Delivering exceptional web experiences

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IBM Software Cross-Industry Delivering exceptional web experiences IBM Web Content Manager

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Transcript of Delivering exceptional web experiences

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IBM Software Cross-Industry

Delivering exceptionalweb experiencesIBM Web Content Manager

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Delivering exceptional web experiences

1 2 3 4 5Create and Target and

Introduction design Collaborate optimize ResourcesCreate exceptional web Improve productivity Get more from your Help increase revenue, Learn more about

experiences that are per- with enhanced func- team with serial and market share and brand IBM Customer

sonalized and that drive tionality that helps you parallel workflows, audit awareness by designing Experience Suite and

revenue, increase loyalty, create and publish trails, and other features and implementing how you can leverage

improve satisfaction and multilingual content that boost collaboration targeted campaigns IBM Web Content

reduce costs. Manage all and engaging social during the content cre- across multiple chan- Manager.

of these moving parts to websites. Speed time to ation process. nels. Maximize invest-

keep on budget and value with prebuilt tem- ments and improve

launch on schedule. plates for microsites, conversion rates with

blogs and wikis, includ- analytics integration

ing industry-specific support and reporting

templates. capabilities.

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1 Introduction 2 Create & Design 3 Collaborate 4 Target & Optimize 5 Resources

Introduction

Day 1: the task at handTrina Washburn is new to Acme

Corporation and she has been given what

seems like an impossible job.

Two weeks. That’s all she has. The board of

Acme Corporation has approved a partner-

ship deal with Bronson Corporation.

Bronson and Acme will be joining forces

with a combined product offering that

could mean millions in revenue for both

companies—and the ball is in her court.

Trina is on point to deliver the web experi-

ence that is key to the success of the

partnership—the experience has to drive

revenue, increase brand loyalty, improve

satisfaction—and she isn’t sure where

to start.

There are dozens of things that have to get

done before her CEO and the CEO of

Bronson announce the deal in two weeks—

graphics, content, images, copywriting,

social media integration. And it has to be

great.

Figure 1: Back of the napkin wireframe.

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Business requirementsFirst, Trina receives the business require-

ments from her product management team.

They need a new microsite for the new

products. The microsite must work seam-

lessly with back-end office services and be

accessible from the Acme corporate site

and from the Bronson site. The content

needs to be branded as Bronson Products

when users come from Bronson’s site and

as Acme Products when they arrive from

Acme’s site. Content must be tailored for

all the key players—manufacturers, the

media, distributors and others. And it must

be optimized for search to establish Acme’s

position with their selected keywords

before competitors get a chance to

respond. And, naturally, she has a limited

budget.

Trina gathers her team and they translate

the business requirements into a list of key

web objectives:

● Create a highly functional and effective

website that wows its users

● Tailor product messages for each of our

target audiences

● Launch concurrently in all marketplaces

● Establish top search engine rankings for

our chosen keywords

● Convey consistency in our messaging

and brand values through all channels

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Delivering exceptional web experiences

● Build a buzz—get users engaged in

commenting/blogging/rating/networking

● Understand user behavior on the site so

we can adjust quickly as necessary

● Launch the site—FAST!

Trina turns to her team: “Now how can we

make this happen?”

A seasoned veteran on the Acme IT team

speaks first, “No problem. We just updated

our web content management solution with

IBM Web Content Manager software. It’s

part of the IBM Customer Experience Suite.

We can do this.”

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What is IBM Web Content Managersoftware?IBM Web Content Manager software can

help you more easily create content, target

individuals with relevant content and opti-

mize content delivery on your website—plus

so much more. IBM Web Content Manager

software enhances the web experience by

bringing together the key capabilities and

functionality people expect, including new

and improved social features, enhanced

content support, improved search and

search engine optimization capabilities,

simplified editing and publishing of digital

media, and integration with rich internet

applications such as Adobe® Flash

software.

Comprehensive and agile, IBM Web

Content Manager software helps organiza-

tions quickly and easily create rich and

dynamic websites, respond to ever-

changing customer demands and expecta-

tions, and boost customer satisfaction.

Figure 2: IBM Web Content Manager home page.

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IBM Web Content Manager software can

help you create an engaging and rewarding

web experience that spans multiple chan-

nels—smart phones, websites and social

sites. The software’s robust features and

functionality also help you do more with

your website content to help increase brand

awareness and profitability.

IBM Web Content Manager software deliv-

ers powerful capabilities:

● An easy-to-use creation and editing inter-

face to help increase productivity

● Enhanced authoring forms to support

easy content creation

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● Optimized publishing and change man-

agement for projects

● Enhanced analytics integration support

to help you understand user behavior and

improve conversion rates

● Tags, ratings, and improved blogs and

wikis to harness the expertise of user

communities

● Enhanced website templates to help

speed time to value

● Simplified roundtrip content editing

through integration with IBM Lotus

Symphony™ software

● Virtualization support for platform

optimization

● Serviceability enhancements to help

lower cost of ownership

With a comprehensive set of authoring,

editing, sharing, designing, management

and delivery features, along with powerful

analytics integration support that enables

you to better understand visitor behavior,

you can transform your website’s most

important component—its content.

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Create

Web content management, anintroductionAt Trina’s last company, content creation

was highly dependent on IT. IT had to go

into each individual HTML page on the

company’s website to make changes. So a

simple edit might have to be repeated on

20 different pages, leading to increased

chances of error. The process left content

owners frustrated by their inability to deploy

changes in a timely manner. Without the

resources to deploy changes quickly and

with business requirements that were not

always clearly communicated, IT was often

put in a precarious position.

With these things in mind, Trina is worried

that the operational costs of implementing

the content according to the business

requirements could drive the project over

budget. Content owners need to be

empowered to manage the delivery of

dynamic content and rich media through

multiple channels without spending an inor-

dinate amount of time on content entry. At

Acme, the process of web content man-

agement (WCM) is already ingrained in all

its processes, so Trina has nothing to worry

about.

At its most basic level, WCM separates the

process of creating content—the writing,

editing, revising and approval processes

around content—from the presentation of

the content. Content authors create, edit

and deploy content through an intuitive user

interface that enables the information to be

reused across the website in different con-

texts and for different purposes. IT creates

design components and templates that are

used by the content authors. IT becomes

responsible for administering the applica-

tion, managing the environments, and occa-

sionally creating new design components or

templates.

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Create (continued)

Reusable fragmentsWeb content is made up of many frag-

ments. From a user perspective, content

owners can manage content from one

place, but the content itself can appear in

multiple places, on multiple sites and via

multiple channels. When users make a

change to the content, the change appears

on every page and in every website where

that piece of content appears helping to

enforce consistent branding.

How it worksWith IBM Web Content Manager software,

the entry process for content creators is

standardized based on type of content

using authoring templates. The template

determines the design of a content form,

defines what fields and elements appear on

the form, and specifies default values. The

templates use drop-down selection boxes, radio buttons and check boxes to make it easy

for authors to create custom content. And you can include help text in the template so users

don’t need extensive training to choose the correct options. Prebuilt templates for many

types of content can be downloaded and used as is or modified to suit your needs.

Figure 3: IBM Content Templates Catalog.

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Create (continued)

Design components like authoring and

presentation templates, menus, and

components can be organized in folders.

IBM Web Content Manager software

provides authors with personalized views

of information relevant to them, enabling

faster, more intuitive content creation.

Content approvers can see a list of items

waiting for their approval. Content authors

can quickly find pending and historical

items that they’ve created. If they use the

same items regularly, such as a particular

template, they can mark that item as a

favorite and return to it quickly by accessing

a favorites list.

This focus on simplifying the user experience helps remove unnecessary and tedious steps

and page reloads. It weaves Web 2.0 techniques into authoring to accelerate content cre-

ation and management.

Figure 4: Folders help organize.

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Design

Picture framesBecause this is a new microsite, Trina is

challenged with making the site design dis-

tinctive while also managing the additional

complication of cobranding. Depending on

where users originate from, the microsite

will also need to switch from an Acme-

branded page to a Bronson-branded

page. Within IBM Web Content Manager

software, Acme will be able to create those

standard design templates and customize

the branded sections based on the origin of

the site visitor.

If authoring templates enable users to paint

a picture, presentation templates build the

picture frame. Presentation templates con-

tain the code that determines the layout

and placement of content. The templates

determine the overall presentation of the

site—that is, fonts, color palette and text

styles as well as the layout of content on a

page. The presentation template also con-

tains all the header, footer, image and per-

sistent navigational elements—like sign-on

or help—that appear on every page.

The content author chooses which tem-

plate is appropriate for the content. When

the content is published, IBM Web Content

Manager software is designed to automati-

cally present the content with the desired

styling, with the placement of images in the

right place, and with the right spacing and

layout. It also enables new functionality like

tagging and rating tools to allow users to

provide feedback on website content.

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Figure 5: The customizable design of the Acme site.

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Design (continued)

ConsistencyIBM Web Content Manager software takes

the most common types of web content

display and creates presentation templates.

The software includes prebuilt templates for

microsites, blogs and wikis as well as

industry-specific templates. It also gives

you the ability to customize templates

around themes and make wholesale

changes to the global design template

of your site.

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Design (continued)

Dynamic navigationWhen a person visits a website and clicks

on a link to a page in the browser, the page

is delivered to the user as a single web-

page. Behind the scenes, IBM Web Content

Manager has assembled the page by

selecting the appropriate content frag-

ments, applying styles to the content from

the appropriate style sheet, organizing the

content and images in the layout specified

in the associated presentation template,

and applying the site navigation specified

by the navigators.

IBM Web Content Manager uses two types

of components to build dynamic navigation

for the site when a user requests a page.

Navigator components display the structure

of the site and automatically create all the

links from the site navigation. Menu compo-

nents create lists of links that are shown on

a page and that are related to the content

displayed on a page. The links shown in

navigators and menus can change based

on the context the user is in—that is, the

content displayed on the page. The naviga-

tors and menus create the linked structure

between pages in the site, and the software

assembles all the pieces upon request by

the website visitor.

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Design (continued)

Simplified developer toolsIBM Web Content Manager software

includes features that simplify certain tasks

for the developer. For example, tags within

the HTML in a presentation template are

identifiable by brackets. To insert a new tag,

link or image, developers can simply click

the appropriate button and specify the

properties for the item using the drop-down

boxes. There’s no coding required for these

common elements.

Figure 6: Presentation template coding.

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Collaborate

Working togetherAcme’s new website needs input from

cross-functional stakeholders across the

internal value chain. Marketing communica-

tions, human resources, product manage-

ment, finance and legal—all need to weigh

in at various times as either content authors

or approvers. Site developers and design-

ers have independent workflows that are

interdependent with the launch process.

Effective collaboration among all of these

groups is essential to launching content

in a timely manner. Serial and parallel

workflows, audit trails, and track changes

features help boost mission-critical

collaboration during the content creation

process.

IBM Web Content Manager software uses a

security model that allows you to keep the

work of site developers separate from the

work of the site designers. The work of the

developers and designers is also separated

from that of the content authors and

approvers. The software includes separate

libraries so each department can complete

its work independently and collaborate

when necessary.

Customized viewsWhen content authors or approvers sign on

to the system, they only see the content,

templates and components they are

allowed to see and need to do their job.

The user interface is clean and simple so

users can accomplish tasks quickly. Once

content is created, a review workflow is

triggered automatically. Reviewers, editors

or approvers in the workflow receive an

email notifying them that they need to take

action on new content. They simply click a

link in the email and sign on, and then they

are taken directly to the piece of content

they need to review.

They can review new content online, just as

it will appear on the website, and make any

changes or approve it. After all the

approvals are done, the new content

appears on the website. Or if the content is

supposed to coincide with an event, such

as a product launch, then you can schedule

the content to appear on the site at a spe-

cific date and time. And you can have the

content disappear from the site at a specific

date and time.

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Collaborate (continued)

Competing prioritiesWhile important to Acme, the Bronson

project is only one of the website priorities

in the pipeline. Within the company work-

flow, there are several projects in various

stages of development. IBM Web Content

Manager software enables Acme to choose

which content and design components are

launched at which time. Project drafts can

be created at any time, regardless of the

status of other items. Workflow can allow

multiple drafts or enforce exclusive drafts.

In other words, all the new images, content

and components for the Bronson project

can travel through the content life cycle

together without disrupting any other devel-

opment project.

One of the significant advantages of

IBM Web Content Manager software is the

ability to create a project. A project takes

content, code components, images, and

both authoring and presentation templates

and bundles them together into a logical

site update package. The items in the proj-

ect do not have to be in the same library

and they can span across many libraries. A

project can include changes in the organi-

zation of existing content. And even though

reorganized content may be live on the site,

you can preview all items in a project

together. Content live on one part of the site

will appear in its new location when you

preview the project contents. On the go-live

date for the new project, all items in the

project move together from one environ-

ment to another.

For instance, if code components are cre-

ated in the development environment, they

can be moved to the testing environment

without disturbing any other items that may

exist in the development environment.

Similarly, users can bundle all the content

and images created in the authoring envi-

ronment and syndicate them to production

as a single bundle.

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Target

Personal experienceAcme wants to create a web experience

that feels personalized to each user

whether that person is a customer, partner,

supplier or employee. It needs to dynami-

cally adapt content and product offers

based upon the user’s behavior, prefer-

ences and relationships. Ultimately, Acme

wants to design and launch targeted cam-

paigns across multiple channels. Providing

users with relevant information based on

those channels will help increase revenue,

market share and brand loyalty.

To help ensure that search engines index

the new content to attract more site visitors,

IBM Web Content Manager software con-

tains several options within its authoring

templates. For example, the “Name” field in

the template is the page name for the URL,

the “Description” field is what will be dis-

played as the page description in a search

result, and the “Keyword” field populates

the keyword metatag. Content authors just

need to know the appropriate keywords to

get their content noticed.

From a web experience perspective,

Acme plans to take advantage of reusable

content to target site visitors, personalize

sites with role-based content and map

site-visitor preferences. The personalization

component of IBM Web Content Manager

software can select content for users

based on information in their profiles and

based on business rules. Using the author-

ing template, content can be categorized by

audience using metadata. Then content

owners can select their desired audience

from a drop-down list or check box.

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Target (continued)

Creating commerceIn addition to IBM Web Content

Manager software, Acme also uses

IBM WebSphere® Commerce software to

drive its cross-channel and online com-

merce. WebSphere Commerce software

uses the concept of e-spots and content

spots to deliver static and dynamic content

throughout a site: e-spots are connected to

campaign rules and allow for dynamic tar-

geting and personalization; content spots

are used for static content targeting all

customers. Spots can contain images,

Flash files or text.

The IBM Web Content Manager software

integration with WebSphere Commerce

software focuses on associating web con-

tent with product pages in a commerce

store. For example, Acme can include links

to its product catalog in articles about its

new products.

IBM Business Partner Ascendant

Technology has created the Catalyst for

Commerce solution to enable WebSphere

Commerce to consume content feeds from

other applications. The third-party content

is stored in the WebSphere Commerce

authoring server and can be assigned to

e-spots, products and categories through

the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator,

helping to achieve real time to value for

your commerce channel. The integration

of IBM Web Content Manager software and

Catalyst for Commerce provides a very

compelling value proposition, enabling

content owners to manage and approve

content in a single tool and to deliver that

content to portals, commerce sites, mobile

sites and social networking sites.

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Optimize

Wake-up callTrina’s cell phone alarm rings at 4:50 a.m.

on Monday. The last of her weekend

dreams fade, and the mix of anticipation

and fear makes her adrenaline rush. She

runs to her computer, where she hits refresh

over and over, waiting to see if the site

launched on time.

The home page for the new site appears.

A smile creeps over her face. Growing

more excited, she clicks through each

screen and sees that each page and con-

tent item appears as expected. The project

with all its content, templates and compo-

nents has launched as expected. The site is

live. They’ve made their schedule.

As she starts composing a congratulatory

email to her team, she is looking forward to

the rest of this Monday. She knows her

work isn’t done. Acme still needs to be able

to measure the success of the launch and

the microsite. But she knows that websites

powered by IBM Web Content Manager

already include an easy way to incorporate

web analytics and reporting from major

web analytic solutions that were going to

help her understand what was working well

and what might need to be tweaked to

improve conversion rates. Over time, they

will fine-tune the online experience by ana-

lyzing customer behavior, helping to

increase conversion rates and deepen cus-

tomer engagement. With the IBM Customer

Experience Suite, Acme can intelligently

manage sites, campaigns and offers by

tracking them via integration with supported

analytics solutions.

All in all, it is a good Monday.

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Resources

More capabilities with theIBM Customer Experience SuiteIBM Customer Experience Suite brings

together capabilities that enable you to

deliver highly engaging, personalized and

differentiated web experiences that meet

the evolving needs of today’s customer. Key

capabilities include business user content

management, a highly scalable and flexible

web presentation framework, built-in social

and real-time communications, marketing

tools, personalization, enterprise search,

integration capabilities—including analytics

and commerce integration—plus mobile

device support. The comprehensive

IBM Customer Experience Suite solution

delivers the capabilities you need to

respond to individual expectations, reach

more customers and deliver exceptional

experiences.

● Create: Help reduce operational costs

and increase responsiveness by enabling

business owners to manage the delivery

of dynamic content and rich media

through multiple channels

● Target: Increase brand loyalty by creating

experiences that feel personalized to

each customer; and dynamically adapt

content and offers based on customer

actions, preferences and relationships

● Socialize: Improve customer loyalty and

help resolve problems by enabling cus-

tomers to share ideas and opinions; and

drive higher value customer interactions

via lower cost channels

● Optimize: Fine-tune the online experi-

ence by analyzing customer interactions,

helping to improve conversion rates and

engagement; and intelligently manage

sites, campaigns and offers by tracking

them via integration with supported ana-

lytics solutions

● Realize: Help improve profits by maximiz-

ing cross-sell and up-sell opportunities;

and capture new leads by easily publish-

ing dynamic, compelling offers and

content

● Reach: Connect with existing customers

and new prospects across multiple chan-

nels: mobile, web, social sites, kiosks and

email

● Integrate: Deliver more personalized,

relevant web experiences by linking into

back-office applications, cloud-based

services and social sites; and aggregate

disparate systems into a seamless, cohe-

sive customer experience

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Please Recycle

For more informationTo learn more about IBM Web Content Manager software and other

IBM solutions, contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner,

or visit: ibm.com/lotus/webcontentmanagement

To learn more about IBM Customer Experience Suite software, contact

your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit:

ibm.com/software/info/customerexperience

The preceding ebook was developed based on an original white paper

authored by Ascendant Technology employees Ann-Marie Sheppard,

Brian Newell, and Rik Frost. To learn more about Ascendant Technology

and its Catalyst for Commerce asset, please visit: http://www.atech.com

Additionally, financing solutions from IBM Global Financing can enable

effective cash management, protection from technology obsolescence,

improved total cost of ownership and return on investment. Also, our

Global Asset Recovery Services help address environmental concerns

with new, more energy-efficient solutions. For more information on

IBM Global Financing, visit: ibm.com/financing

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2011

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