Gilbane Web Content Management Survey Lauds Lyris' Hot Banana CMS Solution for Positive User Experience

Business Wire, Nov 27, 2007

Hot Banana Obtains Highest Rating for Application Design, Interaction with Other Systems, Overall Ease of Use

BOSTON -- Lyris, Inc. (OTCBB:LYRI) today announced that its Hot Banana Web content management solution (CMS) was ranked highest in overall ease of use by The 2007 Gilbane Group Survey on the Web Content Management User Experience. The company made the announcement at the 4th Annual Gilbane Conference Boston, here through November 29.

This first-of-its-kind survey was distributed to users of more than 20 commercially available Web CMS solutions. The survey results ranked Hot Banana highest in overall ease of use, interaction with other systems, and application design. Hot Banana also ranked in the top three for its navigation and feature functions and for its incorporation of rich media.

In lauding its ease of use, survey respondents noted that Hot Banana enables users to create content in Office applications or in Adobe Photoshop and then easily transfer the content and graphics to Web pages. Hot Banana was also recognized for its integration with other systems such as CRM, ERP and business intelligence solutions, and for its easy, intuitive application design. Respondents reported that the Hot Banana CMS solution made it easy for them to incorporate rich media into Web pages and that its interface was straightforward and easy to navigate.

"This is the kind of validation that every company strives for - highly positive feedback from actual Web CMS users, responding to the usage issues that matter most to them," said Krista LaRiviere, Director of Professional Services for Lyris, Inc. and General Manager of Hot Banana. "We are committed to providing the best e-marketing solutions to our clients and we continually strive to improve usability, connectivity and communications within our solution set."

"Hot Banana did well in the survey," said Tony White, Gilbane's Lead Analyst for Web Content Management. "Ratings in categories such as ease-of-use and application design often have an inverse relationship with ratings in other areas like application integration. But Hot Banana users gave it top ratings in all three. That's rather unusual."

The survey was conducted in recognition of emerging trends whereby companies are prioritizing their selection criteria around the ease with which users can create highly usable Web sites with rich content.

The survey ranked eight vendors in addition to the Lyris Hot Banana CMS, including Acumium, CrownPeak, EMC, Interwoven, Oracle, OpenText, Percussion and In-House.

About Lyris, Inc.

Lyris, Inc., (OTCBB:LYRI.OB), formerly J.L. Halsey, is a leading marketing technology company that provides hosted and installed software solutions for marketers at mid-size businesses. The company offers marketers an integrated technology platform through its Lyris HQ product and point solutions including ListManager, EmailLabs, ClickTracks, BidHero, Sparklist, Hot Banana and EmailAdvisor. These sophisticated, yet easy-to-use tools provide marketers a suite of best-of-breed applications for managing email marketing campaigns, publishing and managing Web site content, creating landing pages, optimizing Web sites and managing pay-per-click campaigns.

Hot Banana is Lyris' award-winning Web CMS that helps marketers build and manage SEO-friendly Web sites that can be automated and optimized for maximum lead generation and conversion performance. Hot Banana is available as a Software as a Service (SaaS), hosted offering, or as a licensed software ColdFusion CMS - with everything an eMarketer needs, including Web site optimization and marketing automation tools. Lyris, Inc. clients include Nokia, Adobe, PalmSource, Johns Hopkins University and Jupitermedia. For more information, please visit www.lyrisinc.com, www.lyris.com, www.emaillabs.com, www.clicktracks.com, www.hotbanana.com and www.sparklist.com. The company is based in Emeryville, Calif.