Articles - Page 152

The Top 10 AI Tools for Small Business: From Automation to a Coordinated Team of AI Agents

matt-garrepy

One of the more common errors made when evaluating products designed to enable an online presence is the misunderstanding of the difference between a WCM and a CMS.
In order to help alleviate this confusion, I thought I'd offer up how I view the two, so you can get a better understanding when trying to decide which solutions to explore as part of your short listing process.
<h2>WCM</h2>
A WCM is a Web Content Management system. These systems are designed to provide your organization with a means of putting your business online with relative ease. A WCM, on a basic level, will offer such features as: easy content editing, versioning (revisions of your content), media management, workflow management for content approvals and publishing, template modification and an easy to use dashboard of sorts to provide you with an overview of your site(s). Most CMS vendors offer WCM within their enterprise suites but they can also be offered as standalone packages for smaller organizations.
Examples of web content management systems include (but are not limited to):
<ul>
<li><a href="https://buildwithcraft.com/" target="_blank">Craft CMS</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.wordpress.org" target="_blank">WordPress</a></li>
<li><a href="https://drupal.org" target="_blank">Drupal</a></li>
<li><a href="https://joomla.org" target="_blank">Joomla</a></li>
<li><a href="https://typo3.com" target="_blank">TYPO3</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>CMS</h2>
A CMS, on the other hand, is a system that provides a way for multiple users to collaborate, interact with and control access to data through a common interface. While some CMS vendors may bundle their content management systems with WCM components, this is not always the case, nor is it mandatory.
Examples of content management systems include (but are not limited to):
<ul>
<li><a href="https://jahia.com" target="_blank">Jahia</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.sitecore.net" target="_blank">Sitecore</a></li>
<li><a href="https://getmura.com" target="_blank">Mura CMS</a></li>
</ul>
You can see a full list of all platforms broken down into helpful categories within our directory here: https://www.cmscritic.com/dir/
The biggest issue nowadays is the misuse of the terms and this can often lead to a great deal of confusion as some WCM vendors may call their systems CMS, when in fact, they are not.
<h2>Website Builders</h2>
Further to CMS and WCM there are also products called Website Builders. These products are hosted in the cloud (meaning you don't have separate hosting costs to worry about) and are designed to help you quickly and efficiently build a website or online store with ease. Most of the time, they are extremely easy to use and packed with features.
Examples of content management systems include (but are not limited to):
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/weebly" target="_blank">Weebly</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/out/webydo" target="_blank">Webydo</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/out/motocms" target="_blank">MotoCMS</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Portals</h2>
For those interested in learning about what a Portal is (so may terms, so little time!) you can read this excellent write up by Paul of Liferay: https://www.liferay.com/products/what-is-a-portal/web-platform which gives a great overview and explanation.
If you need further help or clarification, <a href="https://forum.www.cmscritic.com/" target="_blank">post in our forums</a> and we'll get right back to you!

CMS or WCM - Which is Which?

mike-johnston

With the holidays approaching, I thought rather than write a million press release style articles, I'd just share with you what has happened over the last couple of weeks in the CMS world.
Here are some of the popular happenings from in an around the world of CMS and business software:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.magnolia-cms.com/blogs/antti-hietala/detail~@magnolia-core-5-5-is-our-strongest-release-so-far~.html" target="_blank">Magnolia 5.5 was released</a></li>
<li><a href="https://contao.org/en/news/contao-3_5_20.html" target="_blank">Contao 3.5.20 was released</a></li>
<li><a href="http://documentation.concrete5.org/developers/background/version-history/803-release-notes" target="_blank">Concrete5 8.0.3 was released</a></li>
<li><a href="http://processwire.com/blog/posts/pw-3.0.45/" target="_blank">ProcessWire 3.0.45 was released</a></li>
<li><a href="http://share.ez.no/blogs/community-project-board/the-week-in-review-ez-platform-1.7.0-release-name-changes-php-7-benchmarks-and-more" target="_blank">eZ Platform 1.7.0 was released</a></li>
<li><a href="https://arastta.org/blog/arastta-1-5" target="_blank">Arastta 1.5 released</a></li>
<li>ExpressionEngine 3.4.6 released</li>
</ul>
Check out the websites for more info and have a great holiday!
~Mike

CMS News Round-up - December 19, 2016

<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/out/bigcommerce" target="_blank">Bigcommerce</a> has set out its vision for 2016, revealing an eventful roadmap for all to see.
The popular eCommerce solution was chosen for two awards last year here on CMS Critic; The 2014 Critic's Choice Award for Best Enterprise eCommerce Solution and The 2014 Critic's Choice Award for Best eCommerce Solution for SMB.
Bigcommerce also welcomed <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/bigcommerce-appoints-brent-bellm-as-ceo/" target="_blank">a new CEO during 2015, in the form of Brent Bellm</a>.
Tim Schulz, the Bigcommerce Chief Product Officer <a href="http://blog.bigcommerce.com/bigcommerce-in-2016-positioning-retailers-for-success-and-innovation/" target="_blank">outlined their 2016 roadmap in a blog post</a>. Here's a summary.
<h2>Bigcommerce 2016: From Themes to Point of Sale</h2>
Here's a breakdown of the areas Bigcommerce is planning on improving throughout the course of 2016:
<ul>
<li>Storefront &amp; Themes</li>
<li>Product Management</li>
<li>Inventory Management</li>
<li>Marketing &amp; Conversion</li>
<li>Analytics &amp; Reporting</li>
<li>Checkout &amp; Payments</li>
<li>Shipping Solutions</li>
<li>Accounting</li>
<li>POS &amp; Offline Selling</li>
<li>Social Media &amp; Social Commerce</li>
<li>Marketplace Selling, i.e. Amazon, eBay, Rakuten</li>
<li>B2B Features</li>
</ul>
Thats a broad range of areas for Bigcommerce to focus on. I don't doubt their ability to cover each one, but it's certainly going to be interesting to see how they fit it all in.
<h2>Introducing Stencil</h2>
Along with their roadmap unveiling, Bigcommerce also made an interesting announcement in the form of <a href="https://stencil.bigcommerce.com/">Stencil</a>.
According to Bigcommerce, Stencil will be, “the world’s leading design framework for branded storefronts,” and it's due for release within the next few months.
An early partner making use of Stencil made the following comments about the tool:
<blockquote>
“To me, Stencil is what makes Bigcommerce unique compared to other ecommerce platforms. It gives theme developers the flexibility and freedom the industry is desperate for.”
</blockquote>
It certainly sounds like an interesting design tool, although there doesn't really seem to be much information on it as of yet. The finer details aren't being advertised right now, it seems.
However, you can sign up to become an <a href="https://stencil.bigcommerce.com/" target="_blank">early-access developer for Stencil</a>, to test drive it for yourself.
Overall, it looks like Bigcommerce will be busy in 2016, and that can only be a good thing for its growing user base.
Also, be sure to explore more of Bigcommerce through our CMS Directory.

Bigcommerce Unveils 2016 Roadmap & Announces Stencil Launch

Toiling in order to attract customers and make sales is already difficult and time consuming enough, yet the effort needed to process and ship those very orders can be just as arduous. But not any more.
<a href="http://mbsy.co/3mQzZ" target="_blank">ShipStation</a> is a cloud-based software designed to help online merchants process, fulfil, and ship their orders from all the most popular online marketplaces and shopping carts via world renowned carriers.
Founded in 2011, ShipStation has since flourished into one of the most popular, flexible and feature-filled shipping softwares on the market.
<h2>Signed, Sealed &amp; Delivered from the Cloud</h2>
One of the beauties of ShipStation lies in its accessibility. The software is completely cloud-based, meaning that there is nothing to download or install, and yet you can access it on any device, from anywhere in the world, and at any time.
ShipStation itself enables you to import, sort, and process your orders just the way you want them.
The software combines order processing, production of shipping labels, and customer communication in an easy to use, web-based interface that integrates directly with major carriers and selling platforms.
Shipping rules can be specifically defined, labels can be printed in bulk, returns can be professionally managed, branding can be applied and much more. It's everything you need to successfully fulfil orders, all in one place.
Yet, the conveniences of using ShipStation don't end there.
<h2>Seamless Integration with Popular Marketplaces &amp; Carriers</h2>
No matter how or where you sell your products, or with which carrier you like to deliver them, ShipStation can almost always seamlessly integrate.
Marketplaces like eBay, Amazon, Shopify, Bigcommerce, Volusion, Etsy, PrestaShop, Squarespace and many more are all a piece of cake for ShipStation to join forces with.
This integration includes automatic order retrieval, automatic customer notification regarding order status and tracking, customized email confirmations, branded shipping slips and so forth.
And if that wasn't enough of a comfort, ShipStation also integrates just as easily when it comes to popular carriers, including FedEx, UPS, DHL and USPS.
It's as easy as selecting your orders, choosing and then automating your shipping options and then printing your shipping labels all in one fell swoop. There's also no need to separate orders by carrier, weight or destination. ShipStation simply handles it all with no complications.
<h2>Multi-channel Unification</h2>
ShipStation isn't just compatible with different online marketplaces – it's compatible with all of them at once.
For merchants who sell through multiple channels, like Amazon and eBay for example, this means that ShipStation can process all orders seamlessly, even though they come from different selling platforms.
This is also true for when you use multiple carriers. ShipStation once again streamlines the process, allowing you to manage multiple carrier shipments using just one interface, without having to constantly log in and out of individual carrier accounts.
So, the chore of attending to each platform and carrier to gather up and fulfil orders is long gone – all thanks to ShipStation's all-in-one solution.
To find our more about ShipStation, and to sign up for a completely free 30 day trial, <a href="http://mbsy.co/3mQzZ" target="_blank">visit their official website</a>.

ShipStation: a Seamlessly Integrated Cloud-based Shipping Service

Glorify just announced the official launch of its platform which enables any ecommerce entrepreneurs to be able to create state-of-the-art product photos and marketing materials themselves. It aims to eliminate the need for bootstrapped home based online sellers to hire designers, photographers or have to learn complicated programs like Photoshop. It allows entrepreneurs to easily create powerful product images and create a highly engaging brand designed for their niche and audience.
Founder Omar Farook commented “Most ecommerce entrepreneurs are on tight budgets and while they can take on most tasks themselves, one area they nearly always needed to hire outside resources for was for product photography and graphic design. As yet, there wasn’t one easy-to-use platform that had been created specifically for ecommerce businesses owners and had everything they need in order to create beautiful product images and marketing materials easily and inexpensively, themselves.”
The Glorify platform can help users automatically create a brand which includes logos, color schemes and fonts. It in turn allows them to search whichever e-commerce platform they are using (Shopify, WooCommerce etc) to find the best website template they offer that matches their new brand.
For product photos, with a few clicks you can remove backgrounds and have photos or images on a clear white background. It has a large range of ready to go graphic templates to add to the photos to call out certain features. It also offers customizable e-commerce marketing banners in a variety of shapes and sizes that are required for the various marketing channels e.g. Facebook banners, Instagram photos etc.
Omar continued “There were already a number of big players creating similar solutions. We don’t believe in reinventing the wheel, rather we prefer to improve the wheel. And in this case we took what was already working for our competitors and catered it to be extremely targeted towards one particular audience – e-commerce entrepreneurs”
The number of entrepreneurs who start a home based online business is dramatically increasing. Today there are over 5 million sellers on Amazon marketplaces, 1,029,528 new sellers joined Amazon in 2018 which is equivalent to 2,957 new sellers every single day. Over 90% of shoppers attribute a recent online purchase to the quality of a product image.
Glorify has been created specifically for any e-commerce business owner working with most of the online selling platforms such as Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce, Ebay, Esty etc.
Glorify initially launched  platform in September 2019 and has already acquired over 2500 paying customers.
To find out more about Glorify please visit <a href="https://www.glorifyapp.com" target="_blank">www.glorifyapp.com</a>

Glorify launches platform to help online sellers create high converting product and marketing images without the need for graphic designers.

Affinity announced today the official launch of Alliances™, a relationship management solution that helps business professionals expand their networks and identify more opportunities for warm introductions. Alliances™ enables users to connect with any contact outside their organization and instantly share their relationship graph. Affinity then allows users to see the best paths to referrals within two degrees by applying a patent pending relationship strength algorithm so users truly understand who is best suited to make a referral or introduction. Alliances™ is now available for all users as an integrated part of the Affinity platform.
Alliances™ reinvents professional networking by using machine learning algorithms and Natural Language Processing to analyze a user’s relationship graph and identifying sources of warm introductions. While Affinity's relationship management platform enables an organization’s team to leverage each other’s relationship graph, Alliances™ allows Affinity users to connect with external contacts such as advisors, partners, investors or mentors to tap into their networks and access their connections. Unlike social media networks, which treat all relationships the same, Alliances™ automatically shows which connections have the strongest relationships to targeted prospects based on the tenor of their emails, frequency of their meetings, and other factors, enabling users to easily identify opportunities for referrals and introductions.
“Alliances™ unlocks the real power of business networks to help professionals source new opportunities, raise capital and close deals,” said Ray Zhou, co-founder of Affinity. “Unlike traditional networks, Alliances™ captures not only who your colleagues and peers know, but how well they know them, so you always know who’s in the best position to introduce you to a new contact or organization. With Alliances™ you can stop cross-checking social networks, your CRM system and other platforms hoping to stumble upon the right person to make an introduction.”
According to LinkedIn, 84 percent of B2B decision makers begin the buying journey by way of a referral. And yet, most sales professionals lack the insight to know which contact in their network is best suited to make that referral for them. Social networks can help identify mutual connections, but they’re insufficient for professional networking due to an overabundance of connections and an inability to determine which relationships are real or genuine. Affinity’s Alliances™ opens the doors for more warm introductions by easily and quickly surfacing the people in a user’s network that are in the best position to make a referral.
Affinity’s Alliances™ offers features such as:
<ul>
<li>Relationship Strength: Affinity’s machine learning and Natural Language Processing algorithms analyze relationship data buried in peer-to-peer communications to let you easily identify which contacts in your network, within two degrees, have the best relationship with targeted prospects or organizations.</li>
<li>Prospect Lookup: Look up any prospect to see every relevant contact your allies can provide a warm introduction to, based on real-time network data including the latest emails sent or received, the latest meetings held or scheduled and more.</li>
<li>Prospect Finder: Within Affinity’s CRM, input your targeted prospect by industry, job title, location or other criteria, and Alliances™ will display every relevant prospect who you can get connected to via your allies’ real-time networks.</li>
<li>Prospect Import: Within Affinity’s CRM, import a list of prospects by an organization or person name, in either .csv or .xlsx format, and see which of your allies can make a warm introduction.</li>
</ul>
“The real economy is comprised of relationships; it consists of people working together to deliver the products and services that run our modern world. Alliances enable professionals to better grow, leverage and manage the relationships that dictate their success,” said Joe Lonsdale, General Partner at 8VC and an Affinity co-founder.
“Alliances™ for Affinity has helped our portfolio companies supercharge connectivity within our common network; spotting new opportunities for adoption and partnerships,” said Luca Zorzino, Investment Director at Illuminate Financial.
Alliances™ is immediately available for all existing Affinity customers by selecting the “Alliances™” tab directly from the main menu within the Affinity dashboard. For more information, visit https://www.affinity.co/product/Alliances.

Affinity Launches “Alliances™,” Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Grow Users’ Professional Networks

Update: Pligg CMS was sold on December 16th 2015 for over $50,000.<a target="_blank" href="http://pligg.com/">Pligg</a>, the free and open source CMS that enables users build social websites similar to Reddit, is up for sale on Flippa.The domain name, all owned assets related to the platform, and the credentials to Pligg's GitHub account, are all included in the package. In other words, the eventual buyer will own everything to do with Pligg CMS, bar the third party developer-owned modules found and sold on the website.Established in 2005, Pligg has a solid reputation and a relatively large user base. It can build websites where members can submit articles, vote on them, and leave comments.In many ways, it's sad to see it being sold on – but there could be a silver lining.<h2>A CMS That Needs Saving?</h2>Sometimes, projects (no matter their size) can no longer be maintained by those who initially brought them into existence. That certainly seems to be the case with Pligg, as the owner states:<blockquote>“After operating this domain for nearly a decade, I'm ready to move on. I haven’t been able to commit much time to the website recently and I hope that the new owner will be able to revitalize the site and accompanying software product.”</blockquote>In any case, one thing is for sure. Pligg needs saving.Now, I'm not implying that Pligg is a damaged product by any means. It's currently offered as a “one click install” option from many popular web hosts, and is still used by thousands of web developers to build social websites.The owner admits a decrease in website traffic and sales over the past year, but has attributed that to a lack of recent updates.However, if a buyer cannot be found, Pligg risks fading away into the deep digital darkness of the Internet's history. That shouldn't be allowed to happen.Furthermore, it's worth noting that Pligg lies within the social network builder niche, an area of the CMS world that I've long bemoaned for not being as accomplished as it ought to be.Stellar social website &amp; social network builders are few and far between, with Pligg being a historically average option. Perhaps, though, through its sale and purchase, it can become the product that rejuvinates the social website builder niche.<h2>What's Included?</h2>Pligg's owner has answered a few questions via the Flippa sale page, detailing what's included in the sale:<blockquote>“I'd be glad to provide the new owner with [GitHub] admin rights so that they could take control of the project and publish updates.I am including all of the premium content that I have developed for Pligg, including the Facebook and Twitter login, Comment Subscription, and other popular modules. Modules included with the sale are marked as “Sold by: Pligg CMS” on the product page.All other modules are owned by their respective developers.”</blockquote>Some Exclusive Answers from The FounderI managed to ask a couple of questions directly to Pligg's Founder, Eric Heikkinen. Here's what he had to say.<hr />KI: Why have you decided to sell Pligg?EH: This week celebrates 10 years of Pligg development, and I've been a part of the project since it all began. As you might expect, a decade is a long time to be committed to one project.Over the past year, I haven't been able to give the project as much attention that it deserves and I hope to find a new owner who will be able to care and grow Pligg in my stead.KI: What challenges did you face while running Pligg?EH: The biggest issue that I faced as an open source project manager was sourcing and retaining developers. When I first began the project, there were a number of enthusiastic open source developers who were eager to help out and explore the new project. In 2005-2006, managing these users effectively was very difficult.The tools for collaborating were limited (no GitHub or Slack) and it wasn't easy for users to submit changes to the core code. Today the process is much easier, but I've struggle to find developers willing to contribute to the project regularly without any financial incentive.<hr />If you ask me, it's a pretty lucrative deal. Pligg has potential, and I hope the eventual buyer is able to push it away from decline, and into prosperisty again.Find out all the details via Pligg CMS' sale page on Flippa.

Pligg CMS Goes Up For Sale

Just days after Pligg CMS went on sale, <a target="_blank" href="http://900dpi.com/">900dpi</a>, the CMS that makes use of Dropbox to quickly launch and manage websites, is set to shut its doors for good. When <a href="/900dpi-build-websites-with-html-css-dropbox-and-nothing-else/">I first got my hands on 900dpi back in 2014</a>, I was impressed by it. It had charm, a simple interface, and plenty of wiggle room for a developer to code something brilliant. Plus, all you really needed was a dropbox account.Now, I hate being the bearer of bad news, but unfortunately, this new piece is just that. Bad news.The 900dpi team sent out an email to their subscribers yesterday, with the sad news of their impending shut down.<h2>“900dpi Cannot Meet the Rapidly Expanding Needs of the CMS Market”</h2>Apparently, its the vastly evolving CMS market that has killed 900dpi:<blockquote>“In 2013 we embarked on a great journey to create a CMS that was easy and intuitive to implement for designers and developers. We are so proud of the work that we put in, and that we were able to create a product that helps to make your lives easier.However, over the past year, we have realized that 900dpi cannot meet the rapidly expanding needs of the CMS market and its users. We have decided to close up shop on December 31st, 2015.”</blockquote>According to the email, existing 900dpi users have until that date to find a new solution for their Dropbox-driven websites. After that, their files will remain in their Dropbox folders as per usual – they just won't be live on the web anymore.As for hosting payments made for periods after December 31, 2015, 900dpi have confirmed that refunds will be going out within “the next few days”.The 900dpi team helpfully pointed users towards platforms which, only a few weeks ago, would have been competitors. <a target="_blank" href="http://cloudcannon.com/">CloudCannon</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.harp.io/">Harp</a> were among the names they listed.Like I said before, this is sad news. It's never pleasant to see a solid CMS shut its doors, but with the recent news of Pligg being sold to the highest bidder, one can only hope that we aren't seeing the start of a horrible trend.For one last look at 900dpi before it's gone forever, <a target="_blank" href="http://900dpi.com/">check out their website</a>.

900dpi Set to Shut Up Shop

CMS Summit 26

Find out at Open Source CMS 26, October 20-21 in Utrecht, Netherlands

What's ahead for Open Source CMS?

#ffffff

Your website is your most visible and valuable marketing asset and the decision as to which <a href="https://www.solodev.com/" target="_blank">content management system (CMS)</a> to use when building your site can have a long-term impact on the success of your organization. Today’s CMS solutions are at the epicenter of your marketing technology stack and are key factors in driving revenue, brand awareness, and engagement with prospects and customers. Finding a solution that can be tailored to support the needs of your business is more important than ever.
And remember, you’re not just choosing technology. The vendor of that technology is an essential part of your decision. Do they see the needs of your market the way you do and are they working on a product roadmap that will support your organization going forward? Or are they focused on features you don’t really need and will just serve to clutter the product you’re using. Is there even a vendor? Open source solutions may seem great — but if you require any support, you may not have an obvious place to turn to when you need it.
Choose the right CMS platform and you can avoid several issues:
<ul>
<li>outgrowing the platform sooner than is reasonable</li>
<li>allocating more budget than you really need to</li>
<li>always relying on someone else to update your site</li>
<li>greater vulnerability to security breaches</li>
<li>not keeping pace with the needs of your customers</li>
</ul>
To help you in your selection effort, we offer this overview of 7 critical factors we feel are important to address when choosing a Content Management System for your organization.
1. Ease of Use
When choosing a CMS Platform ‘ease of use’ is paramount. However, there is a fine line between ease of use and robust functionality. Many CMS platforms compromise on functionality to make their platform easier to use. When searching for different solutions, make sure that not only is the platform easy to use and intuitive, but also has all of the features and functionality your organization will need to meet your business goals.
Updating and Maintaining Content
The days of having to know how to code to make edits to your website content are long gone. Microsoft Word-like interfaces with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editors and inline editing are basic requirements of any modern CMS platform. Additionally, it should be easy to share content and data across several channels without requiring multiple instances of content. Find a CMS solution that enables anyone in your organization, from marketing to sales, to make site-wide edits without requiring IT support, developers, or a third party agency to update your content for you.
Custom Content Applications
CMS platforms typically come with applications, sometimes called modules or plugins, either out of the box or as an add-on and/or upsell to the platform. These applications are used for many purposes, including easy, form-based authoring of structured content for specific content types like news items, events, and management bios. Look for a CMS that offer applications out of the box that do not embrace a one size fits all mentality, but are customizable to suit the needs of your business.
2. Breadth of Features
Any product is only as strong as the features, functionality and ease-of-use they provide out of the box. When evaluating CMS platforms, carefully review what features and functionality come with the product and if they meet the needs of your organization and avoid the expense of required third party plugins and integrations for what should be standard functionality. The ideal CMS has almost everything you need right out of the box, but also provides the option to integrate with third party applications where necessary.
Native Functionality Vs. Third Party Plugins
Third party plugins are required in many CMS platforms. While seemingly convenient, they can be both a pro and con at the same time. Plugins may save hours of development time and even money in the short term. But they can also be developed by a third party who may or may not continue to support the tool consistently or at all, which could leave you in a vulnerable position. Plugins can also be a major security problem — even well established plugins like Yoast, a widely used Google Analytics plugin, can be exploited by hackers. In fact, the more widely a plugin is deployed, the more attractive it may be for hackers to go after it.
Digital Marketing and Ecommerce
Managing a website in today’s marketplace often involves a robust integration of digital marketing technologies — CRM, marketing automation, social media management, etc. At the end of the day your website is a tool to help your organization meet its marketing and sales goals, whether that’s through lead gen tools like landing pages and calls-to-action, or eCommerce features to increase shopping cart conversions. When looking for a CMS platform, you’ll find that more and more platforms have native digital marketing and eCommerce capabilities — or have established integrations with the leading products in those segments — and deliver the metrics you need to understand if you’re achieving digital success. You need to decide if you’re looking for more of an integrated suite offering, where digital marketing and eCommerce are native to the platform, or if you prefer a best of breed solution that is more focused on third-party integration.
Front End User Role Management
In a world driven by big data, personalization that delivers state-of-the-art digital experiences is more and more commonplace. Real-time intelligence on how users navigate your site can help you deliver just the right content at just the right time to visitors based on their credentials, cookies or even just their site actions. CMS platforms with front end user role management can maximize your bottom line by serving up different content based on how often a user has visited a certain page or even offer a buying incentive to a shopper after 60 seconds of being idle in your shopping cart.
3. Deployment Infrastructure
There are many factors to take into consideration when deploying a website and CMS platform. Is it a cloud-based system that lets your organization focus on its business, not investing resources in IT infrastructure. Is the environment Linux or Windows. What type of system resources do you require based on your traffic and bandwidth, or how mission-critical your site is (i.e. uptime and backups). When evaluating these various requirements, it’s important to think beyond cost and focus on the needs of your organization and whether the CMS platform meets the goals and objectives of your infrastructure plan.
Flexibility
How flexible is the CMS platform? Can it operate in various environments or is it OS specific? Some CMS platforms will run in either Linux or Windows, some only run in one. This can limit your hosting options and create issues down the road. If possible, look for a platform neutral CMS.
Speed
When you hear the term speed related to CMS platforms, it can mean a variety of things. One is how easy it is to install, setup and configure to deploy your first website. Are we talking hours, days, weeks, months? Another is page load speed and how quickly the CMS renders content. Not all CMS platforms are the same so it’s important to understand how the system works and how easy it is to get up and running.
SaaS or On Premise
There are different ways to purchase CMS platforms. Some are premise-based which means you have the license rights to setup the software in your own hosting environment. That can mean “on premise” as in an internal server or on your own server within a colocated environment. Another popular way to structure things is what’s referred to as software as a service or SaaS model. This means you pay monthly as part of an overall infrastructure option based on the monthly or annual installments tied to the hosting environment, software license and support. This is a great way to structure things if your organization desires to leave the IT tasks to the software people.
Scalability
Whether premise-based or SaaS, another factor is how scalable is the environment you’re using to host the CMS platform. Can it handle large spikes in traffic and easily scale up so that a great day for visitor traffic does not become a nightmare. In many SaaS environments, like within AWS (<a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=8e11c912-6253-41b8-b065-bf32bd27911b" target="_blank">Amazon Web Services</a>) you have the ability to add resources and create multi-server environments that mirror each other. That means you can add servers and resources to balance the load of traffic across multiple servers versus a single server. Cloud-based “clusters” work extremely well for organizations looking for speed, uptime and security.
4. Design Flexibility
So many websites look exactly the same today. Sure, the designs are cleaner and the navigation crisper than ever before — but visiting websites today can be like driving through a planned community where it’s hard to distinguish one house from the other. This is largely the result of theme-driven platforms like WordPress. But in a world of cookie-cutter websites, it’s more important than ever — and somewhat easier — for your brand to stand out from the crowd with amazing web design.
Represent Your Brand Exactly How You Want
Not all CMS platforms can handle the nuances of custom, complex design as well others. It all depends on how much control the CMS allows over the templating system. Control may vary from simply being able to edit the existing templates to being able to work outside of a template structure altogether. CMS platforms that offer a flexible architecture that allows complete development freedom from a template structure are much more able to accommodate the exact design that could differentiate your brand from the competition.
Support for Mobile
Depending on your business, today’s web visitors are more likely to find you on a smartphone than on a desktop. We live in a mobile-first world — that is getting more mobile every single day. Be sure that your CMS supports responsive mobile design directly out of the box so that you can reach customers and prospects seamlessly across all channels and devices.
Ease of Design Refresh
The flexibility of today’s SaaS CMS platforms offer options that make it possible to stay on one CMS for years. SaaS vendors can continuously upgrade the CMS platform without you ever needing to do anything. Upgrades fix bugs, improve performance and add more functionality. In fact, you’re more likely to outgrow your look and feel than you are your CMS platform. Certain CMS architectures make it very easy to port all of your existing content and custom functionality into a new look and feel without the pain of a replatform.
5. Multi-site Management
Many organizations no longer manage just one or two sites. Even mid-size businesses may have multiple sites to manage, while large companies may have dozens or even hundreds of sites. Sometimes it’s due to different lines of business or a network of subsidiaries, but more and more, it’s driven by organizations launching various marketing campaigns, all needing their own websites, content and landing pages. What can frequently happen is that all of these sites end up being managed on different platforms. This can be super inefficient, expensive, and can result in your brand looking vastly different across your different websites.
Manage From a Single Platform
Having all your websites on a single platform and part of the same installation means your entire team can work from a single interface to develop and manage content. This means more efficient training and better user adoption. It also allows for better utilization of hardware resources and ultimately lower hosting fees. Additionally, a single platform can make it extremely easy to spin up new sites by making a clone of an existing site that offers a starting point of existing content and templates. It also makes it possible to share the same piece of content or other assets across all of your sites. This approach can enforce a consistent template governance across sites and ensure your brand is presented the way you want it to be.
Assign Admin Roles by Site
Not all content editors should have access to manage content across all of your sites. If managing multiple sites is important in your selection process, be sure that the CMS can assign roles that control access to your sites, and even sections within sites. Granular permissions gives you total control over who can access what, yet still allow you to work together with common workflows that enable sharing and teamwork.
6. Third-Party Integration
In today’s marketplace, your website isn’t just about pretty pictures and marketing copy. The digital experience should be about streamlining operations, automating workflows, and providing your end users with tremendous value. That’s why third-party integration is important. The ability of a CMS platform to communicate with other third-party applications — whether CRM, commerce or marketing automation — allows for seamless integration and workflow, therefore improving the overall digital experience.
APIs
One key thing to look for in a CMS platform is API connectivity. An API, or Application Programming Interface, allows data to be two-way communicated between the CMS platform and other applications. This is paramount if you have plans to develop mobile applications that connect to the CMS platform data. A native API will make those future app plans much easier to implement.
Developer and Custom Application Support
Third-party integration can be completed in many ways. You can leverage your own internal programming and IT team to write the code. You can contract a system integrator to implement the connectivity. Of you can have the developers of the CMS platform handle the heavy lifting. Not all CMS platforms have development support options. Many are “open source” which means they are being developed with the best of intentions but due to the software being free to use (licensing options vary) there isn’t any developer support to assist you in customizing the overall experience. Depending on your plans for development, launch and future implementations, this may be a very important part of your decision making process.
7. Security and Support
The CMS platform’s security and support options can be an important factor in the decision-making process. In some situations, it’s enough just to download the software, install it on a server and build your own site. In others, the need for security and support factor into the equation because the demands of your business and mission-critical uptime lead the charge.
Security
Hackers love hacking, and that’s not going to stop. When evaluating CMS platforms, you have to consider the security implications, the integrity of your data, and whether you can afford to have your site go down or suffer from a data breach. In theory, all websites can be hacked when targeted, but some platforms are more secure than others. Do your research to be sure that the source code is sound and that security is not a major issue.
Support
Know who will be there for you after you go live. Not all CMS platforms come with support options. For example, many open-source applications do not offer direct access to support teams. Typically they develop security patches and software upgrades that you must download and install to keep your site up to date and secure. Most closed-source or SaaS products offer technical support and periodically “push down” the security and feature upgrades to all sites running their platform. This is a great thing if you do not want to worry about the potential technical issues. Its also a bonus to wake up one day with new features that were added at the request of the user community.
Conclusion
The right CMS for your organization is one that fits with your current and future needs and helps you achieve success. If you need help making the right CMS decision, there are plenty of places to turn. You can speak to local developers in your area or engage CMS experts for larger projects. In any event, make sure you choose wisely and test drive the software first. If possible, download trial installations and evaluate systems using consistent criteria. The decision you make could affect the health of your organization for a long time to come.

7 Critical Factors when choosing a CMS

I often get the question “What is an enterprise web content management system (WCMS)?” with the subtle insinuation that I must differentiate a WCMS from an enterprise WCMS. To begin, enterprise is not just a buzzword that we’ve appended to the WCMS acronym to charge more money; it actually has a very powerful and paramount meaning to larger organizations and government entities that handle sensitive data, manage a portfolio of digital properties, and require the highest levels of scalability, availability, security, and redundancy. The appended “enterprise” WCMS makes the procurement process easier for large organizations and government entities that now have a shorter yet more appropriate list of providers to consider.
With over a decade of experience in the WCMS industry I have found there to be a common set of components that comprise an enterprise WCMS. That is, the components that large-scale organizations require a web content management system have before they even consider procurement. These components typically do not come with standard WCMS platforms – there are thousands of WCMS platforms and only a few of them such as <a href="http://www.sitecore.net/" target="_blank">Sitecore</a>, <a href="https://www.solodev.com/" target="_blank">Solodev</a>, and <a href="https://www.crownpeak.com/" target="_blank">CrownPeak</a>, amongst a select few, are enterprise-ready. A true enterprise platform comes with the components covered below out of the box; they are not add-ons at an additional cost. At Solodev, we believe any enterprise WCMS is composed of three core pillars: software, infrastructure, and support, all of which are equally important to one another and will be discussed further in this article.
<h2>Software</h2>
Enterprise web content management software does not require third party code in the form of plugins or themes. One of the major differentiators of an enterprise WCMS is their ability to empower users to craft custom websites without the constraints and potential risks of unreliable, outdated, or expensive third party plugins or themes. An enterprise WCMS allows you to design your website the way you envisioned it and provides an intuitive workspace for you to write clean, responsible HTML to create a stunning <a href="https://www.solodev.com/blog/" target="_blank">web design</a>. In addition, large organizations cannot afford to rely on plugins built by third party developers they have no relationship with whatsoever. They want to build their own “plugins” using the server side languages they know and enterprise web content management systems provide platforms for developers to build powerful web and mobile applications to compliment their web designs.
<h3>Multi-Site Management</h3>
Does your WCMS pass the multi-site management test? That is, do all of your websites live off of a single website root or does your WCMS allow you to create and manage multiple websites with their own root directory? Like most WCMS platforms, your multisite management abilities are limited in forcing you to nest all of your websites under the same directory. Does your WCMS allow you to easily add and manage multiple websites? Does your WCMS allow updates to be pushed to all of your websites simultaneously? While most platforms implement their multisite abilities by forcing your additional websites to live off of the root of your main website, enterprise WCMS platforms do not force this architecture on you, providing separate web roots for each website and as a result, making your websites significantly more secure.
<h3>Content Authoring</h3>
Large organizations push out a lot of content. Whether it is news articles, blog posts, white papers, case studies, eBooks, graphics, video content, and more, enterprises are adamant about having an enterprise WCMS that empowers their content authors to focus on what they do best without having to learn a new platform, technology, or programming language. Does your WCMS provide an intuitive workspace for content authors or is your WCMS constantly getting in the way of your content authors?
<h3>Multimedia Management</h3>
During one interview with a Fortune 500 executive she claimed it was easier to upload 50 photos to Facebook than it was to upload those same photos to the WCMS her organization was using. With an enterprise WCMS at your finger tips, the opposite would be true and uploading thousands of photos, videos, and other file types should be a breeze. The written word has tremendous value but as multimedia takes an increasingly important role in the content marketing landscape it is essential that organizations adapt and embrace multimedia content.
<h3>Workflow</h3>
Enterprises need to know that they can control the workflow that takes place in their WCMS. Essentially, they want to control the flow of content from draft to production ready. In addition, they want to set up custom workflows that execute certain functions under certain conditions. A great example would be user behavior on their website; if a user specifies they are a marketer, they will be sent a different email than a website visitor that specified they are a salesman. Workflows are a way for organizations to customize web experiences in a way that is most suited to their organizational goals. A true enterprise WCMS must have deep workflow capabilities to be truly enterprise-ready.
<h3>Enterprise Permissions</h3>
How granular does your WCMS let you get when it comes to determining which users and user groups have access to which parts of your WCMS – and – what actions can they take in those specified areas? Furthermore, does your WCMS allow you to get so granular that only a certain user has read permissions on a single file on the staging server of your website? If not, your WCMS may have “permissions” but not enterprise permissions and from our research, simply having “permissions” is not enough to be enterprise-ready.
<h3>Versioning</h3>
Another essential component of any true enterprise WCMS is versioning. What exactly does that mean? It means that your WCMS keeps an archived record of every change ever made in your WCMS allowing you to see who has done what and when over any specified period of time. Versioning also allows you to revert back to previous versions of content or code. The ability to easily audit your WCMS and website gives your organization complete transparency as to who is doing what in your WCMS and when they are doing it. Without these two abilities at your fingertips, you are not using a true enterprise WCMS.
<h2>Infrastructure</h2>
There’s a pretty easy test to see if you’re using an enterprise WCMS when it comes to infrastructure. Does the WCMS you are using have a fully redundant hosting infrastructure? To elaborate, does your website benefit from redundancy across all fronts including but not limited to your web server, database, file system, and backups? Further, is the infrastructure of your WCMS architected with a multi-region strategy that creates redundancy across the globe using availability zones and a load balancer? Elastic Load Balancing distributes incoming website traffic to different servers across multiple data centers in regions across the world to create redundancy that ensures your website stays live and experiences no downtime. The aforementioned architecture ensures your website will never go down and that is the metric of most importance to any enterprise.
<h3>Security</h3>
Security heavily weighs on your organization's decision as to how to deploy your WCMS. Does your WCMS live on the Amazon Web Services, Google, or Microsoft Cloud? If your WCMS is built for one of these platforms you likely benefit from datacenters and network architecture built to meet the requirements of the most security-sensitive organizations. Perhaps you have an on-premise deployment or even more, a hybrid deployment. If that is the case, your security is in the hands of your IT department. If you don’t fit into any of the above-mentioned buckets it’s time to reconsider whether you are using the right WCMS for your organization.
<h2>Support</h2>
A surprising number of WCMS providers do not actually provide direct support to their users. Instead, you are required to use third party implementation partners or agencies that stand in between you and your website. These partners and agencies didn’t build the WCMS you are using and despite their expertise, it comes at a cost, a higher host than going straight to the source. A true enterprise WCMS allows you to call and or submit support tickets to the company that built your WCMS and get support from the engineers that spend their days improving and pushing updates to your WCMS.
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
The term “enterprise WCMS” comes up a lot and many companies claim to sell enterprise WCMS platforms and tack on the price tag that goes with the word “enterprise” but few of them have the entire enterprise toolkit. Whether you are looking for a new WCMS platform, are frustrated with your current WCMS, or were perhaps content with your WCMS prior to reading this article, I highly recommend reading our whitepaper <a href="https://www.solodev.com/lp/7-critical-factors-when-selecting-a-web-cms.stml" target="_blank">7 Critical Factors When Choosing a WCMS.</a>

Are you actually using an enterprise WCMS?

With a new year comes a fresh look at what’s working for your content management system and what’s not. For enterprise businesses, any changes to a digital infrastructure can impact the entire company, especially changing their Content Management System (CMS).
Last year, companies witnessed a distinctive shift in the role Enterprise CMS platforms play. Rather than being a one-stop shop for all features a company would need, effective CMS platforms became the glue holding enterprise martech stacks together.
In 2019, any successful Enterprise CMS platform should give more than an updated look. It has to be a future-proofed investment in a company’s marketing strategy. Here are 9 forward-thinking essentials your Enterprise CMS should deliver this year:
1.Cloud-first integration
If 2018 was the year of the cloud, then 2019 is the year the cloud infiltrates every part of an organization’s digital presence. The Cloud helps organizations trade CAPEX for OPEX, breaking the 3-5 year cycle of hardware replacement and eliminating the responsibility over managing infrastructure. There are fewer limits, and enterprises pay as they go only for what they need.
How a CMS would interact with a Cloud hosting solution is the foundation of the rest of a
website’s success. A CMS should ideally work hand-in-hand with any Cloud hosting solution. That intimate connection gives a team more control over server performance and scaling.
Cloud resources within the CMS gives companies the power to grow capacity for their websites instantly, quickly react to spikes in traffic, or autoscale whenever needed. A Cloud system baked into a CMS lets your team manage these capabilities in a variety of areas, with fewer pieces to juggle.
What does the future look like? In a word: choice. Some CMS platforms are now being deployed with containers – allowing you to launch a CMS in minutes and start building your website or application with continuous deployment and no long-term contracts.
2. Solid security 
Last year saw some of the biggest online presences get slammed with several massive security breaches. From Marriott to Twitter, major enterprise names struggled to keep user information secure. It resulted in damaged brand trust, PR nightmares, and (many times) a drop in profit.
No one can afford to have security compromised, but especially not enterprise organizations.
More information online means more data for hackers to crack. Popular open source platforms like WordPress are notorious for having the most frequently compromised websites of any CMS. They often need extra third-party plugins to stave off attacks, and it’s only a matter of time before those are cracked. An enterprise CMS should uphold the integrity of your data. While any website can be hacked, some platforms are more secure than others. Do your research to ensure the source code is sound, that testing and patching are part of the support plan. Consider platforms that warranty their code and services. And ask what protocols are in place in the event of a hack, from 24/7/365 critical care to SLAs.
3. <a href="https://www.solodev.com/resources/case-studies/miami-beach-visitor-and-convention-authority.stml">API integration</a> 
Your enterprise organization needs features native to the CMS. However, there’s also something critical about having a CMS that seamlessly connects your organization to
technologies your team is already using—Marketo, MailChimp, Tableau, analytics
tracking and more.
Today’s digital experience landscape includes thousands of technologies. Understanding which ones to pick is hard enough; but how do you get them to work together? The CMS is a cornerstone of your digital stack, and it should help orchestrate data across different channels. That means seamlessly integrating with the most advanced applications on the planet like Salesforce CRM, Microsoft Dynamics ERP, even exotic platforms like Humanetics to manage blood donation data. The possibilities are endless – and your CMS should be the hub for it all.
When considering the API capabilities of a CMS, find out if it has documented out-of-the-box integrations. Are they committing their APIs to libraries like Swagger UI? How easy is it to build your own integrations in the future?
4. <a href="https://www.solodev.com/blog/web-design/should-your-website-risk-not-being-ada-compliant.stml">Compliance </a>
The Internet might feel like the Wild West, but there are a bevy of regulations that every website should follow. From ADA Accessibility, WCAG 2.0 compliance, GDPR, HIPPA, and more, your new CMS should take important governance and compliance rules into consideration.
Arguably one of the most important regulatory requirements of any website is accessibility. Every web experience should deliver “digital equality” to its visitors, regardless of their disability. Unfortunately, the realm of ADA compliance remains largely misunderstood. Accessibility isn't a “set it and forget it” endeavor; it requires both achieving and vigilantly maintaining the standards.
As the Department of Justice issues more legal suits against public and private institutions, it's critical for all organizations to monitor their ADA posture and develop the best practices for managing compliance. Even <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/blind-woman-sues-beyonces-entertainment-company-discrimination/story?id=60188354">Beyonce</a> recently fell victim to an ADA compliance publicity nightmare.
A good CMS should leverage a structured data foundation, enabling pages to be easily scanned by screen readers. Additionally, it should integrate seamlessly with best-of-breed platforms like SiteImprove to scan for violations on a regular basis.
5. <a href="https://www.solodev.com/blog/tags/mobile.stml">Mobile-first readiness</a> 
It's no longer enough to be “mobile responsive.” With increasingly more users browsing
websites on their smartphones and tablets, you must adopt a true “mobile first” strategy –
where the mobile experience is thoughtfully designed from day one. Likewise, you need a
CMS that understands this shift, and provides a foundation for building, testing and
launching world-class mobile experiences.
6. 
For enterprise organizations, permissioning remains a critical requirement for any CMS platform. Only a handful of people within such large organizations should have access to an enterprise website’s content. Granular permissions give CIOs and CTOs the peace of mind they need when it comes to internal content. User permissions help make sure those with editorial capabilities are approved by administrators. However, effective enterprise CMS platforms still provides the common workflows that enable sharing and teamwork.
7. Native Multisite
Enterprise companies have hundreds or even thousands of pages under their care. It’s important to have a CMS capable of handling the needs of those sites rather than having multiple sites managed on multiple platforms.
Having all your websites on a single platform means your entire team can work from a single
interface to develop and manage content. This means more efficient training and better use
adoption. It leads to smarter hardware use and ultimately lower hosting fees.
A single CMS platform also makes it easy to spin up new sites by making clones of an existing site. Users can share the same piece of content or other assets across all your sites. This
promotes consistent template governance across your sites and ensures an enterprise brand is presented the way you want it to be no matter how many websites you have.
8. Headless capabilities
Organizations wanting to move information across different platforms might find consistency a struggle without some sort of headless solution. The promise of decoupled CMS is that the function isn’t limited to or defined by frameworks that represent the frontend of a website. A headless or decoupled CMS gives you the freedom to share data or access analytics across channels, and connect everything with the power of a RESTful API.
Imagine giving visitors the same experience online as you would a mobile app. This could include customers ordering your services through Alexa or voice-driven gadgets. Headless gives your website the ability to exist today while preparing for the devices of tomorrow – everything from wearable tech like smart watches to screen readers for the visually impaired. At the same time, you want to have the ability to host the templates and frameworks for your website right alongside your data-driven apps.
Hybrid CMS platforms put one foot in the freedom of headless and the other in the stability of the templates and frameworks your website needs. Many CMS solutions are either one or the other – traditional or truly headless—but why choose? If a goal is to be future proof, then select a cloud-based hybrid solution that gives an enterprise the best of both worlds.
9. Training and support
Know who will be there after a website goes live. Not all CMS platforms come with support options. For example, many open-source applications don’t offer direct access to support teams. Typically they develop security patches and software upgrades you have to download and install yourself. While plenty of enterprise organizations have an IT infrastructure to handle manual updates, there’s still a learning curve that comes with any new enterprise CMS.
And while you might go to sleep, your enterprise website won’t—particularly if it generates global traffic. Know any potential CMS’s support response time and the availability of those support options.
About Solodev
Solodev is a leading enterprise website Content Management System (CMS) that empowers organizations to create amazing websites and engaging digital experiences in the cloud – all with total design freedom and control. Built from the ground up for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Solodev provides unparalleled security, scalability, and redundancy with 24/7/365 U.S. based support. Solodev has been listed as one of Inc. 5000’s fastest growing companies for the last three years and recognized as a High Performing leader on the user-driven G2 Crowd Grid. Winners of the 2017 AWS “City on a Cloud” Innovation Challenge, Solodev is an AWS Advanced Technology Partner with competencies in Education, Government, and Marketing &amp; Commerce. Solodev’s self-service CMS can be purchased on demand in the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=8e11c912-6253-41b8-b065-bf32bd27911b&amp;ref=_ptnr_solodev_cmscritic-content_9critical">AWS Marketplace</a> or through the GSA Contract. Learn more at <a href="http://www.solodev.com/">www.solodev.com</a>.

9 Essentials Your Enterprise CMS Should Deliver in 2019

Today, a modern website needs to offer a lot more than it needed to ten years ago, or even five for that matter.Consumers are no longer looking for a plain old “online business card”. They want to be impressed, persuaded and informed.But that’s not all. The modern web surfer demands a convenient and engaging experience when visiting a website. So, a successful website in today’s world needs to be dynamic.We’ve already taken a good look at <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/a-look-at-1-1-internets-customer-centric-approach/">1&amp;1 Internet’s level of customer support</a>, their <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/tackling-the-mobile-world-with-1-1-internet/">attitude to mobile</a>, and their <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/1-1-internet-enterprise-customers-experts-on-hand/">expert management services</a>. But now it’s time to see how 1&amp;1 helps its customers build a truly modern website.<h2>Everything Handled: From eCommerce to Social Media</h2>By capitalizing on the many apps and features that <a target="_blank" href="http://www.1and1.com/?AC=OM.US.USj13K353625T7073a">1&amp;1 MyWebsite</a> offers, businesses can best position themselves in front of the mass market, and drive more profit.Here’s a summary of what 1&amp;1 customers can leverage to hone their web presence for the modern-day customer.Online Success CenterThe newest and perhaps the most exciting addition to the 1&amp;1 MyWebsite suite.1&amp;1 Internet’s Online Success Center is a simplified dashboard for businesses to boost their online presence with some basic search engine optimization.By focusing on basic information, online directories, and content optimization, businesses can improve their visibility on the Web and drive more traffic to their website.Web Apps1&amp;1 Internet’s Web Apps have become an integral element to business websites that make use of them.With the ability to integrate reputable, third-party applications directly into a website via drag-and-drop, businesses can enhance their online reputation and build convenience into their website.For example, restaurant owners will want to include OpenTable or ChowNow to enhance the capability and convenience of the site for their customers.MyShopAnother highly useful feature, particularly for online merchants, is <a target="_blank" href="http://blog.1and1.com/2015/01/06/11-myshop-for-mywebsite-everything-an-online-store-needs/?ac=OM.US.USj13K353625T7073a">MyShop</a>.Most retailers strive to deliver a reliable and strong eCommerce site to consumers. With the 1&amp;1 MyShop feature, they can create a detailed product catalogue within their website for customers while managing payment and delivery methods.Social Media CenterSocial media is more important today than ever before. Not only can it be a superb traffic source, but it’s also a communal hub for a brand and its customers to interact.In recognition of this, 1&amp;1 Internet serves up an impressive solution in the form of the Social Media Center. Consisting of its Social Page Manager and Social Share, the 1&amp;1 Social Media Center is included in the Plus and Pro MyWebsite packages allowing for owners to maintain a successful social strategy.Social Page Manager allows users to synchronize their website with Facebook to create consistent branding across both platforms. When an update is made to the website, the same change is automatically made to the Facebook page. While many businesses have existing Facebook pages, a common mistake is failing to keep it updated with fresh content.Additionally, 1&amp;1’s Social Share enables owners to create and maintain relationships on Facebook, Twitter and their blog through timely and ongoing communication. Posts, comments and tweets can all be made or scheduled via one, centralized dashboard and login.<h2>A One-Stop Shop</h2>Once again, 1&amp;1 produce a fairly astute set of tools in the face of modern, relevant and recurring problems faced in the world of website and online brand building.To find out more about <a target="_blank" href="http://www.1and1.com/?ac=OM.US.USj13K353625T7073a">1&amp;1 Internet as a web hosting solution, check out their website</a>.

1&1 Internet: An App & Feature Roundup

In recent years, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/">headless commerce</a> – or the separation of the frontend and backend of an application – has emerged to offer e-commerce sites greater freedom of expression and the ability to enrich the customer experience. In spite of these advantages, maintaining a headless architecture comes with several challenges, including the need for additional resources to keep content and features updated and the risks of decreased site speed and increased security vulnerabilities. And, of course, there are additional costs for building infrastructure and testing.So you need to ask: is going headless the right move for your organization? The alternative (supposedly) is to stick with the more traditional, all-in-one, "monolithic" platform approach. One key benefit of doing so is the built-in frontend that makes it easy for non-technical users to launch an online storefront quickly.However, monolithic systems can lock an e-commerce company into one vendor’s pre-existing development environment and limit its developers to the most common use cases. In sum, the monolithic approach tends to work better for new businesses that wish to get a website launched quickly. But, our experience is that it’s not long before these businesses begin to feel restricted by their platform’s templates and tools. <h2>Are You Really Ready?</h2>Making the decision to jump to a headless architecture can be scary. Migrating an entire frontend is hard, and more often than not you’ll also choose to migrate the backend, and it will most likely take longer than planned. Moreover, e-commerce organizations get absolutely none of the headless benefits until the migration is completed.Under this scenario, the existing site is kept on life support for the months or years the development team is focused on building the new headless frontend. And even if a development team hits all its key project dates and goes live, it’s still hard. There may still be many capabilities and features that can’t be included in that initial launch, which leaves the newly created frontend in catch-up mode.<h2>You Can Go Halfway</h2>The good news is that going headless does not have to be all or nothing. It’s possible to achieve many of the benefits of going headless without taking the full plunge.  Here’s how:<ul><li>Don’t take on more than you can handle. Especially in the current market, where every second counts and organizations likely have fewer engineers than they did last year, expecting a resource-strapped development team to rebuild an entire frontend is unrealistic, and would likely take too much time and upfront investment.</li><li>Implement a supplemental strategy where, instead of replacing a monolithic frontend in one big project, the organization chooses one critical headless capability at a time to add to the frontend. For instance, instead of replacing the whole site, e-commerce marketers could replace an element in product pages that isn't helping shoppers convert to buyers. This cumulative approach focuses the team on achieving meaningful short-term milestones. In this way, an e-commerce organization can continuously add new capabilities and progressively evolve from a monolithic system until the entire backend is segmented into microservices or different best-of-breed vendors. This approach also means that business value will be delivered throughout the migration.</li><li>Consider dedicated frontend composition platforms that implement additive strategies while allowing all business users - including developers, marketers, and designers - to help bring new functionality to the site. This can help overstretched development teams avoid becoming a bottleneck so the broader organization can deliver new experiences to the existing site more quickly. Reducing handoffs and eliminating the build step enables quicker content creation, which allows for more experimentation and, ultimately, a faster path to optimization and revenue-driving conversion improvements.</li></ul><h2>Open the Doors to Experimentation</h2>Let’s look at a common scenario. If an organization’s team does a quick analysis of its product pages and evaluates where the most underutilized real estate is on those pages, they will be able to translate that deficit into an opportunity and make that real estate more effective. For example, on many product pages, there are large swaths of whitespace and then a related product carousel tucked down at the bottom of the page where customers rarely venture. In this case, moving those related products up on the page is a good way to drive up average order value.In addition, the organization can choose to take it a step further and turn that related products carousel into a "build a bundle" offer where shoppers can attach three additional items to purchase all at once - with just one click. Ultimately, the organization can quickly and easily test anything - including the page layout and adaptive experience options, without needing weeks of lead time for planning and development. It's all about picking one’s opportunities and providing the desired experience built with the technology that gets you the shortest time to value and responsibly balances business success.The decision to go headless (or not) certainly does not need to be an all-or-nothing event. It’s possible to go halfway or to dip your toes in just a little bit. Don’t try to do everything at once; instead, focus on doing a little at a time, and take advantage of new design tools that unleash frontend creativity and agility while transitioning to your ideal e-commerce stack at a gradual pace.<hr /><a href="/critics/ryan-breen">Ryan Breen</a> is Chief Technology Officer at Zmags and a CMS Critic contributor.

Dipping Your Toes into the Headless Waters - Why Jumping Into the Deep End May Not Be the Best Bet

ryan-breen

Best Video Experience

Give your audience the best video experience

#000000

Explore a wide range of informative articles, insights, and industry updates. Stay informed and ahead of the curve with our diverse collection of news and posts covering the latest trends and developments in the industry. Page - 152