Company Name: Amadesa
Executive Name: Rita Brogley
Web Site: http://www.amadesa.com
Illinois Technology Association: In 10 words or less, what problem does Amadesa, Inc. solve for your clients?
Rita Brogley: Amadesa maximizes online revenues, customer engagement and marketing ROI.
ITA: What motivated you to join Amadesa, Inc.? What is the origin of the name?
RB: The industry is at a turning point. Online marketers are realizing that they need to shift their focus from “how do I get more visitors to my site” to more attention towards “how do I convert my site visitors into customers.” We’ve found that many of our customers are challenged with limited resources and budgets, so to be able to lead a company that is well-poised to both help online marketers effectively traverse this transition and to shape the evolution of an industry was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.
Great question about the name! There is water cooler chatter about the genesis of the Amadesa name. One of the variations that I find most engaging is that our founders were brainstorming one evening over dinner about what kind of business they could create that would fundamentally change and improve the lives of online marketers and ecommerce executives. And when the light bulb turned on, a concerto by Wolfgang “Amadeus” Mozart was playing in the background at the restaurant. So it’s a play off Mozart’s middle name. We want to help our customers compose and create inspiring works of art. In our case, the “work of art” is a dynamic and personalized web site that moves and transforms visitors into customers. But regardless of which version you subscribe to, it’s all a part of the allure of our culture and rich history, even for a young startup such as we are.
ITA: How does Amadesa, Inc.. differentiate from its competitors?
RB: There are many testing vendors, recommendation companies, and other solutions providers in the market place that help companies better engage site visitors. While these are all certainly great tools, they tend to focus on specific pages or areas within a web site. In addition, many of these products require complex integration and/or the significant deployment of resources. Amadesa provides an end-to-end personalization solution suite that helps customers personalize their entire web site. Looked at a different way, every customer experience is unique, from the pages they view to where they come from (banner ads, organic search, etc.), from their specific click paths to the products they purchase, and so forth. Thus, you can’t just look at specific areas of a site. True personalization must encompass the entire customer experience, and therefore the entire web site.
In addition, we’ve dedicated a lot of resources and customer feedback over the past few years to create and refine a simple-to-use yet powerful platform UI for users of our SaaS-based products. As a result, our customers have the ability to design and implement web site optimizations quickly, with limited IT dependency and clearly understand and leverage results through actionable reporting.
ITA: What type of clients provide Amadesa, Inc.'s prime source of income?
RB: Amadesa’s solutions help both ecommerce and ebusiness companies. So whether it’s to augment revenues or boost order size and values, or to increase time on site or enhance visitor engagement, Amadesa can help.
ITA: How has your business sector evolved over the last five years?
RB: Just a few years ago, you were seeing marketers dramatically increasing their web site presences and investments. But much of the focus was on traffic generation, via online advertising, SEO and SEM, etc. It also primarily meant creating an aesthetically pleasing site that matched the look and feel of the company’s brand. The problem was that even with a site that were appealing to the eye, most sites would essentially present the same content and information to every user – from the home page image to the presentation of product categories and details all the way on through to the checkout and order confirmation pages.
Marketers began to recognize that all users do not behave equally. Early on, benefits could be achieved from simple A/B testing, where presenting simple element variations to split groups of users would reveal higher performing content elements. Multivariate tests presented additional testing economies for site operators to apply testing throughout their site.
As marketers became even more sophisticated, segmentation would provide an additional level of personalization. For example, not only could you test, but you might conduct different tests based on where visitors came from (e.g. banner ads versus organic search), the time of day or day of week they visited, etc. In both the testing and segmentation environments, the benefits are significant, but it’s still predominantly a manual process. As technology advances continue, the ability to deliver real-time content in an automated and therefore efficient manner, based on hundreds of anonymous user data point, becomes a reality that is actually achievable today. Today’s savvy marketers are realizing that delivering a truly personalized one-to-one experience is the most effective way to convert visitors into customers. In coming full circle, this means that the site-side efforts also optimize their traffic generation activities as well.
ITA: One of your main selling points is the 'personalization' of websites. What does that term mean both to the visitor/user and the website operator?
RB: Consider a typical KPI for online businesses, such as conversion rate. According to shop.org, the online conversion rates for retail web sites have hovered around the 2-3% range for the past decade. But if you could “personalize” the site, the entire site that is, you can dramatically improve the online experience, remove abandonment points and increase site stickiness. And that means a more relevant and compelling experience for the visitor.
For the operator, it means being able to do what was just described for each and every visitor. In essence, your web site becomes their web site as content on every page is personalized at the individual level. When the operator aggregates the improved engagement from all these individuals, the result is significantly increased conversions and marketing KPIs, as well as maximized ROI.
ITA: What are the biggest challenges you face as an Illinois-based IT company?
RB: There is a big perception challenge. The glamour and news for technology tends to emanate from the west coast. A lot of industry events, media coverage and venture capital activity tends to concentrate in the Bay Area. It just means we have to put forth a greater and more focused effort in creating and disseminating the buzz around our story and our value proposition. We are seeing a lot of momentum in this area, and firmly believe that our story will certainly be told. It helps to see the quantity and quality of recognized brands buying into our vision and solutions.
ITA: How does having an Midwestern location help you in the IT industry as a whole?
RB: The Midwest provides a lot of great resources, especially when you consider the base of companies who call the Midwest their headquarters. In addition, there is a strong concentration of intellectual capital, from the significant number of strong academic institutions to the large pools of diverse and experienced technological professionals. Don’t get me wrong, I spent quite some time in the Bay Area and there are definitely benefits to being on the west coast. That said, the talent pool here is quite rich from which Midwest-based tech organizations can draw from.
ITA: What are the hottest trends in Conversion Optimization? defined as user interaction with website elements such as articles, video, etc.? that website operators should be aware of now?
RB: The fundamentals of personalization don’t change, and they shouldn’t. Whether site visitors are interacting with or are looking for news, articles or other content; banners, ads or other promotional offers; audio, videos or other multimedia; user/community-driven information or other social media; pricing, features or other product details, the end goal doesn’t change – deliver an engaging and compelling experience. In a way, it’s a bit of a paradox. So as operators learn about new gadgets and toys to use on their sites, it becomes even more paramount that they don’t lose sight of something that hasn’t fundamentally changed – and that is that it’s still the customer who ultimately controls the relationship.
ITA: What trends do you see heading into 2010 that are relevant to the industry and your company?
RB: Even though there is much work to do at the site-specific level, one of the hot trends that will evolve quickly is the cross-channel integration that needs to take place. That means that as site owners become more prolific in personalizing their web sites, they also have to quickly embrace the opportunities for carrying those personalized experiences into other areas and channels, including at their brick and mortar presences, in their outbound telemarketing and email communications, via their inbound call centers, in mobile, etc.