'Net Features : Limelight Networks

Digital Presence Management for B2B Technology Marketers

Allison Howen — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 02:05:00 GMT

If you’re a business-to-business marketer within the tech industry who is having trouble coordinating content distribution across Web, social and mobile channels – you might want to check out Limelight Orchestrate for High-Tech Marketers, a new platform from Limelight Networks.

This new solution features a unified platform that helps marketers deliver a digital presence across all channels to enhance customer relationships, drive brand awareness and increase conversions.

Orchestrate for High-Tech Marketers includes tools for Web content management, online video publishing, mobile publishing, Web and mobile acceleration, Web personalization and content targeting – as well as comes with social media integration and search engine optimization features.

“To address the demands of business technology buyers, high-tech marketers must provide rich, fresh content – including whitepapers, webinars, data sheets, research reports, videos, animations, graphics and more – across multiple online, mobile and social channels,” says Jeff Freund, CTO, DPM Solutions and VP & GM, Web Content Management Group, Limelight Networks. “To do this quickly and successfully, marketers need an integrated, easy-to-use solution that allows them to update their collateral content and video assets without IT support and processes. Also, it’s vital to understand visitor context and present meaningful, relevant content at appropriate times during the buying cycle.”

By leveraging Orchestrate for High-Tech Marketers, users can manage and publish Web and video content from one interface, which gives them more control over their digital presence and more time to focus on results. Additionally, key visitor data can be used for segmentation strategies in order to ensure that the right message gets to the right prospect at the right time, while assets can also be re-purposed across multiple Web and mobile properties to simplify workflow, speed publishing and to ensure brand consistency.

“Targeting with relevant information is becoming increasingly important because buyers are contacting vendors later and later in the sales cycle,” says Greg Ott, CMO, Demandbase. “To take advantage of this trend, companies need to turn their corporate websites into more effective marketing and selling vehicles – capturing and using analytics and responding to visitor behavior and demographics with targeted campaigns of engagement. By capturing more leads early in the process, marketers can often help to shape the scope of a potential buyer’s projects.”

Deliver More Video with New Management Tools

Allison Howen — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Managing content and videos across channels can be a challenging task, but new upgrades to Limelight Networks’ integrated Web content management and video platform offerings makes it much simpler.

The Limelight Video and Limelight Dynamic Site enhancements enable users to publish and manage videos across multiple online and mobile sites from one dashboard. And by managing all Web and video assets from one interface, users can increase publishing frequency, which can drive engagement and conversions.

"As websites become the primary source of information for consumers and business buyers, publishers and marketers more than ever are tasked with providing engaging, relevant and timely content," says David Hatfield, senior vice president of Limelight Networks. "Managing, publishing and delivering this content using disparate point systems is cumbersome and costly. To meet the challenges they face today, marketers and publishers require a powerful, unified system that allows them to quickly and cost-effectively manage a digital presence that drives site traffic and builds brand loyalty."

The integrated solution provides users with the ability to combine video and Web content into a single content workflow, access an integrated view of the video repository, edit and update video metadata, publish and reuse videos across channels, access video channel-management features and add multiple videos into single or multiple channels simultaneously. Furthermore, by leveraging Limelight's complete offering, digital marketers have the ability to quickly upload, manage, publish and analyze online and mobile content, as well as optimize the performance of their online and mobile sites.

Mobile Shopping Patterns of the Holiday Season

Allison Howen — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:45:00 GMT

Hopefully your site is already optimized for mobile, because it has proven to be a popular avenue for consumer shopping – especially during this holiday season.

According to a study from Internet platform and services company Limelight Networks, 20 to 25 percent more consumers will research and/or purchase holiday gifts on their Internet-connected mobile devices this year compared to last year.

“As ownership of smartphones and tablets continues to rise, more consumers are shopping on these devices, making it imperative for retailers to seriously consider their m-commerce strategies,” says David Hatfield, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Limelight Networks. “Retailers who optimize their mobile shopping experiences will have the opportunity to increase sales conversions this holiday season and boost brand loyalty for future shopping.”

Further results of the study reveal:

Smartphones

Eighty-nine percent of consumers intend to research and/or purchase holiday gifts on their smartphone this year, compared to 71 percent last year
Thirty-five percent of consumers intend to research and/or purchase 20 to 100 percent of their holiday gifts on their smartphone
Eleven percent of consumers report that they are not planning to use their smartphone to research and/or purchase holiday gifts this year – a decrease of 62 percent compared to last year

Tablets

Eighty-nine percent of consumers intend to research and/or purchase holiday gifts on their tablet this year, compared to 74 percent last year
Forty-nine percent of consumers intend to research and/or purchase holiday gifts on their tablet for between 20 to 100 percent of their holiday gifts
Eleven percent of consumers report that they are not planning to use their tablet to shop for holiday gifts this year – a decrease of 58 percent compared to last year

Why Merchants Must Maximize Mobile Now

Allison Howen — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 23:00:00 GMT

The mobile channel clearly provides great opportunities for merchants, but a poor-performing mobile commerce site might turn consumers away from a brand altogether.

A recent study from Internet platform and services company Limelight Networks has revealed that a smooth and rich mobile experience can increase conversions and build brand loyalty – leading to consumers making mobile purchases, purchases on desktop computers, as well as making purchases in stores.

According to the survey, 34 percent of consumers use their mobile devices regularly to purchase products other than apps, games, eBooks and music, while 33 percent make an occasional purchase – at least once every three to six months.

After researching a product on a mobile device, 76 percent of respondents purchase the product in a brick-and-mortar store, while 72 percent make the purchase on a desktop computer. Furthermore, 71 percent even claim that they use their mobile devices to research products while they shop at brick-and-mortar stores.

“Even if respondents do not complete purchases on their Internet-connected mobile devices, they are using their devices as a source of product information before making purchases elsewhere,” says David Hatfield, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Limelight Networks. “The mobile device has emerged as a gateway to retail engagement across multiple selling channels, and therefore retailers who maximize the mobile shopping experience are best positioned to increase sales and overall brand loyalty.”

The survey also shows that consumers have a low tolerance for bad shopping experiences on mobile devices, with 62 percent abandoning the site and returning to it on a desktop computer at a later time. Twenty-one percent complete their research and/or purchase, but won’t return to the site if they can avoid it, and 18 percent abandon the site and look for alternative brands to visit on their mobile devices.

“Consumers are unwilling to suffer less than optimal mobile shopping experiences, with 80% reporting that they will instantly abandon a bad experience,” says David Reisfeld, Limelight's general manager of content delivery solutions. “Although 62 percent of respondents noted that they intend to return to the retailer at a later date using a computer, the retailer has still lost the immediate purchase and cannot guarantee that the buyer will ultimately complete the purchase in the future. Even worse, almost 40 percent of respondents indicated that they will actively avoid a retailer’s unsatisfactory mobile site.”

New Interactive Video Ad Formats for Mobile

Linc Wonham — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:30:00 GMT

Limelight Networks has introduced a service that enables interactive video ad units within applications running on iOS and Android platforms.

Called Limelight REACH Interactive, the service helps publishers, agencies and advertisers create tappable pre-roll and post-roll in-stream video ads, which open coordinated microsites. Playback of the video containing the ads is paused while consumers interact with the landing page.

These video ads are unskippable on the device, as video playback controls are disabled while the ads are playing.

Limelight REACH Interactive delivers in-depth analytics for both publishers and advertisers on video playback and user interaction. Publishers can measure drop-off rates for users who close the mobile app while watching the video as well as buffering events that negatively impact user experience, while advertisers gain insight on ad views and user engagement.

REACH Interactive captures the following behavior data, including:

When a user plays or stops video content

When the video ad within content started and ended

When a user tapped on video ad

When the user returned to video content from ad landing page

The amount of the video content that was played in 25-, 50-, 75- and 100-percent intervals

When a buffering event occurred

Visit Limelight Networks to view a demo of REACH Interactive.

Web Accelerators Improve Site Performance

Linc Wonham — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 09:27:00 GMT

As greater numbers of consumers are going online in search of a faster, more convenient way to shop, retailers are striving to provide the best Web experiences they can for their customers. Two new products from Limelight Networks are designed to help businesses achieve that goal, expanding the software maker’s arsenal of website acceleration tools and services.

The Commerce Accelerator allows merchants to balance a richer end-user experience with overall site performance. The service maximizes the delivery of dynamic site content such as transactions and shopping carts, personalized pages and other highly interactive content. Commerce Accelerator can amplify the effectiveness of customer-owned infrastructure and increase the availability of storefronts during peak usage periods.

The Portal Accelerator speeds the performance of Web and extranet applications, helping to ensure effective communication and collaboration between partners, suppliers, co-workers, employees and customers around the globe. The service uses Limelight’s global infrastructure to increase application availability, response times and security by seamlessly extending the reach of customer-owned infrastructure.

Limelight has also updated its site delivery solution, Site Accelerator. Ideal for businesses that target regional end users, the service can significantly reduce requests made to customer-owned infrastructure.

Limelight Unveils New Version of Web Acceleration Service

Linc Wonham — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 13:46:00 GMT

Limelight Networks, Inc. has announced numerous upgrades to Limelight SITE, its Web acceleration service that was launched in March 2009. Designed to address the evolving demands of businesses trying to provide the best services for their online customers, the updated version offers more control over cache management, SSL support, increased failover options and integrated content security options.

The new platform utilizes Origin Direct technology, which accelerates traffic by routing it over Limelight’s private, network-based infrastructure, allowing for consistently high performance of rich media content. SITE’s Content Storage service provides customers with a modular method that spans multiple servers for fast and flexible scalability.

Traffic Balancer is another new feature that allows SITE users a way to distribute traffic among multiple origin sources, or even multiple content delivery service providers. Customers can define how traffic loads are managed and experience improved site performance, as well as lower their delivery risk.

Also unveiled was the Limelight REACH mobility service, which adds support for enterprises and retailer environments by distributing properly formatted rich media content to almost any mobile or connected device through Limelight’s auto-detection technology.

Limelight also announced that it will support high-performance, media-rich content delivery to the Apple iPad starting on day one of product availability.