and non-threatening. There are no big
hurdles to surmount. The person feels like they are in
control of the process, and are more likely to extend
incremental trust and expend additional effort as the
relationship deepens.
From the standpoint of the business there are ben-
efits too. It is much easier to create content that speaks
to a targeted audience and is seen as more personal and
valuable. Much of the early stage follow-up can be done
with automated email sequences – not requiring any
incremental effort or human involvement. Early stage
qualification can be done much more cost-effectively
via chat than on the phone. The best-trained phone
sales people are getting to talk to receptive prospects.
The phone sales people will have higher utili-
zation rates (connecting with prospects a higher
percentage of the time due to appointment pre-
scheduling instead of outbound cold-calling follow-
up). It’s a classic case of win-win.
Efficiency is doing things right – effectiveness is
doingtherightthings.
Of course it takes some work to set all of this up. Email
sequences will need to be developed, online chat will
need to be staffed, all of the information collected
about the prospect will need to be passed to the phone
sales reps ahead of their appointments, the phone reps
will need to be retrained to take advantage of the new
workflow and available information (and to adjust their
technique to a more gentle “close”).
Beyond the specific example of educational lead-
generation above, business model innovation can
be done in a number of settings. In the e-commerce
sphere it can take the form of frequent-buyer loyalty
clubs, referral programs and incentives, and changing
a one-time purchase into some kind of ongoing sub-
scription-based payment model. In lead generation it
can involve cross-referrals to other businesses that want
to reach the same audience. The possibilities are limited
only by a person’s own imagination.
Now is the time to start thinking more broadly
about a company’s business model and not simply
about its online marketing campaigns. How can
marketers help engineer a better business model?
If it benefits the business and aligns more naturally
with the needs of the audience, then they know they
are on the right track.
Tim Ash is the CEO of SiteTuners, Chair of Conversion Confer-
ence and bestselling author of “Landing Page Optimization.”
10B2B
Lead-Generation
Opportunitiesfor
YourBlog
Thesearetheelements
thatshouldn’tbemissed-
wsm.co/blogb2b.
36. | DECEMBER 201534 | .com
Email
EXPERIENCE
Afterputtingeffortintopullinginnewcustomersforthe
holidays, the key to long-term success is retaining those
new subscribers and fostering strong customer relation-
ships. However, the biggest mistake many marketers
make in retention is treating new subscribers like the
rest of their contact lists.
Below are a few tips and best practices to most ef-
fectively retain this season’s new subscribers and turn
them into loyal brand advocates:
HoneYourHolidayTactics
The holiday season is a great time to prepare new sub-
scribers for a lifetime of happiness with a brand. Mar-
keters should use these first few months to grab their
attention and leave a lasting impression.
Thiscanbedonebyrevampingthestandardwelcome
message with a personalized seasonal greeting. Holiday
subscribers aren’t a brand’s average contacts and shouldn’t
betreatedassuch.Addingapersonalizedtouchwillmake
a strong first impression and give them an idea of what a
long-termrelationshipwiththebrandmightlooklike.Ad-
ditionally,marketersshouldmakesuretransactionalemails
are well branded. Holiday subscribers will likely receive a
flood of transactional emails during the season, so a com-
panywillneedtoensureitstandsoutabovetherest.
SlowandSteady,Santa
Oncebrandshavethesenewcontacts,theyhavetotreat
them uniquely and avoid approaching them too ag-
gressively. There should be a “slow and steady” period
in the initial engagement, focused on building rapport
rather than overwhelming new contacts with a blizzard
of emails. To build trust and “introduce” a brand to new
subscribers, companies should send informational con-
tent over promotional deals – they’ll probably be cut-
ting down on the shopping after the holidays anyway.
Futher, if marketers purvey information, send surveys
and request feedback about the customer experience, it
provesthattheyappreciatethebusiness.Thiswillensure
a brand is still top-of-mind without being overbearing.
Re-GiftingIsn’tAlwaysTacky
A retailer’s contact list will likely double, or even triple,
in size between Halloween and the New Year. Retailers
shouldusethisasanopportunitytorecycleoldcontent.
Allofthecontentwillbebrandnewtoholidaysubscrib-
ers,sotheycouldbeamorereceptiveaudienceforcam-
paigns that have some more life left in them. This will
allow marketers to not only predict which campaigns
will garner success (since they’ve executed on them be-
fore), but to also maintain efficiency despite a flourish-
ing contact list.
BetheGiftthatKeepsonGiving
The secret to retention after the holidays is continuing
holiday engagement even after the holiday season ends.
Bystudyingcontacts’engagementwithabrandthrough-
outtheholidayseasonthisinformationcanbeleveraged
in upcoming holidays in the New Year. By using report-
ingandanalysistools,companiescanidentifywhattype
of product or deal attracted holiday subscribers to their
brandinitiallyandusethatinformationtotailorandper-
sonalize deals moving forward. For example, if a man
bought a woman’s necklace around New Years, send
him jewelry promotions around Valentine’s Day. Or if a
womanpurchasedchildren’stoysforChristmas,deliver
toy promotions around Easter.
Don’tBeaGreedyGrinch
Subscribers earned over the holidays aren’t always long-
term wins. Email marketers should work to build a re-
lationship with new contacts for the first few months of
the New Year, but may want to taper off if they don’t
receive engagement. Further, they will want to use en-
gagement scoring to determine who is open to com-
munication. If recipients are not interacting with the
content, they should temporarily be suspended from
the mailing lists and re-engaged after Christmas.
Holiday subscribers can be valuable contacts long
after December but only if approached correctly. Still,
evenfailureinaretentioneffortcanbealessonthatpays
off. Use new subscribers as a testing group if you lose
more than half after the holidays end, and re-evaluate
your overall email marketing strategy to optimize for
retention. In short, don’t waste the opportunity holiday
contacts offer. Whether they’re naughty or nice, there’s
insight to be gained.
With so many festive promotions to offer
during the holiday season, attracting new
customers from Black Friday through the
New Year isn’t a problem for most email
marketers. The true challenge is getting
new subscribers to stick around after the
holiday hype dies down.
By EJ McGowan,
General Manager, Campaigner at J2 Global
Post-Christmas
EmailRetention
37. DECEMBER 2015 | | 35.com
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38. | DECEMBER 201536 | .com
Analytics
INSIDER
Understanding their behavior, their needs and the im-
petus for their actions requires a basic comprehension
of psychology (and some great digital customer experi-
ence tools to gather the required data).
While there is no magic formula for button colors
that convert, killer copywriting or winning layouts, it is
possible to get inside the mind of a target audience and
understand which elements prompt action.
IntrospectionandWebBehavior
The process of understanding behavior could be best
described by the psychological term “Introspection,”
which essentially means to examine one’s own con-
scious thoughts and feelings, to obtain privileged access
to one’s mental states. That’s not easy to do, however,
when it comes to Web behavior.
Introspection (and self-observation) is a method in
which people are asked to verbally report their mental
processes.Forexample,tosaywhytheymadeaparticu-
lar choice or how they arrived at a particular judgment.
The main criticism to this method is that there is always
a gap between what people report about themselves
and their actual behavior. Therefore, when trying to
optimize a website, relying solely on visitors’ feedback
regarding their experience is not the ideal approach.
Instead, brands are using solutions to visualize visitors’
online behavior to bridge the data gap in understanding
action and inaction.
Introspection’sSubstitute:Behaviorism
Introspection is about human self-reflection rather
than external observation. It reflects the inner pro-
cess of the human mind. In contrast, Behaviorism is
more quantitative and looks at the external, observable
causes of human behavior.
To be practical in the realm of Web analytics, the
context of actions is of the utmost importance in under-
standingbrowsingusage.Whiletraditionalanalyticscan
analyze conversion rates and detect whether a website
has succeeded or failed in reaching its goals, they are
ineffective at providing a broader view.
When engaging in more refined exploration of
humaninteractionontheWeb,analysisbasedonserver
access logs alone (as is the case with traditional analyt-
ics) is anything but sufficient. To see the entire picture,
it is necessary to examine and understand the visitor’s
behavior, motivation and resulting actions.
AkeyelementintheBehavioristapproachtounder-
standingonlinebehaviorisgatheringmouse-movement
data, which can pinpoint user intent and interests.
Mouse-movement recording technology provides
a series of interesting advantages when compared to
classical usability tools. For example, it can be mass
deployed, allowing for large datasets; it can reach typi-
cal and first-time visitors in their natural environment;
and, most importantly, it is transparent to visitors, so
no experimenter bias or novelty effects are introduced,
allowing them to browse websites in their natural envi-
ronment as opposed to lab conditions.
Session recording technology enables businesses to
easily examine what is going on behind the screens, in
the minds of the users. For example, it can reveal how
many users considered clicking the buy button versus
how many of them actually clicked it. Or, it can pro-
vide insight into the order in which they complete the
fieldsofaform.Marketerscanusethistechnologytoget
quantifiable answers to the questions that plague them,
including whether people actually scroll down the Web
page (and how far), where they hesitate on the page
(and for how long), as well as what elements they are
interacting (engaging with or concentrating on).
Session recordings provide answers to these ques-
tions and many more. Videos can be generated for in-
dividual or for segments/groups or users (for example,
based on engagement time, location or first-time versus
returning visitors). Likewise, recordings detect page el-
ements that visitors interact with the most, the rate of
scrolls (to infer interest), or whether the pages viewed
have a minimum scroll reach (which may indicate that
some visitors are searching for specific content but are
not being successful), to name just a few.
NoRoomforGuesswork
WhileitispossibletoguesswhatchangestoaWebpage
or website will achieve the highest conversion rates and
thenhopeforthebest,thisisclearlynotthebestpractice
for online marketers as it wastes time and money, both
valuable resources. Using Introspection and Behavior-
ism principles to develop valid hypotheses, understand
behavior, run controlled tests and evaluate the results is
the only path to improvement.
If there is one important lesson learned
from the many studies conducted in the
Web usage, analytics and optimization
fields, it is that to see results, online busi-
nesses need to “feel” their clients.
By Dr. Liraz Margalit, Web Psychologist at ClickTale
UsingPsychologytoImprove
WebsiteConversions
39. DECEMBER 2015 | | 37.com
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in the industry’s top publication. Over 50% of our
subscribers are C-List executives, and overall, 84% of our
subscribers influence purchases at their organizations.
“DoYouSeeMe?”
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Go beyond! Website Magazine offers
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40. | DECEMBER 201538 | .com
With email passwords, social media passwords,
banking passwords, etc., the last thing most want
is to have to remember another login to make a
simple purchase. In fact, in a recent Web Hosting
Buzz report, 86 percent of retail customers say that
they are bothered when they have to create a new
login and username.
For this very reason, social login has become in-
creasingly popular among retailers looking to turn
website visitors into returning customers. Retailers
know that improving conversion rates (e.g. purchases)
begins with improving the customer experience. Al-
lowing visitors to register with a simple click to log in
with their existing social media profile from Facebook,
Twitter or LinkedIn eliminates the need for long regis-
tration forms, verifications and password recovery. In
fact, 77 percent of consumers reported a preference for
social logins in the Web Hosting Buzz report.
Despite its benefits, many businesses fail to take full
advantage of the potential of social logins – using them
ineffectively or not at all. In order to use social logins
to build more complete profiles of customers and cre-
ate seamless experiences, retailers must understand the
three pillars of social media login.
I. Go beyond gamification
Interactive elements including quizzes have proven suc-
cessful in reaching today’s consumer, creating fun and
entertaining ways for visitors to interact with a brand and
share content. Many enterprises use social login to access
thesegames,butlimitingsociallogintobrandengagement
campaigns means companies are losing out on important
insights. Using social logins merely for short-term market-
ing efforts limits the ability to enhance customer experi-
encesandcreatecomprehensivecustomeridentities.
When social login is used only for one-off cam-
paigns,alltheinformationaboutuserbehaviorislimited
only to the game. Instead, implementing a social login
for all digital marketing efforts – from shopping carts to
commenting tools to customer service inquiries – will
help digital marketers connect the dots between all of
the ways a customer interacts with their brand.
Inthequestforsimpleandintuitivedigital
experiences, website visitors are growing
increasinglyfrustratedwithhavingtocre-
ate multiple usernames and passwords
for each site they visit.
By Stefan Koenig, CEO and Co-Founder of Hull
Social Media
MAVENS
Enhancing Customer
Identity Management:
3Pillarsof
SocialLogin