The BrightEdge Mid-Year Review – I
‘Tis that time of the year for reflecting on all that we achieved over the year. While that time of the year occurs at the year-end for most, we crank out stuff at such a frenetic pace that we have enough to talk about at the mid-year mark and so we shall. Over two posts, we’ll walk through the 10 greatest hits of 2013, in no particular order, that make a huge impact on our customers, in a positive way, of course!
1. Series D Funding Makes Our Customers Citius, Fortius, Altius
As you are probably aware, we received Series D funding of $42.8 Million from Insight Venture Partners , one of the early backers of successful startups like LivingSocial, Tumblr & Twitter. This investment will allow us to extend the already powerful capabilities of BrightEdge S3 and make it the gold standard for measuring the value of content marketing strategies across digital channels.
‘How will this investment be channeled?’, you might ask. To answer that, we will allude to what you heard us say over and over again, and probably will for a while – customer success is our core value and we will invest in areas that will make your marketing even more successful than it already is. You will not only hear about these investments but feel the impact, soon enough.
The end result is that the BrightEdge customer will respond to the changing marketing landscape even faster, will be better equipped to manage this change and ,ultimately, soar higher with even greater results!
Citius, Fortius, Altius – get it?
2. Taking Content Marketing To A New Level With Content-Search Alignment
We won’t repeat the cliche ‘Content is king’. Without saying those very words in that very sequence, we all do agree that content is ,indeed, king! This April, we helped our customers move from acknowledgement of this axiom to action – we launched BrightEdge Content Optimizer, which allows customers using the powerful CMS Adobe CQ/WEM to optimize their content for search engines while it is being authored.
Our customers tell us that this is a huge and unprecedented leap in making sure the compelling content they create is setup for record conversions from Day 1. As Anchorman Ron Burgundy would say, this is kind of a big deal!
Companies like Travelocity can vouch for this – read this case study to understand how aligning content and organic search makes content more effective in giving you those much sought-after conversions !
3. Manage The Fragmented SERP With A Holistic Approach Across Locations & Devices
Search results are personalized – user location and device matter more than ever. You now have a global footprint and your customers are everywhere. In other words, the search results your audience sees varies wildly and this fragmentation can be a huge challenge. Unless, you are a BrightEdge customer!
This May, we announced our biggest innovation till date – customers have new capabilities to manage search for all global search engines, local cities, and desktop and mobile devices! We made these breakthrough features available to customers to keep you ahead of the changes in search and put our most powerful capabilities in the hands of all of our customers.
With this update, customers can manage the fragmentation of the SERP with a holistic approach to managing search across locations and devices!
4. Seamless User Experience For Greater ROI From BrightEdge
As a BrightEdge customer, you should have noticed a brand new user experience in March, and you will probably agree that we took the user experience of BrightEdge S3 to a whole new level.
While we could go into great depth on how we went about enhancing the UX, it is probably quicker to summarize that we paid a lot of attention to make every nook and cranny of BrightEdge S3 deliver the most smooth, intuitive and consistent experience. We also employed proven design principles that have consistently made life easier and more productive for users.
We are quite pleased with the feedback so far – our customers have been raving about the user experience and we can only respond to these compliments by striving to make our UX even better. Be prepared for more good stuff on this front!
5. Brand New Website
On a related note, you may have seen that we have a brand new website. Our product has tons of features and it is now easier for you to access the wealth of information, case studies, white papers that will of interest to you. The site features intuitive organization of content, an attractive color palette, simple navigation and more. Needless to say, the website experience is totally consistent with that of the app.
We are happy to share a rough framework that drove the revamp of our application and site in our Search Engine Watch piece ‘ 5 Pillars of a Successful Modern Web Design ‘. Hope you find these pointers useful!
To Be Continued
It’s that time of the post where we say ‘Arrivederci’ but we will be back next week – as promised, we will discuss the rest of the Top 10 achievements that make 2013 a glorious year so far for our customers!