This is enormously helpful as we no longer need to rely on knowing your postcode before we can suggest what products and services you might buy. In fact, that notion just looks plain stupid now despite it still being widely used in traditional marketing. So longer do we see groups of 17-24 year olds or C2 demographics or single mothers or people living in EH13 postcode. Now we see people across all spectrums who share a love of cars, dark humour, 1980′s gadgets, rambling etc. This is going to make our life as marketers a great deal easier, we just need to tap into those loves and apply them appropriately.

Would be really useful if we had a web platform that recognised those communities and talked to them in a consistent manner…oh yes, that what VITES is used for

We laugh now but in the mid 90′s, there was this crazy notion that if you put up a web-site, any old web-site, then the money came rolling in. Even more crazy is that it worked…by the bucket load. Then along came “big” marketing and dragged us down some odd “brand-orientated, synergy-busting and paradigm-shifting alley”. Most of us got lost. Lost in banner impressions, land-grab, click saturation and massive paranoia about “giving away the crown jewels”.

Sadly what had happened is that really good personal relationships and transparency got smacked over the back of the head by mass-market tactics and thinking. It was wrong and a few companies avoided the headlong charge into “flash banner pages“, curious navigation and obsessive prettiness. You’ll recognize the companies that stayed away from this party, names such as Ebay, Zappos and Google spring to mind – there are a thousand others.

During what I call the “dim ages” many companies flocked to the outpouring of flash designers and online brand consultants. I feel sorry for them, during that period (2000-2003) we lost a fair few high-profile clients as they created their animated works of art that nobody wanted to sit through (remember the link “skip intro” appear on a thousand home pages?)

The dim ages were broadly a copy of old mass-marketing or 1:x broadcast style marketing. But what made the t’interweb so good in the beginning was the sheer vertical nature of the content, it started pretty much as a 1:1 media and that was it’s success. Thankfully we are now starting to see a shift back towards a 1:1 Internet and that is where its future lies.

You simply MUST focus on the needs of the individual when thinking about your Internet strategy and that means, due to the volume and disparity of people using the web, you must have a web platform that can identify individuals and serve them personalised content.

There are various platforms available but only one commercially available with open APIs. VITES 3.0, code-named 1:1 Superhero, offers everything you need to serve up personalised content to each and every visitor to your site. Regardless of how they arrive at the site.

License costs start at £500 per month and implementation from around £20k for a full turnkey service to slide under your existing site seamlessly and open up a whole new world of sales, data and conversion opportunities.

Here is a brief outline of what you can expect in the next release of the worlds first, commercially available, personalisation and customer journey platform

• Faster core platform, requiring less server computing power and faster serving of content
• In-built AB testing functions, faster, easier testing of content, pages and call-to-actions
• Server load balancing, giving higher system availability, improved fault tolerance and improved performance
• Off the shelf CMS support, de-skilling and speeding up changes to content
• Faster profile management, faster and easier creation of new customer journeys
• Reporting API, simplifying the export of business-critical data giving easier and faster access to real knowledge
• New User Group to support discussions, bug-tracking, feature request and cross-learning between clients

Initially released in 2006, VITES was designed to dramatically improve on and off site conversion rates by providing a scaleable platform that offered proper customer journey management (ala Amazon, Ebay etc) combined with a suite of testing tools that allowed accurate testing of new content, CTAs and traffic streams

Since it’s release, every client using the platform has seen at least a doubling of conversion rates and huge reductions in cost per enquiry/sale

The latest release is a ground-up rethink of what our clients and marketplace needed and part of this was a massive simplification in deployment of changes, testing and profiles

All current clients are on a migration plan to complete the porting to the new version by the end of 2010 and all new clients will automatically get the latest version of the platform

License charges remain unchanged, starting at just £500 per month for the basic 10k users per month version

Contact Liam, Martin or Nick now to find out more about how VITES 3.0 (Rangoon) can supercharge your web strategy.

VITES remains the only commercially available off the shelf journey profile and testing platform

Contact our licensing team (Liam, Martin or Nick) for further information.

System integrators and agencies should contact our CEO (Martin Dower) to discuss how VITES can help your clients

Overview

Break your visitors into groups of any size (1-1,000,000) and serve them their own version of the web-experience, now and every time they visit. Personalised calls-to-action (CTA), web 2.0 functions, layout, navigation, content and design. Automatically move your visitors from group to group using simple rules. Restrict what the groups see and can do. Communicate via email, ICQ, dmail & social networking according to the needs of their group.

End of the “one-size fits-all” web?

The “one-size fits all” web is a compromise, a general-purpose attempt to deal with all the potential combinations of types of visitors. By way of example, the benefits of creating creating custom landing pages by simple keyword groups is widely documented as hugely improving online conversion rates. Despite this, even the most savvy organisations don’t carry this any further than the first landing page and certainly look to learn from this when the visitor returns to the site. This represents a huge loss in conversion rates.

Compounding this loss is the increase in visitor expectation. No two people have the same needs and need to be dealt with in an intelligent manner or they well simply go somewhere else.

Web III? (sic)

Personalised, adaptive and tailored content goes a long way to answer the need of this new breed of customers and the results speak for themselves. For most organisations this means that they can successfully dominate their Internet marketplace with a reduced cost of marketing and increased visitor value.

An organisation showing a 20% reduction in cost per enquiry could use the marketing spend to fund the driving of an additional 30% of revenue, this is a powerful reason to chase the goal. This is not chump change, this is a seriously attractive and compelling goal.

Web plus (sic)

Interactions don’t just exist in a single online space anymore, other mediums are frequently used to talk and drive the site visitors (call centres, direct mail, physical meetings, email, ICQ, social networking, off-site interaction). These are all source of intelligence and information [and covered in-depth here] and can be used to either feed to personalisation engine or be fed by the engine. The relationship is bi-directional and so it should.

The sky’s the limit

When considering tailored or personalised content there is really no end to it’s uses; it really is a marketers dream tool. Any item of information available anywhere can influence what a visitor is shown. Some examples of the triggers for content change are shown below:

• Macro environment. Time of day, day of week, season, weather, public holiday, event, share price of BP, lead news story.
• Visitor environment. Geo location, browser, operating system, ISP, IP address, iphone.
• Visitor history. Last visit, first visit, frequency, pattern, number, relationship period.
• Visitor engagement level. Place in sales cycle, previous actions completed, next planned actions, off-site interactions, email interactions, telephone, face-to-face
• Source. Ad type, keywords used, product/service interest, ad network, demographics learning
• Demographics. ACORN type, income, peer-group learning

What’s next?

If you want to learn more about how you can utilise this element of the VITES™ platform then contact Liam, Nick or Martin or you can learn more about the other 4 key functions and benefits of VITES™.

The art of improvement is simple; make a change and then test it. If it’s better then use the latest version as the best and then cycle round again. The compounding effect of making lots of small improvements gives a number of key benefits:

• Continual improvement drives the performance up, relentlessly
• A frequent change culture encourages the testing of lots of ideas, sometimes the daftest or smallest of ideas have a major impact on performance
• Reduction of risk, a poorer performing idea is quickly and efficiently scrapped
• Much wider pool of thinking, more ideas from more people adheres closely to the concept of “the wisdom of the masses”
• Avoids the “Highest paid persons opinion” (HiPPO) quandary where decisions are made at the wrong level by the wrong people
• Compounding small improvement generates a huge improvement over time
• Real learning is possible and this helps the feedback loop for the next test
• No idea is right or wrong – it simply generates learning

The downside of kaizen in the digital world is that most web-site environments are simply not built to allow the kind of rapid change, test function that is required to get the most from this approach. VITES™ at it’s core is built around this philosophy.

Trial and error culture

Connected adopt a Kaizen approach to ongoing development and conversion rates where staying agile and making lots and lots of small changes – each time testing them to measure success – and then moving on again. Connected offer a number of services to help make this happen:-

• Fixed Kaizen contracts. A fixed number of tests or hours in a given period with a planned target to reach.
• A/B testing suites. Utilising the VITES™ platform to provide accurate, reliable A/B testing.
• Profile/persona-based testing. VITES™ supports unlimited profiles and profiles types, each can be tested independently or raced against a “banker”.
• Micro-site build & development. Avoiding the need to completely re-develop a client web-site and provide much of the improvement via a micro or landing-page site.
• Business Intelligence reporting. VITES™ Passport ™ provides a huge mine of data that can be accessed to provide unique learning. Provided as a service or as an API.
• Landing-page heavy lifting projects. The key first-wins for most commercial traffic sites, provided as a service, turnkey or consultancy.
• Performance contracts. Fixed target-based contract rewarded around specific goals and milestones.

Connected provide these services either standalone or linked with existing build-and-manage contracts.

What results can you expect?

Depending on the start point most clients can expect to achieve a doubling of conversion rates during the first year. The law of diminishing returns can apply and often the major advances are made in the early part of the project. Pushing down the “long tail” still has great value and the ongoing refining of the solution frequently uncovers surprises and big jumps on online conversion rates.

Keen to find out more?

Thinking of entering this world? Talk to Liam, Nick or Martin on 0845 051 4228 and he’ll sit down with you and go through the various options available and how to best approach improving your digital offering.

Virgins

These are the first-timers, they are here for a range of reasons – all of which are probably unknown to the client at this time. There are a number of techniques that can be used to help the visitor through the magic first 10 seconds.

• The page must load quickly and smoothly (under 50kb is a pretty safe target to aim for)
• Ensure the messages/content on the page don’t jolt with the previous destination

Once the visitor is comfortable that they are a) on the right page and b) going to stay a little longer it’s time to consider the purpose of the visit. Many companies make the mistake of focusing the page on the needs of the company and it’s offerings, ignoring the real reason that visitors are here. This is why some landing pages can have 95%+ abandonment rates.

Remember we are talking about virgins, first-time visitors. What could they want? Suggest starting off with a complete list of what every visitor might want to do whilst on the site and then for every action rate it in terms of value to the company in the short time (this visit), medium term (multiple visits and maybe some offline interaction) and long term (whole of life value plus referral/evangelism/social/semantic trust value). This might be:

• Short term value : Join VIP club, buy item online, subscribe to offers, enter competition, leave email details, give postcode, select region
• Medium term value : Join VIP club, buy item online, visit store, order from catalogue, enter competition, come back to site
• Long term value : Run referral scheme, brand evangelist, regular purchaser, Join VIP club, frequent site visitor

This is quite a wide range of needs and, remember, we are still only talking about virgins; first-time interactions. As this is a first time visitor we can safely focus on the short-term needs of the visitor and ignore the longer term aims as they all entail returning to the site so therefore fall into the next section as they would be virgins no more.

The highest value to the company, no doubt, if for all first-time visitor to pay £25 and join the VIP club but we would be cray to believe that this is going to happen in any more than a few rare instances. We’d have needed to woo them to a point where they are ready to commit to a long term relationship and that’s pretty hard to do after 25 seconds. So, off we go, back to basics.

Virgins need to know they are in the right place, can trust the company and can see available what they want from their visit. If they want information then let them have it, probably at the cost of an email address. If they want to know more and maybe get more involved – they’re interested – they might swap some of their information for something they want, it could be a special offer, a discount code, a competition, free stuff, an open day etc. Whatever suits the client offering.

Next up, give the visitor a simple, clear and obvious way to carry out their request. Big forms, few words, little or no complexity, strong colours, action-based buttons and simple entry of information. Watch out, though, quite a few visitors still get form entry wrong so look at how you handle those “Nerr, nerr” errors. Be gentle, help the visitor through, explain what you need and why, avoid big red errors and “you are a plonker” type messages. Make it easy, make it simple and guide the visitor on their journey.

Sound pedantic, tedious and pointless? Well, a similar designed landing page with good housekeeping, good calls-to-action and sound structure can out-perform a “normal” one by 100% or more. If you leak visitors here then you’ll never get them back as they’ve finished their journey with your organisation – they could be continuing the journey with a competitor.

Every client and visitor profile is different. Talk to us and we’ll give you plain speaking and honest appraisal of what you are doing now.

Teasers

“I’m thinking about it” it what you would hear if you could speak to them. This category of visitor is on the cusp of bringing you value. Typically they might have visited the site a few times and maybe even carried out a value trade by swapping their details for an information pack. They still come back to the site via landing pages but this time you might have more control of it. They might be returning from an email-shot or maybe a company brand term on Google Adwords or maybe you have a web platform that recognises returning visitors and can categorise them. Either way, recognising their return is critical as we don’t want to show them the same message as the virgins – we are kind of past first base here and aiming for a home run (apologies for the awful americanisms there).

The teasers are now used to us, they trust us a little and they’ll certainly spend a good deal longer in and around us. This still have needs so we need to satisfy those and we still need to make the process simple, painless and “guided”. We can ask for more commitment, more information and we can even make them jump through more hoops.

Stronger calls-to-action, different copy, more in-depth information, more community and social involvement.

Family

These are the loved ones, the visitors that you embrace and help and cuddle. They pay the salaries, they pay for corporate expansion and they pay for the site. They need treating very differently all the other categories of visitors. Hopefully they are returning via a bookmark or an email link. Either way, the aim would be maximise the longer-term value and worry not a jot about basic data acquisition.

The CTAs here are very company/visitor/relationship specific and focused on a number of possible areas:

• Driving repeat sales
• Increasing sales value
• Spreading the word, getting the visitors to chatter and talk about your company and it’s products
• Involving them in product direction, ideas, offers, marketing, customer services
• Creating goodwill to bring the relationship closer
• Creating feedback on the brand, company and products
• Strengthening the brand, isolating the competitors and creating brand advocates

In summary, depends on the long-term relationship aims of the organisation and how to best leverage their continuing involvement and value.

Using VITES™ to manage visitors

VITES™ holds a record of all visitor interactions for all time – therefore a new interaction is (broadly) a virgin and can be served up content appropriate to the first-time needs of the visitor. As VITES™ stores every interaction it is simple enough to identify “Teasers” and “Family” and serve the right content, calls-to-action, applications and information. Contact us