Optimization/Personalization

P1. Track Keynote: Hear how Harvard Business Review and WGBH have Transformed Digital Engagement

Tuesday, December, 2: 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.

Engaging customers and online audiences requires the right mix of technology, content, and tools, orchestrated in a way that leverages deep customer knowledge to deliver the right content at the right time in the right fashion. That’s a tall order, yet it is a “do or die” imperative for organizations that use content to make a living. In this session, you’ll learn how to transform and optimize customer digital engagement from presentations by two leading-edge organizations that are paving the way to the future using a blend of customer-centric design, dynamic and targeted content, big data and analytics, agile technologies and processes, and a vision for the future. These presentations will inspire you to kick-start your own digital engagement transformation initiatives!

You'll also meet the HBR.org development team: Daigo Fujiwara, Kevin Davis, Matt Wagner, Fred Lalande, and Ismail Ozyigit.

C3. Panel - Stump the Web Content Management Consultant

Tuesday, December, 2: 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

For those of you unfamiliar with this format, the concept is simple: Bring your toughest, thorniest, most intractable Web Content Management conundrum or challenge and a team of experienced Web Content Management consultants will compete to offer you the best advice in 2 minutes or less. But there’s a twist… we’ll use noise-canceling headphones to make sure the gurus can’t hear the answers that the other panelists give. Come and get insightful, likely controversial, and sometimes entertaining answers to your most pressing questions. The person deemed to have stumped the consultants the most will go home with their own noise-canceling headphones!

C5. Optimizing the Customer Experience with Analytics

Wednesday, December, 3: 9:40 a.m. - 10:40 a.m.

Optimization has been on many a marketer’s radar for some time though far too many still underutilize much of the data they have collected. Those who are already looking beyond the usual web analytics for optimization ideas will benefit from the two additional suggestions presented in this session.

T8. How to Improve Findability

Wednesday, December, 3: 2:00 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.

Efficiency (speed), accuracy and comprehensive results have long been measuring units by which search engines and search within applications have been judged for findability. Human factors and design play into the efficiency of any search experience. Algorithms determine the validity (relevance) of items retrieved for a given query, and they also determine how complete results (recall) are against a given corpus of content. Search experts who seek to implement search engines for relevance or recall also need quality data to make tuning decisions.

Our speakers in this session will give us three views of what it takes to improve design and content for findability. They will speak to points of usability, as well as how high quality metadata supported by specialized taxonomies, contribute to those improvements.

C11. User Experience Design and Engagement

Wednesday, December, 3: 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

David Polcaro examines marketing goals (gathering contact information, qualifying leads, encouraging conversions,etc.)that are not always aligned with a great experience for end users of a website, app or other digital platform. Learn how UX pros approach the challenge of advocating for the best user experience while simultaneously addressing conflicting marketing goals.

Next, Jessica Langdorf reports on a recent study looking at how customer experience in live chat affects conversion. Findings include: branded chat windows delivered +13% more chat orders than generic ones; optimal placement of a chat window on the screen is the bottom-right corner, resulting in 38% more conversions; allowing users to interact within a chat window that is layered on top of the web page content produces 27% more conversions than a secondary browser; and chat button design and placement has a significant impact on engagement and conversation rates.