Widemile Wins Prestigious ad:tech Limelight Award for Best Campaign Optimization

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 (PRWEB) 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 http://www.ad-tech.com/awards/winners.asp

About Widemile
Widemile Inc. is a leading provider of services and technologies for digital marketers, employing proprietary optimization and multivariate testing technology, predictive analytics, original creative development and professional services 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 to increase the effectiveness of digital marketing investments. Widemile is privately held and headquartered in Seattle, WA and can be found at http://www.widemile.com or by calling: 206-985-7171.

About The Weather Channel Interactive
The Weather Channel Interactive is the leading provider of broadband and wireless weather products including weather.com, Desktop Weather by The Weather Channel, and The Weather Channel Mobile. weather.com, the Web site of The Weather Channel, is the ultimate source of weather on the Web helping users plan their lives by delivering timely current conditions, expert forecasts and relevant lifestyle content for 98,000 locations worldwide. weather.com reaches more than 30 million unique users each month, is the most popular source of online weather, news and information and is the most trusted source of online weather information according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The Weather Channel Interactive also provides consumers with unique and customizable products such as Desktop Weather and a full lineup of mobile services including downloads, messaging, mobile Web, and mobile video.

About ad:tech
ad:tech expositions, LLC is the leading organizer of conferences and exhibitions for the interactive marketing community worldwide. ad:tech produces the world's largest interactive marketing events held in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, London, Paris, Hamburg, Beijing, Singapore and Sydney. ad:tech is produced by dmg world media; based out of the company's headquarters in Larkspur, California. For listings of exhibitors, speakers, events and upcoming conference offerings, visit http://www.ad-tech.com.

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