The world has gone digital and we are now more connected than ever. Interactivity, access and control are the consumer expectations. They are inviting you into their world—their conversations—and reward you with their priceless influence. In response the “R” in ROI has come to mean more than dollars. It’s critical to broaden how we understand “return” and understand how to track engagement. Where there is engagement and interaction, there is an opportunity to learn about the customer, about the business and about the future. Today react-ability is the new opportunity and being able to manage understand data and act on it will provide companies the unique opportunity to capitalize on these significant market dynamics and blaze trails in the category. Traditional media models are being challenged as technology alters how consumers interact with brands and those who were once partners have become competitors. Traditional channels lend themselves beautifully to predictability, but are limited by their “sales” construct of pushed-out messages. Today’s consumer has a much more sophisticated appetite for co-creating brands. The channels available for such engagements will require different controls and benchmarks. The movement from predictability to measured engagement/responsiveness leads to optimized experiences and loyalty. Changes in the way customers receive and process information via social-networking sites, mobile phones, retail, television and the Internet, combined with shrinking margins, deteriorating customer loyalty, and increased demand for marketing accountability, suggest the need for a customer-centric approach to measurement. It is no longer an “if” but rather a “when.” So, what does this mean for you?

• A company must identify a clear understanding of metrics, both traditional and those made appropriate in emerging channels. This will inform effective management, optimization and ROI analysis.
• You must understand where your target lives, works and plays. This will mean exploration of mobile, social, viral, ARG, video, event and promotional media strategies. This will give the right input to develop appropriate benchmarking on channel role and performance expectations.
• You need to develop a strong and sure testing plan that generates results quickly and drives toward reliability and predictability.
• Deploy relevant and robust technology that can be managed easily and completely, and that centralizes all pertinent data around the customer and the goal.
• Establish a team structure that can supports and drive data at every step of the process, communicating successes, insight and learning and necessary next steps.

Predictability is the quantified form of leveraging the data. Through strategic leveraging of Webtrends tools companies can drive consistent analysis of data in order to inform relevant forecasting and projections of channel role and behavior in order to drive to a place of predictability. Increase focus on predictability enables better campaign management and better interaction between high-level and low-level tactics. This is essential in generating better quality marketing communications. But it is equally as critical to value react-ability. In order to get to a place of predictability, it requires more than just optimization of efforts. Optimization without insight is like driving without a destination. Reliability of outcomes is the combination of strategy + tools + insight, surrounding clearly identified business objectives. In order to take advantage of this robust data environment, you must have deep, relevant insights and flawless technical data management. This customer-centric method is designed to identify insights, execute on those insights and optimize for the most effective delivery of messages against those insights. [This guest post is from Marc Schwartz - Global Lead, Data and Analytics at SapientNitro, a premier Webtrends Agency Partner. Marc presented on this topic along with Bob Wilcox from CA Technologies at Webtrends Engage. To see all the presentations and videos, visit our Engage media gallery ]

Yesterday our new VP of Mobile, Mike Ricci spoke at Marketing Innovation & Discovery Summit held in Austin. This event, hosted by Quantum Digital, brings together agency super stars and executives from world-recognized brands. His session was on uncovering what's fueling the mobile marketing explosion and help get attendee up to speed on some key trends and metrics that are driving adoption.

Mike provided an overview of new mobile devices, applications, and services, including: tablets, QR codes, location-based SMS, Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Shopkick, and much more. Take a look at his presentation and see how you can put some of these tools and technologies to good use in your integrated marketing campaigns. Presentations are being live-streamed and videos will be available on the Quantum Digital site after the event.

There was great dialogue at the show and online, you can see all the Twitter buzz here or with #mids11 - the conference hashtag.

Please join us in welcoming Mike to the team. If you've got questions about mobile for him or topic you'd like to see covered here - share your thoughts with us below or any of our social channels (Facebook, Twitter or in our User Forums)

Too much web development is based on aesthetics. Often, there’s also a misplaced desire to showcase the latest applications, social media technology and Web 2.0 functionality. However, these shouldn’t be the yardsticks by which a site is judged. Introducing the shiniest new thing on the web for no practical reason will have no impact beyond increasing bounce rates. If you want to make your site more sticky and ensure visitors follow calls to action, all changes should be based on data. Before optimising any site, you need insight into which pages require adjustment so you can pinpoint exactly where the highest bounce rate is occurring. There’s no point in deciding the homepage needs work just because it seems like a good place to start. It may be a well-worn adage, but it’s true here: if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

Test, then test again

Any alterations made should be underpinned by extensive trials so that every button and tab helps the user complete a task – whether that’s buying beans or signing up for a newsletter. Multivariate testing breaks a page down to its core components in order to try out different combinations of how items are placed, what they look like on the page and how they’re received by real-life users. The behaviour of those users can then be tracked after exposure to variations in content, determining the strengths and weaknesses of each option. These results – combined with data on individual visitors (what time of day they logged on, the browser they were using and so on) flag up the most successful combinations. Segment-based targeting is another function that site owners should consider if they want to identify and act on specific behaviour. The IP addresses of visitors can be identified, ascertaining location so that you deliver the most relevant content. That’s something that a person’s opinion can’t compete with, so when you’re performing a test, let it run completely in order to obtain the whole picture. Resist the temptation to cut it short and fill in the gaps with guesstimates. It’s also worth thinking carefully about whether adding something – a live Twitter feed, for example – is going to ease someone’s path through your conversion funnel, or whether it’ll end up drawing people away when they see something else. Web users are flighty things and need no encouragement to find another corner of the internet to explore. If your site’s call to action is to follow a Twitter feed, by all means include one. But without any other reason backed by testing, you’re more likely to distract the user away from your website’s main goal. Every aspect of developing a great site needs to involve designing, testing and planning, and should be based upon performance analytics, not opinion. To avoid your pages becoming stagnant, the testing process should be continuously implemented. Therefore, content can regularly be refreshed and updated, helping you to ensure that there isn’t too much clutter by way of secondary calls to action, be they affiliate adverts or other areas within your site. Yes, advertising can drive revenue, but it can also push people away from what you want them to do.

Trust the numbers

Many site owners are now using cross-channel optimisation for other areas of their business, ensuring continuity in all contact with customers. For example, once someone has purchased an item, follow-up communication with them should offer products and services that complement the initial purchase. If they buy a printer, don’t send an email saying, “We saw your recent purchase and thought you might be interested in some new printers that we now have in stock.” It won’t get you another sale because they’ve just bought one. Whatever the future holds (and, let’s face it, in the ever-changing world of the web, no one can say what that is with absolute certainty), individual websites will always be unique and cannot be directly compared to one another. With that in mind, ignore opinion and let the data decide. [This was originally published 4/2 on .net magazine. Colette Wade is the Marketing Director, Webtrends EMEA and Australasia. -- Ed] For more on Webtrends Optimize, our testing, targeting and site optimization solution visit our product site or review some of our other posts on optimization. Any other topics you want to see covered here or a burning question you've got. Let us know!

Mobile internet usage has almost doubled in the past year, with Australians turning to mobile devices to access the internet even when a computer may be available in the home or in the office. Australians most commonly access the mobile web at work or at home (both 42 per cent), followed by when they are in transit (30 per cent) and when they are out and about (10 per cent). Long gone are the days when the internet was exclusively accessible from a desktop computer in the lounge room. The splintering of the internet has seen its accessibility spread across a number of mobile devices including smart phones, laptops, tablets, and even gaming consoles. The recent launch of The Daily, the first daily newspaper built exclusively for tablet devices is a solid example of how accessing online content beyond a fixed PC is becoming the norm. This splintering of the internet has serious implications for businesses. They have the added advantage of customers who have 24 hour access to the internet via their mobile devices; these customers are consistently engaging with mobile websites and applications providing a wealth of valuable data as to their interests and preferences. However, many businesses are faced with a lack of understanding as to how to properly engage their mobile customers. To engage with the mobile audience, businesses need to think about developing a mobile version of their website - many companies have done this well, such as Facebook and YouTube, while other mobile sites still need improvement. The content and layout of a mobile website needs to be simplified to improve the browsing experience on the small screen. Excessive scrolling should be avoided, pop ups should be removed and image sizes should be reduced. Additionally, text entry fields should be replaced with drop down menus for a streamlined user experience. Developing a mobile site alone is not enough. To ensure that they are reaching their target audience effectively, businesses need to understand how customers effectively customers are engaging with their brand through the mobile site. By tracking their visit and understanding where drop of points occur, they can optimise their mobile sites to better engage the mobile audience. ….To read the rest of this article please visit ABC’s Technology + Games site [This post was written by Mark Allison. Mark is the Director of Webtrends Australia and a regular contributor to ABC’s Tech Blog – Ed.]

As we've seen in recent years, the SXSW conversation happens as much socially as it does at the event itself - maybe even more so. Of course those conversations include the obligatory "SXSW Is Over" comments (I'm loving the article Saying "SXSW Is Over" Is Over with its Portlandia references). While we were at the event together with the MoFilm, as the sponsor of SouthBytes, we were also monitoring the event buzz. This year people shared their thoughts pretty equally between Twitter and Facebook.

Each year SXSWi brings a bevy of new and updated apps, this year we looked at what was hot before and during the event itself. Instagram moved from 4th to 1st, showing big love for the iPhone app by the Austin audience.

While Techcrunch declared "Before it Even Begins, Apple Wins SXSW" which might be true for iPad2 sales, the brand buzz put Google out in front.

Checking in this year had FourSquare dwarfing local-favorite Gowalla. Seth Priebatsch said We'll All Be Playing Games Soon but SVNGR checkins registered only a blip.

And what those checkins, tweets and Facebook posts said differed from day to night:

All data was gathered using Webtrends Social Measurement & analysis conducted by Webtrends analysts.