Solving the Software Puzzle

26 | WEBSITEMAGAZINE.com | AUGUST 2009

Solving the

Software PuzzleSoftware is fundamental to the success of every Web enterprise.Choose the right software for your business’ specific needs andyou will find a valued business partner.

By Peter Prestipino

Selecting software requires we answer important questions.Do you need a better way to share and distribute content? Ifso, your answer is a powerful, yet user-friendly content man-

agement system. Do you need to develop a better relationship with prospects

and existing customers? A customer relationship management(CRM) software solution to empower your sales and marketingstaff is what you’ll need.

Want to sell an exciting new gadget you designed and devel-oped? Seek only e-commerce platforms of the highest caliber. Needothers to help sell those gadgets? Affiliate management software iswidely available and may even be built into your existing e-com-merce solution.

Each of these types of software solutions comprise the piecesthat can help solve the Web success puzzle. These platforms powerour websites in the form of content management systems andweblogs, automate commerce, and enable us to communicate ona level perhaps never conceived of by the Web’s founders.

Let’s review the components and how they can fit to ensure thebest chance of success on the Web, and look at some of the ven-dors who are making it happen.

Content Management SystemsContent management systems (CMS) are software applications de-signed to store, manage and distribute HTML content and digitalassets, and are available in a number of hybrid varieties. Most fea-ture a system where users can deploy a default template or skinthem per their own branding elements, offer editable content, arescalable with plugins (more common among open source systems)and rely on Web standards. More sophisticated systems offer work-flow management, delegation and advanced document manage-ment to ensure content never exceeds its predetermined lifecycle.CMS are often more alike than they are different but often the de-termining factor is the scale that a website or business needs.

The major change on the Web since its commercial inceptionnearly two decades ago is that more people are involved in the

COVER STORY

The importance of softwareon today’s Web can not be overstated.

What is ultimately needed is a product

that improves some process of our

Web life, thereby allowing us to focus

on our core business practices.

AUGUST 2009 | WEBSITEMAGAZINE.COM | 27

process of creating and managing content. That results in a greaternumber of people needing the benefits of a CMS with more optionsfrom which to choose. Understanding the features and supportmodels of these solutions will ensure you make the right choice foryour business and website. However, there are hundreds of CMSon the market, and that can be confusing to both the novice andexperienced Web professional. Every website is different, so anyCMS should address the business’ specific needs, starting with themost critical functions.

Open source CMS like Joomla, OpenCMS, Plone and othersprovide the ability to easily edit and maintain a dynamic assem-blage of documents and data. In addition, these solutions are oftenbundled with portal and community features that make the freeprice twice as nice. Another popular open source choice is Drupal— well known as a scalable open source CMS and used by somerather large websites, including parody news site TheOnion.com.Ultimately, however, the size of deployments remains a challengewith any open source CMS. In short, the prevailing opinion is thatthey often don’t grow well with your business.

The middle ground between open source solutions and full-scaleenterprise-ready platforms is filling up quickly with commercial

open-source solutions (that typically charge for support) like We-bGui from Plain Black, DotNetNuke, ezPublish and Magnolia, hostedsolutions like Clickability, and mid-market vendors like Sitecore.

At the upper end of CMS are full-blown enterprise-level solu-tions — often referred to as Enterprise CMS, or ECMS — neces-sary for many businesses running complex, resource-intensivewebsites. Interwoven, Vignette’s V7, or Oracle’s Stellent all providean entire software infrastructure to manage digital assets. One ofthe biggest advantages of ECMS is these vendors offer more thanjust a support mechanism for the software; they become an inte-gral part of your overall business.

Weblog Software: Still on the EdgeOver time, blogging moved from an edgy, mostly American phe-nomenon to a global, main-stream activity responsible for the lion’sshare of the Web’s content — more than 133 million blogs weretracked by Technorati in 2008. The presence of blogs is apparentif not pervasive on search results and social media sites. The sim-ilarity to CMS (often a substitute) and the potential to influenceconversations with consumers makes selecting weblog software,therefore, a critical business decision.

Weblog software is essentially designed to facilitate the cre-ation, maintenance and syndication of blogs and their content. Nomatter the individual solution, features always include support forauthoring, editing and publishing content entries, as well as theability to easily create or edit titles and permalinks (URL struc-ture) and post dates. Also commonly included is the presence ofcomment support, and categories or tags, and the support of track-backs or pingbacks. These are the most basic, yet most importantfeatures of any weblog installation.

More advanced features include Web syndication (offeredthrough RSS or Atom) capabilities, post moderation and even post-ing API’s, which can enable blogging from mobile devices via SMSor e-mail. Blogging directly from any number of third-party appli-cations should also be available. For example, some blogging soft-ware solutions support plugins for Firefox, such as Scribefire thatallows the user to post directly to their own blog from anywhereon the Web.

Much like other software, weblogs come in two varieties —open source and commercial/proprietary. There are hundreds of de-veloper-hosted blogging platforms (e.g. blogger.com, LiveJour-

Lifestreaming platform Amplifeeder has caught the attention of the Web’s elite. The solution is unique, in that its backend

was developed in ASP.NET, unlike popular solutions such as SweetCron (PHP). Users of the aggregator platform can com-

bine their activity from different services (Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Shared Items, Tumblr, Digg, Reddit,

LastFM, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Upcoming, Mixx and many others) and style the themes as they see fit. There are actually

quite a few impressive themes already, something that can’t be said for SweetCron. While using a lifestreaming app like

Amplifeeder or SweetCron will not appeal to everyone, it is an interesting way to broadcast your social activity.

DISTRIBUTED SOCIAL ACTIVITY AGGREGATOR: AMPLIFEEDER


The administration section of an e-commerce solution shouldalso be an area of great focus and attention. Often called store man-agers, they should enable the addition and editing of product fea-tures, establishing categories, implementing discounts, and thehandling of shopping and payment settings through third partymodules. While the vast majority of e-commerce solutions are nowWeb-based, there are a few holdouts for desktop-based applications.

Analytics Software: Measuring UpInternet professionals often turn to analytics soft-

ware as the last piece of their Web successpuzzle. Analytics software offers the

ability to measure, collect andanalyze website data

nal.com, tumblr.com, Vox.com, even My-Space) for novice bloggers to use, but as indi-viduals and companies gather some expertiseand sophistication, there is often a shift to-wards more robust and customizable plat-forms. WordPress or Movable Type are idealfor open source advocates, or choose Com-pendium, a proprietary system that addsvalue to blog content marketing strategies inan innovative manner. Compendium takes aunique approach to blogging in that it’s builtto support multiple bloggers and has a singu-lar focus on leveraging that collective brain-power for the purpose of influencing theimpact of search marketing and social media.

E-commerce Solutions: Sell, Sell, SellMerchants could not exist on the Internetwithout an e-commerce software solution.Instead of taking orders over the phone from consumers visitingstatic websites, e-commerce shopping cart software aids thosemaking purchases online. But e-commerce solutions do muchmore than simply provide a means of displaying products and cap-turing a client’s payment information. The administration of prod-ucts and users is an integral part of creating a profitablee-commerce enterprise.

E-commerce software is categorized into two types: licensedsoftware and as a hosted service. Licensed software is similar tomany of the open source platforms including OSCommerce andMagento because it is downloaded and installed on a Web server.The major advantages of licensed software are that the merchantowns the license and can host it on any Web server thatmeets their requirements.

A hosted service, on the other hand, is never down-loaded. Instead, it is offered and supported by ahosted service provider such as Volusion — in thiscase, an application service provider or ASP, and paidfor on a monthly or annual basis. This model oftenhas predefined templates from which a user canchoose to customize their individual look and feel.Users typically have less of an ability to modify or cus-tomize the software, but get the advantage of the vendorcontinuously updating the software for security patches as wellas new features.

The most important features of e-commerce shopping cartsoftware are the storefront and administration area. The store-front is where consumers will interact with a merchant’s prod-ucts. Every storefront should offer search and the ability for themerchant to create products and the categories where they re-side, as well as offer the ability to highlight featured productsthrough the use of best sellers or “hot” items. E-commerce solu-tions differ wildly in scope and depth in their consumer interfaces— what merchants should consider is the interaction that shop-pers will have on their site(s).

You might notice quite a bit of overlap between the software solutions

featured in this article. For example, your CMS might come with analytics, or

your shopping cart software might come with an affiliate management

module. You essentially eliminated another software implementation to man-

age — and that’s a good thing. Whenever one software solution bridges the

gap between multiple core functions, you’ll spend less and by the very nature

of the tightness of the integration, achieve greater insights. NetSuite is a

provider of enterprise-level business software suite that enables merchants

to leverage one platform for their e-commerce, CRM and financial reporting

information from one convenient data source. “Our solution is unique in that

it's one product that does many things,” says Mini Peiris, vice president of

product marketing for NetSuite. “Businesses don't have to worry about learn-

ing a new interface. And in turn, there is a lot of value delivered to customers.”

NETSUITE, BRIDGING THE GAP


for the purpose of understanding consumeruse and intent. Web analytics is often bro-ken down into on-site and off-site — an important distinction. The former measureswebsite visitors’ activity, while off-site ana-lytics refers to measurement and analysis ofa potential audience as determined by visi-bility and buzz happening across the Web.On-site Web analytics is the focus herein.

Website analytics enables Internet pro-fessionals to formally dissect visitor activity— as they arrive on a site, how they movethrough a site, and where and when theyleave the site. From tracking hits, page views and visits to deter-mining new versus returning visitors, bounce rate and referraltracking, analytics software provides insights into a Web-based en-terprise and becomes a valuable asset for any organization lookingto understand potential roadblocks and opportunities. Being ableto understand the psychology of consumers’ interactions offers anopportunity to exceed the status quo.

Log-file analyzers were the choice-du-jour many years ago, butas page tagging increased, so has the number of vendors in themarket. Log-file analysis aids in reading Web server records and allits transactions, while page tagging uses JavaScript on each page tonotify a third-party server when a page is rendered. Both modelscollect data that is presented in Web traffic reports. There are ad-vantages to each of the models, but on today’s Web, most providersfocus on the page-tagging model.

There are many popular vendors in the space outside GoogleAnalytics that deserve attention. Omniture’s SiteCatalyst productand Lyris’ ClickTrack solution are two options. Omniture has re-cently released many tools to measure Web traffic and the social ef-fect of participation in consumer generated media. For example,Omniture’s App Measurement for Facebook (part of its SiteCata-lyst solutions) was released in early June 2009. ”With more than

200 million active users, marketers are intrigued by the potentialof Facebook to help them connect with consumers in personal-ized and meaningful ways,” says Brett Error, CTO and executivevice president of products for Omniture. “Yet the relatively youngphenomenon of social media has forced marketers to rely on ex-perimentation to tap into that potential.” When an analytics solu-tion can deliver actionable insight into social applications, you canbet your website that marketers will be able to develop data-drivensocial media marketing strategies that support and positively affectefforts across other online channels.

Analytics solutions are much like life — you get out of it whatyou put into it. Even if you don’t invest in robust marketing ana-lytics solutions like Omniture or Lyris, consider another productand use the insights it can provide within every business decision.Other noteworthy providers in the space include BLVD Status(free) that offers an excellent suite of features including RSS andform conversion tracking as well as a WordPress plugin. Wooprais a unique option because it is available as a desktop version, butalso provides live tracking and Web statistics.

SEO Software: Master the SERPs Search engine optimization (SEO) is more challenging today than

ever before. Many Web professionalsopt to take advantage of SEO softwareto minimize the learning curve and helpmanage their overall Internet marketingcampaigns. While some purists mightargue there is no substitute for manu-ally optimizing your site, the truth isthat minimizing the often dull andrepetitive tasks associated with SEO canleave more time for strategic thinkingand business planning. While not a curefor an ailing SEO campaign, softwarecan improve organization and structure.

SEO software typically provides arange of tools that mimic both the artand science of optimization. For exam-ple, keyword list builders and keywordanalyzers are common, as are rank

Bold Software announced the availability of a product that might just revolution-

ize how website owners and large scale retailers communicate with customers

and prospects. The BoldCCM (Customer Communication Management) suite

combines live chat, click-to-call, e-mail management, active co-browsing and

remote control into a single interface. New within the full platform is ActiveAssist,

the co-browsing and full remote control capability that allows customer opera-

tors to control a shopper's mouse or computer to resolve sales and support

questions. In addition, a Salesforce.com integration module aids in creating

leads, contacts and cases inside a firm's Salesforce implementation.

CONSOLIDATED COMMUNICATION TOOLS

SaaS website testing and personalization provider Amadesa announced

the launch of an automated, site-side behavioral targeting capability. The

algorithm analyzes hundreds of anonymous user data attributes (time of

day, day of week, IP address, referring URL, etc.) in real time to learn which

campaign promotion, category image or other content element is most

compelling. It then automatically matches the best content to each visitor

to drive engagement. This in-session updating captures visitors' actions

and behaviors, incorporating them into personas. Merchants are then able

to act on these finding in real time.

AMADESA SITE-SIDE BEHAVIORAL TARGETING



checking tools. While website submission is a relatively uselessfeature — search engines constantly improve their crawling prac-tices and the practice of submitting sitemaps directly to search en-gines is on the rise — many solutions continue to provide thatcapability. While different SEO software solutions provide variedfeatures, most are quite similar, leaving price as the only true dif-ferentiator in many cases.

One of the most well-known solutions, Web CEO, offers a freeedition of their SEO software, whereas the SmallBiz and Profes-sional Editions range from $199 to $389, respectively. There aremany others, however, including RankSense (starting at $29.95per month), and SEO Administrator (licenses range from $129 to$199). Each of these solutions offers a robust suite of search enginemarketing tools in one platform.

While many of the aforementioned offerings have been aroundfor many years, new vendors are entering the market. LotusJump($24-$49 per month) is a robust SEO software solution that hasgenerated plenty of attention. The service automatically populatesuser accounts with customized SEO and social media tasks tocomplete. Traffic Travis is another recent entrant offering SEO andSEM software programs. The downloadable software includes asuite of 11 tools for finding keywords, analyzing pages for SEO

factors, identifying inbound links, traffic reporting and position,and provides a decent competitive research mechanism.

While there is no cure for the ills of poorly conceived SEO strate-gies, SEO software does help with the overall process and makes formore productive, successful and efficient campaigns in general.

CRM Software: Know the CustomerCustomer relationship management (CRM) software is often re-served for enterprises that have made a significant investment intheir business and have a particularly organized focus on devel-oping rich, heavily data-driven user profiles. In all its complexity,CRM software essentially enables us to collect, track and organizesales contacts or current and prospective customers. The advan-tage of using a CRM is it aids virtually every department that needsaccess to user information — from direct sales and business de-velopment teams to marketing and advertising departments. Fea-tures often include a rather robust contact manager, configurabletasks such as reminders and alerts, and detailed tracking with pro-filing and history.

CRM is big business — the market capitalization of leadingCRM vendor SalesForce is more than $5 billion. However, it is re-ally just a software-based approach to handling the relationships


we have with our customers. With an increasingfocus on building better relationships with con-sumers over the past few years — a virtue of theof Web 2.0 age — CRM earned its rightful placein the pantheon of essential software for Web pro-fessionals.

Even more than analytics software, CRM so-lutions often have multiple touch points withinan organization. For example, much of the dataaccessible within a CRM solution can be analyzedin order to plan marketing campaigns, developbusiness strategies and judge the success of CRM activities (Howmany customers do we have? What is our market share?). Realiz-ing the many uses of CRM solutions, consider it more of a soft-ware-enabled strategy for doing business — one that adds value tocustomers in ways that add value back to the company. When weknow the circumstances under which consumers interact with ourbrands, we are better able to deliver what they want and influencetheir future behavior.

Properly identifying what type of CRM solution is appropriatefor an individual Web business is clearly important. Should it beused to analyze customer data (an operational strategy), used as a di-rect sales tool (to gather intelligence) and to inform businessprocesses? Or, should our CRM enable a more of a collaborative so-lution, one which covers all aspects of a company’s dealings withcustomers and whose ultimate goal is to use the information gath-ered by all departments to improve the quality of services providedby the company?

Why add another layer ofsoftware complexity to your

business? The answer issimple — if it adds

value, why not?The challenge formany Web busi-ness owners isjustifying the cost.

While many of theenterprise level CRM

solutions offered by Ora-cle or SAP can run into the thou-

sands of dollars (sometimeshundreds of thousands) per imple-

mentation, there are many high-qual-ity offerings that power CRM initiatives

at a fraction of the cost — and do so ex-ceedingly well.

Some of these vendors include opensource CRM powerhouse SugarCRM andmid-market vendor OnContact Software. Forthose interested in testing the value proposi-

tion of CRM campaigns strategically, considerZoho.com, free for up to three users.

BrandVerity launched PoachMark, a service to help stop trademark

abuse in paid search ads. PoachMark identifies websites, keywords

and affiliate IDs utilized by affiliates as they market through paid

search. The technology detects violations of pre-existing agreements,

by utilizing a distributed network of servers coupled with monitoring

agents capable of detecting many of the techniques used by

affiliates to hide themselves, including referrer laundering, JavaScript

interstitials, day-parting and reverse geo-targeting.

BRANDVERITY POACHMARK UNVEILED

Affiliate Management Software: Extend Yourself When sales trend downwards, smart merchants turn to affiliatesand affiliate marketers to pick up the slack. However, managingthose affiliates can be a cumbersome exercise. For this reasonalone, many merchants whose e-commerce solution does not di-rectly support affiliate marketing through built-in or add-on mod-ules often turn to affiliate management software to aid in managingcampaigns and affiliate partners.

One of the top-tier affiliate program software vendors, Di-rectTrack, offers the most comprehensive solution on the market.The most popular features include the fully-customizable privatelabel interface and powerful ad serving with day parting, geo-tar-geting, and access to the Speedera CDN for image hosting. Thereare also a wide range of creative possibilities (including e-mail),helpful management tools like automated notifications, custompayout structures, and perhaps the best accounting tools avail-able, including a check-cutting service through an escrow ac-count. Affiliate tracking and reporting from DirectTrack rivals thebest independent networks and includes real-time tracking,blended tracking, cookie or API tracking, and other importantcampaign management tools. You'll need to pay extra for thepower of all those additional features but, for many, the benefitsfar outweigh the cost.

DirectTrack and other solutions represent legitimate alterna-tives to outsourcing full affiliate program management responsi-bilities to agencies, to organize and promote offers on variousnetworks. Other noteworthy affiliate software management solu-tions include Post Affiliate Pro (ranging $219 for a leased licenseto $299 for an owned license), and iDevAffiliate (ranging $99 forthe standard edition to $299 for the premium edition). Hasof-fers.com is a newbie among affiliate software vendors, but onethat is positioned to become a competitive force in the market.Its white label offering is free for networks under one millionclicks per month.

The importance of software on today’s Web can not be over-stated. The wish for, and challenge of software is one and the same.What is ultimately needed is a product that improves some processof our Web life, thereby allowing us to focus on our core businesspractices. While the solutions highlighted here are some of themost robust, user-friendly, and supportive communities online,the right software for your enterprise is the one that works wellwith your business initiatives.

Documents

Solving the Software Puzzle