Ektron's Corporate Blog

Dear Reader,

When you come right down to it, people visit Web sites for the content they deliver. The better the content, the stickier the sites are and the more likely that visitors will come back and tell friends and colleagues about the site. Web content management is about delivering the best content to Web audiences.

But how do you know what the best content is? A study in April 2009 showed that only 4% of marketers could identify winning content. The best way to make sure that you’re delivering the right content for your audience is to leverage their activity on your site. It’s why we’ve embraced multivariate testing as part of our solution and what we believe is the best way to deliver relevant content.

Visitors to your site can play a large role in defining what content resonates most with your audience. What content is being viewed the most? What are visitors sending out to the social Web? How is content being rated? And are people talking about it? This is the information that defines what information is “best.” It’s the content that is getting the most response from people, whether they are just looking for it or are going further and interacting with the information. Ektron can leverage this activity data to make sure that your best content is front and center.

It’s not only about how the best content is defined by site visitors. Delivering good content is also about having a better idea of what individuals are looking for. The more information you have about your site visitors, the more you can target the best content to them. Delivering relevant content has a powerful resonance with site visitors; the information means something to them and directly reflects why they visited the Web site in the first place. Everything from URL parameters and physical location to date and time and group membership can define what the best content is that should be delivered to an individual user. Even the way site visitors navigate the pages on your Web site is useful for defining what they are looking for so that you can deliver the right content to them. To make the “right” content even more precise, a site powered by Ektron can use multiple parameters to refine the results that populate the page.

These techniques are very effective on their own to deliver information to your audience and you can combine them to yield even more precisely targeted results. This puts the best content within the context of who the user is and why they are looking at your site. It will let you deliver ads that they are more likely to respond to, increasing click through rates and producing better responses to marketing campaigns. This more efficient use and management of content will lead to optimized marketing efforts and more user-centric site experiences.

I believe this is the way content needs to be managed to keep up with the way that people want to use the Web. A more personalized and targeted experience will ultimately bring (and keep) more visitors to your sites and grow your brand as much as SEO and traditional marketing combined. I look forward to hearing what you think about this and how you are shaping your Web presence to meet the needs of your audience.

Sincerely,

Bill Rogers
CEO & Founder

Dear Reader,

From building a software platform capable of supporting the benefits of an active virtual community to building relationships that benefit our customers and our company alike, Ektron believes in the power of community. This commitment means giving you as many opportunities as possible to be active. One of the best ways to tap into the Ektron community is our upcoming Local User Group (LUG) tour which starts in Boston on March 16.

The LUGs are more than an in-person opportunity to see the new technology Ektron is adding to our Web content management platform to power your own online relationships. They give you the chance to speak with our executive team while exchanging ideas with other Ektron users in your area. The relationships that are formed at the LUGS are precisely what we think of when we consider the benefits community brings to our company.

Ektron believes there is more to our community than simply customers helping customers. There are a number of Ektron employees, including your Account Managers, who are active on the DevCenter, proactively answering questions and offering solutions that save you time and energy. The LUG meetings bring the online relationships you may have already built on the DevCenter into a brick-and-mortar environment.

Given this connection between the goals of the LUGs and the DevCenter, it only makes sense that we would unveil the Ektron Exchange, an exciting addition to our DevCenter, during this year’s LUGs. The Ektron Exchange will be a comprehensive Ektron code-sharing resource where developers and partners can share widgets and other solutions to common challenges while actively engaging in peer-to-peer collaboration.

The DevCenter, the LUGs and soon the Ektron Exchange are where your voices are heard. We take your ideas very seriously. The needs you have shared at previous LUGs have helped define our product roadmap. In order to continue to quickly react to the evolving demands of our user community, we are creating a Code Factory Group (CFG). This dedicated team of engineers will be developing new features (including widgets and user controls) that you will be able to find on the Exchange and implement right away. You will hear more about the CFG and its role at the LUGs and also have a chance to define some of the challenges we will look to address through this group.

Community is also about employee-to-employee relationships and that is what is so exciting about the second half of the agenda at this year’s LUGs. At Ektron, as well as with our customers, I’ve seen first hand how our intranet application has improved the way our employees interact, manage projects and find information while adding to our overall operational efficiency. Along with input from you, this experience has informed the direction of the new eIntranet 2.0. Completely re-engineered from the ground up, this collaborative intranet application will also be unveiled during the LUGs.

The Ektron community is unique in the Web content management industry, spanning the online world and in-person interactive opportunities like our Local User Group tour. The relationships formed in this community go beyond simple problem solving. The members have become trusted resources both inside and outside of Ektron for the whole community, driving innovation and contributing to each other’s projects.

When you come to the LUGs, you’ll get to see this activity first hand and actively participate in building these relationships. The schedule of meetings and the agenda for each one is up on our Web site now. Check and see which local group you are a part of and register here to come and get connected with the Ektron community.

Sincerely,

Bill Rogers
CEO & Founder

Throughout 2009 businesses faced new challenges and opportunities. Marketing teams had to change rapidly as companies looked to do more with less. Social media rose to prominence as the way that users looked to get information; more than 240 million unique users, and 300,000 businesses, are now on Facebook. For the first time in 23 years, Pepsi is not advertising during the Super Bowl TV broadcast in favor of a heavier presence in the digital channel.

In the new year, Ektron’s customers are looking for new ways to build on the opportunities that the seismic events of 2009 presented. Ektron has a unique ability to address the three online needs of any business: Web content management, social software and marketing optimization.

Online marketing is first and foremost driven by effective content delivery. In 2010, you will need to have more information about the traffic coming to and interacting with your site so that you can make the right decisions for your business. This data has to be within the context of the content you are managing and further enhanced by multivariate testing that takes the pulse of your site visitors and makes content delivery decisions that generate the most conversions.

Effective content delivery is no longer enough online. The expectation is continuing to move towards a more open and social standard for even the largest companies. For example, amazon.com has set new standards for what users expect from a corporate Web site. By embracing user-generated content, transparent communication, customer service and personalization, amazon.com has created an online environment that gives consumers a rich experience and multiple reasons to keep coming back.

Both on and off your Web site, you’ll need to give users the same kind of interactive opportunities. A customer-centric experience that empowers visitors to your site will grow brand awareness and increase customer loyalty. A study by the Altimeter Group showed that companies with high levels of social media activity saw revenue grow an average of 18% over a 12 month period. Companies with very low activity saw their revenue shrink. To ensure that your company is in the growth category, you have to start engaging your audience everywhere they are currently active.

Ektron recognized early on the power of community online and has led in integrating social software into our platform. With Ektron you already have the tools to deliver unique, personalized experiences that sites like amazon.com have made the expected standard. With our new social media strategic consulting team, Ektron can also provide you with Web content management and social software experts that can help you determine how to use our Web content management capabilities to ensure your online success, whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish.

With all of these puzzle pieces in place I’m very excited about what’s coming next. As each unique opportunity comes up for your organization, Ektron will be right there with the resources to help you to maximize the results.

Happy New Year!

CEO & Founder

The impact of the Social Web on sales and marketing is undeniable. Social media marketing has rapidly become one of the most powerful ways to build brands, grow customer bases and drive those potential customers to e-commerce Web sites. But what do these social media savvy customers do when they get there? What is going to drive them to follow through on the branding they’ve been exposed to and make a purchase?

Social media is all about the user experience. By putting a powerful social experience around the e-commerce part of your site you can give site visitors an interactive experience that will influence and accelerate their purchase decisions. User interaction with the e-commerce content, with other users and with the rest of the content on your Web site is the way that you will build an engaged community for your brand. Cindy Gallop, the former chairman of the international creative agency BBH, recently stated: "If you build a seriously engaged, seriously involved, seriously loyal hardcore community around your brand, they will do your selling for you.”

This is the reason we built our own e-commerce engine as an integrated part of CMS400.NET. Your whole Web site’s user experience can engage that “hardcore community” and the interactions users have with your content needs to extend seamlessly into the online sales aspect of your site. The experience is integral to promoting your brand and online sales. “Bolt-on” e-commerce solutions, while they perform adequately for processing transactions, have inherent limitations and challenges. When it comes to integrating with the whole site’s experience, they cannot leverage the content or functionality that the rest of the Web site can use. Content is what drives users into the buying process and content delivery needs to continue through the sales cycle for your site’s e-commerce to be successful.

Using our eCommerce, it’s a straightforward process to extend your site’s content and the user experience into your online sales. From multimedia widgets that showcase what it is you’re selling to taxonomy classification that suggests products and makes finding what your customers are looking for easy, these are the elements you’re already using on your existing site and should be part of the sales experience as well. Commenting and ratings can further promote the conversation around what you’re selling and micro-messaging can get users interacting with each other and your corporate team while they’re shopping.

These features can be powerful additions to your site and provide the engaging environment that your customers crave. Social proof (and, therefore, user-generated content) is the biggest influencer in purchasing decisions and having it as part of your e-commerce can drive sales and give you valuable feedback about your products and services. It also gives you the opportunity to directly clear up any questions customers might have.

I firmly believe that future of the Web is in the social user experience and it is absolutely critical that the experience flows seamlessly across your site. E-commerce is a big piece of the Web site puzzle, but it’s always been treated as an accessory and this instance is no exception. I think it is critical that online sales start to incorporate the social media that is being implemented in the other areas of sites in order for e-commerce to succeed. By managing it with the same application as the rest of your site, e-commerce is able to leverage all of the power Ektron provides.

Best regards,

Bill Rogers
CEO and Founder, Ektron Inc.

Synergy 2009 wrapped up only a few weeks ago and it was a huge success! I had a great time and I was excited to be able to meet so many members of the growing Ektron community. This conference has always been about sharing ideas and this year was no exception. I enjoyed seeing how you are using the technology we’ve developed and was very interested in all of the different ways that you are solving the business challenges you face every day.

This exchange of ideas is just one way that our worldwide customer conference goes beyond flashy demos. Synergy is as much about the existing technology you’ve been building your Web presence with as it is about new developments we’re introducing. I got to see a number of case studies from both clients and partners that showcased solutions they built with Ektron. Case studies from NASDAQ, John Hancock, Seattle University and King’s Daughters Medical Center highlighted real life Web challenges whose solutions are having a direct and dramatic effect on businesses, whether it is increasing revenue, brand awareness or growing a community.

NASDAQ gave an inspiring presentation about how they have implemented version 8.0 of CMS400.NET to build an interactive user experience on their site. Using the new activity streams and micro-messaging as a driving technology for communication, their community is growing and users are reacting positively. Attendees walked away from this presentation (and other presentations like it) with new ideas about leveraging Ektron to achieve similar results with their own Web sites.

One of the new technologies that people got very excited about is our multivariate testing. Attendees are seeing this as the best way to quickly respond to user preferences for design, layout, content, forms, branding and more. Multivariate testing is a step beyond A/B testing. A/B testing only compares and chooses from two different versions of a page while Ektron’s multivariate experiments test a number of different (and occasionally subtle) variations on a page before automatically selecting a “winner” (based on number of conversions). Multivariate testing leverages PageBuilder and widgets, two of the other technologies that Synergy visitors were very interested in.

One attendee told me that PageBuilder will make it easier for his development team to work with his company’s marketing department. His group will be able to build a framework of templates and widget functionality that the marketers roll out messaging on. There will be less of a delay and more immediate responses to the needs of both areas of the company. This kind of efficiency is exactly what Ektron’s content management platform has always been built around. It is great to hear that users of our software really understand and plan on taking advantage of the benefits we envisioned when we were building PageBuilder.

I left Synergy invigorated. The excitement at Synergy was infectious. Attendees couldn’t wait to get started implementing new techniques they learned and introduce the new technology to the rest of their team. On December 3, 2009 we’ll be hosting a Webinar where you’ll be able to get a good look at some of what we introduced, specifically the CMS400.NET Version 8 functionality that relates to marketing. Sign up here to get an in depth look at how we can help you optimize your Web site and grow and solidify your brand in your marketplace.

Best regards,

Bill Rogers
CEO and Founder, Ektron Inc.

Last month, I wrote about our new model for analytics and how we were integrating it into Ektron CMS400.NET. That model for analyzing and tracking site traffic will be rolled out with version 8.0 in just a few weeks, along with other tools that are designed specifically around improving user experiences, both for Web site visitors and for the team that builds, manages and maintains the Web site.

Going hand in hand with the analytics, we have added multivariate testing to our suite of tools for building Web sites. Your Web site plays a critical role in your marketing efforts, and the experience users have on your site can determine success or failure. With multivariate testing, you can implement immediate user feedback and ensure that your site is as effective as possible. Multivariate testing leverages the power of PageBuilder and enables your marketing teams to roll out and test multiple versions of a page at once, experimenting with imagery, navigation, branding, layout and more to find the most effective combination for turning page visits into conversions. In addition to reporting on the “winner” of the experiment, it can also automatically switch off all of the “losing” versions of a page to maximize the effectiveness of that area of your site.

Activity stream and micro-messaging functionality has also been added for you to use immediately on your sites. With Facebook and Twitter, users have come to expect this kind of functionality and Ektron’s activity streaming has the added advantage of being searchable and filterable, making it ideally suited for intranets and other collaborative Web sites where timeline navigation can improve efficiency. With this powerful social media tool and our existing social networking and Web 2.0 technology (combined with our complete content management platform), we are building a complete social software solution that can fit every and any need. We already have some very interesting sites that are using this technology

The new calendar feature improves on the calendar control that we offered before. This isn’t a case of adding to the current feature, this calendar was rebuilt from the ground up to create a powerful marketing, scheduling and event tool for public sites and intranets. As an event and time management solution for public facing and intranet site, it has multiple display options, intuitive editing, filtering by taxonomy and mashup capability that enables you (and your users) to combine multiple calendars from different areas into single customized calendars that put all pertinent information at your fingertips and in context of other events and assets.

As a marketing tool, your Web site can evolve as your message changes and it offers unique opportunities to optimize your presence in response to not only market conditions but also to activity on your site. Traffic analytics engines can help you determine the popularity of areas of your site, examine click through rates on your calls to action, analyze site structure and navigation and gives you key information about the users who are visiting your site. Google Analytics, Omniture, Web Trends and other analytics tools provide the valuable information you need, but until now it has been siloed, separate from the platform that manages your Web site.

The upcoming edition of Ektron CMS400.NET integrates your best-of-breed analytics tool into the content management system, putting the results directly adjacent to the text, images and navigation that you want to optimize. By doing this, analytics information is put into context. You are able to see changes in traffic as it relates directly to changes in your marketing efforts, from copy updates to new product launches to changes in layout, without having to jump back and forth between software interfaces.

Why choose a best of breed third party tool to handle your analytics? I’m a firm believer in you using the best tool for the job and these dedicated third party tools are the best at analytics. If you’re already using one, you won’t need to convert and it will integrate seamlessly into CMS400.NET. You’ll continue to have access to your legacy data and, while it is now part of the cms, your preferred and customized reports will remain available to you as part of the Workarea’s digital dashboard.

Equally important is performance. Because CMS400.NET leverages a provider model, all performance and CPU usage needed to capture, analyze and report traffic data will be handled on a third party system ensuring no loss of performance on your CMS400.NET Web server. If analytics is not coming from a third party system, more processing power is needed from your Web server in order to capture, store and report for every site visitor. It can and will slow down your Web site, no matter how optimized your hardware configuration is.

Furthermore, as new capabilities come available from these analytics specialists, you will be able to leverage the new reports in CMS400.NET easily, letting your site scale as needed. CMS400.NET leverages analytics tools in a way not dissimilar to the way we leverage the .NET platform: we build on them and grow with them, using them to expand the capabilities that you can bring to your Web sites.

These new tools will launch very shortly, and you will be able to learn more about them directly at Synergy 2009, Nov. 1-4. We have several sessions dedicated to the use of analytics and how you can leverage these new capabilities on your own existing sites, not to mention the one-on-one time you’ll have with our own specialists at the networking events. Space and rooms are still available, but the special price of $995 is only good through October 1. I look forward to seeing you there!

The popularity of sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Digg is undeniable. The influence of social media on how the Web is being used and how communication is taking place is extremely powerful. There is a real opportunity for organizations to leverage it as a communication and marketing tool, but it’s not enough to just jump on this bandwagon. You need to have a realistic strategy that understands why social media is critical to business success today. By recognizing what social proof is, why it’s so important and how good content is still the key to promoting your message, you can build a foundation that will set your company on the road to success on the social Web.

Social media is simply the most powerful medium for getting your company’s message across. It’s where word-of-mouth marketing meets technology and it exists as social networks, activity feeds, blogs, threaded discussions, user reviews, ratings and comments (both on your Web site and on other channels). This is where a company’s message meets the social Web. Good and bad information both spread rapidly (the bad often more so). Your company can choose to participate in the conversation and elicit some control over the direction it takes, or it can sit back and let consumers say what they will. But your brand’s reputation will evolve here and this organic branding will establish the social proof you’re looking for.

According to a number of studies, consumers trust their spouses’ and friends’ opinions significantly more than they trust advertising when it comes to making decisions. This trust that they have in the people closest to them is the first layer of social proof that you should be looking for in order to succeed on the social Web. These are the people that your audience relies on and who you need to be referring back to your company as an expert in its field, whatever field that is.

The fact is, on the Web, you can’t be everywhere at once. But the people who believe in your organization and who follow what you say can and will spread the word for you, to their friends and their friends-of-friends, and to the networks they participate in. And establishing positive social proof is good for your SEO too. Every search engine is looking for trusted authority sites to rank high in their search results. They’re now turning their attention to social media to determine what those sites are (Google is now including a Digg button in their toolbar and GoogleWiki is encouraging users to rank sites). Being recognized as a leader in your field will have your audience referring back to your company, referring your links to others, growing your SEO and cementing your message to your brand.

You’re probably thinking, this is great, but how does it relate to content management? The message that they’re spreading on the social Web is the content they find wherever your company leaves its mark. From videos on your Web site to comments on a blog to employee Tweets, they’re all part of how your company is perceived. Good, effective content establishes you as an authoritative source, both on your Web site and as your message spreads to other networks. Mismanagement of content, on the other hand, can result in the corruption of your message and a loss of control. Your company could spend more time and money cleaning up the mess than it does promoting your good information.

By making sure that your content is reflecting your company’s message, you ensure that the social proof being built is establishing your brand in the most positive way possible and is in line with the branding you’ve established. When you’re telling the world about the expertise your company has, your primary source of information and messaging has to be conveyed perfectly in order to move the social media conversation in the direction you want it to go.

No matter how good your product is, your reputation is just as valuable. Putting the social Web to work for you with social media is the ultimate in word of mouth advertising and it deserves a strategy founded in tried and true principles. We’ve put together a guide to the why’s and how’s of building a solid social media strategy. I encourage you to read it and see how it applies to what you are trying to do on the Web.

Dear Reader,

Last month, I talked a bit about the Widgets that developers build for use with our PageBuilder technology. I touched on how these open architecture pieces of functionality can be dragged and dropped onto a page by non-technical designers and administrators to build out exactly the kind of page they need. Because Ektron Widgets are built with clean code and aren’t attached to a template, they can be reused across multiple pages and projects.

This might seem like a lot of control that is being given to non-technical users. In reality, it’s no more than they had before. Designers and non-technical stakeholders are often a big part of the Web site team that determines what functionality is needed on a site or page and the designers are directly involved in page layout. What PageBuilder does is streamline the process of deploying the site by refining the roles of the designers, marketing team and other non-technical team members who are involved in making the page building decisions.

For a marketing team, when they need to create a new campaign page or want to do some A/B testing, PageBuilder makes it clean and efficient process. A wizard walks them through selecting the page name and the template.  Then, the designers and Web masters can build out the functionality on that Web page by dragging and dropping Widgets that the developers have built for the Web project. It could be Widget functionality that was built for other parts of the Web site, another project or it could be brand new for this page. In any of these cases, the marketing team doesn’t need to make requests to the developers every time they want to add a new page and need functionality built into it. They can reuse what’s already available, changing the properties to reflect the purpose of the page. This saves an incredible amount of time in page development and launch (testing the new page or pages is a lot quicker too; many of the Widgets will have already been used successfully). 

Pages built with PageBuilder fit in seamlessly with the rest of the site. Look and feel is controlled by the templates and other development work, while layout and page functionality is decided by the best people suited for it, the designers and marketers. These pages also leverage the core content management features of CMS400.NET. You’re able to control SEO properties, including URL aliases, metadata, taxonomy, titles and descriptions, at a page level, as opposed to the content level. Approval chains and permissions can also be applied to the whole page, and entire page histories are kept, making it even easier to roll back to earlier versions.

With Ektron’s PageBuilder technology, rolling out new product or services pages is more efficient, as is adding and modifying functionality to existing pages. The ease of A/B testing is also boosted, as you can launch two versions of a campaign page with different aliases and track your success with analytics. Microsites are also quick to launch as needed and in conjunction with technology like eSync, easy to manage.

I’ve been working directly with our engineers to come up with new Widgets for you to use in your marketing efforts and I’ve also seen some impressive Widgets coming from developers outside of Ektron working with PageBuilder. The new Twitter Widget is just an example of spreading your message using social media on your own site.

To learn more about PageBuilder check out a new video we just created all about it here.

Sincerely,

Bill Rogers
Ektron CEO and Founder