Widemile Wins Prestigious ad:tech Limelight Award
Panel of Marketing Industry Executives Selects Emerging Leader in Web Site Optimization for its Campaign with The Weather Channel Interactive; Conversion Rate Improved by 225%
Seattle, Wa – May 11, 2007 – Widemile Inc., an emerging leader in Web site optimization and multivariate testing, today announced that its work with The Weather Channel Interactive received the Limelight Award for Best Campaign Optimization at the recent ad:tech San Francisco industry conference. The Limelight Awards recognize talented designers, strategic thinkers and excellence in interactive marketing. Winners are selected by a panel of over 130 judges from the industry’s most revered companies and brands, based upon creative excellence, ease of navigation, results, and the overall consumer experience.
“The ad:tech Limelight award is an honor, and we’re thrilled to be recognized for our work on behalf of one of our best clients,” said Robert Bergquist, President of Widemile. “Our obsession is optimization and delivering higher conversion rates for clients. We have yet to find a webpage that can’t be tuned for better performance. The secret is testing.”
When creating a webpage, it is difficult for publishers like The Weather Channel to design the best version on the first attempt. Web site optimization using multivariate testing enables marketers to modify key areas of a webpage – experimenting with multiple versions of an image and copy, for example – to determine the best–performing combination under actual user conditions. Widemile employs proprietary multivariate testing technology and predictive analytics, original creative development and professional services to accelerate this process for optimal results.
The company worked with The Weather Channel Interactive to optimize website customer acquisition for Notify!, a core subscription product that provides consumers with highly relevant and timely severe weather information. The objectives for the campaign included optimizing the offer, creative, and page design to deliver the best possible results.
Widemile tested the equivalent of over 1000 possible webpage combinations for The Weather Channel Interactive, including Flash® animated image versions. The best–performing combination improved conversion rates by 225% over the initial control version, widely surpassing the 30% improvement target. Interestingly, contrary to conventional wisdom, the animated version outperformed its static counterparts by a large margin.
“The approach and tools that Widemile offers are the next generation of conversion marketing,” said Brad Bacon, Director of Distribution, Consumer Applications, at The Weather Channel Interactive. “They walked us through the entire process, designing an accurate test and providing creative services that enabled us to implement quickly. Every day counts – you never want to leave money on the table by having non–optimized landing pages.”
For more information on the ad:tech San Francisco conference and the Limelight awards, visit www.ad-tech.com/awards/winners.asp.
About Widemile
Widemile Inc. is a leading provider of web content testing and optimization technologies and services for online marketers. Founded by marketing technology pioneers Donald Pickering and Dean Kimball, Widemile employs a proprietary multivariate testing and optimization platform with related services, including original creative development and campaign management, to accelerate the path to optimal results. Widemile solutions are built for marketers, leveraging deep understanding of both the technical and the marketing aspects of customer conversion behavior, to increase the effectiveness and value of online marketing investments. Widemile customers include: Microsoft, SmartSheet.com, The Weather Channel Interactive, OneWebHosting, Charter Communications and MIVA, among others. Widemile is privately held and headquartered in Seattle, WA and can be found at www.widemile.com or by calling: 206–985–7171.
Press Contacts
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