Hot Topics for Web Experience Management in 2011
2010 was a memorable year for us at Squiz (see the Squiz Labs blog for a round up of 2010). The launch of the Squiz Suite has been a huge step for the company and we're enthused by the great reception it has received. We're looking forward to helping more of our clients reap the rewards of the hard work Squiz Labs have put into making these products perfectly suited to the requirements of contemporary organisations.
Naturally, there are many further developments of Squiz products and services planned for 2011, and we will let you know all the details as and when new features are released. In the meantime, here are our hot topics for Web Experience Management in 2011. These are the areas which we believe will require attention and investment from organisations in order to keep up with the needs and expectations of their users in the next twelve months and beyond.
1. The Mobile Web
Ensuring that your web properties are accessible and usable on mobile devices is absolutely essential given the growing popularity of smartphones, tablets and mobile devices. Depending on the objectives for your sites and your target market, you may need to develop separate mobile websites, adapt your existing sites to be suitable for smaller screens or produce bespoke mobile applications. Whichever approach you take, it's a minefield of considerations. Read our Mobile Web white paper for more information on this topic.
2. Contextual Content
Delivering web content that is specific to the context of the user makes for a faster and more satisfying user experience. Users now expect a certain degree of personalised, contextual content from their online experiences, and it's important to get the balance right without making them feel that their privacy is being compromised. For example, delivering language content appropriate to the user's geographical location, automatically displaying a mobile website upon detecting a mobile device or showing personalised content for a user based on their previous behaviour. Delivering contextual content in this way requires a content management system, such as Squiz CMS, which makes it simple to create, deliver and maintain multiple versions of content. Read more about Squiz CMS.
3. Social Media
Social Media has been a hot topic for a number of years now, and that's not going to change any time soon. Many businesses have embraced Social Media and are reaping the rewards, some have been shy to engage, and others have made serious mistakes. It's an ever evolving area and organisations need to have a social media strategy in place which is able to evolve with it. The right approach for an organisation will depend on their overall marketing strategy, their audience and their business objectives. Squiz will be releasing a new Social Media Package in the coming months to help our clients find the right solution for their organisation. If you are interested in finding out more, please get in touch with us.
4. Web Analytics
Almost all organisations are now making good use of analytics applications to measure the value of online investments and marketing campaigns, and to inform optimisation and incremental user experience improvements. Are you? Are you getting the *right* information? Does your analytics system provide automatic optimisation suggestions? Does it make it simple to carry out A/B testing? Does it provide reports which are easy to understand even without a computer science degree? The more appropriate and usable your analytics system is, the more likely it is that your data will be used to make positive changes. Get in touch with us to find out about Squiz Analytics and how it might be able to help.
5. Cloud Computing
Deploying software and hosting data in the cloud offers the benefits of increased performance, agility and scalability. There are thousands of servers in the cloud, so you'll never have any down-time and any spikes in traffic can be managed by adding additional nodes to handle the load. Users accessing cloud hosted data will get the content from their nearest server farm, so global websites can have speedy loading times throughout the world. We host all of the Squiz UK site's images and CSS on the cloud so that our site is as fast in Australia as it is in the UK. These, and many other, benefits have made cloud computing a hot topic for 2011.
If you would like speak with us about these, or any other, subjects, please get in touch with us.
Published:
19 Jan 2011 11:07am
Comments
No one has commented on this post, be the first:
