'Net Features : week172012

Slowing Down? Time for a WCM Health Check

Linc Wonham — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 03:00:00 GMT

CoreMedia has released a free online diagnostic tool that allows digital professionals to test the current maturity level of their companies' Web content management (WCM) implementations.

Web Content Management Health Check takes into account a company’s diverse online goals and culture, and the WCM Health Check walks participants through an interactive survey that evaluates and provides recommendations concerning the effectiveness of their WCM technologies, systems and processes and enables them to compare their efforts against that of their peers.

For example, the WCM Health Check examines the following four main areas of existing WCM implementations:

Customer Experience – achievement in supporting a broad range of customer goals and interactions ranging from educational to ecommerce

Marketing Effectiveness – strength in the delivery of content within the appropriate context to target audiences, with the goal of driving customer engagement and brand loyalty

Mobile Readiness – how advanced and robust are an enterprise’s multi-channel strategy to support the rapid growth and diversity of mobile devices

Usability and Consumability – how intuitive are the interfaces that empower business users and editors to create relevant customer experiences

Within these areas, the WCM Health Check analyzes system speed and reliability, freshness and relevance of content, the multichannel customer experience, the strength of the WCM system and how content is presented in a context-aware setting.

After completing the online survey, an assessment score is provided together with actionable recommendations on how to better leverage WCM technology, as well as how current content management processes and systems stack up against peers.

“Today’s Web-savvy audiences seek dynamic online experiences that present them with relevant content based on their context, yet most websites fail to meet even the most basic criteria,” says Glenn Conradt, VP of global marketing and North America, CoreMedia.

“With the availability of CoreMedia’s new Web Content Management Health Check, enterprises are now armed with the information they need to pinpoint how well their current WCM implementations are positioned to deliver optimal Web experiences that meet or exceed their audiences’ expectations. We believe that the results of this assessment may assist in the optimizing of their current investments or the justification of additional investments in people or more relevant technologies.”

Blame it on Rio – Your New SEO Success, That is

Linc Wonham — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:00:00 GMT

Search marketing agency Covario has released a new business unit aimed at growing the market for its present SEO and social media software tools.

Rio SEO will focus on serving the automation needs of in-house SEO managers extending from large to mid-size companies, as well as search marketing practitioners at digital agencies that provide SEO and social media services to their clients.

A suite of organic search marketing and social media software tools for content marketing, auditing, reporting and competitive analysis highlight the launch. Rio SEO will provide technology applications designed to help marketers and retailers that generate huge amounts of content optimize their Web pages with minimal IT support, as well as build corresponding mobile sites optimized for devices like smartphones and tablets.

At launch, Rio SEO is also offering the first of several application-specific SEO and social media modules to come.

The initial tool is called Rio SEO Change Tracker, an application module that will help SEO managers and digital agencies discover, diagnose and address website changes – often emanating inadvertently from other areas of an organization, such as IT, marketing, e-commerce and website design – which can cause numerous SEO performance problems if not caught quickly and fixed right away.

Two Tech Giants Reach for the Cloud

Michael Garrity — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:00:00 GMT

The race to the cloud is heating up, and the last week has seen some pretty big cloud-related news from two of the largest technology companies in the world.

Microsoft SkyDrive
Like other major names in the tech industry, Microsoft has moved to the cloud with SkyDrive, an online storage service that is the meat of its cloud computing services (think: Amazon Web Services). Just yesterday, Microsoft rolled out some impressive new apps for SkyDrive that may prove to be a breakthrough moment for the company, at least in the cloud.

Perhaps the biggest revelation was desktop integration with Windows and Mac (although only the OS X Lion version).

In a move that is highly reminiscent of Dropbox, users will be able to access and save files in SkyDrive as if it were just any other folder on their computers, and everything they put in there will be automatically backed up in the cloud, safe and sound, as well as synced to other computers with access to the account.

A new preview application will allow Windows users to access, browse and stream files using a remote PC.

Microsoft also updated its mobile apps for iOS and Windows Phones, as well as launching a SkyDrive iPad application.

One major downside to this update is that the company is drastically reducing the amount of free storage it offers, from 25 GB to a paltry 7 GB. But maybe it’s not that bad, as Microsoft claims that less than 0.1 percent of current SkyDrive users actually use more than 7 GB. Plus, current customers who are using over 4 GB of storage will be upgraded to 25 GB for free, and new users will obviously be able to buy more storage, with a starting package that runs just $10 a year for 20 GB.

Google Drive
Google has also announced Google Drive, the company's first major attempt to bring its brand into the cloud.

After a long period of speculation, Google finally came clean with its announcement of Drive, which will work pretty much like SkyDrive, AWS and most other cloud services.

Users will be able to create, share, collaborate on and, of course, store all kinds of content in Drive, including photos, videos, documents, PDFs and more. This content will be available from basically anywhere, as Drive can be installed on both Macs and PCs, along with an app for Android mobile devices; the iOS version is in development.

Google has built Google Docs right into Drive to make it easy for users to create and work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. All shared content will allow users to add and reply to comments on anything (including image or video files), and Drive will notify them when other users comment on shared items.

And, no surprise, Google built in some handy search features, allowing users to search for keywords and filter results by file type, owner and other considerations. The service will even be able to recognize text in scanned documents with Opitical Character Recognition technology.

Drive is another component of Google's attempts to create a seamless experience for users across all facets of the Web, and it integrates nicely into other Google properties like Google+ and Gmail. It will also work with third-party applications for faxing documents, editing videos and more. These apps can be installed in the Chrome Web Store, with more additions on the way.

To start, users will get 5 GB of free storage. From there, they can upgrade to 25 GB for $2.49 a month, 100 GB for $4.99 a month or 1 TB for $49.99 a month. Paid accounts will also automatically expand a user's Gmail storage to 25 GB.

A Merchant's Guide to Meaningful Metrics

Linc Wonham — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:00:00 GMT

Baynote and the e-tailing group have collaboratively researched the current state of e-commerce analytics, and the findings show that more needs to be done on the part of most merchants.

For starters, more than half of respondents reported a conversion rate lower than 3 percent on their retail websites, while about 1 in 4 cited rates above 5 percent. While nearly all of the retailers polled said that their evaluation of analytics was a top priority for retaining customers, the majority admitted to falling short of achieving optimum data analysis.

The most significant hurdles cited by merchants include information silos, limited data access across organizations, and a lack of education about which metrics are the most valuable.

"Data will be the driving force behind growing businesses where gaining a clear picture of one’s customer will suggest ideal marketing and personalization strategies," says Lauren Freedman, president of the e-tailing group.

Findings from the research can be found in this infographic and in this white paper, and lead to the following conclusions about meaningful metrics for merchants:

Pure Profit
While conversion may get the most attention from many merchants, gross profitability was seen as the top metric, especially in low-margin categories where profitability percentage points can have a major impact on overall performance.

Getting Personal
Retailers increasingly value, and are investing in, personalization technologies, yet they seem to agree there is an industry-wide need for more sophisticated measurement tactics.

Mobile Madness
Traffic and conversion rates have exceeded expectations across mobile and tablet channels, and a better understanding of key metrics will enable retailers to drive significant growth. Retailers appear to be following a “same metrics/different device” approach, which can work in the short-term but will become problematic for long-term strategies.

Is Social Stuck?
Retailers’ metrics are still focused on the number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers -- 78 percent and 61 percent, respectively, according to the merchant survey -- and not real ROI. Retailers cited measuring interactivity and customer preferences as their top goals.

Holistic Thinking
The ultimate horizon for retailers is to have a 360-degree view of the customer across all touch-points that takes into account interactions and transactions and provides understanding of the most cost-effective ways to reach customers and drive conversion for life.

Imagine This: Major Moves for Magento Merchants

Allison Howen — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:00:00 GMT

It looks like e-commerce platform Magento is running at full-speed ahead.

Magento, which is a division of eBay’s X.commerce initiative, was the recipient of a bundle of new updates this week at the Imagine eCommerce Conference that took place in Las Vegas.

The new updates offer merchants and developers the ability to create more customized and easier shopping experiences for consumers, and are available in the latest versions of the Magento Community and Magento Enterprise software. The biggest updates include the integration of HTML5 for Magento Mobile and PayPal Payments.

Since smartphones are becoming one of the most popular channels for consumers, Magento is now offering its merchants a simple way to create a more compelling mobile shopping experience.

Magento’s new mobile offerings include gesture-based controls, multi-touch and image scaling, device-specific audio and video capabilities. Other new features aim at creating a user-friendly experience for consumers, including an easy-to-use search and results display, the ability to drag and drop products to the shopping cart, the capability to zoom and easily swipe between product images, as well as the inclusion of cross- and up-sell features.

The customizable HTML5 theme also supports iPhone, Android and Mobile Opera browsers.

“From research to checkout and beyond, merchants can now drive conversions more effectively, increase order size and build customer loyalty,” says Roy Rubin, general manager of Magento and chief product and customer officer of X.commerce.

The other major Magento announcement is the integration of the PayPal small-business product suite, which helps merchants compete in multi-channel retail environments. PayPal Payments offers merchants one solution that makes it simple to accept payments online, from a mobile device or in-person.

PayPal Payments is available in three tiers, with every tier offering a full suite of payment solutions. Magento users can select PayPal Standard, Advanced, Pro or Express Checkout directly from the Magento platform -- based on which solution best meets their business' needs.

Additional updates to the Magento platform include advanced visitor segmentation capabilities, the ability to enable consumers to create multiple wish lists and an improved content management system for Magento Enterprise users, as well as the automatic generation of coupon codes for both Magento Enterprise and Community merchants.

Magento has been gaining a lot of momentum recently. Prior to the Imagine Conference, the company announced partnerships with VisiStat, Bronto Software and 500friends. The X.commerce open ecosystem that Magento is a part of provides users with a large selection of end-to-end commerce technologies, including shopping carts, payment services, inventory management, marketplace integration, SEO and more.

Video Advertising Gets Social

Michael Garrity — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:45:00 GMT

Online video is hot. Social media has mostly taken over the world. So, why haven't these two highly popular advertising avenues been married yet? (My guess is fear of commitment.)

Slowly, but surely, it's starting to happen. Recently, video advertising solution provider Innovid announced major enhancements to inRoll Studio that will allow users to to create interactive video ads that offer social media and microsite functionality. These ad units will be able to quickly launch on all sites and devices almost effortlessly.

The inRoll platform allows advertisers to add interactive elements to pre-roll video ads to improve interactivity (obviously), increase awareness, foster brand engagement and introduce better tracking and targeting capabilities into the videos. This new update will help make inRoll enhancements more social, which is never a bad thing on today's Web.

Innovid is even helping to tailor specific features to some of the Web's most popular social networks to help customers get the most out of their ads. For instance, they can include actions to drive users to their Facebook profile pages by encouraging them to "like" the pages with interactive elements over the pre-roll.

Other social network-specific options include the ability to display real-time Twitter feeds over their pre-roll, let users tweet and retweet the content from the pre-roll, add streaming YouTube videos, include "like," "subscribe" and "share" functionalities for YouTube and leverage a variety of other social media channels (Digg, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest) with a "Share This" feature to let users share marketer information.

According to an Innovid press release, advertisers using inRoll Studio are seeing an average 500 percent CTR increase over their banner ads.

A “Social” Publishing Tool for Email Marketers

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:51:00 GMT

Email marketing solutions provider GraphicMail has released a new social publishing tool that enables marketing teams to collaborate on email development.

Connect+, which was developed in partnership with social publishing platform MessageSherpa, essentially adds a social content management system to the GraphicMail ecosystem that enables businesses to share and collect content from those within their network, create email messages from that shared content, and distribute communications by both email and social media posts.

The solution will likely be a good fit for those organizations with extended networks like franchises, chains, distributors, retailers, channel partners, etc., which require a centralized, community-driven repository of information and are increasingly demanding greater collaboration features from their software. Connect+ pricing starts at $9.00/mo.

“It's all about connections and sharing resources,” notes Nick Eckert, CEO of GraphicMail. “Every organization has a network that extends beyond colleagues to include suppliers, sales reps and clients. The network influences the organization's vision and goals and its approach to commerce. Connect+ enables the collection of content from across this network so it can be leveraged to achieve the organization's communication objectives.”

Social Gamification Gains Momentum in the Retail Channel

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:20:00 GMT

eCommerce coupon and “offer marketing” platform Fanplayer has brought its gamification technology to Magento, the first such partner in Ebay’s X.Commerce ecosystem.

Magento merchants are now able to add the Fanplayr widget to their stores to engage consumers socially with games that provide multi-variable coupons and offers. There are currently three Fanplayr games – Spinner (see short demo video below), Mystery Game, and Card Flip.

The Fanplayr widgets can be deployed pretty much anywhere – not just a Magento shopping cart – including Facebook brand pages, email, mobile websites, even within advertising. The extension offers real-time performance insights into the coupons/offers being used by merchants and also provides social graph (and Facebook Connect) integration.

"Magento's integration partnership with Fanplayr enables merchants to better engage and convert social consumers to sales using new and traditional marketing channels," said Fanplayr CEO Simon Yencken. "We're excited to be a lead innovator for the Magento and X.commerce platforms and are focused on building new and innovative commerce experiences that drive the highest engagement, loyalty and sales for merchants."

8 Mobile Apps for Performance Marketers

Michael Garrity — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:30:00 GMT

There’s an old cliché that says time is money, and on the Web, that is perhaps most true for the affiliate marketer.

Modern technology has afforded us all the opportunity to stay on top of our tasks from virtually anywhere thanks to mobile devices and the apps they run. This has (mostly) helped make us more productive, especially for those who work on the Internet, as it allows them to stay connected to their businesses at all times.

It was inevitable that developers would soon begin creating mobile apps aimed at helping improve the productivity of affiliate marketers by helping them stay connected to their various campaigns, view real-time data or make changes on-the-go. After all, time is money.

Here are great mobile apps aimed at helping affiliates boost their productivity (and profits!):

Cake Marketing
For network owners and affiliate partners of Cake Marketing, a hosted software provider of affiliate management solutions, this iOS application is a great way to help manage their network operations, view reports and track their campaigns from their iPhones or iPads.

Affiliate ABCs
New to the affiliate game, or just like to keep abreast of industry info and best practices? Well, Affiliate ABCs is for you! This app lets users read affiliate marketing articles and listen to podcasts by the popular affiliate blog of the same name.

Affiliate Marketing Handbook
Like Affiliate ABCs, this app is great for beginners or seasoned affiliates who like to have something to reference. Published by PTAJ Marketing, the Affiliate Marketing Handbook provides all the information one would need to excel in affiliate marketing, at home or on-the-go.

Affiliate Tracking Software Guide
Another offering from PTAJ Marketing that helps affiliates learn the ins and outs of affiliate tracking software, which any good marketer will tell you is the most important part of a successful campaign.

Millionaire Network
Are you an “elite” affiliate? If you are, you may just fit right in with Piranha Media’s Millionaire Network, and then you’ll have access to this great app that helps users track campaigns, clicks, sales, conversions and more from virtually anywhere.

HootSuite
These days, you can’t really be much of an affiliate marketer without a social media presence. The popular HootSuite dashboard solution now offers an app that helps users aggregate their social network profiles and automate updates to make sure their message reaches the right audience at the right time.

SEO Search Ranking
This helpful app provides users with information about keyword ranking, allowing them to simply enter their site information to see what keywords they’re competing against and how their site ranks against the competition.

Analytics App
The heart of affiliate marketing is in analysis, right? Well, no app is better named for the job than Analytics App, which leverages the power of Google Analytics to provide users with detailed information about their websites, including unique visitors, bounce rates and time on site, among many other metrics.

WordPress Wednesday: 10 Plugins You Can’t Live Without

Linc Wonham — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:00:00 GMT

WordPress is an incredibly powerful online publishing tool. Much of its efficacy comes from a user-friendly interface and great design flexibility that allows users to configure and customize their sites in almost any way they desire.

In addition to all of the ways that a WordPress site can be personalized, however, it is really the numerous plugins that can be added for extra functionality that may be the driving force behind this publishing platform.

When it comes to content marketing, there are more than a few plugins that you simply cannot live without. Here are 10 selections that should always deserve consideration:

Gravity Forms
This plugin is a highly intuitive, easy-to-use way to create custom forms for your website. From simple contact forms to complex product customization and ordering, Gravity Forms have you covered. Just select your fields, configure your options and embed the form in your site and you’re ready to go.

Google XML Sitemaps
This innocuous little plugin is incredibly valuable. Once it is installed, it generates a complete XML sitemap for your blog, allowing search engines to more easily and thoroughly index your site. This allows all search engines to have a more complete view of your site and more easily retrieve its content. The plugin also notifies the search engines when new content is added, ensuring that your content appears in search results more quickly and accurately.

Revision Control
Thus plugin adds some extra functionality to the revision protocols already in place within WordPress. For each page and post, you can control exactly how many revisions are saved, via enabling, disabling and limiting controls. It also allows you to delete specific saved revisions. Simple, but powerful.

Scribe SEO
This incredibly well-designed and easily integrated plugin allows you to more easily create high-quality content for your site that adheres to the highest standard of SEO. Based on the content that you provide, this plugin suggests the best keywords and tweaks to enhance its SEO efficacy, helping you develop link relationships with other influential sites and social media sources.

Social Metrics
This free plugin allows you to monitor social media traffic on your site. Once it is installed, the plugin allows you to see how many times your content has been shared across various social media outlets, including Facebook, Twitter, Google + and LinkedIn. You are able to see how your content is shared, and share your content more effectively right from the Social Metrics dashboard.

W3 Total Cache
Used and trusted by many heavily trafficked sites, this plugin increases your website’s performance. It more completely caches your site, ensuring that your theme loads faster, the server performs more effectively, and your Google Page Speed is vastly improved.

Backup Buddy
This great plugin allows you to completely back up your Wordpress site, including all customizations, themes and plugins, as well as your content. Once safely stored in a location of your choosing, restoring your site to the most recent save is a breeze. It also allows for incredibly easy migration of your site. Setting regular, automated backups means you don’t even have to remember saving your site at regular intervals to keep your backup up to date.

WP-Optimize
A simple and effective database-optimization tool. This plugin allows you to easily remove spam comments, post revisions and other bits of unnecessary data. It also comes in a variety of languages, which is a plus.

Yoast Breadcrumbs
This clever plugin allows you to add SEO breadcrumbs to your themes. Breadcrumbs allow your readers to navigate more easily between pages, categories and posts on your site. In addition to easier navigation, breadcrumbs also make the structure of your site more transparent for readers.

Yoast SEO
This powerful plugin may be the most complete SEO package available for WordPress users. Functions include XML sitemaps, content analysis, meta descriptions and a whole host of other, fully customizable options. If you need more, there are also several add-on modules available.

About the author: Matt Goulart is the founder of and lead consultant at Webstar Content, and can be reached at Matt@webstartcontent.com.

Google Crushes Spinners and Spammers

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:05:00 GMT

The much anticipated over-optimization penalty has arrived, and the most roguish (or simply the most uninformed) SEO's are in full-on panic mode.

Google announced that it has taken a step to reward high-quality sites, but what it has really done is punish those engaged in techniques and tactics that don't provide a good user experience. Sounds Ok to me.

Google has been very vocal about its anti-webspam efforts the past few months, rolling out some serious Panda changes as well as a page layout algorithm which lowered the ranking of sites that emphasized advertising over content clarity particularly above the web design fold. But this algorithm change is different.

This change takes a direct shot at webspam and will (very likely) decrease rankings for sites that Google believes are knowingly violating its existing quality guidelines. While no mention of specific signals that would warrant a ranking drop were made, Google made it clear in the announcement exactly the type of behaviors that would be deemed black hat and jeopardize a high ranking. At least it’s a start.

Google referenced two web spam tactics in particular, the first being keyword stuffing - which has long been discredited as a reasonable means to optimize a page for higher rankings. The second example is a little more complex and something that Google has long struggled with in my opinion - article spinning.

The example provided by Google (see image below) showed "unusual linking patterns" - call it link spam - within the content. The links within that content were completely unrelated to the content itself – giving Google an indication that something was amiss. The article was spun, or created automatically with the help of software.

Article spinning essentially takes a piece of content and replaces different parts or elements of the article with “spintax” (a play on the word syntax) which is really just a list of text, but most often keyword-laden links used in an attempt to game the search engine. Many of the algorithm changes we’ve covered here at Website Magazine were focused on the use of anchor text and this may be one manifestation of those changes.

Google indicated that this change in particular will go live for all languages at the same time. While the recent Panda change affected about 12 percent of search queries to a “significant degree”, this change affects 3 percent of search queries in English to a degree that a “regular user might notice.” This algorithm change will affect other languages to varying degrees.

Link Spam Example Provided By Google:

Growing Pains for Facebook?

Michael Garrity — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:30:00 GMT

The good news for Facebook is that it officially surpassed the 900 million-user mark earlier this year. The "bad" news is that the social network is growing slower than in years past.

While it’s hard to undermine just how monumental a figure 900 million users really is, it’s also important to know that rapid growth has heretofore been Facebook’s primary means of generating revenue. And while it only took the site about five months to go from 800 million to 900 million worldwide users, it took just three months to expand from 700 million to 800 million.

Facebook is still the top dog in terms of social networking and, really, a lot of other things on the Internet.

Each of the 901 million Facebook users is worth $1.21 for the company, which shows a 6-percent increase from this time last year. Moreover, 532 million of them are considered “daily active users,” which is up from just 372 million a year ago.

Plus, the site is still valued at more than $100 billion, and Q1 revenue was up from this time last year, although it did see a slight net income decrease due to additional operating costs.

HootSuite App Directory Adds MailChimp and More

Allison Howen — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:00:00 GMT

The ever-growing HootSuite App Directory has just gotten a little bigger.

The social media management platform just added new partner integrations from MailChimp, Chime.in, Identi.ca, Vision Critical Surveys and RSS Reader into their App Directory. These new apps are immediately available to all HootSuite users.

Check out more information about the newest apps below:

MailChimp – This app enables HootSuite users to send email newsletters, manage subscriber lists, track campaign performance, view and search for recent email campaigns and share campaigns to social networks.

Chime.in – This app from social interest network Chime.in, allows users to schedule and send chimes, leave and view comments, preview photos and videos.

Identi.ca – HootSuite users can use this app to post status updates, monitor timelines and messages, track replies and view conversations.

Vision Critical Surveys – This app enables users to design and share surveys with social networks and monitor results in real-time.

RSS Reader – Users can utilize this app for a quick and easy way to view RSS feeds in the HootSuite dashboard, as well as share stories and articles from feeds to social networks.

“Businesses today are social, says HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes. "Success depends on connecting with customers instantly across multiple social media channels and networks. The growth of our App Directory gives clients an impressive arsenal of tools to do this, all in a single place. Our goal, as we close in on six million users by end of year, is to continue aggressively integrating leading apps, turning our dashboard into the mother of all SaaS resources for the social business.”

This new set of apps joins the current group within the HootSuite App Directory, which includes applications from Digg, TrendSpottr, InboxQ, Constant Contact, Get Satisfaction, YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr and Orkut.

Sharing Made Easier with Dropbox Links

Allison Howen — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:30:00 GMT

The popular document storing service Dropbox has launched a new way for its users to share their content quickly – with a link.

Dropbox Links enables users to easily share documents, photos, videos and even entire folders by sending a link to their colleagues and friends. The link opens up the chosen content into a full-browser display without any setup, signing in or downloading.

“We’re always looking for ways to make life easier and solve the basic problems people face every day,” says Drew Houston, CEO and co-founder of Dropbox. “Sending files has always been a painful process, but now with Dropbox, sharing with friends, family and colleagues is effortless.”

Users can create a link by clicking on the “Get Link” button on a specific file or folder. Links can be created from Dropbox desktop, Web and mobile applications. Additionally, if the link is sent to another Dropbox user, that person will be have the option to instantly save the file into their Dropbox.

New Tracking Tool Measures Pinterest's Influence

Allison Howen — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:00:00 GMT

A new tool from iGoDigital helps merchants discover how Pinterest is affecting their site's traffic and conversion rates.

iGoDigital launched the Pinterest Tracking Tool as part of the company’s Personalized Product Recommendations Platform. The Pinterest Tracking Tool enables retailers to gather Pinterest traffic data and use it to influence marketing and merchandising decisions. Once the “Pin It” button is added to iGoDigital product recommendations, retailers can start identifying individuals who pin products, the popularity of those pins, and determine conversions that are associated with Pinterest activity.

The traffic data that is retrieved from the Pinterest Tracking Tool enables retailers to send more targeted and relevant marketing messages, incentivize influential Pinterest users who drive a lot of traffic, make better merchandising decisions, use product recommendations as a customer acquisition tool, leverage preference data from customer profiles to make shopping experiences more personal, and add Pinterest as a variable into the customer lifetime value calculation.

“With more than 10 million registered users, retailers are seeing Pinterest as a way to inspire shoppers and drive traffic, but many brands have been unable to track, monitor or understand how Pinterest activity affects their bottom lines,” says Eric Tobias, president of iGoDigital. “The Pinterest Tracking tool will begin to give them this insight.”