OpenText announced a series of enhancements to the rich media handling capabilities of its Web Experience Management offering, giving marketers new tools for captivating global audiences with visually appealing content and dynamic, interactive experiences across the Web and mobile devices. The new platform also includes new enhancements for optimizing visitors’ Web experiences.
According to Gartner, by 2013 80 percent of businesses will support a workforce using tablets – the Apple iPad is just the first of what promises to be a huge wave of tablets focused on content consumption. In response, corporate public Web sites will need to morph into various customer-driven, context-aware online centers of rich content that allows people to consume and engage with organizations through different channels, applications and devices.
“The way forward for corporate websites is clearly much different than it has been over the past few years, with much more use of video and interactive personalized ways of consuming content along with better support for mobile devices,” said James Latham, Chief Marketing Officer, OpenText. “With this release of Web Experience Management, we are continuing to deliver the robust Web marketing tools our customers need to make this happen.”
The changing requirements for Web marketing is borne out by the latest market research. In a survey of 260 content and collaboration professionals, Forrester Research found “improved multichannel customer experience” is their top priority for 2011. Major areas of investment for Web content management included support for mobile Web experiences, social functionality, and content targeting – all areas addressed by OpenText WCM solutions.
The new release of Web Experience Management features a newly integrated Web Media Management module that formats any type of digital media to make it Web ready and easily accessible to content mangers and contributors. This enables rich media to be an integral part of the overall Web experience delivered to consumers across multiple devices including smartphones, laptops and tablets.
Time to market is another key factor to every marketer. Web Experience Management enables marketers to reach their online audiences faster and in real time by providing upgraded editing tools that allow even the casual content contributor to make a big impact to their sites. This empowers marketing organizations to take more control of content without having to involve technical resources for simple changes.
Additionally, Web Experience Management provides marketers with enhanced optimization features that make it easier for marketers to enable content recommendations and optimize search metadata. This is vital to delivering relevant, personalized content to targeted audiences. Web Experience Management also incorporates features from OpenText Web Recommendations and OpenText Semantic Navigation products to create meaningful, interactive experiences that guide visitors to relevant, helpful information and in turn drive repeat visits and boost loyalty.
Another key element in optimizing the Web experience for visitors is comprehensive analysis of Web traffic and social activity on a site. With Web Experience Management, the marketing team can identify actionable trends tied to specific business goals, campaigns, events or key performance indicators. This analytics platform provides a “behind the firewall” alternative to Web or social analytics offerings that is easy to deploy and economical compared to other platforms.
