Articles - Page 158

Agentic AI for Agencies in 2026

bmckeiver

DNN announces the general availability of Evoq 9, which delivers omnichannel publishing via a microservices architecture. Evoq 9 includes Liquid Content™, a new Content as a Service platform that’s delivered as a microservice via DNN’s Liquid Content™ Cloud.
Included in Liquid Content™:
<ul>
<li>A headless CMS to manage content </li>
<li>A content analytics application to measure and analyze the impact of content </li>
<li>A stateless API to access and retrieve content </li>
<li>Delivery of services via Liquid Content™ Cloud, powered by Microsoft Azure</li>
<li>The content delivery and presentation features of the Evoq CMS, including a library of 100+ visualizers</li>
</ul>
Liquid Content™ facilitates the intelligent re-use of content beyond websites, to apps, devices and Internet of Things (IoT). 
<blockquote>
According to Navin Nagiah, President and CEO, DNN, “Liquid takes the shape of the objects it’s placed in and flows around barriers and obstacles. Our vision with Evoq 9 is to transform your content into liquid. Your content becomes fluid and adaptable, and can easily be published to any channel.”
</blockquote>
Fred Beer, President of ITX Corporation, a DNN Gold certified partner said, “Liquid Content™ and Liquid Content™ Cloud are exciting developments that help us efficiently deliver digital experiences to our customers. Creating content once, then re-using it across channels, will help our customers gain a higher return on their content.”
Because all Liquid Content™ features are delivered as microservices, DNN can publish weekly or daily updates to individual features. All customers will receive updates instantaneously, which provides enhancements and fixes as quickly as possible.
“We’re bringing multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) to a CMS, which is quite rare in our industry,” said Nagiah.
While most headless CMS platforms require developers to create front-end experiences, DNN leverages the longstanding capabilities of the Evoq CMS to deliver content without writing a single line of code. “Evoq is the head that’s attached to the headless CMS of Liquid Content™. Customers will receive all of the content delivery and presentation features they’ve come to expect, along with visualizers and other new features,” said Nagiah.
Visit them on the web at <a href="http://www.dnnsoftware.com/" target="_blank">http://www.dnnsoftware.com/</a>

DNN Announces the Release of Evoq 9

mike-johnston

For those of you who are unaware, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/headway">Headway</a> is a premium theme / framework for WordPress that takes theming far beyond what was normally believed to be possible.
Headway is the only theme available today that truly makes designing simple and easy to use for anyone.
How does it do this? Through one of the most unique methods available today in the world of WordPress theming. Drag and Drop.
The following video highlights very well what Headway is capable of:
Some of the key features that <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/headway">Headway</a> brings to the table include:
Special Content Layouts On Demand
Using the Headway Visual Editor, you can do anything from a standard blog, to landing pages, to membership sites, to e-commerce sites. For non-technical folks, Headway’s “Easy Hooks” let you insert custom content at will wherever you like on any page without messing with PHP or CSS. For hardcore developers, Headway has heaps of actions and filters (or hooks) to take customization even farther.

<h4>Design Your Blog Visually</h4>
Headway’s innovative Visual Layout Editor gives you the power to rearrange your site layout without touching a line of code. Even if you’re comfortable with HTML/CSS/PHP, the Visual Layout Editor saves you time. You can sculpt your design into anything you want. You’re not restricted by someone else’s ideas about columns or content layouts. The sky’s the limit.

<h4>Complete Control is Yours to Command</h4>
In the Headway Configuration Panel you can customize just about everything behind the scenes you can imagine. Add universal analytics or opt-in form scripts, integrate your Twitter account, set detailed options for post meta information (publication dates, author, etc.), add a favicon, and much more.

<h4>Search Engine Optimization</h4>
Headway has its own built-in search engine optimization (or SEO) settings. Simply having Headway will help your search engine optimization, even if you don’t use any of its manual features. If you do use them (and we’ll show you how), you can enjoy a greater chance of moving up in search rankings. Our priority for this was to keep the code clean, but flexible. Having clean code allows the search engines to easily scour the page and index what’s important. With Headway you can stop worrying about what plugins to install and how to efficiently optimize your site. All the options are there and easily accessible. Settings for the home page, the entire blog, and each post or page (more than any other theme) are there for you to control.
Get pricing, purchase or learn more: <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/headway">Headway Theme for WordPress</a>

Headway for WordPress - the future of theming?

<h2>How A Document Management System Leads to “Big Insight”</h2>
The term “document” has become a ubiquitous, widely applicable term for anything containing information in digital or physical format. However, for the purposes of organizations, it is better described as anything an organization creates that contains information.
As the e-commerce revolution ensued and surged at the beginning of the 21st century, organizational information with each passing year could not be accurately defined as just a document or file.
Instead, the term “data” emerged to explain and categorize the varieties of organizations’ digital information, including the variety of places this information can be stored, duplicated, and lost—making it an equally dangerous medium for unstructured information.
<h3>Leveraging Document Management to Mitigate Skilled Labor Shortage</h3>
The most versatile <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/efilecabinet-online/">benefits of a document management system</a> are time and money savings. In the construction and manufacturing industries in particular—there is a large shortage of skilled laborers.
However, a skilled labor shortage does not have to mean the downfall of an organization, for a document management system solutions can resolve this problem—given that a document management system expedites internal processes, it frees up room for recruitment revenue and the salaries to attract top talent to an organization without breaking the bank, providing a competitive edge on the balance sheet when it is especially needed.
Moreover, new talent is not always needed: cutting costs internally through a document management system alone is enough to free up the profits sought by many executives and administrators—especially those who are beginning with startups.
A <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/what-is-a-document-management-system/">document management system</a> (DMS) is any small to mid-sized organization’s formalized, strategic, and technological means for storing and managing images, web pages, graphics, social content, email content, video, and other rich media assets.
The goal of DMS is to effectively manage all information belonging to and created by organizations—relaying greater insights into the information contained in its content. Document management provides organizations with the means to manage the proliferation of their content, including the data and information it contains.
This signifies a major paradigm shift for the organizational prospectus: moving from big data to big content—focusing less on data-intensive aspects of the organization like data mining (which automation is better equipped to handle today) and more on effectively storing content to effectively harness its information.
This phenomenon is further reified by the <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/mobile-document-management-software/">DMS mobile app</a>, which gives businesses, in addition to other mobile tools, another means of conducting businesses wherever there’s an internet connection.
<h3>Deriving Big Insight through the Document Management System</h3>
Essentially, organizations should not spend money on analytics and big data without the means to effectively do so—DMS being a potent means for accomplishing these objectives.
Additionally, sometimes organizations purchasing a document management system will arrive at sufficient analytics and insight-based conclusions regarding the data in their content without buying big data and other analytics services—further increasing the potential ROI for document management system adoption and use over the long haul.
Analytics, or in other words—deriving insight from data—has dominated organizations’ spending plans for the past two years. For instance, the <a href="https://www.idc.com/">International Data Corporation (IDC)</a> projected that analytics would become a $125 billion market worldwide by 2015.
However, these budget allocations are futile without a document management system or other enterprise-grade document management solutions, for without DMS and similar technologies, including the behavioral means to use them effectively, acquiring crucial insight from data will prove a time-consuming, ineffectual process.
To learn more about what a top-rated document management system, visit <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/">efilecabinet.com.</a>

Document Management and Entrepreneurship: From Big Data to Big Insight

Convio, Inc. (NASDAQ: CNVO), announced today it has acquired StrategicOne, a leading provider of analytics, predictive modeling and database marketing services. By adding StrategicOne’s capabilities to Convio’s market leading software and service offerings, nonprofits can improve marketing and fundraising results by building stronger relationships with constituents and prospects. StrategicOne services help nonprofits discover, analyze and act on information to more effectively attract new constituents, retain existing ones, reactivate lapsed supporters and steward relationships to higher levels of engagement.
“Enterprise-size nonprofits need solutions that help them apply analytical intelligence to their constituent data to more successfully leverage relationships across channels and across the organization,” said Gene Austin, Chairman, CEO and President of Convio. “The experience and expertise of the StrategicOne team combined with our increased investment in enterprise constituent engagement solutions, further strengthens Convio’s position in helping large nonprofits maximize results.”
“The StrategicOne portfolio of services are designed to increase an organization's fundraising and other engagement results by maximizing the lifetime value of each relationship,” added Austin. “These services provide nonprofits with a better understanding of their constituents and prospects which allows them to develop campaigns across channels that more efficiently and effectively engage people to drive fundraising results, volunteerism, advocacy and other forms of engagement.”
StrategicOne, headquartered in Overland Park, KS, was founded in 1997 with the mission to assist clients with predictive and actionable intelligence to improve constituent acquisition, retention and lifetime value across all channels.
“Convio is at the forefront in integrating online and traditional channels with social, mobile and other emerging technologies,” said Michael Rogers, president and chief executive officer for StrategicOne. “We are proud to be joining a company that recognizes evolving market dynamics and is leading the way in helping nonprofits address those changes with innovative technology and services that help deliver fundraising results.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Convio will pay approximately $5 million in cash and may also pay $1 million in cash based on successful achievement of performance targets payable over three years. Total revenue for StrategicOne was approximately $2 million in 2010. Convio expects the impact of the acquisition to be neutral to non-GAAP earnings per share on a full-year basis in 2011. The Company will provide additional financial detail regarding the transaction on its regularly scheduled fourth quarter earnings call, to be held February 3, 2011.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains certain forward-looking information within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 about Convio, Inc. (“Convio”), StrategicOne, LLC (“StrategicOne”) and the combined company after completion of the transaction. Words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “targets,” “goals,” “projects,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “seeks,” “estimates,” variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements which are not statements of historical facts. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements related to the opportunity presented by the acquisition, the needs of nonprofit clients and the addressability thereof by Convio and StrategicOne, the integration of the products and services to be delivered to nonprofit clients by the combined company and the fundraising and other benefits thereof, the financial results of StrategicOne and the impact thereof on the financial results of Convio.
These statements reflect management’s current beliefs, assumptions and expectations and are subject to a number of factors that may cause actual results to differ materially. These factors include but are not limited to: the unprecedented volatility in the global economy; the risk that the future business operations of Convio and/or StrategicOne will not be successful; the risk that Convio will not realize all of the anticipated benefits from its acquisition of StrategicOne; the risk that there will be disruptions following the acquisition in client acquisition and retention; the risk that unexpected costs in the integration and operation of the combined company will be incurred; the risk of litigation related to the acquisition or the operations of the combined company and the outcome thereof; the detrimental actions of competitors; adverse changes and developments affecting our industry; quarterly or cyclical variations in financial results; the risk that Convio is not able to protect its intellectual property rights; risks related to the combined company’s reliance on third parties for products and provision of services; and other factors that are set forth in the “Risk Factors” section and other sections of our registration statement and periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Convio assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events or developments, except as required by law.
About Convio
Convio is a leading provider of on-demand constituent engagement solutions that enable nonprofit organizations to more effectively raise funds, advocate for change and cultivate relationships with donors, activists, volunteers, alumni and other constituents.
For more information, please visit <a href="http://www.convio.com/">www.convio.com</a>

Convio Acquires Analytics and Data Intelligence Firm StrategicOne

We’re kicking off another featured week here at CMS Critic, and this time, we’re accompanied by <a href="http://ez.no/" target="_blank">eZ</a>.
<a href="http://ez.no/" target="_blank"><img alt="eZ-Logo-No-Tagline_max600height250.png" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ns3w2zCGC3Ouw8GeW2BDUUwbnIOgoqiRIvGmGeii4y-Ljv864aP5KAjTP2LZ8Onuyboa_cxqjvdO8KYNuM5s9oiVL5BcSCNmrZsHbEIl1TOCVLKDCdZrtHAquM6FgMgQg_ADBe-a" /></a>
eZ Systems, the company behind eZ Publish, was founded in 1999. The company refined itself into eZ Systems Group in 2011 in order to develop further products to complement their flagship enterprise product the eZ Publish Platform.
As we begin our coverage of this CMS, I’m taking a good look at how it offers three solutions that are in high demand – content management, eCommerce and marketing – under the very same roof.
Here’s a short introductory video to get us started.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koDex3KhHNM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koDex3KhHNM</a>
<h2>Content Management</h2>
eZ Publish Platform may have a broad skill set, but there’s no doubting that content management is its chosen forte.
Built to be easily used by developers and publishers, eZ Publish enables brands to produce, manage and deliver content to any device type.
The platform offers landing page management, front-end and WYSIWYG editing for non-technical users, multi-language support and multi-channel delivery.
To help brands embrace the emerging age of IoT (Internet of Things), eZ Publish provides Rest APIs to push your content to the screens of Smart TVs, automotive interfaces, and more.
<a href="http://ez.no/Products/Content-Management">Learn more about eZ Publish and content management</a>.
<h2>eCommerce</h2>
Selling online, whether it be physical or digital products, is now as lucrative as ever.
In recognition of this, eZ Publish Platform gives its users everything they need to set up an online marketplace.
Products and catalogs can be added directly into any eZ Publish-powered website via specific pages, or even via embedded content blocks.
There are no design restrictions to worry about either, so shopping experiences can be moulded around existing content and design elements to provide a seamless process for the end user.
eZ Publish also empowers brands to integrate with other products that can help bolster their eCommerce offering. PayPal, SugarCRM, Netsuite, Magento and more, are all welcomed with open arms.
<a href="http://ez.no/Products/e-Commerce">Learn more about eZ Publish and eCommerce</a>.
<h2>Marketing</h2>
Marketing automation has rapidly emerged as the next big thing that brands should be engaging in. Marketing automation systems have sprouted up everywhere, built to work alongside a CMS.
However, just as it does with eCommerce, eZ Publish Platform cuts out the middleman by housing such features within itself.
eZ Publish boasts Marketing Automation, Smart Analytics, Personalization, Recommendation and Optimization features, to ensure that no web property ever goes unnoticed or untracked.
For example, eZ Live Viewer, using live analytics, tells you how a website’s content is performing in real time, by sending alerts and recommending changes that improve content performance.
Meanwhile, eZ Recommendation heightens the personalization level of a web property, by recommending; news, images, videos, products and events to users in real time, based on their behaviors.
<a href="http://ez.no/Products/Digital-Marketing">Learn more about eZ Publish and marketing solutions.</a> 
To find out more about eZ Publish, <a href="http://ez.no/">check out eZ Systems’ website</a>. You can also <a href="http://ez.no/Forms/HTML-forms/Request-a-Demo">request an eZ Publish Demo</a> to try it for yourself.
Stay tuned for a separate post from eZ Systems regarding their next generation content management solutions, eZ Platform and eZ Studio, launching in Q4 2015.

eZ Publish Platform: Content Management, Marketing & eCommerce Under The Same Roof

To get the ball rolling with our latest featured week with <a href="http://ez.no/" target="_blank">eZ</a>, we explored how <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/ez-publish-platform-content-management-marketing-ecommerce-under-the-same-roof/" target="_blank">eZ Publish Platform provides everything a brand needs for content management, eCommerce and marketing</a>.
Now, understanding a platform’s core features and benefits is one thing, but seeing them put to use in the real world by noteworthy brands puts everything into perspective.
<a href="http://ez.no/" target="_blank"><img alt="eZ-Logo-No-Tagline_max600height250.png" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/yZso9JMz33l5WvuANjWMr05G9S9-PEE4ohCGOee-TPnMEE4-igzkPPiPVTFvAgVNwV7-8CCcgGmX4CxgAFOBsVz08lsJObSLY7aKQ0knKS-reJKqMkdNBSxV-TMt2WUNlz7yj_jF" /></a>
With that in mind, let’s take a look at how two high-profile eZ customers have found success with the enterprise-grade CMS by making use of eZ Publish Platform’s broad feature set.
<h2>A Suite Deal</h2>
With over 10 million customers worldwide, HootSuite is one of the world’s most popular social media management tools.
Hootsuite began looking for a new CMS when they realised that their web properties were stretched across too many platforms. They required an enterprise-grade platform to unify their online presence.
Their essential requirements were:
<ul>
<li>
Full stack Symfony2 Implementation
</li>
<li>
Personalization capabilities for dynamic content generation
</li>
<li>
Internationalization and localization of content
</li>
<li>
Solid development framework for deep integration into their product and systems
</li>
<li>
High traffic scalability
</li>
</ul>
Jeff Waterfall, Hootsuite’s User Interface and Frontend Developer, gives us further background:
<blockquote>
“From the start, we knew that we wanted an open source CMS. After a two month evaluation process, Hootsuite narrowed their search down to Drupal, SiteCore and eZ Publish.
We started looking at eZ Publish and it checked all the boxes for us. It was an enterprise-grade CMS and it was very secure. It had everything we were looking for baked right into it.”
</blockquote>
As of right now, Hootsuite is benefitting from eZ Publish Platform in several ways, including; an editorial interface that gives publishers total control over website content, fine-tuned SEO tags, rich text formatting, embedding images and videos with multi-load functionality, and more.
Furthermore, as a result of eZ Publish Platform’s content delivery performance levels, paired with streamlined SEO capabilities, Hootsuite has experienced a boost in traffic originating from search engines.
<a href="http://ez.no/Customers/Case-Studies/Transforming-Hootsuite-Embracing-the-Symfony-Framework-with-the-eZ-Publish-Platform?utm_source=cmscritic&amp;utm_medium=articledownload&amp;utm_content=hootsuitelink&amp;utm_campaign=hoosuitecasestudy">Download the Hootsuite Case Study</a>.
<h2>Scoring with eZ</h2>
comScore is a digital measurement and analytical company, with over 1,200 employees serving over 2,000 clients.
By selecting eZ Publish Platform, comScore was looking to move forward on four key fronts:
<ul>
<li>
Marketing automation for increased lead capture and nurture
</li>
<li>
Mobile first with responsive design
</li>
<li>
Analytics availability throughout the organization
</li>
<li>
Multi-lingual content delivery
</li>
</ul>
How did it work out, you ask? comScore’s Senior Director Web Marketing, Ferry Gijzel, sums it up nicely.
<blockquote>
“By integrating our Marketing Automation Platform with eZ Publish we can offer more targeted content and a smoother user experience across multiple channels, improving engagement and conversion.
Connecting the dots between Eloqua, eZ and Digital Analytix allows us to continuously track performance and optimize where needed.
During January to July 2014 the average engagement (measured by the number of page views per visit) increased by 19.2% compared to the same period in 2013. In that same time frame, the average share of browsers that converted directly by requesting a product demo showed an increase of 25.7%”
</blockquote>
comScore’s story provides us with an excellent example of a brand making use of eZ Publish Platform for more than just content management.
As discussed in our premier featured article, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/ez-publish-platform-content-management-marketing-ecommerce-under-the-same-roof/" target="_blank">eZ Publish Platform covers the three major bases of content management, eCommerce and marketing automation</a>. And as you can see, it delivers not just on paper, but in practise too.
<a href="http://ez.no/Customers/Case-Studies/Create-Deliver-Optimize-the-comScore-Way?utm_source=cmscritic&amp;utm_medium=articledownload&amp;utm_content=comscorelink&amp;utm_campaign=comscorecasestudy">Download the comScore Case Study</a>.
To find out more about eZ Publish, <a href="http://ez.no/Products/The-eZ-Publish-Platform" target="_blank">check out eZ Systems’ website</a>. You can also <a href="http://ez.no/Forms/HTML-forms/Request-a-Demo">request a personal demo of eZ Publish Platform</a> to see the many features for yourself. 
Also, stick around for more eZ coverage, including articles on their next generation content management solutions, eZ Platform and eZ Studio, launching in Q4 2015.

From Hootsuite to comScore: Success with eZ Publish Platform

Workbooks, the UK-based leading CRM vendor, today announces the launch of its new events module. The module helps mid-market organisations create and publish an event online, manage the registration process from start to finish and ensure a smooth on-the-day management.
<h2>Your events, managed</h2>
The events module extends Workbooks capabilities to managing events of all types – from stand-alone training courses and seminars to multi-stream conferences – helping marketers provide a seamless experience for their prospects and customers.
The new module builds on the functionality of the existing Workbooks campaign record and event management web portal. It brings efficiency gains to every aspect of event management, from audience segmentation and event promotion to managing attendees – paying or not – and speakers. And all from a single, fully integrated platform.
<h2>Fast-growing platform</h2>
The new module is the latest in a series of fresh features to be added to Workbooks' cloud-based CRM applications over the past year, including marketing automation, web analytics, contact information-gathering and integration with Zapier, which allows customers to link their CRM with over 750 apps such as Xero and Wufoo.
Workbooks is developing fast and is increasingly seen by mid-market organisations as the automatic choice of CRM provider.From planning to ticket printing
Every aspect of event management is covered by the new module:
– Create event – with the option of allocating products, which can be individual items, such as a ticket, or a bundle of products, such as a table for 10 people at a dinner; – Create individual sessions within the event; – Manage delegate status; – Manage all communication to the target audience and delegates, whatever their preferred communication channel; – Manage orders and invoices and track payment, as well as manage international tax rules (for VAT etc.); – Website integration – publish events on the website, with the option to purchase tickets or any other event-related product; and – Print tickets for the event.
Workbooks CEO John Cheney said: “This new addition to our suite of CRM applications streamlines every aspect of event management and it's highly configurable so our customers can adapt it to suit their specific needs.”
“The new module offers a great alternative to RegOnline or Eventbrite with the added advantage of being part of a fully integrated CRM solution, with all the benefits this brings in the areas of efficiency, insights, reporting and communication. No need for re-keying information, transferring data from one system to another. Everything is available at your fingertips in one platform: Workbooks.”
“We think it's a game-changer for SMEs and growing businesses looking to maximise their return on investment for events.”
The events module is available to Workbooks users from Spring 2018.

Workbooks extends its CRM and Marketing Automation offering with a new events module

Call Tracking + AI 

Call Tracking + AI that Turns Calls into Leads

#ffffff

Every marketer who’s ever been responsible for content marketing knows that keeping content fresh, relevant, and up-to-date is incredibly important. Part of any content marketing strategy involves keeping your website populated with meaningful content that will engage and draw users to your site. 
However, the urgency of content creation means that you may not be reviewing your website design as often as you should. 
A good website with a modern feel and quality navigation enhances the user experience and drives repeat visits. There’s an old adage that you should update your website with a completely new design every year or two. Realistically, this may not be possible and you might be thinking that if your website is currently working for you, why change it?
Well, there are a couple of reasons. The first is that even a well-designed, functioning website gets stale from both the perspective of design and technology quite quickly. Everyone has had the experience of going to a website and immediately recognizing that it hasn’t been updated in years. 
Those signs include missing key elements such as rotators, newer social media icons, or relying heavily on flash technology. It’s particularly egregious when your website doesn’t respect that many of your visitors will be viewing the site using mobile devices. 
This is most noticeable when your website lacks responsive design or a dedicated mobile version. Another dead giveaway that your site has not been updated recently is that the screen resolution it was designed for is too large for mobile devices, and too small for a modern desktop monitor. Where you’ve got screen real estate, you need to use it, and where it’s not available you need to ensure that only the most relevant content is presented.
So let’s say that you recognize your website is starting to get a bit dated. How do you justify to your CFO or CEO the costs associated with a complete website redesign? Every marketer I’ve ever talked to has struggled to get the budget they need to be successful on the tactical day-to-day activities of marketing. Getting enough budget to redesign your website is often like pulling teeth. So, to help justify your decision and get you the budget that you need here are a few tips on calculating the ROI of a website redesign:
<ol>
<li>
If your site is not optimized for mobile and tablet usage, use your CMS or Google analytics to determine how many visitors are coming to your site using these devices. Being able to demonstrate the user experience and quantify the number of affected visitors can go a long way making your case.
</li>
<li>
If your analytics show that people on mobile or tablets navigate away from your site faster than those on desktops, you have a compelling reason to modernize your website with responsive design.
</li>
<li>
If your site is heavily dependent on flash technology, those same analytics can help determine how many visitors can’t access your content because they are using an iOS based system.
</li>
<li>
Check for brand consistency. What often happens is that your brand slowly changes and develops over time. If the website has been static for a long period, it immediately shows that there is a gap between your current marketing materials and your existing website. If you can show that your new designs are more effective than your old ones, this will lend weight to your argument that the website needs to be updated.
</li>
<li>
Crunch the numbers. (You know your CFO loves numbers.) Have your conversion rates been dropping over time? How many of your new leads are coming directly through your website forms, landing pages or website “contact us” page? If you’re evidence shows that these channels are less effective than they used to be, you can use that data to calculate the value of the lost opportunities. Use your knowledge of your organizations conversion from leads to closed sales. Estimating lost revenue as a dollar figure may be the most powerful way to justify the budget for a new website.
</li>
<li>
Doing a win/loss analysis of your most recent deals can reveal how important your website and the information on it is to the decision-making process of prospects. You may be able to connect a lost opportunity and the dollar figures it represents to a quote like “… but I couldn’t find the information I needed…” or “… I didn’t realize you offer that product/service”. Even in cases where you have won the deal you may have won “…despite your website.”
</li>
</ol>
So with these tips in mind, you can build a case for a website redesign using strong metrics which makes getting budget approvals significantly easier. Keep in mind, once you have acquired the budget for a website redesign, it’s also a great time to evaluate whether your current CMS has the features and functionality you need to keep your website’s content up-to-date. 
To find out more about picking a quality CMS, you might want to read <a href="http://www.marqui.com/landing-pages/March2014-Newsletter.aspx?%5Bwxactivitytracking%5D">this article</a>.

Determining Your Website's ROI

<a href="http://www.flazio.com/">Flazio</a>.com powers more than 150,000 Websites worldwide, so it’s high time you heard about it, if you haven’t already.
Launched by the Elisa and Flavio, both from the Italian-rooted Fazio household, Flazio has become a popular choice for startups and brands looking to entertain an international audience.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nS7sGLoDoO8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Their Professional plan includes custom domain name usage, 5 5GB email accounts and unlimited bandwidth. The Professional plan comes with an extra-cheap price: 9€/month or 99€/year (VAT included).
Flazio.com also boasts a lucrative <a href="http://www.flazio.com/Partner-Program.php">reseller program for freelance and agencies</a>.
Now though, let’s delve into what Flazio.com <a href="http://www.flazio.com/features.php">offers</a> as a website builder.
<h2>Social</h2>
Flazio.com also offers a unique import function from Facebook personal and brand pages in just a matter of one click. This functionality also stretches to Twitter and Linkedin.
As Flazio.com does most of the work by pulling data directly from existing social media profiles, this provides non-technical users with an excellent avenue into website building.
<h2>One For All</h2>
Flazio.com has been built to cater to all business types. And it's just not matter of different templates.
Features like eCommerce functionality, photo galleries, a booking engine and even real-estate modules which boast complete databases, ensure that most brands can flourish with Flazio.
<h2>Visible Everywhere</h2>
First and foremost, Flazio.com builds purely responsive websites, which are ready to be viewed and used by visitors on desktops, tablets and smartphones.
Flazio.com also boasts advanced SEO (search engine optimization) and analytics features to help get websites in front of more eyes – and to inform website owners of when that happens.
Furthermore, Flazio.com users can also implement Flazio’s multi-lingual capabilities, which includes the quick and simple translation of text boxes.
<h2>Free(dom)</h2>
Flazio.com offers a package totally free of charge, and follows up by providing freedom when it comes to design, too.
You can start with either a template or a blank page, before moving things around using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. So, anybody can design a truly functional website.
<h2>Collaborative</h2>
Got a team together? Flazio.com makes it easy for users to work together on the same page, and they can even see things changing in real time.
Not only does this streamline design and publishing processes, but it also saves time. For example, an Editor is able to proofread text as it’s being written.
<h2>Customer Centric</h2>
Last but not least, Flazio.com puts the customer first.
The team behind Flazio.com prides itself on fast email support, live chat and customer service via social media.
To learn more about Flazio.com, <a href="http://www.flazio.com/">visit their website</a>.
Please Note: This is a sponsored article.

Introducing Flazio: Flexible, Multi-lingual & Free

dotCMS announced today that it has made <a href="http://dotcms.com/downloads/">dotCMS 1.9.1</a> available. This follows the July 27 release of 1.9.
“We have never launched a point release with this number of new features,” commented Will Ezell, CTO of dotCMS. “I am very proud of our R&amp;D team, the Community and Partners for knocking this out 7 weeks after a major release.”
The major additions of 1.9.1 include:
<ul>
<li>Multi-lingual backend now includes Spanish, French, German and Conversational Chinese translations. Thanks to our Partners CGX AG and Asta Systems!</li>
<li>Red-lining : “what's changed” tracks additions, deletions before publishing.</li>
<li>Lucene/Nutch based site search. The new site search can index many different file types such as HTML, XML, ZIP, OpenDocument, Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), PDF, JavaScript, RSS, RTF, MP3 (ID3 tags).</li>
<li>Additionally, we have created an admin tool to allow a site administrator to build new indexes on a scheduled basis.</li>
<li>New I/O friendly disk cache implementation speeds page delivery and overall</li>
<li>throughput.</li>
<li>JSP/Velocity integration tool eases legacy/enterprise system integration by allowing JSPs to be wrapped by velocity templates and content.</li>
<li>Improved starter site ships with Events calendar, more demonstrations, Google Maps and Google Analytics.</li>
<li>Multi-host sites will exclude system content by default, more cleanly separating content that lives on specific hosts.</li>
<li>Multi-host sites log you into the host that you are viewing by default.</li>
<li>Community contributed JSON Tool – server side JSON handling that allows you to consume and reuse JSON from remote systems – thanks Michael Fienen (@fienen)!</li>
<li>Community contributed email Tool – scripting friendly tool allows email communication from within Velocity – thanks Chris Falzone (@chris_falzone)!</li>
<li>A number of minor bug fixes and improvements.</li>
</ul>
All of the improvements listed above are available in the Community Edition of dotCMS, with the exception of Red-Lining. All 1.9.1 features will be included in all Enterprise products.
About dotCMS dotCMS is an enterprise-grade, open source J2EE/Java Web Content Management System. The system allows those with moderate or limited technical capability to make massive changes in a site. This allows corporations, institutions and organizations to move at a quicker pace by removing the need for application development talent on the Web Team.
Among those who run on dotCMS Enterprise Edition include Toyota, Hospital Corporation of America, Thomson Reuters, University of Texas, Aquent, State of Ohio, and the Government of Quebec.
For more information go to <a href="http://www.dotcms.com">www.dotcms.com</a>

dotCMS 1.9.1 adds red-lining, multi-lingual backend and improved search

Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC), the preeminent provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software, today announced the release of Open Text ECM Suite 2010, the largest innovation effort in the company’s history to create the industry’s most comprehensive, fully integrated ECM solution suite.
The unique value of ECM Suite 2010 is its combination of technologies covering all aspects of ECM. Open Text adds wide ranging new functionality linked through numerous integration points covering 90 products and modules, and spanning everything from compliance, business process management and portals to integrated mobile support and enterprise information archiving. The result gives customers the most complete content management system available to handle the vast array of content types, languages, applications, user needs and business processes in their organizations.
ECM Suite 2010 gives organizations the power to move ECM beyond projects or functional deployments, where ECM crosses systems and departments to add greater value, helping to reduce costs and increase productivity. The strength of the ECM Suite is its core services layer — process services, user interface services and the cornerstone of the ECM Suite, the Enterprise Library (formerly Livelink), with integrated archiving, metadata management, search, and records management. All ECM Suite components integrate with this layer. ECM Suite 2010 adds leading capabilities from acquired technologies to further strengthen the ECM Suite:
<ul>
<li>Open Text Portal (from Vignette): Offers a powerful, standards-oriented portal capability that publishes content from the ECM Suite, from processes, from the Web, Open Text Social Communities, and other content sources.</li>
<li>Open Text Web Experience Management (from Vignette): Offers a dynamic Web content management capability for the ECM Suite. It can publish content from the Enterprise Library, Open Text Social Communities and Open Text Media Management. It can also publish into the Portal. Web content can be archived and managed with the ECM Suite.</li>
<li>Open Text Social Communities (from Vignette): Adds dynamic social and community intranet and extranets capabilities to the ECM Suite. Content can also be archived and put under records management.</li>
<li>Open Text Content Analytics, Semantic Navigation (from Nstein): Adds content analytics technology into the ECM Suite, allowing users to find content faster based on its meaning. Semantic Navigation is now also available as part of Web Experience Management.</li>
<li>Open Text Capture Center (from Captaris): Fully integrates imaging and optical character recognition components.</li>
<li>Open Text Media Management (from Artesia): Open Text has also integrated Open Text Media Management with Web Experience Management.</li>
</ul>
“The chaos and risks of content in organizations continues to grow but we’ve focused on innovation to help our customers meet those challenges,” said Open Text Chief Technology Officer Eugene Roman “Over the past several years, Open Text has aggressively moved to a services-based architecture and implemented sophisticated development processes that enable us to quickly and efficiently integrate new and future functionality no matter if organically developed or acquired. As the biggest R&amp;D achievement in Open Text’s history, ECM Suite 2010 will help our customers easily plan their future ECM strategies.”
Innovation: New Capabilities ECM Suite 2010 includes expanded features to improve social collaboration and mobility, manage compliance and enrich the user experience, so users can work faster, while driving productivity and ROI for organizations. Social collaboration is embedded into the fabric of ECM Suite 2010, offering capabilities such as discussions, forums and wikis. Open Text Pulse allows ECM Suite users to engage in microblogging, follow co-workers, share content, find subject-matter experts, all in a compelling interface that helps users be productive. As part of the ECM Suite, these social media capabilities can be fully secured and managed under compliance rules.
John Tropea, Global Facilitator, Communities of Practice from global engineering firm Hatch, said, “I like that Open Text Pulse allows you to interact and build discussions around a document rather than in a separate place like email. All the micro-decisions that went into a deliverable are now recorded by default — the real corporate memory.”
For interoperability with existing content repositories and applications across a large enterprise, ECM Suite 2010 provides support for the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard. This allows customers to access content from CMIS-certified systems and content repositories. Likewise, CMIS-compliant applications can access content in the Open Text Enterprise Library.
ECM Suite 2010 also adds support for all three major virtualization environments: VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V and Oracle Virtualization.
Designed for Adoption Knowing the importance of a great experience to drive viral adoption, reduce training, and help users work faster, Open Text made significant user interface changes in ECM Suite 2010 based on the latest Web standards, continuing to make the software more intuitive, customizable and extendable to mobile devices. The new design lets users customize their experience, using custom columns, hiding unnecessary menus and creating personalized filters. To further support user adoption, the search experience has been enhanced, and Open Text has also added facetted browsing, which lets users leverage metadata to navigate through vast volumes of content.
With ECM Suite 2010, Open Text also developed multilingual metadata, language interface switching and the ability for customers to localize the application language to their organization using company-specific dictionaries.
Built for Performance Performance improvements in ECM Suite 2010 also add to user adoption through faster response time, and by serving up relevant content and search results incredibly fast, so that users can quickly navigate and organize content. Open Text also added speed and performance improvements in other areas, for example, in records management where large-scale records dispositions, which used to take 2.5 hours of processing time in benchmark tests, can now be done in 15 seconds, adding to the company's traditional strength in information governance.
Performance improvements at the server level mean that a smaller number of server instances need to be deployed to support the same level of scalability, freeing up capacity for more functional components on the existing infrastructure environment. The thorough optimization of the ECM Suite code results in much higher throughput rates in benchmark tests.
For more information on ECM Suite 2010, go to: <a href="http://www.opentext.com/2/global/sol-products/sol-pro-open-text-ecm-suite.htm">http://www.opentext.com/2/global/sol-products/sol-pro-open-text-ecm-suite.htm</a>
Managing Content in the Cloud Many of the fundamental ideas that drove the development of ECM Suite 2010 are captured in a new ECM book called Managing Content in the Cloud, where Open Text Executive Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer Tom Jenkins talks about how ECM is forever changing the way organizations do business. The book prescribes effective solutions, looks at key technologies, and includes 50 innovator stories of how Open Text users are using the ECM Suite to solve problems. For more information, go to: <a href="http://www.opentext.com/2/global/company/company-ecm-book.htm">http://www.opentext.com/2/global/company/company-ecm-book.htm</a>

Open Text Unveils ECM Suite 2010

‘Big data’ is certainly the buzzword of the moment, but it's also one bandwagon that big brands actually should be jumping on.
Most larger business already have bucket loads of data floating around in their systems. but all of this information is useless without the means to analyze it. Enterprise analytics platforms allow enterprises to gather and analyze this data so that informed and effective business decisions can be made.
<img alt="bigstock-Office-desk-24442193.jpg" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/R5EmqiRyeqKv3Xk7Ny1qpNyIUIVnurgLM0VHtQ9kZHCX1a9jVXs4eYAPP74nCXh8mYykvSZwJvJpUR-Oa0LOmPuKaC207vABWusCT7AasWyTy33GsmjBqV7X1KU1u8cam8ssSQOw" />
This is why finding the right analytics tool is essential in order to gain an insight into the business as a whole, and not just on a departmental level.
You can check out my 8 Awesome Alternatives to Google Analytics over <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/8-awesome-alternatives-to-google-analytics/">here</a>, but when it comes to larger enterprises – the requirements can be little more extensive than these platforms allow.
If you’re involved with a larger enterprise, you may need an analytics tool that’s more system driven and intricate. There are a few of these analytics tools out there that vary in terms of value/efficiency, so I’ve sourced the best of the bunch. In this post, you’ll find 6 reliable enterprise analytics systems that definitely hit the mark.
<h2>1. Moz Pro</h2>
Moz combines an easy to understand analytics platform with great data mining capabilities and research tools. So, whatever data you’re looking for – you won’t need to be an expert to find it. This platform allows users to track inbound marketing metrics, creates reports, and provides recommendations based on the findings.
One particularly useful tool is the Fresh Web Explorer, which allows you to track and analyze the latest online mentions and links to your business name/brand.
The Moz Pro Academy also offers short video lessons for anyone who needs a helping hand, making it a great choice for business owners who need to hit the ground running.
Find out more about Moz Pro <a href="https://moz.com/products/pro">here.</a>
<h2>2. ComScore</h2>
ComScore has become an industry standard for measuring digital movements and behaviors. Its analytics product – Digital Analytix Enterprise – combines audience demographics with data analysis, to drive growth and reduce costs for enterprises.
This analysis tool isn’t as user friendly as some of its competitors, but that won’t be an issue for seasoned marketers. Digital Analytix Enterprise also has a number of flexible features, including the advanced reporting tool – which allows users to choose from various methods of sharing key data and information within their organizations.
Find out more about ComScore <a href="https://www.comscore.com/Products/Enterprise-Analytics">here.</a>
<h2>3. Crazy Egg</h2>
Crazy Egg is a powerful analytics tool for measuring user behavior and engagement. With the heatmap and scrollmap, you can see exactly where your customers are clicking, what they’re clicking most, how many pages they scroll through – and where they stop scrolling. Crazy Egg will also tell you where those customers came from in the first place. On their website, they call it an ‘x-ray’ system – and it is. Plus, I’ll bet it’s cheaper than hiring a PI.
Crazy Egg can be set up in just a few minutes and it’s really easy to navigate once you get started.
Find out more about Crazy Egg <a href="http://www.crazyegg.com/">here.</a>
<h2>4. IBM Enterprise Marketing Management</h2>
IBM Enterprise Marketing Management is a highly developed tool that’s perfect for larger businesses and it has seen rapid growth as part of the company’s overall service offerings.
IBM’s analytics service aims to improve business efficiency, accuracy, and forecasting and it provides a range of features that will appeal to all enterprises – such as business intelligence, predictive analysis and enterprise performance management.
Find out more about IBM Enterprise Marketing Management <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/category/marketing-merchandising">here.</a>
<h2>5. Oracle</h2>
Oracle offers a range of business analytics services, including the popular Enterprise Performance Management tool. This product offers excellent data sourcing and visual analytics tools, alongside its planning and forecasting capabilities. Oracle EPM aims to assist businesses to improve performance, and better understand and utilize pertinent information.
With the extensive range of services available to enterprises, Oracle is pretty intricate, so it will suit businesses who are ready to take the time to assess which options are best for their business, and also allow for sufficient training and implementation.
Find out more about Oracle <a href="https://www.oracle.com/applications/performance-management/index.html">here.</a>
<h2>6. SAS</h2>
SAS has been a key player in the business analytics field for a number of years now. With its analytics tool, Enterprise Miner, businesses can quickly develop models to streamline the data mining process.
The SAS Rapid Predictive Modeler empowers users with limited statistical skills, by allowing them to generate their own models, and the easy to use GUI guides them through the data mining workflow tasks.
Find out more about Enterprise Miner <a href="http://www.sas.com/en_us/software/analytics/enterprise-miner.html">here.</a>
<h2>7. Piwik Enterprise</h2>
Piwik offers a premium service to fulfil the needs of Enterprise users. Piwik Enterprise can be tweaked to suit your business needs, and it offers features such as a self hosted platform, advanced server-side set-up, user support, and assistance with technical development.
Piwik will also monitor your account 24 hours a day to ensure that any issues are instantly detected and fixed.
Find out more about Piwik Enterprise <a href="https://piwik.pro/enterprise/">here.</a>
<h2>8. Adobe Analytics</h2>
Adobe Analytics offer a range of options which can provide real-time analytics and detailed segmentation across multiple channels of your business.
With Adobe Analytics Complete, you’ll gain a complete understanding of your business by utilizing features such as cross-channel analytics, a 360 customer analysis, and predictive marketing.
Find out more about Adobe Analytics <a href="http://www.adobe.com/marketing-cloud/web-analytics.html">here.</a>
<h2>9. Woopra Enterprise Edition</h2>
Woopra Enterprise Edition is a customer focused analytics platform that helps businesses to better understand customer behaviour by delivering a comprehensive profile for each user. It creates these profiles by integrating information from sources such as your company's web, mobile, email automation, and CRM.
Woopra then provides key insights into individual customer behaviours and tracks users in real-time – allowing for real-time actions to be taken.
Find out more about Woopra <a href="https://www.woopra.com/">here.</a>
<h2>What Works For You?</h2>
Choosing the right analytics platform for your enterprise is no easy task, but hopefully this list has given you a few solid options to consider.
Each of the analytics tools I’ve listed has been designed to make big data analysis accessible for the average user – so you don’t need to be a stats whiz to utilize them to their full potential. And, as you’ve probably noted – most of these platforms offer very similar features.
Ultimately, you should opt for the analytics platform that best caters for your own specific business needs, so it’s important think about your budget, the scale of your business, and your key requirements over the next year.
If you’re already using one of these platforms, or have a suggestion of your own to add to the mix, we would love to hear more in the comments section below.

9 Powerful Enterprise Analytics Systems

grainne-logue

One of the reasons why I love my job as a freelancer is the fact that I have a CMS that is intuitive, logical and includes a slew of tools that you can add on to enhance your website design and content creation. In the CMS world, WordPress is like an amusement park that already has all the best rides but keeps on expanding in order to keep content wizards hooked in with new functionalities. And much like a well-oiled machine, the platform is resilient as it is capable of bouncing back from the not-so-frequent crashes that threaten to jeopardize your content.
I started using WordPress six years ago as a blogging platform that already had a leg up over competitors such as Google’s BlogPost. While the latter was essentially an extended version of Microsoft Word online with formatting and cropping tools, WordPress was more like a combination of Word and Excel. The CMS mimics Word in the way that it can create and format written and visual content if you like to keep things simple, but it has Excel’s ability of entering data into a spreadsheet of churning out impressive results that affect your website’s visual content in the form of GIFs, graphs, layers, charts and videos.
WordPress is known for its SEO capabilities, offering users the chance to create a title, an SEO title, a meta description, a slug, an excerpt, category checkboxes, stock tickers, tags, keywords, alt texts on images and a variety of other tools that help your website gain visibility. The platform also links up with Google Analytics to measure the success rate of your content based on its readability, visual appeal and SEO prowess. If something about your content is off, the CMS tells you what you need to do to improve the quality and visibility of your online content.
A key advantage that WordPress has over its competitors is that it has open code access. Website developers can take advantage of this functionality as it allows them to customize their toolbox or develop new features as they see fit. Having open code access makes the CMS very flexible, drawing in more than 80 million websites, including e-commerce, business, membership and forum sites. The fact that WordPress is so popular makes it easy to find a solid developer anywhere in the world who is familiar with the CMS’ ins and outs.
Plus, WordPress has no shortage of open-source plugins that are already available, allowing content developers to use their coding prowess to create new tools, themes and functionalities. The CMS’ plugins library is massive as it includes a product management tool, a payment services platform, membership access capabilities, stock information in real time, recommendation engines for retail sites and more.
Every great CMS needs to combine functionality with likeability, and WordPress excels in this fact as it has a user-friendly interface in addition to its ever-growing toolbox. Creating content is simple as you can enter content in one of two areas: the “visual” tab or the “text” tab. The visual one will show you what your content will look like, while the text tab has all the code behind the text, formatting and visual aids you are adding to your piece. Less experienced content developers can stick to the simplified visual region, while experienced coders can embed YouTube videos and include side content on the text region with their HTML knowledge.
The CMS also makes it easy to manage content as when you exit a particular piece, you can go back to an overview of all the content you’ve created, as well as the content that your freelancers have created (if you’re the manager or editor). You will be able to see each post as its own section, with the title, author, tags, category, last modified date and other pieces of data about the piece. Plus, you can filter posts and search them based on keywords or phrases.
All in all, <a href="https://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a> is one of the most complete CMS out there if not the most complete, making content creation and content management an easy and convenient experience. Additionally, it’s wide array of SEO and visual tools can enhance the visibility and appeal of your website without any advanced coding techniques. You won’t know how great it is until you try it out and get a feel for it, and I highly recommend you do so as I’ve never enjoyed content creation more than I do now.

Why WordPress Has All the Tools You Need Out of a CMS

karl-utermohlen

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