See Mike Leach, i-Dialogue CEO, present at Dreamforce '06.
"Out of the Box: Portals and Web Sites Powered by AppExchange"

 
Note: The camera stays focused on the podium for the entire presentation.
Check out this screencast for a previously recorded demonstration of the Salesforce portal builder.

i-Dialogue is pleased to announce support for the web site templates available at Template Monster. Both HTML and Flash templates are supported by i-Dialogue.

This gives Salesforce.com customers the ability to chose from thousands of ready-made, high-quality web site designs for hosting their interactive i-Dialogue web and portal solutions.

The recent announcement by Adobe to spend $100 million in venture funding to promote it's next generation Apollo platform is not insignificant, as it relates heavily to the future of business web applications, such as Salesforce.com.

The history of business application development has always pursued a fine balance between application "reach", which is how many users can access the app, and application "rich", which is creating applications that address human factors to improve adoption and usability.

Clearly, the Internet has become the defacto means to "reach" end users, but there is a battle waging to determine how best to deliver "rich" user interfaces.

As you can see from the matrix below, Apollo (or something like it) is poised to fulfill the richness that is lacking in Web applications today, such as disconnected access to local files, keyboard shortcuts, and resident application processes.

Also competing for the Web 3.0 quadrant is Microsoft Vista (and Live) with plans to extend their already rich applications with Internet connectivity and collaboration.

Customer and Partner portals will clearly err on the side of maximum reach and utilize open web standards that are capable of delivering the richest possible user experience to the largest possible audience. Employee facing applications and portals are less constrained by a browser-only requirement.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 web browser was officially launched this week prompting web developers and eMarketers everywhere to download and install it for compatibility testing.

I've been using IE7 Beta for several weeks and noticed the new RSS auto-detect button would only occasionally find a feed on a web page. "Hmmmmm", I thought  "Maybe this is just a Beta thing. I'll wait until the final release to worry about it".


Now, RSS adoption by everyday consumers is probably barely over 1%. However, I've been a firm believer that RSS auto-discovery in browsers will be the key to promoting more adoption (besides calling it anything other than "RSS", like just plain old "News Feed").

All of our web hosting solutions include an RSS feed that aggregates activity across all web applications so that customers and partners can subscribe to a single feed to track discussion forum activity, blog entries, KB article updates, and general news.

So, when I installed the final release and noticed our feeds were still not being auto-discovered, I turned to RSS expert Charlie Wood who pointed me in the right direction to quickly resolve the issue (thanks Charlie!).

The impact of RSS on B2B marketing may take awhile, but features like auto-discover in IE7 will definitely help remove the major barriers to adoption.

I try to keep this blog focused on Sales and Marketing, but for those interested in the technical aspects of Salesforce, there's some Apex commentary on our other blog.

I met with Steve Anderson from ONE Northwest in the morning to prepare for our presentation in the session "Portals and Web Sites Powered By AppExchange". The goal of the presentation was to demonstrate integration between a couple open source CMS solutions and Salesforce.com.

Steve utilizes Plone to develop various web sites for non-profits (and turns out to be a masterful S-Control developer as well).

My presentation started with a blank slate web site and incrementally added "Contact Us", "Support", and "Careers" pages that integrated directly with Salesforce; all within about 15 minutes.

About 50%-60% of the audience, by a show of hands, were already using .NET with Salesforce. At least 50% had already incorporated Web-to-Lead into their web site.

The "Careers" portion of the demo went smoothly as we successfully displayed open job positions in a web page from the Recruitment AppExchange app and captured online job applications that immediately appeared in Salesforce.

Finally, I spent the afternoon attending the Partner Summit. Having read all of Geoffrey Moore's books on product management and marketing, I was interested in attending a panel discussion that grouped him with some other silicon valley venture capitalists.

There was some good discussion around the on-demand business model and, more specifically, how to capitalize start-ups working from the AppExchange (or more directly, should start-ups even seek equity financing since the entry costs are so low).

The Salesforce Channel/Partner management representatives did a great job identifying application areas that they deemed strategic and would therefore invest in internally; and also highlighted where they saw continued dependence on partners to fill the SFA/CRM/PRM gaps going forward.

Colin Powell - General Colin Powell took the stage at Dreamforce to kick-off the days sessions and, in my opinion, made for a tough act to follow. Aside from my deep personal respect for the man (I served under him in the military many moons ago) he absolutely captivated my interest with his unique perspective on recent world events.

His ability to express strong, commanding leadership and humility was endearing to all.

Appy Awards - Marc and Jim Steele took the stage from 2-3PM to hand out several awards to customers and partners. Great to see customers get recognized for their work. Amazing to see deployments with more than 1,000 seats.

More on Apex - The key architects/developers of Apex took the stage in a revealing 1 hour session that delved into the new Apex language syntax and script governing architecture. Apex will allow even richer Internet dialogues with Leads and Contacts with the ability to create Triggers on record updates.

For example, today i-Dialogue can auto-create a Task for Salesforce reps when any number of web events occurs (called Actionable Events). An Apex trigger monitoring the i-Dialogue Web Event records will be able to evaluate even more complex web interactions and take a variety of actions, such as sending a follow-up email to a Case Study download event.

I arrived in San Francisco today for the Salesforce User and Developer conference this week and plan to log some highlights of the conference on this blog.

At the Speakers Reception, I learned Salesforce expects 5,000 attendees this year, a considerable increase over last years ~2.5K. The Moscone Center is decked out and everything looks well coordinated.

There's so much I want to share about the next release of Salesforce and how it impacts web and portal solutions, but I can't spoil the surprises just yet. All I can say is that the Salesforce '07 platform is exponentially greater than what is available today.

Stay tuned..... I'll post more as the new features are announced...

Michael Leach, i-Dialogue President, recorded this spontaneous presentation on "Creating Web Sites Integrated with Salesforce" in preparation for Dreamforce 2006.

This presentation is intended for web developers and goes beyond the Portal Explorer to demonstrate how to create custom Web Parts integrated with Salesforce custom objects using the AppExchange Recruiting application as an example.

Salesforce's Web-to-Lead feature allows you to integrate web forms with CRM, giving Sales and Marketing immediate visibility into prospects inquiries.

Here are some tips to get the most out of Web-to-Lead using i-Dialogue:

Keep Web-to-Lead forms Relevant
Referring web sites and links set the expectation for a Web-to-Lead form has to offer.
Notice the AdWord in this Google Search for "Widget 9000 Attenuator" sets a "Free White Paper" expectation. The landing page on click-through continues the dialogue with a relevant landing page containing the web-to-lead download form.

Convenient
Make web forms VERY CONVENIENT to complete and submit and keep the number of fields to a bare minimum.
Some web usability best practices include:

• Auto-focus on the first form field so the customer can begin typing immediately
• Pre-populate fields if a relationship already exists
• Set the tab index orders so the form can be easily traversed top to bottom
• Hitting the Enter key should automatically submit the form.
• Validate forms on the client-side (such as "Email missing")

When implemented correctly, the prospect should never need to take their hands off the keyboard and use a mouse.

Fulfilling
Keeping inline with the expectation set in the referring links and relevance of the web-to-lead landing page, the next step is to fulfill the promise of the web-to-lead form.

Web-to-Lead fulfillment activities may include:

• Redirecting to a download page for white paper/case study
• Sending an email auto-response with directions to download some marketing collateral

DO NOT Promise to fulfill a web form submission immediately (such as "Download White Paper Now") and then make the prospect wait for a Sales call Follow-Up. If you cannot fulfill a marketing collateral request immediately, then make it clear BEFORE the form is submitted, such as "A Sales Rep will call within 24 hours to setup a demo".

Actionable
Sales Representatives want to trust web leads, but often don't because of poor data quality (who is going to follow-up on qwerty@asdf.com?) or there isn't an expressed need for a service or product.

The keys to making web-to-lead forms actionable include:

• Validate form fields so that empty fields don't get submitted
• De-duplicate Leads
• Associate Leads with Campaigns so Sales and Marketing know the source
• Pre-Qualify Leads with 1-2 questions (Product Interest, Timeline)
• Auto create follow-up Tasks when Leads come back to the site

Mike Leach, i-Dialogue Principal, will be demonstrating these best practices on October 11th, 2006 at 10:15 at the Salesforce User Conference. Stop by the session "Portals and Web Sites Powered by AppExchange" for a first hand presentation.