I wrote to you last month about a new structure for 2010 Web & Multichannel Marketing meetings. We recently conducted our first meeting according to the new plan, and attendees were very pleased with the results.

Members from W.W. Grainger, The Swiss Colony, Lands' End, Figi's, The Mason Companies and J.J. Keller gave practical presentations on either user experience or Web analytics. All of these excellent presentations focused on methods and processes learned in the real world of business experience.

To begin the morning focus on user experience, Rosie Manfredi with W.W. Grainger spoke about her Online User Experience Team's mission and core principles, as well as the methods and tools the team uses to accomplish its goals. Plus, she took us through a detailed case study of how the team responded to user input and implemented a new search engine on Grainger.com.

Hans Bernet of The Swiss Colony engagingly shared useful and well researched insights on a number of methods the company employs for usability testing.

Tomasz Borowiecki of Lands' End shared valuable information about the online-retail giant's UX Team — its history, structure, values and methods — as well as how the team improved Landsend.com's checkout process in response to behavioral input.

After lunch, we turned the focus to Web analytics. Kurt Officer of Figi's and Jodi Bresina from The Mason Companies showed how their respective organizations rigorously monitor site KPIs. Jef Hall of J.J. Keller spoke about how to use Google AdWords and MS Excel to analyze critical results quickly and take effective action immediately.

This dual meeting on User Experience and Web Analytics featured relevant content and fostered engaging collaboration. The content is available to all UWEBC member companies. Don't miss these real-world practices and insights from the most trusted of resources: your peers.

Sandra is Practice Director of the UWEBC Web & Multichannel Marketing Focus Area. She is a sought-after expert in the online-marketing space. She headed up Heibing's interactive shop and founded online branding firm Aesention. Sandra earned her master's from the prestigious UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. You can reach her at 608-265-3299 or slbradley@wisc.edu.