B2B customers expect the same level of personalization, frictionless service, and consistency across channels from their business transactions that they enjoy in their consumer buying experiences. To keep up with (and exceed) customer expectations, B2B companies need to be proactive in evolving their digital strategies and technologies.
Join our Commerce, Digital Strategy, and Digital Marketing experts at B2B Online, November 11 – 13 in Miami, Florida, to learn how to take your B2B customer experience to the next level. Our subject matter experts will be meeting with companies from across the B2B sphere at booth #109 to discuss their unique digital and CX needs.
Senior Commerce Consultant Karie Daudt and Nate Bauer, Managing Director of Digital Marketing, will also be taking the stage on Day 1 to talk personalization in the B2B space. Join us for their session and learn how to put your customer data to work.

Personalizing the B2B Commerce Experience through Data
Monday, Nov. 11, 4:45 pm
3rd Floor, Met 2/3/4

John Ambrose, Managing Director of our Commerce Solutions practice, will continue the conversation around effective personalization with a roundtable discussion focused on Day 2.

Consumer-Centric Thinking: Making Personalization Real & Practical – Roundtable Discussion
Tuesday, Nov. 12, 12:25 pm
3rd Floor, Met 2/3/4

Are you planning to attend B2B Online? Use code PERF25 for a 25% discount at registration. And let us know! We’d love to schedule some time to meet with you at the conference. We hope to see you there!

At Perficient, we spend a lot of time bringing creative and innovative ideas to the table and then working hard to turn them into successful realities. It’s kind of our thing. In fact, it’s our thing even when we’re not at work!

Four of our creative and technical powerhouses proved this earlier this year at the Kennessaw State University Global Game Jam, where they turned their first foray into video game design and development into a victory.

The Origin

The journey began when Colton approached Aidan, Aaron, and Maxx to see if they’d be interested in joining him and his brother Cameron for the game jam. Although no one in the group had previous experience designing or developing video games, each had been wanting to give it a try. The answer was an enthusiastic “Yes!”

The Players

• Maxx Morgan, 2D Artist
• Aidan Arrowood, 2D Animator & Developer
• Colton Dale, Developer
• Aaron Hevenstone, Developer
• Cameron Dale, Composer, SFX Artist & Video

The Jam

Facilitated by the Georgia Game Development Association (GGDA), the game jam took place at Kennesaw State University Marietta campus in Marietta, Ga., where more than 100 individuals in about 20 teams came together to compete. Each team was given a classroom to work in and 48 hours to create a prototype of a video game that somehow related to the theme “What Home Means to You” and the concept “transmission.”

After some brainstorming, the team decided on a post-apocalyptic game concept set in a subway tunnel where a crash has recently taken place. Players have to explore the setting and find clues in order to fix a broken radio and call for help, all while looking for other survivors and building a new home for themselves. They called the game “Hatch,” referring both to the hatch the characters escape through and the idea of progression from one state to another.

The experience and existing team dynamic the group brought from Perficient proved to be a major advantage at the game jam. Maxx handled the two-dimensional design, Colton and Aaron worked on development in Unity, and Cameron created the score and sound effects. Aidan took on the role of animator and quickly learned how to use the video game animation software Spine to bring Maxx’s designs to life.

“The work we’ve been doing at Perficient translated very well to the game jam,” Colton said. “It helped that we’d all worked together in the past. Knowing how each other works and who would be best suited for what definitely made the approach a lot easier.”

Colton had set up a code repository and Trello board for collaboration before the game jam, so the team was able to hit the ground running once the event began. They took the same approach as they would for a client project at work, breaking it up into individual tasks, establishing parameters for the minimum viable product (MVP), and keeping the scope of the project realistic for the tight deadline.

This approach set the team up to create a well-executed, deep vertical slice of the game and caught the attention of the judges and observers.

“It started out with us just doing it for fun, but I think at some point we started to notice that we were getting a lot of visitors and then a lot of repeat visitors,” Colton said. “The people who were working at the game jam were walking around and would come in and take a look. We started to realize that we were doing a little bit better than the average team there.”

“I heard some of the judges walking by saw that we were handling scope well, which is part of what we’ve learned while working together on projects at Perficient,” Maxx added. “We knew what scope creep looks like, and when ideas started to get a little out of control, we knew how to step in and say, ‘Okay, we realize what’s happening here. Let’s scale it back. What can we actually accomplish in the next 48 hours?’”

The 48 hours went by quickly, with the team working late into each night and catching Zs on borrowed couch cushions. In the end, their creativity, hard work, and lost sleep paid off. After viewing the trailer and game demo, the judging panel (made up of KSU Department of Computer Science faculty) selected “Hatch” as the winning game.

The Next Level

After taking the title at the KSU Global Game Jam, the team had one month to continue working on “Hatch” before they would compete again, this time against the winning teams of the three other GGDA game jams that had taken place across Georgia. They were also provided with a mentor to work with during that month, as they continued to polish the game demo.

“This one was somehow even more difficult,” Colton said. “Now we didn’t just have a whole weekend we could dedicate to it. We were balancing it with work and life.”

Colton added that the team had to deal with even more scope creep during the month they were polishing “Hatch.”

“You’re going to have more coherent ideas over a month than over 48 hours,” he said, “so scope creep became an even bigger issue. We had to dial it back to a good, digestible amount that we would be able to package nicely. Basically, we had to readjust to decide what our new MVP would be.”

Their hard work paid off again. After presenting the updated game to the panel of GGDA board members and mentors, the team tied for first place and earned additional professional resources, access to PR consulting and audio development firms, to help them continue to develop “Hatch.”

What’s Next

The team, now known as Macca Games, enjoyed their first foray into game development and is continuing to develop, expand, and polish “Hatch.”

“I absolutely loved the game jam,” Aaron said. “I got to work on something I was interested in but had always been kind of afraid to jump into. We still meet up almost every week to discuss what we’re working on next and what the future is going to look like for this game. We’re creating this whole world that we’re excited to share with everyone else.”

The Game

Watch the trailer for “Hatch.”

Download and play the original version of “Hatch.”

Special Thanks

Kennessaw State University, Department of Computer Science
ListenUp Audio Production
Vicarious PR
Wabi Sabi Sound
Joe Cassavaugh

Technologies Used

Unity
Spine
Adobe XD
Adobe Photoshop

READY TO GROW YOUR CAREER?

At Perficient, we continually look for ways to champion and challenge our talented workforce with interesting projects for high-profile clients, encourage personal and professional growth through training and mentoring, and celebrate our people-oriented culture and the innovative ways they serve Perficient and the community.

Learn more about what it’s like to work at Perficient at our Careers page. 

Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.

The number of wearable users in the US is predicted to reach predicted to reach 67 million, more than 25% of the adult population, by 2022. Wearable technology is expanding beyond the realm of fitness trackers and smartwatches, creating new opportunities for brands to reach their customers and improve day-to-day tasks.

To stay on top of this growing demand, the Perficient Digital Labs team has been trying its hand at wearable design and development.

“We challenged ourselves to produce a practical wearable product,” Director of Emerging Experiences Dan Thompson wrote in a recent blog post. “[We asked] ‘What can we produce that’s new, interesting, and useful?’”

This question led the team to develop a prototype for a light-based signaling system that could be used with electric scooters (you know, the ones popping up everywhere) to increase rider safety.

After several rounds of development and testing, the final product was a set of electroluminescent (EL) signals mounted on an everyday backpack and controlled using a Bluetooth-enabled cycling glove. Users can indicate turns and braking by simply moving certain fingers. The EL tape attached to the front and back of the bag then responds accordingly, signaling the rider’s intent and increasing visibility.

Watch the video below for a glimpse into the development process and to see Dan take the new prototype on a test-drive around the streets of Chicago.

To learn more about how this prototype was developed, check out the original blog post.

READY TO GROW YOUR CAREER?

At Perficient, we continually look for ways to champion and challenge our talented workforce with interesting projects for high-profile clients, encourage personal and professional growth through training and mentoring, and celebrate our people-oriented culture and the innovative ways they serve Perficient and the community.

Learn more about what it’s like to work at Perficient at our Careers page. 

Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.

Director of Conversion Optimization Alex Harris stopped by Opticon19 last week to meet with other conversion rate optimization (CRO) experts in the industry and learn about the latest Optimizely releases. While there, he sat down with Nasdaq’s Laura Moreno for a quick chat about the event, what we do here at Perficient Digital, and the evolution of website development and conversion optimization.
“The way websites are created today is a lot different than it used to be,” he explained. “You essentially would redesign a website and then replace your existing website – that was kind of the old way of doing it. Today you really need to iterate and change your website strategically to ensure that the changes are actually going to be successful.”
When asked about the event, Alex said that he’s most looking forward to better understanding the new releases and how they can help us bring the most value possible to our clients. Among these are the ability to measure the ROI and success of both campaigns and programs as a whole, as well as new capabilities around customizing data models, adaptive audiences, and adaptive recommendations.
Alex explained that CRO technology has come a long way from where it was when he entered the field 18 years ago.
“We now have better software, better data, and better access to be able to make sure the user sees the right experience based on their own individual preferences,” he said. “It’s great to see how far the technology has come to do experimentation on a much larger level and also to be able to personalize to show [the user] the right experience at the right time, for the right specific need.”
Watch the full interview below.

Learn more about Perficient Digital’s conversion optimization capabilities.

Augmented/mixed reality (AR/MR) is the talk of the tech industry, but many traditional AR and MR experiences are trapped on expensive headsets or single-user screens, keeping the technology from reaching its true potential.
“In the evolution of the AR/MR medium, it’s important that we continue to experiment and think about mixed reality in creative and unique ways,” said Conner Hasbrouck, a creative developer and designer at Perficient Digital Labs.
The Labs team set out to explore new, more immersive and inclusive options for bringing mixed reality to the masses (and to businesses). One option: Combining projection mapping and computer vision technology to turn real-life settings into visually stunning, interactive mixed reality environments.
To demonstrate this technology, the Labs team built a product configuration installation using Lightform and OpenCV where users can add custom color schemes to a real shoe using projected buttons on the display surface.

A second projection mapping/computer vision proof-of-concept paints 3D data visualization onto the canvas of an exercise ball.

In both of these cases, the projection mapping technology creates a mixed reality experience viewable by anyone in the vicinity, while the computer vision provides a broad spectrum of interactivity options, tracking user interaction and responding accordingly.
To learn more about Perficient Digital Labs and how these two prototypes work, check out Conner’s original post.

The Mount Carmel Health System’s new website has earned its second creative recognition with the announcement of the 2019 Muse Creative Award winners. The new site brought home a Silver award in the Health Website category only a few weeks after a nod from the Hermes Creative Awards.

The new website was the first launched in an ongoing project Perficient Digital has undertaken with Trinity Health, one of the largest multi-institutional Catholic healthcare organizations in the nation. After experiencing a lot of growth through acquisitions, Trinity Health wanted to unify its various digital properties and create a cohesive online experience for its patients and internal teams.

We began the process by evaluating the organization’s 22 existing websites and developing a journey map for each. We then helped Trinity Health establish a unified approach to digital strategy, content, UX, design, SEO, and analytics that would be applied across each website. We also developed a style guide, reusable page templates, and a component library that would create a consistent look and feel for each website, while another Trinity Health partner took on the development work.

The new MountCarmelHealth.com went live in December 2018 and paved the way for several more successful Trinity Health site launches. In addition to the Muse award win, the Mount Carmel site also earned Gold at the Hermes Creative Awards in the Medical Website category.

This recognition also marks the second Muse Creative Awards win for Perficient Digital, which first won a silver award for its work for The Henry Ford in 2016. Administered by the International Awards Associates, the international competition recognizes creative professionals “who possess the unique ability to inspire with a concept, idea, or design – whether through traditional materials or electronic media.”

The awards recognize a wide variety of categories including websites, mobile apps, advertising and social media campaigns, audio and video, and even corporate social responsibility programs. Other 2019 winners include projects for Nike, Disney, Girl Scouts of America, and Prime Video.

Kimberly Williams-Czopek recently joined Perficient Digital as a director within our Digital Strategy group, bringing decades of retail and digital strategy experience with her. We sat down with Kim to talk about her experiences in the retail industry, her advice for shaping an effective digital strategy, and her reaction to being named “Retail Innovator of the Year” at the 2018 Retail Innovation Conference and as one of Chain Store Age’s “Top Ten Women in Tech.”

Can you tell us about your background and experience in the retail space?

I started my career in digital on the agency side, working primarily with B2C and B2B brands on devising their digital transformation and ecommerce strategies. So in addition to deep and broad technical strategies, I’ve had a heavy dose of user experience design, cross-channel customer experience design, and consumer research in my background. I’ve always tried to root everything I’ve done in consumer-centric and design thinking practices. Working closely with brands across industries through dozens of implementations, I ended up learning the entire supply chain and how digital transformation can be used to drive growth and efficiencies in the business; ultimately leading to superior customer experiences.
I then joined Hybris (now SAP Customer Experience) as the head of their Product Design team, leading the transformation of their software interface framework and design approach focusing on making it possible for marketers, content editors, merchandisers, etc. to create rich, personalized, cross-channel customer experiences without IT intervention.
My most recent position was on the brand side as VP of Digital Commerce with Lilly Pulitzer, a women’s luxury apparel brand. In this role, I was able to bring together the full range of my experience to develop and execute the company’s digital commerce strategy to drive business across web, mobile, and in-store digital experiences. I think that role was representative of where retail organizations are headed now. There was a marketing group and there was an IT group, but this was a new digital commerce group that was charged with driving business through digital across channels.
I’ve come to know the retail space very well throughout my career, which is why I was excited to join Perficient Digital and get back into consulting and agency work, so I could bring all of that experience back to clients like those I had been working with at the beginning of my career.

Why do you think a CX strategy so important for retailers?

In the retail space today, customers are entering into a different social contract with retailers in order to do business. It’s made up of what I call the Five Customer Commandments:

1. You will not make me work hard to be a customer
2. You will reward me for my loyalty
3. You will listen to me and personalize my experience
4. You will protect my personal information and my privacy
5. You will practice good corporate social responsibility.

Those are all important pieces of a CX strategy. Retailers need an integrated customer experience strategy in order to deliver on this contract. Those that are successful in this will acquire new customers and retain existing customers at higher rates than those that are not.

How does emotion relate to customer experience? Is it the same across industries?

A positive emotional connection is an outcome of doing a good job addressing the Five Commandments, but what I think that we’re really talking about here understanding customer motivation. What is the motivation for the interaction a customer is trying to have with a brand? Can the brand recognize it and deliver on it? That is key to a strong CX strategy and it doesn’t differ across industries. If you can understand motivation, you can deliver the right experience, which in turn will trigger an emotional reaction like surprise, delight, loyalty, and happiness, and will keep a customer coming back.

What are some questions retailers should be asking as they develop their customer experience strategies?

Do I really know my customer, what motivates them, and what their needs and expectations are from the brand?
A lot of brands will say, “Yeah, we have these personas and we have these segments – we know our customers.” When we start to dig in, however, we find that they actually don’t know their customers or what motivates them at all. It usually just comes down to talking to customers and a lot of brands are very reticent to do that, for whatever reason. If you have a good program or approach to talking with your customers and getting feedback, it really helps you understand nuances in their motivations and deliver a better customer experience.
Do I have the right team and org structure in place to deliver on my strategy? Do I have the hard and soft skillsets I need, and enough diversity in thinking?
If you only have one type of person in your team and in your organization, you’re not going to be able to deliver the best customer experience. You need a lot of diversity in your team and ideas. A lot of brands are dealing with with this right now and asking themselves, “What does that broad organizational  structure look like?” “What does that skillset look like?”
There was a shift a couple of years ago to have people act more as generalists and there’s definitely a rising trend in organizations to organize more around individuals and their skillsets, letting the people who are really good at certain things do those and then use internal hires or external support to  fill in the gaps around them.
If I were starting this brand today, what would I do? How would I do it? With what people, processes, and systems?
We work with brands to push on this point and the need to break free from traditional retail thinking.  It’s incredibly hard for traditional retailers. It doesn’t mean you should immediately turn the business on its head, but just try to get out of the “We’ve always done it this way” mindset. Most brands are really rooted in that kind of thinking and that’s part of why transformation is so difficult. It’s also why you see direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands doing so well – they’re not mired in the inertia of legacy people, processes, or systems.

You mentioned brands are hesitant to reach out to their customers. Why do you think that is?

They think they already know about their customers and don’t want to take the time to go deeper. Segments and programs may be working fine and they don’t want to take the risk and possibly miss a quota.
That is where working with an outside firm like Perficient Digital can be a catalyst for change. We can help brands put together a voice-of-the-customer program that does not have to be time-intensive or expensive. It’s really about getting a baseline of who your customers are today and what motivates them, and then determining how you make sure you understand how those motivations are changing.
One example I see all the time is that a brand has established personas, but they are years old. They haven’t done anything to confirm whether the personas are still valid. It’s often a budget issue, or they think, “Well, these segments are working.” What they’re not seeing, however, is the growth potential of new segment definition based on an updated understanding of the customer needs.

What role should customer feedback play in retail strategy?

As a digital leader or a retail leader charged with learning more about customer needs, customer feedback needs to play a large role with the caveat that you’re still in charge – you’re the one identifying what the right experiences are for both the customer and the business. It’s easy to fall into a trap where you build a strategy around what customers tell you they want and then it turns out they didn’t want that at all.
It reminds me of a quote often attributed to Henry Ford, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Whether he really said that or not, the sentiment is dead-on. The voice of the customer is critical in getting to know their needs better, but it shouldn’t be construed as marching orders for implementation. It’s really up to the brand’s digital leaders to strike the right balance there and still drive business value. To do that, you have to dig deeper and understand the motivation behind what they say they want.

Can you tell us about an experience you’ve had combining customer feedback with your own knowledge to improve an experience?

Over the course of my career, there have been fewer and fewer “aha” moments in customer feedback. When UX design was still an emerging practice, you could leave a usability test with three or four big things to fix. Now those kinds of findings and insights are more nuanced and subtle, and may be very specific to a particular use case. Feedback you get from one segment might be in contradiction with what you get from another segment. Again, you have to understand where to strike the right balance. Luckily, modern customer experience platforms allow you to improve experiences for all customers, not just one.
I was once doing mobile navigation testing for a client and we were testing a traditional hamburger menu against a newer hub and spoke menu, like the one Pinterest uses. The test group of loyal customers preferred the traditional menu, while the group of potential customers loved the new style.
The impulse was to say, “Our existing customers are really important. We can’t disrupt their experience, so let’s just stick with the hamburger menu.” As the digital leader, I said, “I hear what you’re saying. Change is hard, but I think you’re going to see the future of menu navigation to be this new type of design. I think we should go for it, but roll it out slowly, do some A/B testing, provide the right training, and support our existing customers.” There were a lot of hard discussions around that, but at the end of the day, we eventually rolled out the new menu and it was much more successful than the traditional one.
That’s a good example of existing customers saying, “We want this,” but we didn’t play to the lowest common denominator. You have to take some calculated risks, which means having room in the budget for experimentation and iteration. Don’t build a roadmap that inflexible; “We’re doing A, B, and C.” Build a roadmap that has at least a 10% budget contingency and a funded testing and experimentation workstream so that it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition, whether it’s a new design, a new platform, a new hosting facility, or any other new experience.

How can companies stand out when competitors are also fighting for relevance?

The three questions I listed earlier should trigger some actions, whether it’s a customer survey, customer research, team reorganization, or brainstorming on what you would and wouldn’t do if you were starting the brand anew. Beyond working to truly deliver on those Five Customer Commandments in an authentic, on-brand way, effective methods are really going to vary across brands and verticals.
In retail, a lot of brands are panicking over the market share being taken by D2C brands, but I think the consumer response to the D2C brands is, generally speaking, rooted in a more authentic brand story and an overall better product. Retail brands that already had that authentic brand story and superior products aren’t losing customers. I always point to REI as a good example of this. They’ve posted years of double-digit year-over-year growth, they are authentic to their messaging, they have superior products, they are not losing foot traffic into their stores, and they are growing online.

How should retailers be measuring the success of their customer experiences?

One of the first things we work to understand and define with our clients is why they are doing X, Y, Z. What are the business goals? What are the metrics and KPIs they are trying to hit? Saying “We’re trying to increase conversion,” is very different from saying, “We’re trying to increase conversions by 5%.” We always push to get more specific in identifying an increment we can measure against to determine success.
Also, a lot of brands think those kinds of goals and objectives apply to all their customer segments equally, but it’s really important to look at each of your segments and define different goals and objectives where necessary.
I also really like the CX maturity assessment Perficient Digital has developed, which calculates an organization’s maturity by examining customer and financial metrics, but also includes internal metrics like employee satisfaction. It’s really difficult to deliver great experiences if your teams are unhappy or don’t have the right skillsets to deliver on the customer experiences envisioned.

Last year you were recognized as one of Chain Store Age’s “Top Ten Women in Tech” and as “Retail Innovator of the Year” during the Retail Innovation Conference. What does recognition like that mean to you?

It’s always an honor to get an award and to be recognized, especially within the Top 10 Women in Tech. That peer group was amazing. I have been in the industry for a long time and have seen how rapidly it shifts and changes. It’s part of the reason I love it. Every day there is something new – a new technology or a new brand or a new interaction design – and it’s just so fun to keep up. Honestly, I wish the title was more like “the Top 10 People in Tech.” It just shows how the technology industry still has a bit of work to do in that area. That said, it’s great to see so many more women joining the top technology ranks across industries in addition to retail.

How does your background and experience in retail help Perficient Digital clients improve their customer experiences?

A good customer experience is not industry specific. People are people. If you can understand their intent and motivations in interacting with a brand, you can develop a successful and agile customer experience strategy. That being said, I really love working in the retail space. I love looking at how consumer behavior and expectations continuously evolve and change with new digital capabilities.
I think our commerce and consumer markets clients really appreciate that I can hit the ground running, having been in their shoes and having been charged with the same types of goals and objectives. A lot of other potential partners haven’t been in a brand’s shoes and don’t quite get it, and that’s what I love about our Digital Strategy group. Everyone has been on that side of the fence and there’s deep, practical, hands-on knowledge behind the strategies we develop with our clients. That really allows us to move the needle for them much faster than a generalized consultant might.

Check out more thought leadership from Kim and our other digital strategy experts.

Perficient Digital has another reason to celebrate with the recent announcement of the 2019 Hermes Creative Award winners. The very first website we helped create for our client Trinity Health in its efforts to unify its various member organizations earned a gold award in the Medical Website category.
Based in Livonia, Mich., Trinity Health is one of the largest multi-institutional Catholic healthcare delivery organizations in the United States and includes 94 hospitals and 109 continuing care locations. The organization has experienced a lot of growth through acquisitions and wanted to create a consistent digital experience across its 22 public websites; we were brought in to help make this consistent experience a reality.
Because this project involved a series of websites, there was a lot of groundwork that needed to be laid to create the cohesive experience Trinity Health was looking for. We began with a content audit of the 22 existing sites and identified journey maps for each. We then helped lay the foundation for the new sites with a unified approach to digital strategy, content strategy, UX, design, SEO, and analytics. We also created reusable page templates, a style guide, and a component library that would be used to create a consistent look and feel throughout each site, while another Trinity Health partner handled the development.
The Mount Carmel Health System website was the first of the new websites to launch, going live in December, 2018. With this website and now several others successfully launched, the groundwork is in place for the creation of the rest of the new sites.
We’re so proud of the great work our teams are doing to improve the digital experience for our client’s patients and members. Having that work recognized by organizations like the Association of Marketing and Communications Professionals, which administers the Hermes Awards, is just icing on the cake.
The Hermes Awards recognize excellence in concept, writing, and design in marketing materials and communication ranging from traditional media to emerging technologies, and this isn’t the first time Perficient Digital has been recognized in the arena. The app we created for the Jackson Energy Authority earned a gold award in 2018 and we brought home one platinum and two gold awards in 2017 for work we did for Mohawk Flooring, Carhartt, and The Henry Ford, respectively.

Always at the forefront of agile and innovative technology and design, our Perficient Digital Labs team recently set its sights on the following question:
What if you could share a VR experience with someone without actually being in VR yourself?
The team wanted to expand the typically solitary VR experience to include players and components set in reality. Dan Thompson, Director of Emerging Experiences, explained the exercise and its results.

Perficient Digital Labs’ designers and developers prototyped three different scenarios to explore ways that the real world could be brought into the virtual world. From these exercises, both groups gained knowledge of concepts that apply to VR: software development, interaction design, IoT concepts, and hardware prototyping. We call the results ContactVR…

Check out the video below to see the three prototypes – designed for entertainment, educational, and industrial applications – in action.

To learn more about Perficient Digital Labs, the three prototypes, and ContactVR, read Dan’s original post.

Personalization has been a hot topic in the sphere of digital experience for years because of one simple reason: Customers in every industry expect the companies they do business with to recognize their needs and preferences and provide relevant, timely experiences. The concept sounds pretty straightforward, but developing and executing an effective personalization strategy across an entire customer base can be a tall order.
One of our resident personalization experts, digital experience strategist Brian Flanagan shared insights for a recent report on the subject produced by the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA). Brian’s article focused on the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to augment a company’s personalization efforts and the importance building those efforts on a solid strategy foundation.

The potential for AI is unbound. With machine learning, we can use data to observe, understand and anticipate the needs of customers. However, AI isn’t a silver bullet that’s going to do all of the work for you. You first have to develop a strategy around personalization and then use technology to enable it.

Brian outlined three steps organizations need to take to create an effective personalization strategy:

1. Understand the customer’s journey from their point of view
2. Develop a content strategy that will keep pace with the demands of personalization
3. Know the extent of your current technologies’ capabilities, and then expand them

For more information about personalization, AI, and tips on each of these steps, check out Brian’s original article and the rest of the SoDA report.

Perficient Digital is proud to partner with our clients in creating better experiences for their customers and internal teams. We’re even more proud when that hard work is recognized by other experts in our industry, which happened this week when the new, multi-platform mobile app we helped create for GM Financial was named Best Financial Services Mobile App by the Internet Advertising Competition (IAC).

The new mobile app provides GM Financial customers with a convenient and secure way to manage their auto financing. Customers can use the app to manage payments, chat with GM Financial representatives, and accomplish other account-related tasks, anywhere and anytime. The app received more 144,000 downloads within the first three months after launch and has been well received by customers.

To see the new app in action, take a look at GM Financial’s new promotional video.

This award marks third consecutive year of IAC wins for Perficient Digital. Our team earned a pair of Best of Industry awards in 2017 for the work we did for Carhartt and The Henry Ford, as well as the Best Energy Mobile App in 2018 for our work with Jackson Energy Authority.

This latest win also came only a few days after our digital marketing team brought home three Interactive Marketing Awards for Best Large SEO Agency, Best Interactive Agency, and Best Interactive Marketing Campaign (Retail/Commerce).

The latest cutting-edge experiences in the B2C arena are shaping expectations for B2B transactions and relationships as well, so manufacturers and distributors need to be proactive in evolving their digital strategies and technologies in order to keep customers happy and earn new business. Wondering how to accomplish this? Join our Commerce, Digital Strategy, and Digital Marketing experts at B2B Online, April  29 – May 1 in Chicago, Illinois.
We’ll be exhibiting at booth #109, where our experts will meet with attendees from the B2B space and discuss ways their organizations can and should evolve to improve their customer experiences and meet these changing customer expectations.
Alex Harris, Director of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), will also be assessing conference attendee’s websites and providing recommendations to boost website performance. He will also present a breakout session on the topic:

How to Get Higher Website Conversions: Quick Fixes and Customer Insights

A successful conversion rate optimization strategy involves more than tweaking messaging and moving buttons. It’s also about understanding your customers and how your site is (or isn’t) fulfilling their needs. In this session, you’ll learn about both – how to implement quick fixes to immediately increase conversion rates and how to use behavioral analysis and website analytics to get to know your customers and the experience they expect.
The session will include:

• Several proven landing page improvements to quickly increase conversion rates
• Behavioral and website analysis methods that can impact long-term ROI
• How combining both as part of your CRO strategy can help increase form submissions and phone calls to generate more leads

Are you planning to attend B2B Online? Reach out to schedule time to meet with our team at the conference. We hope to see you there!