The good news is they don’t necessarily need to wait for the latest gadget to use technology that can boost revenues, increase productivity and satisfy your customers. The apps for that are already here.

In our latest customer spotlight, TELUS explains how it worked with the Salesforce1 Platform and Sales Cloud to build its Door to Door app, which has dramatically changed the way it signs up new customers and gets services up and running. Although TELUS is one of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, there are lots of takeaways from its success story that SMBs can easily apply:

1. Spot the process bottleneck: For TELUS, having to get customers to sign paper contracts was awkward and time-consuming, particularly in an age where almost everyone carries a mobile device of some kind. SMBs should take a few minutes to step back from their day-to-day work and think through all the steps they need to make a sale. Is there a place where apps could eliminate one of those steps, or make it a more fluid process? Figuring this out up front will help you calculate your return on investment before app development even begins.

2. Aim to be organized anywhere: Some SMBs may still keep most of their customer records in filing cabinets or on their desktop computers, but that’s only useful if you’re spending most of your time in the office. A company the size of TELUS probably has more customers than most SMBs, but their sales agents can easily access what they need on the road with its app, offering one-tap access to information that can help them identify who might be interested in its service and who’s already been served.

3. Take the team spirit with you: Consumers love using messaging apps to stay in touch with friends and family throughout the day. Businesses are now realizing they can provide a similar advantage to their staff with social networking apps designed for professional use. Like TELUS, SMBs should think about the kinds of conversations that might only happen when everyone’s in the same room, and use apps to bring that same level of collaboration and support to their smartphones and tablets.

There is a lot more detail about how TELUS uses Salesforce and its Door to Door App to target its best prospects and convert more leads into sales in the complete customer story. Check it out and start thinking about apps as less of a consumer trend and more of an opportunity to change your business for the better.

Learn more about how mobile CRM can revolutionize your business in How a Mobile CRM Makes You Successful.

The post What TELUS Can Teach SMBs About Selling With Business Apps appeared first on Salesforce.

Content audits aren’t particularly fun either, but they’re definitely worthwhile. While a content audit isn’t a non-stop thrill ride, you’ll quickly discover that few activities can provide a better look into how well your business is actually performing online.

A content audit can also serve as a roadmap for improving important metrics like customer engagement, conversions, and—yes—dollars in your bank account.

But before we get too far, let’s cover the basics:

What is a content audit?

A content audit is a comprehensive way of taking stock of all of the content on your website (a content inventory), and evaluating how well that content is performing against your business objectives.

Why should I even bother?

Content audits help companies find out what’s working, what’s not, what to scrap, and what new pieces to create. They’re all about getting answers to important questions about content performance. They help to better understand user behaviour as it pertains to content, helping prioritize where a company needs to improve.

5 Reasons You Should Conduct a Content Audit

What is a Content Audit? A content audit is a comprehensive way of taking stock of all of the content on your website (a content inventory), and evaluating how well that content is performing against your business objectives.

1. To Identify ways to improve your content marketing
2. To find gaps in your conversion funnel
3. To diagnose problems with your SEO strategy
4. To discover your best performing content pieces
5. To improve your overall user experience

That’s why the approach to your content audit will differ with your own specific goals.

For example, if you want to assess how well your content is performing for SEO, you may take stock of the following:

• Which pages target which keywords?
• How well are those pages ranking?
• Which pages have not yet been optimized?
• Are any pages missing key elements of SEO?
• Are there areas of weak, duplicate, or redundant copy?

Or, for an audit that informs your content marketing strategy (which is what we’ll dive into), you may choose to measure the following:

• Which content receives the highest traffic?
• What does customer engagement look like (time on site, social shares)?
• Which piece of content converts the best?
• Is any content outdated or unnecessary?
• Does my content consistently follow my brand’s voice and tone?

Just like getting a physical, a content audit may not be something you want to do, but it’s a good way to monitor and improve the health of your marketing.

How long will it take me to conduct this audit?

That depends on two things: the size of your website and the depth of what you want to measure.

If you’re a small site with less than 10 pages and a few downloadable assets, this may only take a few hours. But if a website is quite large or there’s a ton of content to comb through, a content audit can take a few days, weeks, or even months.

And while there are tools to help pull all of the data together, it’s the analysis that will take the most time. You want to be able to give careful time and attention to the process so the conclusions from the audit are founded in good research.

Audits can get incredibly detailed. For instance, while some people choose to measure a piece of the content’s traffic as a whole, others will want to look at traffic patterns over time to find evergreen assets or flash-in-the-pan successes. Practice patience and take your time.

The example audit below provides some hugely helpful insights, and doesn’t take a ton of time to accomplish. Reference these basic steps with a far more in-depth content audit if you choose—just add metrics for measurement.

How to Conduct a Content Audit

The following outlines a content audit that looks primarily at content marketing, not SEO. While the basic framework and approach are the same, the metrics you would use for SEO would be different.

1. Start with your purpose.

Before diving into your pages, spend some time defining your objectives and considering the audience impact of your findings.

Since we’re dealing with a content marketing audit in this post, we’ll outline the ideal metrics/questions/considerations for that type of audit.

Think about all of the following:

• What are our goals for the audit?
• Which metrics will be most important to measure?
• Who is the audience we’re trying to reach with our content and what do they care about?

Defining your target audience is critical, because if you don’t know who you’re creating for, you can’t really have a true sense of what’s working and relevant versus what’s ineffective or redundant. It’s a good idea to break your target audiences down into specific personas, as this will help make sense of some of the metrics to come.

While that last one is something you’ll help refine as you complete your audit, it’s important to remind yourself of any initial research to gauge initial assumptions.

2. Take inventory of your content.

With your goals clearly defined, it’s time to start compiling a big list of content pieces, from website copy down to downloadable marketing assets (eBooks, white papers, etc.) Store the information you’re gathering in a spreadsheet.

Gathering a big list of your content’s URLs can be done one of two ways:

• Use a website crawling tool such as Screaming Frog to automatically scour your entire website and collect the URLs, Title Tags, and files, then conveniently export this into a spreadsheet.

• Start scrolling and click, copy, and paste URLS one at a time then type in the content title as you go. This isn’t too bad for small sites, but be attentive so you don’t miss pages or links to assets along the way.

Once you have a list of URLs, it can be very helpful to categorize them according to the structure of your website, just to avoid feeling like you’re sifting through a rat’s nest of random pages. A simple numbering system will help here.

For example:

1. About Us 1.1 Our Team 1.2 Our History 2. Services 2.1 Consulting 2.2 Coaching 2.3 Support 3. Resources 3.1 Downloadable Consulting Whitepaper 3.2 Consulting Glossary 4. Contact Us

By laying it out in an intuitive way, you can see where every piece of content belongs in your content hierarchy, which will also help draw some conclusions over bloated sections or missing opportunities later down the line.

3. Collect & organize your data.

With your URLs and content titles in place, it’s time to start pulling in the data you want to analyze, creating a column for every metric you think is important.

For example, since this audit is for content marketing purposes, some of the metrics you may want to collect include:

• Content type (landing page, blog post, infographic, eBook, etc.)
• Targeted persona
• Social shares (pull this with a Social Metrics Plugin)
• Number of comments
• Total traffic (use Google Analytics or your own tracking solution)
• Traffic types (social/search: allows you to gauge SEO vs. sharing value)
• Time on page/scroll depth (use Riveted and Scroll Depth tools to get really accurate)
• Last date updated
• Content topic/category (what is the content about?)
• Total conversions and conversion rate
• Consistent tone/voice? (Check this like a pass/fail)

If you’re using a content marketing platform such as HubSpot, there will be a myriad of metrics you can add in here (conversions being one of the most useful and easily measured).

If you want, score your content pieces based on the metrics they meet. An A/B/C system is pretty common, where “C” denotes content that isn’t up to par and needs immediate action.

There’s one more very important metric to address: The stage of the buyers’ journey that the content supports. The most effective content marketing strategy is one that is mapped to the stages of the buying cycle.

Assess whether or not you have content assets to assist and nurture your customer at every stage of the funnel:

1. Interest/Awareness: Content intended to make clients aware of your brand, their needs, or what makes you unique. This is content that helps to establish rapport and credibility, targeted at those who are at the top of the funnel and may not yet be leads. Examples: Blog posts on general topics, infographics, beginner’s guides, podcasts, whitepapers
2. Consideration/Establishing Preference: This is content that helps a lead who has identified they have a need and is investigating their options. Your content here continues to build credibility, but focuses on educating the client on your solution. Examples: Landing pages, demo videos, tutorials, eBooks, in-depth whitepapers, spec sheets
3. Purchase/Buying Decision: This is content that pushes a buy-ready lead to make a buying decision, eliminating feelings of risk and supporting the purchase. Examples: Case studies, landing pages, ROI calculators, solution builders, configurators, direct response e-mails, pricing information, reviews, testimonials
4. Evaluation & Repurchase: This is content that supports the buyer after their purchase, helping to create a community of buyers and build loyalty. Examples: Feedback forms and surveys, promotions, special offers

As you collect your data, do your best to classify which stage/stages content apply to, as this will be critical during the analysis stage.

4. Analyze for gaps, opportunities, and insights.

Once you have everything in your spreadsheet, it’s time to start crunching the numbers—looking for patterns and digging up the insights that will inform your strategy.

Just a few things you can analyze:

Where are your content gaps?

Sorting through your data, what stages of the buyer’s journey have the least amount of content to support them? Are there sections with none at all? Now you have a visual look into where you need to prioritize content creation to bridge the gap between turning your leads into conversions.

What about topicality? If you can see certain topics have been very popular, are you creating enough content around them?

Is all content consistently branded?

Styles change, authors rotate—but inconsistent content and messaging will confuse visitors and leave them wondering who your brand really is. By assessing the voice and tone of your content, as well as the quality of the information itself, you can eliminate ambiguity and put your best foot forward online.

What content performed best on social/search?

When you’ve identified pieces that got the most traction on social, the highest traffic levels (combined with time on site and scroll depth that prove engagement), or the most downloads, you will have clues into all kinds of things, like:

• What other similar content could you create?
• How long/what format is your most successful content? Can you replicate that for future pieces?
• What content did very well in a short burst, then dropped off over time? Could you remarket the asset for further traction (without creating more content)?
• What content is best at driving conversions? How can you make this content more prominent and accessible?

You want to find the “why” behind the successes and either repurpose that content into additional successful pieces, or apply the same principles to less successful pieces.

What content is outdated/irrelevant?

Do you have old resources that could use an update? Are there examples of redundant, duplicate content, or content that’s no longer useful to your audience?

If you can find old pieces that performed very well, this can give you fodder to update and create new pieces that will get better traction.

If you find superfluous or useless content, this may be a good time to redirect old pieces to newer, better ones, or to use the “nofollow” attribute.

5. Act.

Now that you have a clear understanding where the problems in your content marketing strategy lie, it’s time to execute on your discoveries:

• What new content needs to be created to align to the buyers’ journeys and prevent them from dropping off?
• What content do you need to update, rewrite, or eliminate?
• What new content can you create to capture hot topics and replicate past successes?

Transform your discoveries and analysis into a concrete, prioritized list of recommendations and then get down to work.

5 Steps to Conduct a Content Audit

1. Start with your purpose

• Define your objectives and consider the audience your findings will impact
  • What are our goals for the audit?
  • Which metrics will be most important to measure?
  • Who is the audience we’re trying to reach with our content and what do they care about?
• Break target audiences into specific personas

2. Take inventory of your content

• In a spreadsheet, compile content pieces. Either:
  • Categorize URLs according to the structure of your website
  • Use a website crawling tool to automatically collect URLs, Title Tags, and files, then export into a spreadsheet
• Copy and paste URLS one at a time then type in the content title as you go

For example:

1. About Us 1.1 Our Team 1.2 Our History 2. Services 2.1 Consulting 2.2 Coaching 2.3 Support 3. Resources 3.1 Downloadable Consulting Whitepaper 3.2 Consulting Glossary 4. Contact Us

3. Collect & organize your data

• Pull in the data you want to analyze and create a column for every metric you think is important
• Consider:
  • Content type
  • Targeted persona
  • Social shares
  • Number of comments
  • Total traffic
  • Traffic types
  • Time on page/scroll depth
  • Last date updated
  • Content topic/category
  • Total conversions and conversion rate
  • Consistent tone/voice?
• Assess whether or not you have content assets to assist and nurture your customer at every stage of the funnel

4. Analyze for gaps, opportunities, and insights

• Look for patterns and dig up the insights to inform your strategy
  • Where are your content gaps?
  • Is all content consistently branded?
  • What content performed best on social/search?
  • What content is outdated/irrelevant?

5. Act

• Execute on your discoveries
  • What new content needs to be created to align to the buyer’s journey and prevent them from dropping off?
  • What content do you need to update, rewrite, or eliminate?
  • What new content can you create to capture hot topics and replicate past successes?
• Transform your discoveries and analysis into a concrete, prioritized list of recommendations and then get down to work.

Conclusion

Content audits are an involved, lengthy process, but the outcomes certainly justify the means. If you’ve never given your content a check-up, the best time to start is now.

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<p><strong>Click To Enlarge</strong><br /><br /><a href=’https://blogs.salesforce.com/ca/2015/03/content-audit.html ‘><img src=”https://salesforce.com/blog/content/dam/blogs/legacy/2015/03/6a00e54ee3905b883301b7c7579113970.jpg” _rte_src=”https://salesforce.com/blog/content/dam/blogs/legacy/2015/03/6a00e54ee3905b883301b7c7579113970.jpg” alt=’How to Conduct a Basic, DIY Content Audit’ width=’600px’ border=’0′ /></a></p><p>Via <a href=” https://blogs.salesforce.com/ca/2015/03/content-audit.html ” _rte_href=” https://blogs.salesforce.com/ca/2015/03/content-audit.html “>Salesforce</a></p>

About the Author:

Joel Klettke is a freelance copywriter and from the Great White North. Before he decided to write words for a living, he spent his early twenties going head to head with Google as the lead SEO at a digital agency. Today, he helps smart businesses make friends with money to spend, with a focus on website and digital marketing copy. You can check out his work at Business Casual Copywriting and follow him on Twitter at @JoelKlettke.

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Correctly rendering email across a variety of devices and email clients—Gmail looks different than Outlook, different than Hotmail, etc.—can be a difficult process. Ninety seven percent of emails are only opened once, so that means one chance to impress. While creating mobile-friendly emails, it’s important to remember that device does not equal email client. For example, on an iPhone 6, there are several different email client apps and browsers, which can be used to open email.

While industry trends are helpful, the best practice is for each brand to dive into their own analytics to glean what email clients and devices customers use to read email.

Unfortunately, not every email service provider or web analytics (if sending traffic back to a site) will provide accurate metrics about email clients and devices. As an alternative, a brand can take a look at customer demographics or personas. For example, a technology company with a tech savvy audience will want to focus on recent Android and iPhone devices. But a traditional B2B construction company may see its customers use the corporate favorite, Outlook. That may differ from a B2C fast fashion brand that targets customers with lower incomes who may use cheaper Android or even Windows phones. The construction company may even choose not to focus on making email mobile-friendly, while both the tech company and fast fashion brand can’t afford to ignore mobile-friendly email.

A brand should focus on the top three to five email clients most popular with customers, especially if trying to prove mobile-friendly email marketing will help the company’s revenue and goals.

First Step: Pick the Best Mobile Code Format

Coding can be scary. But it’s very important to understand the three different types of email code design: mobile first, flexible layout, and responsive design. Email coding is particularly unique in that all code must be inline and can’t call any external files, except images. Many coders compare it to the way websites were built in 1996: all inline and all tables.

Mobile first puts mobile friendliness above everything. From beginning to final send, this email is tailored for the mobile user. It’s likely all links are driven to a mobile-friendly site. This is best used for those who see almost all their customers come in via mobile traffic. Mobile first sacrifices desktop design, and emails can look awkward on larger screens.

Flexible layouts are great when a brand is less sure of the degree that mobile may impact email marketing. They are also easier to code, which is helpful if internal resources are limited. Flexible layouts look great from the smallest phone to largest screen. The downside: Flexible layouts limit a brand’s design opportunities and require simplicity, considering emails look the same across all email clients.

Responsive design is the most complex to pull off properly, but delivers the best design results. Through code, it tailors itself to a device and client. If a customer checks the responsive email on their phone, they may see a simple call to action (CTA), but if they open it on a desktop, there may be more images, longer text, and multiple CTAs. Responsive design uses inline media queries. Media queries can be intensive, but pay off in the end for a brand looking to ramp up its email marketing program. Responsive design’s major downside is that it requires more coding knowledge, work, and ability to keep up with technology changes and trends.

Layout Hacks: Make an Appeal to All Email Clients

1. Set the width at 600 pixels.

For the best crossovers on email clients, email width should be set at a maximum of 600 to 650 pixels. While this won’t cover the smallest of screens, this size will look nice on almost all devices. (Note: This is not a best practice if going truly responsive.) To take it one step further, add a minimum width of 300 pixels to accommodate narrow screen sizes.

2. Use a single column layout.

For ease of design, keep email layouts as simple as possible. A single column layout is most flexible across clients and devices. Two columns can be used if there’s a good business case. Avoid complex magazine-style layouts with multiple columns since these rarely look appealing on anything but a desktop. And too many columns will distract customers or lead them to ignore important CTAs.

3. Ditch paragraph spacing for old-fashioned tables.

Both Outlook and Hotmail strip out paragraph and margin spacing from code. This means neatly-spaced text will bunch together. Instead, code emails in tables and use padding to add the extra space.

4. Add white space at 15 percent.

White space allows the eye to quickly scan and better digest information. Poorly rendered email on mobile can cause strain just to read the information, which translates to a negative emotion associated with the sending brand. By adding padding of 15 percent, the eye has room to move and relax around the text and images. This leaves more customer brain power to digest the email’s message.

5. Push the font size bigger.

Similar to white space, increasing font size helps improve comprehension and makes reading easier. Many mobile devices, such as the iPhone, automatically resize tiny text. Others leave people pinching and expanding their screens to make fonts readable. A minimum font size of 14 pixels for body text and 22 pixels for headers is a good rule of thumb. (Traditional word processing set fonts as points, which should be avoided as it causes fuzziness when mobile users zoom in.)

To take it a step further, set the font using em or percent coding to be even more mobile-friendly. Setting fonts as either of these will help them scale to different screen sizes. Make sure to choose what will work best for customers, especially if emails are copy-heavy.

Image Hacks: Make Them Look Right and Load Correctly

1. Use the best type of image for email.

For crisp colors and small image sizes, JPGs are the best image file type. They’ll make sure a brand’s images look sharp and load quickly. If an email requires animation, GIFs are best. If it needs transparency, PNGs are the way to go.

2. Remove image “junk” and optimize for load times.

Emails are loaded on all types of devices and hooked into all types of networks. If visitors to a website expect it to load in two seconds and if 40 percent will abandon a site that doesn’t load in three seconds, how long will those clicking on a brand’s email wait?

While there are many complex ways to make an image file size smaller, there are a few easy hacks. Most graphic programs allow for file size adjusting. Make sure to ditch meta information about images such as color profiles and creator information. Photoshop has an easy save for web button. To make image size even smaller, they can be put through programs like ImageOptim, TinyPNG, or JPEGmini.

3. Let the code adjust images to screen size.

While adjusting images to appear clean and crisp at any size, it’s important images scale with screen sizes. A simple code hack is to add style=”width:100%;” to any img tag. Adjust the percent as needed for the space.

4. Keep images from popping out horizontally.

A brand also doesn’t want images popping out beyond an email width. Using the above width code will cover most all email clients, but adding min-width: 100%; will stop any errant images.

5. Display alt text when an image doesn’t load.

While always best practice for accessibility and website SEO, adding alt text to images is imperative for email marketing. Many clients load images automatically, but some don’t. In those image placeholders, a brand wants text describing what the customer should see. This can also help if a customer’s Internet bandwidth isn’t strong enough to load images.

Feature Hacks: Make That Click Happen

1. Use preheaders to give the proper preview.

Most email clients give a preview of the email content, but how many marketing emails just show text along the lines of: “Email not displaying correctly? See it here.” That’s a terrible experience for customers and can negatively effect the brand’s opening rates. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to code these very important 75 characters.

2. Keep emails short and sweet.

Shorter, focused emails see much higher click rates. Ditching graphics, even a brand’s logo, puts the CTA in the forefront. While this is a radical focus on readability, brands have seen up to a 146% increase on conversion doing this.

In the age of skimming, it’s vital to reduce the copy for better readability. Bullet points instead of a long paragraph of text can help solve this. Be direct. Emails with too many CTAs distract readers from a brand’s main message. The best emails only have one CTA and no more than three.

3. Optimize CTA buttons for tap-ability.

Let customers easily click on a brand’s CTA by optimizing for tap-ability. There’s nothing worse for a customer than not being able to click on a link or clicking on the wrong one. Make CTA buttons at least 44 x 44 pixels to optimize for sloppy swiping and tapping on a phone.

Accessibility Hacks: Make It Enjoyable for Everyone

1. Use highly contrasting colors for visual accessibility.

Every smartphone owner knows bright screens kill battery life. Many people dim screens to save power, but muddy colors can make emails completely unreadable. Not to mention, a brand wants to make sure everyone, including people with visual disabilities, can access their content. Use highly contrasting colors for maximum viewability. Test visual accessibility on emails and websites using free software, such as aDesigner. This software allows anyone to see what a page looks like under a variety of conditions and for those with specific visual impairments, such as low light, color blindness, blurred vision, and age-related macular degeneration.

2. Use media queries to change experience.

Customer experience is what mobile optimization is all about. For example, almost every marketing email’s opening line reads something like “Having trouble viewing this e-mail? View it in your browser.” On a smartphone, this takes up precious real estate. Through media queries, a brand can specify that longer messages show on desktops and shorter ones, such as “View in browser” appear on smaller screens.

3. Use a flexbox solution since media queries don’t always work.

Unfortunately, some major email clients like Gmail for iPhone and Android, Mailbox for iPhone, Windows Phone 7 and 8, and Yahoo! for iPhone and Android don’t support media queries. With Gmail ranked as the second leading email client, it’s even more important to realize media queries don’t solve everything. Instead, a brand can use a flexbox approach that is a hybrid of responsive and flexible layouts.

4. Worried about coding? Get a template.

Luckily, there are email coders out there who are happy to share their resources to get one started: CodePen, BazaarVoice, and Litmus’ favorite templates. Don’t be afraid to experiment and test. New trends and designs in mobile happen every day.

5. Direct readers somewhere mobile friendly.

It’s great to optimize emails, but customers are going to be sad if they end with a poor experience on a brand’s website. Make sure all links point to places that are also easily accessible on a variety of devices.

Test, Test, Test, and Improve

It’s important to test different variations on email to make sure it works for a brand’s specific customers. Besides sending test emails before sending to the masses, don’t forget there are tools to help. Email marketing software companies including Litmus, Email on Acid, and PutsMail allow a brand to view emails in just about every email client. These tools save time and energy to make mobile-friendly improvements. Not everyone has access to every device and email client, after all.

Creating more mobile-friendly email marketing is a solid business move. As a channel, email puts brands in touch with customers and community members directly. View email as the one-to-one message it was always intended to be. Make it accessible and see opens, click-through-rates, and conversions soar.

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About the Author

Erica McGillivray spends a ridiculous amount of time being geeky, both professionally and personally. At Moz, she’s the senior community manager, wrangling 500,000+ people and co-running their annual conference MozCon. Erica also is a founder of GeekGirlCon, is a published author, and has a comic book collection that’s an earthquake hazard. Follow her at @emcgillivray.

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Content marketers have understood for quite some time that strategy (and content) for desktop and mobile platforms should be presented differently, and have thus separated them. It’s time to do the same with mobile—isolate tablets and smartphones and tailoring content accordingly for each. That begins with an understanding of what makes these two mobile devices distinct.

Marketers already develop mobile-specific content plans, but what marketers and consumers consider “mobile” is different. In an ExactTarget Marketing Mobile Behavior Report, only 14 percent of respondents said they associate mobile with tablets and e-readers, and 32 percent said they associate mobile with ease of use on the go (let’s call this pocket-ability).

Furthermore, consumers are using tablets and smartphones differently and for varying periods of time. Almost every type of app is more likely to be accessed through a smartphone than on a tablet. The one type of app the reigns supreme on tablets is media apps—think YouTube, Netflix and BuzzFeed (not surprising if you’ve ever tried to watch a video on a smartphone).

If consumers don’t consider tablets and smartphones to be under the same umbrella of “mobile,” they aren’t using them for the same things, and they aren’t accessing them for the same amount of time, then it’s important to adjust your mobile strategy and focus on adapting content for each specific device.

Thinking of tablets and smartphones separately from “mobile devices” is a good first step. While tablets lend themselves to a rich-media experience, including vibrant photos and videos, smartphones are best for on-the-go solutions. Tailor your content accordingly. For tablet users, feature engaging videos and interesting reading. E-books and colorful infographics, for example, are perfectly suited for the tablet experience.

Smartphones, on the other hand, could feature task-oriented service options for the visitor on the go in a way that’s easy to find information quickly. Making sure your content strategy has specific goals for all of the different devices that constitute “mobile” will ensure that users have the optimal experience across all possible gadgets.

Forrester pointed out the mobile experiences from Lufthansa, a German airline, as a primary example of a company that differentiates between tablets and smartphones and promotes content and services relevant to each device.

The photo on the right represents Lufthansa’s tablet experience, featuring photos and sections for reading and browsing, while the photo on the left depicts Lufthansa’s smartphone view, offering users quick shortcuts for what they may need for a flight.

This layout taps into a smartphone’s key function: pocket-ability. The user accessing Lufthansa on their phone is most likely on the go—otherwise they would probably be using their desktop. They don’t want to read up on the airline or look at pictures; they want to know if their flight is on-time, check-in, etc., and they want to obtain that information quickly.

It’s important for the experience to be consistent across all channels. Customers should be able to find the same information however they access it, but that doesn’t mean the user experience has to be identical. Focusing on what each device is best equipped for, and what some of their shortcomings may be, is key to presenting the best content specific to that platform.

Visit our website to learn more about optimizing your content marketing, or download our free e-book.

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Cloud application platforms, also known as Platform as a Service (PaaS), provide the infrastructure needed to build and run apps over the Internet. A new IDC white paper, sponsored by salesforce.com, focuses on the core values of PaaS, and more specifically, the advantages experienced by organizations that have built a broad portfolio of apps on the Salesforce Platform.

Read on for six of the benefits that point directly to why to the Salesforce Platform should be the choice for companies who want to innovate faster.

1. Apps for employees in every department

Customers of the Salesforce Platform are using the technology to build larger-scale and more sophisticated non-sales applications.

2. Increased productivity and agility

Many customers of the Salesforce Platform report developing applications end-to-end in weeks, instead of months, and accomplishing this with much smaller teams.

3. Faster time-to-market

The study found that the Salesforce Platform customers increased their application time-to-market by 70% and upped the number of annual applications they launched by 80%.

4. Higher IT efficiency and productivity

Customers analyzed were able to reduce labor costs while growing their application environment by 44% annually.

5. Reduced infrastructure costs

IDC also reports that customers decreased the infrastructure costs associated with developing and deploying apps by 75-95%.

6. Significant return on investment

Not only did the Salesforce Platform pay for itself in seven months, customers surveyed said the platform delivered a combined 520% ROI.

To read more on how IT can innovate faster and save big by building their app portfolio on the Salesforce Platform, download the complimentary IDC white paper, sponsored by Salesforce.com, Salesforce Platform: Accelerate App Dev with Huge ROI.

6 bonnes raisons d’exploiter votre entreprise sur une plateforme infonuagique

Tous les services des technologies de l’information veulent créer des applications personnalisées. Ces applications doivent offrir une réelle valeur à l’entreprise, aux employés et aux partenaires et soutenir le rythme des affaires d’aujourd’hui. En même temps, les services informatiques doivent avoir de l’agilité et pouvoir accélérer les vitesses de développement, tout en réduisant les coûts et en s’alignant avec les objectifs stratégiques de l’organisation dans son ensemble.

Les plateformes d’applications infonuagiques, également connues sous le nom de « plateforme proposée en tant que service (PaaS), offrent l’infrastructure nécessaire pour créer et exécuter des applications sur Internet. Un nouveau livre blanc IDC, commandité par salesforce.com, aborde les valeurs essentielles de la solution PaaS, et plus spécifiquement, les avantages dont ont bénéficié les organisations qui ont créé un vaste portefeuille d’applications sur Salesforce Platform.

Prenez connaissance de six de ces avantages qui montrent directement pourquoi Salesforce Platform devrait être le choix des entreprises qui souhaitent innover plus rapidement.

1. Des applications pour employés dans tous les services

Les clients de Salesforce Platform utilisent la technologie pour créer des applications non commerciales à plus large échelle et plus perfectionnées.

2. Une productivité et une agilité accrues

De nombreux clients de Salesforce Platform indiquent qu’ils développement des applications de bout en bout en quelques semaines plutôt qu’en quelques mois, et qu’ils accomplissent cette tâche avec des équipes beaucoup plus restreintes.

3. Un délai de mise en marché plus court

L’étude a démontré que les clients de Salesforce Platform ont accéléré le délai de mise en marché de leurs applications de 70 % et que le nombre annuel d’applications lancées était en hausse de 80 %.

4. Une efficacité et une productivité accrues des services informatiques

Les clients interrogés ont été en mesure de réduire leurs coûts de main-d’œuvre tout en développant leur environnement d’applications de 44 % par année.

5. Une réduction des coûts d’infrastructure

IDC a également signalé que les clients avaient réduit les coûts d’infrastructure associés au développement et au déploiement des applications de 75 à 95 %.

6. Un rendement important du capital investi.

Non seulement Salesforce Platform a-t-elle été amortie en sept mois, mais les clients interrogés ont également indiqué que la plateforme avait généré un rendement combiné du capital investi de 520 %.

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