A well-crafted website is a sign of an enterprise that takes all facets of their business seriously. Often times a website is the first point of contact for potential customers or leads interested in your products or services. In order to drive new business and maintain competitive advantage, enterprise websites must adapt to new industry standards.

When dealing with potentially millions of visitors to a brand’s website, consistency is a major issue. Editing mistakes, poor design and irrelevant content can also turn users off within seconds of seeing a page. In a nutshell, all facets of compatibility, content, usability and site layout serve to influence the perception of a company by its customer base.

Through our firm’s experience with web projects for international brands like National Geographic and Fox, I have found the following aspects of design and development to be crucial for designing sites for enterprise clients:

1. Incorporate Device Compatibility with Responsive Design

With the multitude of computing devices, do you know which devices your customers use most to access your website? Designing a website with compatibility for tablets, smartphones and computers is vital to increasing web traffic and attracting business from a global audience. Responsive web design serves as a way to attend to the multi-device challenge.

Incorporating responsive design into web development will ensure a website’s consistency of quality from whatever device it is accessed. If a substantial percentage of your site visits stem from mobile, and your site is not mobile optimized, you are likely losing clickthroughs from potential mobile customers.

2. Contemplate the User During Development

Web development that focuses on the user experience results in a digital design process that ensures optimal usability. Expert web developers map out the functionality of a website through the use of wireframes. Wireframes effectively detail the operations of every click, drop down menu, image feature or page layout in order to create a seamless user experience.

Navigating a website should occur in a natural intuitive way. Once a user feels impeded by the poor design of a site layout, they head over to a competitor. For example, one of the best ways to lose new customers is to make contact information five pages deep instead of available through a single click.

3. Focus on Digital Design and Information Architecture

The best web developers out there are inspired by real world architects. Architects design buildings with the person’s direct experience in mind. Informed architecture within web development is not just about writing compelling content, it’s also about using it to augment the UX and wire framing stages.

By placing functionality above aesthetics, the world’s best web developers consistently deliver an end product that is a pleasure to navigate. A website should offer up a fulfilling experience for the user interested in buying your product or paying for your services.

4. Realize That Content Drives Traffic

Content within a website is also key to a professional web presence. Text within a page is the main driver for increasing traffic. Search engine optimization strategies can bring increased visibility for your page.  For instance, are you properly displaying the entirety of your product and service offerings? In order to streamline the updating and revisions to content, content management systems such as Drupal are highly suggested.

CMS solutions like Drupal, Tridion, and others allow for easy access to a website for editing content within web pages. Drupal, as well as other CMS offerings, is designed for users with zero knowledge regarding coding. CMSs are incredibly useful for managing content on multi-lingual sites for international enterprises. Consistently updated content that meets SEO guidelines is vital for increased web visibility and higher revenue generating traffic.

5. Acknowledge the Value of Microsites

In order to maximize the ROI of a website, there are numerous innovative ways besides design that can grow a business. For instance, traditional business documentation such as case studies and white papers can be adapted for the new era of Internet consumption. Sites with affiliated micro-sites addressing specific aspects of a business are becoming more common.

Micro-sites are similar to blogs in terms of being focused on a specific aspect of a company’s services, experience and offerings. A micro-site is easier to share and access than attachments and provides specifically focused content for certain products, services or marketing efforts.

Designing a successful website takes preparation, knowledge of user context and keen insight regarding how web users search and assess websites.  Approaching a website with an understanding of the end-user experience as well as strategy for spurring revenue and informing visitors, is central to the web design process.

With the challenging landscape of SEO comes the challenging landscape of SEO reporting, and I’m not just talking about merging SEO data sources into one excel file and adding a logo to try to make it look professional, presentable and understandable. I’m talking about how to make all the data points and metrics indicate real progress, and more importantly meet your clients’ or boss’ expectations.

Since the way we do SEO has changed, the way we report on it must change too. Effectively setting up the reporting metrics to prove progress may make the difference between meeting the clients’ expectations or not.

SEO reporting should answer these questions for your client:

• Are our efforts helping us reach our organic search goals?
• What SEO tasks were completed last month in relation to our goals?
• What impact did these efforts have on the web presence for organic search?
• What new opportunities were identified to optimize for organic search?
• Are there any new competitive threats?

So how do you set up your SEO data, metrics and reporting to prove this progress and set the stage for the subsequent month? How do you set up your SEO team for success?

Follow these four steps with month-end reporting in mind for more successful SEO outcomes.

1. Set Expectations - Clarify what SEO is compared to what it is not.

Most of us know that SEO is not just about ranking #1 in Google for the preferred set of keywords, but the people you have to report to might not be on the same page. Set the expectation early in the relationship that SEO is more than just rank, and that SEO ranking data is not the be all and end all of SEO reporting. Setting this expectation is key.

SEO is the on-going process of discovering and uncovering highly converting unbranded keyword phrases that are driving organic search traffic and conversion – then taking action across the web presence to improve upon impact and create new impact. Impact in the form of increased organic search traffic and conversions, expansion of keywords you are being found for, content footprint index, etc.

Metrics that demonstrate the impact of your SEO efforts include:

• Organic traffic/visits
• Organic position
• Conversions by keyword
• On-site and off-site indexed pages

2. Set Goals & Benchmarks – Quantifying the starting point will help clarify the final outcomes.

Agreeing on and setting goals for the SEO project is obviously key and will help maintain focus. Including those goals in the monthly SEO report will remind your client or your boss of what the overall reason for the investment is after the project gets going. Let’s face it, it is easy to forget why we thought SEO was important. To prove impact, setting goals and benchmarking the current web presence is necessary.

A couple examples of realistic goals to work towards are:

• “To increase traffic from organic search by 20% over the next two months.”
• “To triple the number of highly converting unbranded keywords.”

To help demonstrate progress with these goals, benchmarking certain metrics and including the benchmark values in the monthly report is key.

SEO metrics to benchmark to demonstrate progress and achievement of the agreed upon goals include:

• Organic search traffic both as a percentage of overall website traffic and the number of unique visitors
• Backlink diversity
• Unbranded keywords found in anchor text
• Social signals by social channel
• Number of unbranded keywords driving traffic
• Number of unbranded keywords driving conversions
• Number of indexed pages

3. Set up Goals and Conversions in Analytics - Doing SEO without goals and conversions set up in analytics is a fruitless exercise.

If SEO is about understanding highly converting unbranded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions, then doing SEO without goals and conversions set up in analytics makes this task next to impossible.

Whether you are using Google Analytics, Coremetrics, Omniture, or another analytics system, it is important to set up even some simple goals. Think about the website in question and what you consider a successful visit to be. More advanced goals can be set up as you get to know the website and the behavior of the visitor, but if you are looking for some simple goals to get started in order to understand successful keywords here are two:

a) Time on Page: If the time the visitor stays on the page is greater than 2 or 3 minutes then this can be considered a conversion. One can conclude that whichever keyword the visitor searched on to get to the site matched the content on the page plus they stayed a reasonable amount of time to read the content.

b) 2+ Pages Visited: Similarly to Time on Page, number of pages visited can help indicate that the visitor is engaged with the content. Knowing the keyword they searched on to arrive at the page will help to discover new unbranded keywords that ought to be optimized for.

Make time every week to discover and uncover new highly converting keywords. Identify them in your monthly report, discuss them with your client as well as the opportunities you have identified to create on-site and off-site content for these keywords. This is an upsell opportunity for SEO services.

4. Set Metrics & Drive Action Items - Metrics without action items are useless.

SEO is an on-going process and you want to keep your client engaged, so continuing to discover opportunities through the metrics and demonstrating that more content writing can be done will keep their investment top of mind and on-going.

Here are some metrics that will help with continuous action items:

a) Keywords by Position Sorted by Highest to Lowest Converter

Action items:

• Perform additional keyword research to identify other related search terms including variations and longer-tail terms. How might these keywords be included into on-site or off-site content to test engagement and understand if the keyword(s) in question will perform well?
• Identify other pages on the website that are ranking beyond page one for the keywords in question. What can be done to further optimize these pages to improve rankings?
• Obtain additional budget to write content and report on metrics.

b) New Content Being Indexed and Ranked

• Identify new on-site and off-site pages that are being ranked and indexed. Which pages can be optimized further? If conversions increase then perhaps an entire content campaign can be created around this keyword. Once this is identified, obtain additional budget to create and execute on this content campaign and report on the metrics.

Summary

SEO reporting should be considered an art rather than a science. Monthly SEO reporting deserves a conversation with your client or boss to help describe the opportunities for optimization that you see in the metrics. Setting the expectation that reporting is more than just presenting rank data will help to create a relationship that is open to exploring opportunities to optimize based on strong metrics around keyword visits and conversions.
 

Image via CrunchBase

At the recent Google I/O 2013 Keynote, Google announced a laundry list of new enhancements and services.  Solidifying its’ game plan of playing offense rather than defense with innovation.  Which, at this writing, is putting the challenge on Apple to respond.

My thoughts shared here are heavily influenced by a brilliant article from Mike Myatt entitled -Leadership Lesson: The Difference Between Google and Apple.  Mike is one of our best thinkers on leadership and is the author of Leadership Matters . . . The CEO Survival Manual. Here is Myatt’s view on how Google is gaining the edge on Apple:

“…there is one very big difference between the two  – Google plays offense while Apple has recently settled for playing defense. Apple is struggling to maintain its position in the market, while Google is expanding its position.”

Mike goes on to say it is this offensive mindset, which is putting the hurt on Apple.  In essence Apple has ceded ground to Google, Samsung, and HTC while taking a defensive stance.  The result: Apple’s stock has fallen by over 35%.

What really caught my attention and is well worth noting is the following statement from Mike:

“Google could have made the decision to stay solely focused on search, but they had the foresight to move beyond the certainty of what is to pursue new opportunity by focusing on what if.”

By going on the defensive, Apple has lost its’ way in the very element which allowed them to introduce the world to the iPhone and iPad – foresight.  I made this point in my recent conversation with Michael Brenner on his B2B Marketing Insider Blog entitled – Marketing in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution.

In my own humble opinion, I believe this to be a temporary setback for Apple.  There is no question the delay until fall to introduce their newest innovations, as most pundits believe, is hurting them.  Time will tell.

B2B Marketing Lesson

Of note is Google’s ability to turn massive analytics and insight data (what is) into a game plan focused on foresight (what if).  Taking a leadership position on providing a future-oriented vision to consumers on the possibilities of what their future can look like with Google.  In essence, sharing its’ foresight gained as well as making it foundational to Google marketing.

A key lesson for B2B Marketers is this: the new digital age requires us to build a capability of understanding buyer foresight.  It is no longer enough to gain buyer insight and focus on the “what is” as Myatt aptly points out.  B2B Marketing and Sales will need to build competencies in understanding the “what if” scenarios they as well as their customers can see together.  This is what it will take to be a market leader in the new digital age.

Turning Buyer Insight Into Buyer Foresight

During the past few years, there has been much focus on analytics and insights in the B2B arena.  However, it is a focus on what has already happened.  There is value for certain.  What we need though is to expand – not merely respond.  Recently, I had an engaging conversation on the Dan McDade's PointClear PowerView segments on this concept of buyer predictability.

In my recent article 3 Ways to Be a Market Leader with Buyer Foresight, I offered some steps B2B entities could take to build Buyer Foresight into their organization’s DNA.  Of most importance is gaining insight with foresight in mind.  This means more of what my Dad used to say – “you have to look the person in the eye to know what they are thinking”.  More often than not, this takes a level of expertise in on-site qualitative research well worth the time and investment.

Turning buyer insight into buyer foresight takes a new level of commitment.  Google made a commitment to foresight.  This level of foresight and foresight sharing has allowed them to win at the economic game of leapfrogging.

Now they are reaping the rewards.

(Be part of the dialogue with the latest thinking on Buyer Personas, Persona Buying Cycle, and Buyer Foresight - sign up for news and updates here: News and Updates From Tony Zambito.)

Related articles

• 3 Ways to Be a Market Leader with Buyer Foresight
• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013
• 5 Buyer Behaviors Reshaping B2B Marketing
• Leadership Lesson: The Difference Between Google and Apple

All About the Future (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every company has aspirations to become the market leader in their space.  Leading your market has built-in advantages over your competition.  Market leadership helps to ensure a level of stability and longevity.

Getting there and staying there is the hard part.

The demands of the market and the buyers within them can set the bar very high.  Being the market leader can be very tenuous as buyers evaluate new emerging technologies and options.  Rising to the top also comes with a heavy responsibility.  Which is this:

Customers and buyers expect market leaders to provide them with a roadmap of the future.

Recently, this became a profound understanding for me, which I want to share with you.  I conducted a significant amount of qualitative buyer interviews during the past year or more.  There was a sense buying behavior was shifting in this direction.  It has led me to conclude this:

Organizations today, particularly B2B, must develop the capability as well as provide to their prospective buyers and existing customers future-oriented Buyer Foresight™ .

Michael Brenner, who has a fantastic blog B2B Marketing Insider, and I had a conversation on the subject of buyer foresight.  You can find it here: Marketing is in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution.

Buying behavior is shifting towards future-oriented thinking and planning for several important reasons:

Rapid Change in Technology

This is a big threat for existing customers and prospect buyers.  When it comes to high-ticket technology and solutions, the stakes are high.  A true source of fear is making a significant investment in technology, which may be obsolete in a year.  Here is a buyer voice on this matter:

“One of the things we really like to know is what is being planned in the future.  We expect honesty because the last thing we want is to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars only to be stuck with an obsolete system.” Vice President, Business Integration and Operations

Innovation Leader

Customers and prospect buyers want to be associated with organizations demonstrating successful skills in innovation.  Future-oriented buyers are not interested in the status quo. They also want to share in the innovation.  Another voice:

“We are looking for a long-term partnership.  We want to actually be a part of what they create.  Even at the R&D stage.  We believe it helps serve us as well as serve them.” Chief Operating Officer

The Vision Thing

A concept I covered in my conversation with Michael Brenner is the idea of how customers and buyers desire vision.  They want to not only understand your future.  They desire to gain their own foresight into how their future can change if they enter a relationship with you.  A voice to articulate:

“Our committee does a five-year outlook planning session once per year.  It is a fun exercise really.  So, I like vendors who can give me a vision of where they think they will be in five years as well as how they think where we will be in five years.” Vice President, Portfolio Management

Developing Competency in Buyer Foresight

There are several ways to begin building buyer foresight into an organization’s DNA, which can be covered over a series of articles and conversations.  Here are just a few for starters:

• Conduct qualitative buyer research - on-site to get the best future-oriented perspective
• Create appropriate levels of personas for the Persona Buying Cycle™
• Recognize Buyer Insight which can be turned into Buyer Foresight
• Engage in buyer scenario modeling and mapping exercises which are future-oriented

The last of these suggestions, are important new exercises.  Adapting to what I have called in the past Buyer Scenario Modeling can be a significant path for organizations to take towards Buyer Foresight.

Buyers today are seeking relationships which keeps pace with the rapid changes in the new digital age.  Buyer foresight is a means to help you do just that.

Related articles

• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013
• One Way to Know the Ideal Buying Scenarios for Lead Nurturing
• 5 Buyer Behaviors Reshaping B2B Marketing
• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• Marketing is in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution
• 4 Reasons Why Content Marketing Should Care About Audience Development

Many brands online have a digital presence, but don’t necessarily sell anything online. In fact, the goal of their web presence is really to educate consumers on their product or service by developing meaningful and relevant content. The challenge with measuring the impact of this approach is that we’re not surveying the IQ of website visitors before and after consuming a brand’s digital presence, albeit, not a bad idea.

However, while this can pose as a challenge to measure, with social media highly integrated in everything on the web, it’s much easier to have an indication of whether the target audience is consuming website content and engaging with it. These are not your standard bounce rate and time on page metrics. Unfortunately, the days of relying on those metrics are over. Consumers can now visit a page, get the information they need or were looking for and leave the website. The bounce rate isn’t going to be an effective measure of how well the content is doing at attracting visitors further into the website. Time on page can’t substitute bounce rate because web analytics tools often don’t include visitors who exit a page in the time on page metric for the page that they exit on.

So how do you overcome this obstacle?

Think about how a user may engage with your website even if they only visit one page; and capture alternative criteria that qualifies as an engagement. For example, it’s a best practice these days to have social media icons next to content to make it shareable, so be sure to collect data on whether users are using these icons. Additionally, capture whether visitors are scrolling down a page to get an idea if they’re consuming the content and incorporate it into the engagement rate. What other actions can visitors do on a web page to show a level of interest that standard metrics, like bounce rate and time on page are not able to provide?

In the meantime, responsive is the way to go. Essentially, it means building your site (or ads within it) so that the layout adapts automatically to the user’s browser and screen resolution.

For example, Engadget.com is a responsive site you might experience in any of three layouts based on your device. The content remains the same, but the format served is automatically determined by your browser width.

Desktop:

Tablet- portrait mode:

Handset:

So why bother building your site in a responsive way? One reason is flexibility. You can maintain ad placements that can fit virtually any screen. With a native app, publishers are confined to ad placements hard coded into the app.

Another is to meet the needs of users who don’t want to bother downloading an app in order to read your news right now. Maybe they reached your website randomly through another app or site, and you want them to stay without forcing them to download your app – or worse –cramming your desktop site onto their mobile device.

Here’s the hitch. Or rather, a long list of hitches: iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia, HTC, iPad, iPad3, iPad4, iPad mini, Surface, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Note, NOOK, NOOK HD, Kindle, Kindle Fire, HP ENVY…

Handset and tablet fragmentation is off the charts, as is the range of “popular” screen resolutions:

1920x1080 960x640 1024x768 1136x640 1440x900 2048x1536 1280x800 1440x900 1024x600 240x432 1366x768 320x240 720x1280 480x800 768x1280 960x540

This fragmentation is especially daunting from an advertising perspective. Do advertisers have to build ads to target all these devices and specs? Do they need to build a different ad for each device? Happily, the answer is no. In fact enabling responsive ads is a lot simpler and more cost-effective than you might imagine.

The solution for advertisers is to create one ad that contains multiple images (if you are running a standard banner campaign). Three to six images in different dimensions will cover most handsets/tablets resolutions and display on most users device. Even better, when the user changes his or her screen orientation and thus display, ads can respond automatically – choosing among versions to offer the best image. In fact, a responsive ad can conform to either fit the browser width or fit the actual placement dimensions. Add rich media features such as an always-centered video player or elements always stick to the sides of the banner, and you have a Transformer-like ad that adapts perfectly to the screen at hand.

For an example, check out this link from your mobile device, or scan the QR code below (or just go to bit.ly/QHLnjj on your mobile browser):

From a desktop, you will see this ad as a 300x250 banner.

From a mobile phone in portrait mode you will see a 320x50.

In landscape, the ad becomes an animated (by using a GIF)960x160 ad:

With three versions, this advertiser achieved an engaging experience across 99% of user devices.

Responsive ads make life a lot easier in a mobile world. One multi-version ad can run on virtually all devices and platforms without a lot of costly production time. And because there’s only one tag for all the versions, there’s no complex integration necessary.

Until the next phase of mobile technology arrives, responsive design provides an efficient solution for publishers and advertisers to reach consumers on their devices of choice.

Overhead View of Audience (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over the past year, questions about content marketing effectiveness are beginning to surface.  The Content Marketing Institute as well as a survey sponsored by eConsultancy, indicated belief in effectiveness was under 40%.  Most recently, SiriusDecisions made this statement:

“Fully 60 to 70 percent of content churned out by b-to-b marketing departments today sits unused. This stark statistic underscores the urgent need for a content revolution in b-to-b organizations.”

There is consistency on both the customer/buyer as well as the seller side regarding this issue.  In my qualitative research work in the past year, this view was evident. Digging into the “why” is the challenge.  Some 4 “whys” I’ve noticed:

Skipping to the Solution

One of the reasons this is occurring is the act of jumping to the solution too quickly. You can call it education material, insight, information, and etc.  However, reading between the lines, content is loaded with non-value messaging.  Content is filled with the usual “we are great, we know your problem, and we have the greatest solution” messaging.

Product Marketing Origins

Some companies have been product-centric for decades.  Reshaping such DNA is not an easy transition some are finding out.  When the majority of content is being produced from the product marketing or management epic center, it is hard to resist.  Resist what you ask?  The temptation to talk about how great the product is.

Sales Driven

Contrary to the above, some organizations have been sales-centric for years.  Thus, putting enormous pressure on marketing to generate sales-ready leads.  Patience for nurturing may be on the low-end of the scale.  The result is content bleeds “selling” in every way.

One Size Fits All

Some organizations have not moved beyond the “single” view of the buyer.  Content is oriented towards this single view in all aspects.  Thus, content is not developed for other members of the buying team nor external influencers.  I include in this category firms too focused on a single buyer persona.

The Audience Development Manifesto

Three categories of buyer behavior getting plenty of notice recently are:

• Not in the market to buy
• Not ready to buy
• Do nothing

Read them again.  If all content is oriented towards “ready to buy”, then it is no wonder 60 to 70 percent of content goes unread or unused.  Let this voice of a buyer interview subject do the talking:

“It is important to stay abreast of new ideas, trends, technology, and the likes.  But, some just make it difficult to do so.  Everything is set up to sell me something right away.  So I am reluctant to give details about myself.” (Vice President, Mortgage Operations)

If your content is product-centric or sales-centric in the wrong place, time, or situation, this may be the voice of your potential buyers.

Audience-Centric

We are seeing the term audience-centric used more often.  What does this mean exactly?  The obvious is to develop content specific to an audience.  To do so implies not skipping the first step of knowing your audience.

First Step

The first step to be taken is to gain an understanding of segmenting 3 types of personas which are reflected in the Persona Buying Cycle™:

Audience persona: oriented towards "not in the market to buy."  Understanding how to meet the needs and goals of people as well as companies who fall into this category is pivotal.  It can include a wide spectrum of industry influencers to non-buying teams in prospect companies.  Sound audience development messaging begins with understanding audience personas.

Lead persona: oriented towards “not ready to buy” but have needs and goals specific to their role as well as situation.  As we have seen often in buying teams, team members are assigned research and evaluation roles, which can take place over a 6 to 12 months period.  Sound lead nurturing begins with understanding lead personas.

Buyer persona: understanding when the buying cycle “kicks” into sales-ready mode is crucial.  Buyer personas should be specific to active participation in the process of buying.  Buyers can and will choose the "do nothing" choice.  If so, you may be able to trace this back to a lack of understanding your buyer personas.

Armed with the knowledge of how these three distinct personas behave can help lead to this summary point:

Improving content marketing effectiveness requires an audience development strategy.

A plain and simple statement yet with much work to be done.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.  If I can be of help, schedule time with me at So Helpful Tony.)

Related articles

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013

• 4 Reasons Why Content Marketing Should Care About Audience Development (tonyzambito.com)
• Map Content to the 5 Phases of the B2B Buyer Persona Buying Cycle (tonyzambito.com)

The hospital used computer-guided lasers that stacked/fused plastic layers into more than a hundred tiny tubes. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the hospital special permission to implant one of the tubes in the baby, who’s now doing just fine.

In addition to healthcare, 3D printing is fast making significant inroads in a wide variety of vertical markets.

“It’s the wave of the future,” said Dr. Robert Weatherly, a pediatric specialist at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.

Elizabeth Royte, writing in this month’s Smithsonian Magazine, reported that even the printing of organs – and cartilage and skin and tissue – “holds great promise for transforming healthcare and extending longevity. Transplanted organs from a patient’s own tissues won’t be rejected. Waiting times for kidneys and other donor organs will decrease, and organ traffickers could be put out of business.”

One of Royte’s sources, Anthony Atala, who heads up the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, says in a few years hospitals will have 3D printers that can print skin – “from subcutaneous fat up through keratinocytes to hair follicles, oil glands and melanocytes – directly into a patient’s body.”

3D printing, like most other technologies, may have a dark side. Earlier this month Defense Distributed, a Texas-based company, posted details online on how to make a plastic gun (called the ‘Liberator’) using a 3D printer (see Fox News photo). The U.S. Department of State ordered the company to take the blueprints offline because they may contain data controlled by the federal government – Defense Distributed has now complied. Before the firm did so, there were more than 100,000 downloads worldwide.

Forbes also reported that 15 of the gun’s 16 pieces were made on an $8,000 Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer. “The final piece is a common nail, used as a firing pin that can be found in a hardware store,” noted Forbes.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security intelligence bulletin issued on May 21 highlighted the U.S. government’s chief concerns:

“Significant advances in 3D printing capabilities, availability of free digital 3D printer files for firearms components, and difficulty regulating file sharing may present public safety risks from unqualified gun seekers who obtain or manufacture 3D printed guns…magnetometers may fail to detect the Liberator, depending on device sensitivity. Future designs could further reduce or eliminate metal entirely…unqualified gun seekers may be able to acquire or manufacture their own Liberators with no background checks.”

But as the technology continues to evolve, hopefully 3D printing will be an agent of good.

Peter Friedman, who publishes the Innovation Investment Journal, said car dealers, for instance, might eventually include free 3D printers with vehicles so owners can manufacture their own parts.

“3D printing is not just the future of making things you don’t have…it’s the future of making things that you do have immortal,” he said.

However, to use some British vernacular, this may result in a sticky wicket. Royte pointed out a number of legal issues that will pop up:

“Who is liable if a home-printed design fails to perform? Who owns the intellectual property of codes and the objects they produce? 3D printing is bound to encourage counterfeiting, with serious consequences for brand owners,” Royte said.

In addition to the plastic gun example mentioned earlier, Royte said hackers have already stolen personal banking information after creating a widget on a 3D printer that fits inside an ATM.

Nonetheless, 3D printing could jump-start certain industries.

One of these is the solar energy industry.

John J. Licata, chief energy strategist of Blue Phoenix, a consultancy focusing on next generation energy, believes 3D printing will revolutionize solar panel and photovoltaic (PV) cell manufacturing.

Licata said a lack of energy storage, coupled with manufacturing inefficiencies, have had a negative impact on the industry – future production of solar cells need to be more sustainable.

“3D solar cells, despite advances in energy storage, can capture more sunlight than conventional PV models because they are more precise (using copper, indium, gallium, selenide), less complex and weigh less,” said Licata.

He also pointed out that researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) believe 3D solar panels could be about 20 percent more efficient than flat solar panels – 3D printing can extend the amount of solar absorbed into cells.

Licata added that 3D printing may also drop production costs by half by eliminating various inefficiencies associated with the waste of costly materials like glass or polysilicon.

“The ability to control material inputs of your finished solar product would further turn traditional manufacturing of PV on its head by creating more of an on-demand model that doesn’t require fabrication at distant warehouses,” he said.

Lastly, Licata believes that 3D printing can generate very thin solar cells that can be printed on untreated paper, plastic or fabric rather than expensive glass.

“Creating lighter weight flexible solar panels could have bigger positive implications for wearable hi-tech clothing, radios and future electronics,” he said.

Assuming, like all relatively new technologies, that the costs of 3D printers will start to decrease, 3D printing could lead to a new wave of customization for businesses.

Eric Savitz of Forbes reported that this customization potential will compel “leaders to adjust their sales, distribution and marketing channels to take advantage of their capability to provide customization direct to the consumer.”

And from the consumer’s perspective, noted Carine Carmy, director of marketing for Shapeways, a 3D printing marketplace and community, 3D printing helps extend the conversation with brands opened by digital and social media to possibly co-creating products. She also succinctly summed up the technology’s potential:

“As previously occurred with social media, brands early to adopt 3D printing will be in a position to define the market and develop their way to innovation.”

Sky’s the limit. Stay tuned.

One thing we can count on is by the time you have finished reading this buying behavior may have been altered one again.  Changes in buyer behaviors continue unabated.  This is making it difficult for marketing and sales leaders to plan the right mix of strategies and tactics resulting in a winning formula.

5 Buyer Behaviors B2B Marketing Must Keep An Eye On

New buying behaviors means B2B marketers have to become more responsive today.  Creating nimble organizations and improving knowledge in buyer understanding.  Here are ways buyer behavior will continue to reshape marketing:

Buyers Embrace Collaboration

Social and digital technologies has allowed for progress in the area of collaboration.  Meaning the sphere of influence and interaction not only has widened but increased.  Old ideas about roles on buying teams are being shattered as we speak.  The era of collaborative buyer networks has arrived.  We now have to consider internal as well as external members of collaborative networks impacting decision-making.

Buyers Want Co-Creation

Collaborative networks are fostering a new environment for co-creating products, services, and for solving problems.  This new development will put pressure on B2B organizations to get in line with flexible products and services which allow buyers to play an active role in co-creating.  Buyers and their collaborative networks will demand it.  For B2B marketers, this means a broader view on how you deliver messaging.

Buyers Want Less Content

I am sure some will do a double take on the above sub-header.  The fact is buyers are overwhelmed with content.  Here is how one buyer put it to me: “Look, I think twice now about putting my name in a form - not because I am not willing - but I know this just means I am going to get a flood of emails to download more information.” Buyers want less content – yet desire smart content.

Buyers Want 1-to-1

A funny thing happened on the way to marketing automation.  Marketing may be inadvertently dripping back into the mode of 1-to-many as opposed to the coveted 1-to-1.  I came upon this thought after conducting two reviews of lead generation and nurturing campaigns.  Buyers can see right through this screen.  They can smell automation.  A buyer’s voice on an email she received: “What is this?  I really don’t know because it doesn't say anything to me.”

Buyers Want More Than Insight

There is the old adage “too much of a good thing.”  I think we may have such a situation happening.  We have embraced the idea of the Challenger Sale and you see organizations racing to offer insight.  An issue here is too many items are being classified as insight.  This can actually counter-balance the act of contributing insight.   What this means for B2B marketing and sales is they will have to be more judicious in what they label insight.  Why dilute a good thing?

Adaptive and Agile Marketing

With rapidly changing buying behaviors, B2B marketing will need to be more adaptive and agile.  I foresee buyer behaviors shifting in waves.  This means marketing must be able to see these waves and make adaptive shifts in how they connect with buyers.  This will certainly not be easy to do.

Predictability will become even more important as we look ahead.  While Big Data holds promise, it will equally take developing the qualitative ability to anticipate where the new buyers of today are heading.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• The Art of Buying
• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013

1.  Logo – (Noun) “A symbol adopted by an organization to identify its products or services” We all know it’s never about what you have, it’s about how you use it that makes the difference! Since you've spent the time and/or money on this masterpiece called your "logo," make sure it shows up everywhere including business cards, social media sites, and any other promotional materials. Your logo is your company's identity in a picture and the more you show it off, the quicker your brand recognition will grow.

Does this really matter, you ask? Consider this… how likely are you to remember a random fast-food restaurant you visited when they use generic bags and soda cups versus the restaurant that brands every cup and bag with their logo? That garbage in your car becomes advertising and will make an impression every time you see it.

2. Interact – Who knew this was a part of branding? Speak directly with your target and, even more importantly, with your clients. Share and respond to social media comments, answer your phone using your company name and/or slogan, and use interactive communication tools such as surveys and email marketing. Remember, everything you send and share should always include your logo and slogan.

3. Solve – Your mission should be simple. Every business offers a product or service that offers results and/or a solution; and just because you know that, it does not mean your target market does. Leverage your interactive tools to share a clear, concise, and consistent solution that is unique to your brand identity. Remember, the process you use to help your clients may be complicated but your message should be simple enough to earn the trust and comfort of your clients.

Branding is more of an art than a science; it takes creativity, time, patience, and just like a painting, it will even go through an ugly stage. An initial brand launch should focus on creating awareness for your unique product or services. Luckily you have a friend in the industry- whether your current brand is sour or your business is brand new, HMG can help you too!

What other media channel can compare with this?

Consumers are rapidly adopting mobile devices and behaviors and spending an average of 2 hours per day on smartphone devices. We are rarely separated from them, and we check our phones every 6.5 minutes (or 150 times daily). 

MOBILE advertising grew by 88% in 2012

While MOBILE ad/media spending is only 1% of total media (vs. 10% share of consumer media time), MOBILE advertising grew by 88% in 2012 (from $2.4B to $4.5B). MOBILE ad spending growth to-date has been limited by marketers/agencies challenges in creating MOBILE ads designed specifically to take advantage of MOBILE devices. Chia Chen, SVP Mobile Practice Leader at Digitas indicated their client's mobile ad spending grew by 400% (4X more rapidly) because their ads for Amex, Taco Bell, M&Ms and other clients treated smart phones as "small TVs" and incorporated richer media, and more native creative palettes.

Global Tablet Advertising Study - Results Presented

Beth Doyle, Innovation Director at Vivaki, revealed the results of a 14-month global industry study of 20 million global tablet users (sponsored by 12 advertisers including P&G and Coke and 12 media companies) titled The Pool: The Tablet Lane - TABLETS RISING. This study tested 35-40 tablet advertising formats and yielded 3 STD Tablet ad formats being proven as meeting consumers' needs: (1) let me drive; (2) more for me; (3) "tablet-ize" the user experience; (4) no guessing games - keep it intuitive and simple. Clearly, with MOBILE (smartphone and tablet) ad standards emerging, marketers are well on their way to utilizing this new medium in unique ways not available through other previous media channels.

MOBILE's Big Differentiators

MOBILE is a one-to-one media channel and LOCATION is MOBILE's big differentiator. These devices give consumers the ability to find anything they need in real-time and for marketers (with opt-in permission) to find their best customers and prospects when they are in active shopping/buying mode. 40% of consumers already utilize MOBILE devices as their primary (exclusive) online research channel and 60% of mobile shopping converts to purchase (with 75% of sales take place in-store).

Todd Morris, EVP of Mobile & Marketing at Catalina indicated mobile-assisted grocery shoppers buy 8%+ more and over 1M+ consumers are already spending over $1B+ in mobile grocery shopping where items are scanned, store discounts/coupons are applied, and orders are delivered or picked up without waiting in checkout lines.

Trish Mueller, CMO at Home Depot indicated mCommerce grew 129% in 2012 and sales from MOBILE are projected to exceed $650M by 2016. Home Depot has developed a MOBILE web and apps which make it one of the top 10 retail sites creating "an endless aisle" where consumers can access 400,000 SKUs as well as product information and peer reviews at the point of purchase. One of the most innovative apps is "Find A Pro" where consumers can take a video of a problem, send it to Home Depot, and they will connect consumers with "Pros" who can bid the job.

Winston Wang, Global Director - Strategic Innovation at AB Bev, demonstrated "beer and MOBILE go hand-in-hand" indicating beer is the original social network and MOBILE is helping Sales & Marketing along the entire purchase funnel as well as in the loyalty/advocacy areas after purchase. Winston shared MOBILE apps for Stella Artois (9 step pouring ritual, LeBar finder), Beck's and Bud Light.

Announcement: A New MMA Initiative To Address The Mobile Talent Gap

MMA-NA has launched a NEW Mobile Talent Task Force (Jeff Gundersen - Co-Chair) and the first open Committee meeting was held at the MMA-NY 2013 Forum. All parties (marketers, agencies, media companies, technology providers, educators, training & development companies, and other interested parties) are invited to reach out to Jeff Gundersen for a copy of the "Strategic Framework" and related mobile talent research studies pertaining to this new Committee.

When Wal-Mart announced plans to use its retail locations to fulfill online orders last week, the media and business community broke into a collective game of word association. The word? Amazon.

Prior to breaking the news, Wal-Mart was already one of the few companies that could compete with Amazon online. But after unveiling how it plans to do so—by fulfilling online orders in its own stores—Wal-Mart became Amazon’s first serious threat.

The irony is that Wal-Mart will fulfill these orders using Amazon's own in-store locker strategy. Wal-Mart has the significant advantage of already having 10,000 retail locations—something Amazon can't currently compete with. For Amazon, staying competitive will either require rolling out a slew of its own physical locations (which is a possibility considering its test store concept last year) or establishing partnerships with 3rd-party brick-and-mortar retailers (something it is very much in the process of doing). In the meantime, however, all Wal-Mart has to do is boost its online game. Well, and install the lockers.

Clearly Amazon and Wal-Mart have different product sets. They also don’t overlap 100% in target customer bases, and there are a bunch of other things that are fundamentally different about their models… But for the sake of oversimplification, let’s say that all Wal-Mart has to do to rise to ecommerce supremacy is up the online ante. What exactly would that take? A lot. But Wal-Mart’s two most crucial priorities will be helping online customers navigate its extensive product list easily and quickly, and streamlining online and offline operations to create a turnkey overall experience.

Priority #1: Wal-Mart must transform itself into an invisible (and psychic) personal shopper to help customers navigate its vast inventory.

Like Amazon, Wal-Mart has a massive product offering. This isn’t a new problem for either of them, but as the race to fulfill orders guarantees quicker turnaround times and more convenience after placing the order, Wal-Mart must control every thing it can before the order is placed to ensure it’s actually placed through them. In this case, that means making sure customers can find what they’re looking for, quickly and easily. Or, in the case that customers don’t know exactly what that is, helping them figure it out with a fairly high degree of accuracy.

The good news is that this isn’t Wal-Mart’s first rodeo; they’re not exactly starting from scratch. They know who their customers are and they’ve got tons of data from past purchases and online behavior to inform their efforts.

They’ve also got enough content to appeal to every person in the US if they want to – it’s just a question of surfacing the right content to the right people. Therefore there is no extra work involved in getting more products or content; the challenge is simply using it better.

To act as an invisible personal shopper, Wal-Mart must master what they do with this powerful combination of content and data—and when they do it. The goal is to use it in real-time, as customers are browsing their online store.  This is different from standard product recommendations—things like “people who liked this, also like that”--which online shoppers have become accustomed to. Retailers now have the technology to go far beyond these persona/segment-based tools.

They can make use of both historical data (what this particular individual has looked at and/or purchased in the past) and current data (what this particular individual is looking at right now) to make predictions that will shape a particular customer’s experience in context and real-time.

Priority #2: Create a streamlined and turnkey experience across all touch points between online and offline visits.

With this new model comes the potential for far more room for error than ever before. Online customers who will now be traveling to Wal-Mart’s physical locations to pick up their orders will no doubt expect a consistent experience from the moment they order all the way to fulfillment. Along the way, there are a number of touch points, including email, direct marketing, advertising, customer service, and so on.

Building on the idea of personalizing each individual’s online experience, Wal-Mart can easily improve each subsequent experience—something that may seem like it involves a significant level of complexity. But with the right infrastructure, it can be completely automated and dynamic.

The key to accomplishing this is putting visitor profiles at the heart of each cross channel experience. In other words, Wal-Mart can use the same model of targeting used online to inform which content each customer sees across all other channels. In the end, the digital channels match email marketing matches advertising matches direct mail matches messaging at the point of pick-up (a phrase I just coined, mind you), and so on.

At the end of the day, Wal-Mart’s rise to online dominance really just revolves around turning an otherwise complicated shopping experience into one that feels quaint and easy. It can accomplish this by setting up a strong behind-the-scenes infrastructure that puts the customer experience at the forefront. And isn’t that what their new strategy is all about—giving the customer what they want where they want it?

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ernest Hemmingway
The concept of buyer personas, as a means for understanding buyers, has been around now for over a decade.  It is an understatement to say many things have changed in the world of buying and selling since their beginning.

We have witnessed the changing dynamics of the buyer-seller relationship. The dynamics I refer to are buying behaviors and buyer goals.  On the other side of the coin, we see marketing and sales making attempts to adapt.  The concepts of content marketing, lead nurturing, insight-based selling, customer experience, and brand management emphasized.  These practices have been introduced as gateways to connecting with buyers in the new digital age.

Adapting to New Realities

Personas, at their core, were introduced as a tool to communicate the goals and behaviors of users and buyers.  Specifically for informing strategies related to product design and marketing to buyers.  For B2B Marketing and Sales, a clearer picture has begun to emerge around the goals and behaviors of buyers.  Yet, there are many more miles to go.  My endeavor and work with organizations over the past decade lead me to this conclusion:

Personas, specifically in B2B, need to be adaptive to new goals and behaviors of buyers throughout their buyer’s journey.  In addition, personas need to be designed for the new practices, which are developing in marketing and sales.

The term buyer persona has been used universally to an extreme level. The term worked well when buyers relied on sales for their buying cycle for upwards to eighty percent.  We are seeing the inverse today.  Here is where I believe buyer trends as well as qualitative evidence is telling us to go:

B2B personas need to be researched, understood, and designed to meet robust goals and behaviors of buyers throughout the end-to-end buying cycle and brand experience.  In addition, personas need to be designed to enable as well as make more effective new practices, functions, and roles.

Persona Buying Cycle™

As new operational models for marketing and sales develop, there are 5 buying behavior phases of the buying cycle personas must now address:

1. Audience Behavior: the concept of content marketing reaching audiences is more prevalent.  Audience goals and behaviors are distinctly different when not in the market for products or services.  Yet, awareness, insight, and intelligence are an important component of connecting with existing customers and future buyers today.  Content marketing effectiveness is enabled when it can reach many different types of audiences.  Audience personas must now include the likes of industry influences and more.
2. Lead Behavior: one of the fastest growing areas, in terms of emerging practices, is the rise in lead nurturing and lead development.  Buyers have distinct goals and behaviors when they convert from being a part of a wider audience to an interested party.   New forms of lead research and lead personas can create more effective conversions from an interested party to an active buyer.
3. Buyer Behavior: the core persona when buyers have become actually engaged in the process of buying.  Buying behaviors, and buying goals, operate on a different level when buyers are actively engaged in the buying process.  Buyer personas, true their original intent, are designed to enable the buying process between buyer and seller.
4. Customer Behavior: when a buyer becomes a customer, there is a trial period underway.  This trial period consists of a different set of goals and behaviors meaningful to confirmation and customer experience.  Specific customer personas can enable understanding and capabilities to meet customer goals post-sale.  Implementation and customer support teams can benefit immensely from personas designed specifically for their roles.
5. Brand Behavior: brand management is emerging out of the shadows, as a competency B2B companies have to get right today.  Fulfilling the brand promise consistently is one of the hardest jobs of marketing and an organization as a whole.  Customers and buyers have different goals, behaviors, and beliefs, which surround brands.  The goal here is to convert customer personas into brand persona advocates.

A recommendation for forward-thinking marketing and sales leaders is to begin thinking in terms of the Persona Buying Cycle™ versus a singular focus on a buyer persona.  One certainty is the buyer’s journey not only begins before buyers think of themselves as a buyer, but also extends beyond the purchase.  Having a common visual and story of how buyer’s goals and behaviors change throughout the buying cycle is compelling.   We are also seeing activities, functions, and roles widen in marketing and sales in response to changing buying behaviors.  The Persona Buying Cycle™ is a natural extension to address both of these developments.

Positive Outcomes

Creating B2B personas through the lenses of a Persona Buying Cycle™ help bring these positive outcomes:

• • Make personas relevant throughout the major touchpoints of the end-to-end buyer’s journey
  • Make personas more practical to each functional team interacting with audiences, buyers, and customers
  • Make demand generation, lead generation, opportunity management, and customer experience more effective
  • Provide a common communications platform for understanding buyers
  • Foster alignment between marketing and sales by mapping to specific buyer goals and behaviors

In a dozen years, we have seen the then straightforward buyer-seller dynamics become more complex.  How B2B views the use of personas, from a pragmatic standpoint, now must adapt.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• Marketing is in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution
• The Art of Buying

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle (tonyzambito.com)

If the $42.3 billion spent online this past holiday season has taught retailers anything, it’s that capturing customers—and their dollars—online is crucial.

But online is a big place. And mobile, which can seem like an entirely different universe, looms ever larger. So where to even start if you haven’t yet…started? And who should lead the charge?

The modern day merchant must have an intimate understanding of the importance of online and mobile commerce, access to a vast array of customer data, and a strategy for transforming this analytical data into winning online experiences.

In all cases, the goal is to attract and retain both new and returning customers. Whether online novices or experts, business leaders crave insight on how to accomplish this. The question is: who inside the company can embody these traits and help the CEO rule the roost? That responsibility should belong to the chief marketing officer.

A CMO should be somebody who uniquely understands marketing, merchandising, data, analytics and web design, and who can also maintain a creative, innovative organizational structure. IT tends to lean too heavily toward data for data’s sake, while Sales too often relies on revenue and relationships.

Placing the CMO in charge allows for the best of both worlds. Armed with the science of data analysis and the art of consumer engagement, the CMO is well positioned to emulate merchant princes of old and join the ranks of retail royalty. A good CMO can nurture a culture of testing, measuring and learning instead of depending on guesswork and subjectivity, as well as reach out to those on the front lines of customer interactions to figure out what those customers want. The ambitious CMO knows that their company site must be more engaging than the competitions’, as well as a place that customers trust, valuing the available products, services and information on offer. It also needs to be a reliable gateway to actions that grow sales beyond the initial purchase, such as cross-selling and upselling.

What’s the best way to make all this happen? One word: data.

Data is crucial to online retail. It comes in many different forms, the main type being the individual behaviors of current site visitors: which search term or webpage brought them over, what time of day and day of the week they’re most likely to stop by, what recent purchases they’ve already made onsite, what pages they visit and what product categories most interest them. All this pertinent info helps define what the “best content” is for each specific viewer. Other types include customer relationship management (CRM) data and social media data.

The aspiring CMO must then use this accumulated data to gain perspective on what customers want; analytical optimization and personalization tools will aid in this quest. Segmentation sifts through the data to find discrete groups of people with similar traits and/or interests, who can then be targeted and tested with relevant content based on site activity. Product recommendations and other offers are then provided based on what the various groups are most likely to purchase.

Product information tools give customers a deeper understanding of the product at hand—a 360-degree view of an article of clothing, or a close-up of various types of textured materials. User-generated content, like ratings, reviews or social media feedback, also aids and influences purchasing decisions. The savvy CMO uses all these methods to strike the delicate balance between intuition and analysis.

That’s why some innovative marketers have found a different approach—identifying and establishing a common, general website domain that focuses on what the consumer is looking for.

A recent example of this is ShinglesInfo.com. Instead of sending customers to Merck’s massive corporate site, or asking them to try and remember the name of their shingles vaccine, Zostavax, the marketers behind the drug found the perfect domain name. Broadcast and print ads can now point people to the simple and easy-to-remember domain ShinglesInfo.com, a site that shares information on the disease without explicitly stating that it is a website sponsored by Merck. Drug information is not pushed on the consumer; it’s more of a resource for people to learn more about the disease. Eventually, when a consumer decides to “take the next step,” it leads to zostavax.com for specific drug information.

As well as being easy to remember, the domain is easy to find. In fact, domain names such as ShinglesInfo.com have the added benefit of not needing a great deal of search engine optimization (SEO) to be successful. Even if a consumer hasn’t seen the commercial and was simply looking for “Shingles information,” Googling that term brings Merck’s site as the second search result. Pairing a relevant domain like this with quality site content guarantees that it will be found by its intended audience.

Another separate, but no less important advantage of using a dedicated domain like this is that it minimizes the need to rely on a “social” approach to providing information about a topic or product. Too many companies drive traffic to Facebook or other social networking sites and in doing so they make it too easy to lose control of the audience and the message. Facebook and other social media methods are, of course, very important elements of any campaign, launch or marketing strategy. That said, being able to control the information in a centralized location that can serve as a definitive resource for consumers is important, especially in the highly-regulated pharmaceutical industry, where follower opinions cannot be intermingled with official information.

The ShinglesInfo.com strategy is a good reminder of just how important a strong, recognizable domain name is—especially when a brand is hard to spell or remember. Regardless of whether your strategy calls for the site to be neutral or specific to what’s being sold, the importance of a memorable, simple domain name as the key part of your marketing campaign can’t be understated.

As the shelf life of ecommerce sites gets shorter, it becomes harder for marketers to balance the latest trends while maintaining a seamless customer experience. When constant upgrades and revamps become daily tasks, or the functionality just isn’t meeting your growth demands, it might be a sign that it’s time to replatform—or migrate your site to a more stable, streamlined infrastructure.

The bad news is that if you’re considering a replatform, it’s likely because your ecommerce site is highly complex and dynamic, with rich content, targeted merchandising, interactive customer support and advanced search capabilities. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be tricky. Here’s a checklist of six things to help ensure a smoother process.

Think long-term

According to Forrester Research, 39% of surveyed companies see a drop in conversion rates after replatforming, while 44% note slower load times once a new platform goes live. It’s a given that ecommerce sites will need to be further tested and tweaked after replatforming. Therefore, selling the process as a singular project with a definite end date is counterproductive. Replatforming should be treated as a long-term program that caters to the site’s goals and capabilities. Be upfront about this so stakeholders realize that a post-launch dip is part of the plan. And ensure them that you can bring things back into balance through testing and optimization.

Be realistic

The average delay for a replatforming program is 4.2 months; so promising a three-month turnaround is setting your company up for failure. Functionality and usability issues are common once the transition takes place, so be aware of that when devising a timeline. Companies that rush their replatforming efforts often have to spend more time dealing with unexpected snafus, unlike those who allocate enough time to get things right at the first pass. Pro tip: don’t schedule a replatform in Q3 or Q4—unless you enjoy needless holiday chaos! Instead, plan to make the shift earlier in the year (right now is actually a good time!) so any delays that arise are dealt with during the summer, and the bigger issues can get resolved before shopping season begins.

Use teamwork

While it’s tempting to keep replatforming decisions strictly within the marketing department—perhaps under the assumption that less cooks in the kitchen will make things go faster—remember that other departments (IT, sales, executives) are bound to have their own goals for the project, each with their own key performance indicators. Having all that input and feedback is highly valuable, and crucial to a successful replatforming. Keeping everyone in the loop in a diplomatic and transparent way results in a consolidated master KPI list for the program with fair and effective prioritization.

Stay focused

A big replatforming no-no is trying to fix too many problems at once. New site features, design changes, cross-channel implementations, updated order management solutions…implementing all those changes at the same time will make the possibility of things going haywire even more likely. Adding excess scope at the start often leads to trimming things down later on—in other words, wasted time, money and effort. Figure out what the most important changes will be at the start, and implement those in a focused, rational manner.

Know what you need

Replatforming is not the end…only the beginning. Therefore, it’s important to have a clear idea of what tools and interdepartmental support are needed to keep things running smoothly once the transition takes place, and to make those needs clear during preliminary discussions so there’s no surprises. Any manual effort or IT hours should be estimated in advance, as well as any possible ongoing financial outlay beyond upfront costs.

Test everything

Forrester notes that an astounding 63% of companies decide to re-platform based on “perceived ROI” (otherwise known as hunches), while 54% are motivated by internal company demands (also called wishful thinking). That’s a whole lot of guesswork, when what’s needed is actual customer experience testing to see what really improves matters. Any variable you can think of—site traffic, bounce rates, navigation, checkout processes, layout/design, revenue per visitor—can be tested both before and after replatforming to ensure the changes taking place will actually make a difference to the bottom line.

A good example is the recently concluded Linley Tech Mobile Conference, held last week in Santa Clara, CA and organized by Mountain View, CA-based The Linley Group, a market research firm providing independent technology analyses of semiconductors for networking, communications, mobile, and wireless applications. The company also produces a trade publication, Microprocessor Report.

This was the fourth year the event was held; according to company founder and Principal Analyst Linley Gwennap, the conference attracted about 200 people, including those from mobile IP and chip companies, handset and other device vendors, carriers and software vendors, as well as the financial community and press. Attendees represented a broad range of companies, including Broadcom, China Mobile, Cisco, Dell, Ericsson, HP, Huawei, Imagination Technologies, Marvel, Samsung and Sony, as well as financial analysts from Bank of America, Credit Suisse, UBS, and Wells Fargo.

The conference focused on a wide array of topics; here’s a snapshot:

• Heterogeneous processing
• Licensable CPUs for mobile devices
• Licensable GPU and DSP cores
• Mobile semiconductors
• Mobile SoC design issues
• Mobile software trends
• Multicore application processors
• Other low-power IP cores

The presentations addressed design issues for mobile devices -- tablet computers, smartphones, navigation devices, media players, handheld games, and e-book readers.

One of the conference highlights, noted Gwennap, was a panel on the growing China mobile market, featuring executives from China Mobile, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek and Spreadtrum. The panel addressed key challenges and opportunities for mobile products in China, the diverging demands of Chinese consumers and the different tiering in that enormous market. One interesting takeaway: the total available market for mobile handsets in China is larger than the entire population of the United States!

Another session on mobile CPUs talked about major issues for mobile product development. One of the panelists, Mark Throndson, serves as Director of Processor Technology Marketing for UK-based Imagination Technologies.

One of Throndson’s conclusions was that industry trends are forcing more efficiency in how companies build products, and to enable this, new technologies are abstracting software development away from the underlying hardware/instruction sets.

“At the end of the day, even though software is becoming less dependent on the hardware it runs on, good underlying architectures are still important as they affect the user experience through delivering high performance, longer battery life, and lower costs,” said Throndson.

Another interesting session focused on power-optimized design. This is an increasing challenge as today’s mobile devices integrate ever-more features and functionality, yet battery technology hasn’t kept pace. A couple of session participants proposed that the answer lies in adding a bit more complexity in hardware to handle power management. While this additional logic may consume some power, the end result, according to these panelists, is increased efficiency and longer battery life.

I’ve been to gobs of analyst-driven events that focused too much on promoting the market research firm and its offerings; the buzz on the Linley gathering from attendees is that it was two days well-spent.

Sometimes it's hard to even remember  the "olden days" of the world wide web without services like YouTube and Facebook.  Reality is, however, that each of these web networks is less than 10 years old.  Social sites like Pinterest and Instagram are even younger, having been around less than 4 years.  Websites, as well, have changed.  What started out first as an adaptation of print brochures to "online brochures"  has now grown into much more advanced website tools that are commonplace including e-commerce sites, blogs, membership portals, and more.  Even services such as Online Banking have become quite common and mainstream.

Yet we are on the cusp of another major shift in web use.

No longer is the web primarily a place accessed by users on desktop or laptop computers. Now, the majority of web use is via smartphones and mobile devices such as iPads and tablets.  This significant shift to smaller, portable and always on-demand web access is forcing a shift in website design.  No longer is it sufficient to have a website built to be viewed properly only on a desktop or notebook computers.  Today the need is for sites that are built in such a way that they can be viewed according to the device a visitor is accessing the site with.

The Need for Adaptive Websites

This means that a visitor coming to the website via their smartphone needs a more streamlined view of the site as opposed to trying to view the full website on the tiny screen.  As well,  most websites designed for desktop users are not developed to adapt to touch screens and taps – only for mouse interaction.  This leaves the growing number of mobile and tablet users often frustrated and having a less than desirable experience when visiting standard websites.  This is important since a business only has one chance to make a first impression!  If your website experience is frustrating for that new visitor coming to learn more about possibly purchasing your products and services, you could have a great product but still lose the sale!

The Responsive Web Design Solution

A new type of web design solves this dilemma. The style of design is called Responsive web design, simply put because it responds to the type of device a visitor is using and delivers a view accordingly.  It is not two or more different website such as a standard site and mobile site.  Responsive websites change their graphic design, web layout, presentation of content and overall appearance depending on the screen size on which it is displayed. Responsive websites can be configured to automatically adjust text size for mobile devices and also for tablets, to simplify navigation, or to change the layout and design so that zooming in and scrolling aren’t necessary.  More advanced customization of responsive design can include hiding completely or tailoring text to present different information, changing photos, graphics and colors to better fit a smaller screen and to eliminate click-only features that are necessary for desktop users.

Companies today need to be thinking about how they can deliver a helpful web experience to all website visitors, whether the visitor is using a desktop, tablet, or mobile phone.  With the massive growth of both tablets and smartphone use, it's important to consider new digital technologies like Responsive web design to ensure that all users have a friction-less experience when coming to a company's website.

Website hosting providers enter the Internet arena everyday offering new and improved ways to host all types of websites. It is becoming an extremely competitive market. In order to compete with powerhouses like GoDaddy, smaller companies Singlehop are making their debut by offering cloud hosting and dedicated servers at great rates. But, when it comes to the Internet's biggest sites, web hosting is taken to a whole new level.

The following is a list of the world's largest Internet sites and the providers that host their websites according to the Alexa rank system. The list may not be surprising, but the numbers will certainly be astonishing. Many of the sites on this list are commonly used everyday by the average web surfer and some aren't. But one thing holds true: the providers that host these sites are definitely heavy hitters and they all have something in common.

1. Google

It's no wonder that Google comes in at number one on the world's largest website list. Google is everyone's go-to search engine. In fact, it's so popular, it has become a verb: just Google it.

So, what host provider runs the Google behemoth?

Well, Google actually hosts itself. They have their own dedicated servers, thousands and thousands of them. And, Google has over 900,000,000 monthly visitors unique to the site. That's three times the population of the United States each month.

2. Facebook

If Google is the obvious front-runner, then it goes without saying that Facebook would be the close second. Facebook has become a cultural and social icon in the past decade and is growing every second. Facebook has become such an integral part of social networking that many people use the site as their main line of communication.

Like Google, Facebook provides its own hosting with over 200,000 servers housed in Facebook's own data center. As far as unique visitors per month goes, Facebook brings in a whopping 700,000,000. That's a lot of friends and comments to like.

3. Yahoo

Third on the list is the "everything" website, Yahoo, and it has been around since before both Google and Facebook. Because Yahoo is a one-stop search engine and news shop, it gets roughly 500,000,000 unique visitors a month. And, not only does Yahoo provide its own hosting, it offers its own small business hosting service. In order to run both its own website, its sister websites, and the thousands of small business websites it hosts, Yahoo has an estimated 250,000 dedicated servers. Now that's dedication.

4. Youtube

Youtube has quickly become the number one website to post videos, watch videos, and get tuned-in to the latest viral craze. And, because it's primarily used as an upload website, it acts as a host for practically everyone on the web. So, when it comes to servers, the numbers are astonishing. Because Google acquired and has owned Youtube since 2006, Google houses Youtube's servers and hosts the website. Google has an estimated 900,000 servers and any number of these could be dedicated to the Youtube site. As for unique visitors, Youtube gets around 450,000,000 a month. That's a ton of footage uploads.

5. Wikipedia

Coming in at number five on the list is the informative, user contributed website Wikipedia. Again, just like the others, Wikipedia provides its own hosting. Wikipedia has been around for more than decade and is one of just a few authoritative websites that lets its own users collaborate and update published information. With around 600 servers in use, Wikipedia has a lot less than the others on the list, but that's because it's mainly a static site. But, with about 400,000,000 unique visitors a month, Wikipedia can hold its own against the heavyweights.

So, what do the top five largest websites all have in common? They provide their own hosting. But, that doesn't mean there aren't thousands of other websites that outsource their hosting needs. And, when it comes to acquiring hosting for a small business website or cloud hosting for that matter, providers like Singlehop are a great place to get the ball rolling.