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In the world of information technology the acronyms are a plenty and their translations are often debated and overloaded. So what is WEM you ask? Well, WEM is short for West Edmonton Mall located in the glorious province of Alberta Canada OR a line of vintage guitar amplifiers depending how you structured your Google search...I'm just kidding, don't leave just yet! Let's rewind. WEM, Web Experience Management, is an acronym used to describe the evolution of Web Content Management software into a realm that encompasses online interactions with visitors across multiple delivery channels. Web Content Management is still a big part of a user's Web Experience with its processes around creating, editing, publishing and archiving content. However, the approach to building a successful business on the web is no longer a "build it and he will come" proposition like in that Kevin Costner flick depicted above. Prospect and customer engagement is an imperative for any business that wants not only to survive but thrive in a highly competitive online environment. Marketers are increasingly looking for ways to target messages to specific segments of their web traffic. A robust WEM solution allows the marketer to deliver highly personalized and highly customized experiences to these segments.

A world class WEM solution provides:

Scalability

In order to deliver the mass personalization that is required to achieve true customer engagement the system must be highly scalable providing a state of  the art caching system. It's pretty basic, but part of  customer engagement is usability and site that is slow is sure to kill you're business faster than any other blunder.

Content Targeting

Each business is different  with a unique set of engagement metrics that is ultimately tracked, but content is going to be the common thread across sites. A robust WEM solution will provide marketers a means for rigorous testing and controlled content targeting while freeing them from the shackles of their IT resources. The WEM solution you choose should provide the marketer an ability to identify segments of site visitors based on visitor behavior, geo-location information, previous product purchases, etc and then allow them to specify the scenarios under which one content item is presented over another.

Powerful Analytics

The key to optimization  in content targeting and in other areas is obviously going to be a very solid feedback loop in the form of a powerful analytics subsystem. Improving site stickiness requires continual  content optimization and in product based businesses  incremental improvements in conversion mandate that the marketer must have the means to minimally carry out A/B testing and often times multivariate testing. "Build it and he will come" at least for a little while until "he" gets bored or ceases to be engaged.

Multi-Channel Multilingual support

Unless you live under your bed it's obvious that the era of ubiquitous computing has arrived. Users visit your site while moving from computer to mobile device to tablet without even thinking about it. The instant a user begins to feel that they cannot choose their preferred method or language while using your site/content, you may have just lost them as a repeat visitor. The ability to quickly render your site in multiple languages and across multiple browsing platforms is key to a successful web presence.

Support for User-Generated Content

And last but not least, the engaged visitor is usually one that it is interested in participating. The ability to quickly roll out support for polling, commenting on content, and social networking is key to the success of most any site these days.

If you are considering a WEM solution for your site and are in need of some help navigating through those unchartered waters, please reach out to us here . Function1  has a team of industry leaders in the field who are ready to help.

We hope to hear from you soon!

-Mitul