Articles - Page 184

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

matt-garrepy

dotCMS, a leading-edge, open source Java content management software company, announced that its Board of Directors has appointed <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralph-miller-aa235119/">Ralph Miller</a> as Chief Executive Officer effective October 1, 2017. Miller was also elected to the Board of Directors at dotCMS.
“The timing could not be better for Ralph to become the next Chief Executive Officer of dotCMS. We are at a very exciting inflection point as a software product company and we really wanted someone who could lead us in the next phase of our growth” said dotCMS Co-Founder, Tim Brigham. “Ralph is the type of executive capable of accelerating what we're doing well at dotCMS and disrupting what needs to change. He has a unique ability to combine solid financial oversight, vision and strategy into world-class execution. Ralph will move the company forward with the speed required to capitalize on the opportunities in front of us.”
Mr. Miller was most recently President at Authentic, a leading digital agency based in Richmond, where he was instrumental in guiding the rapid growth of the firm and its acquisition of Create Digital in 2016. 
“When the opportunity came up to run the business, I quickly saw what a good fit it was for me, and having been a partner while at Authentic, I've seen first-hand how unique the dotCMS product is and how the market is shifting towards its particular differentiators,” said Miller. “I am excited and grateful for the opportunity the board of directors has given me. The product is disruptive and we aim to demonstrate to the market that you can have an enterprise-class product that doesn't break the bank in total cost of ownership or mandate the massive amounts of technical development that some of today’s legacy products require.”
About dotCMS
dotCMS is a leading , open source content management system for companies that want innovation and performance driving their websites and other content-driven applications. Extensible and massively scalable, both small and large organizations can rapidly deliver personalized and engaging content across browsers, mobile devices, channels, second screens and endpoints — all from a single system.
Founded in 2003, dotCMS is a privately owned US company with offices in Miami, Florida; Boston, Massachusetts and San Jose, Costa Rica. With a global network of certified development partners and an active open source community, dotCMS has generated more than a half-million downloads and thousands of implementations and integration projects worldwide. Notable dotCMS customers include: TELUS, Standard &amp; Poors, Hospital Corporation of America, Royal Bank of Canada, DirecTV, Nomura Bank, Thomson Reuters, China Mobile, Aon, DriveTest Ontario and ICANN.

dotCMS Hires New Chief Executive Officer

mike-johnston

Liferay, Inc., which makes digital experience <a href="https://www.liferay.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">software for enterprises</a>, today announced the immediate availability of <a href="https://wedeploy.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">WeDeploy</a>, a new cloud platform giving developers the infrastructure, services and hosting capabilities required to quickly build, launch and scale their applications.
“With WeDeploy, we’re releasing a platform designed from the ground up to meet developers’ needs for a powerful, intuitive application deployment solution – and one which we believe also empowers any business to get on the fast track toward meeting their digital transformation and customer engagement goals,” said Brian Chan, Chief Software Architect, Liferay.
WeDeploy removes common backend obstacles so that application developers can focus time and resources on the differentiating features of their products. Businesses creating an application need a fast, reliable deployment method. WeDeploy provides easy application hosting through the cloud with just a few lines of code. By leveraging the Docker ecosystem, developers can use WeDeploy’s powerful hosting capabilities to deploy a fully customizable stack with a preferred runtime platform, application server or database.
Additionally, WeDeploy meets the demands of modern apps for a robust infrastructure, significantly reducing time to market of apps. Through WeDeploy, developers have access to intuitive tools and out-of-the-box capabilities needed for today’s applications, such as GitHub integration, automatic traffic distribution, global DNS routing, application monitoring, log management, application health checks and secure data transfers. Moreover, by offering these services through a unified platform, WeDeploy saves businesses from the consistency issues they may face with multiple service providers.
WeDeploy also acts as an all-in-one platform for prepackaged microservices including user authentication, real-time data and email. From third-party authentication through Facebook or Google to real-time content streaming and search capabilities, these plug-and-play services can be easily implemented with intuitive and versatile APIs.
Liferay’s core enterprise solution – <a href="https://www.liferay.com/digital-experience-platform" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Liferay Digital Experience Platform</a> – allows organizations to achieve digital transformation and provide better customer experiences, and WeDeploy is a natural extension of this vision. WeDeploy can serve to unify a business’s customer experiences across all touchpoints, delivering the real-time data needed to make those experiences consistent. WeDeploy’s advantages in the rapid development and deployment of new tools can also improve business operations and customer service, as well as add agility to the execution of a business’s overall digital strategy.
“Our focus is always on improving experiences, whether it’s the experience of a single developer building an application, or making it quicker and easier for enterprises to execute an omnichannel strategy across every customer interaction,” Chan said.
App developers ready to try WeDeploy can get started here: <a href="http://wedeploy.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wedeploy.com</a>

Liferay Launches WeDeploy, a Powerful Cloud Platform for Fast Deployment of Modern Apps

Today Zoho unveiled Cliq, chat software that blends instant messaging with video, audio, and group conferencing to create a unified communications system for organizations of any size. Available immediately in native, web and mobile versions, Cliq integrates with Zoho and third-party applications to bring relevant data from those applications into the Cliq window, providing chat participants contextual information about the topic being discussed.
“More companies around the world are turning to chat for real-time, internal collaboration,” said Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho Corp. “But sometimes text isn’t enough, and chat software must also be able to handle voice and video communications as well as the documents, images, and other data related to the work at hand. Cliq supports this kind of dynamic, company-wide collaboration. And it provides a degree of future-proofing thanks to its unprecedented extensibility and strong developer community.”
Inside Cliq
Through Cliq, Zoho provides users with real-time messaging between team members and different departments to foster rapid decision making. Files of any format can be shared via the chat window in seconds. Separate channels can be created for individual teams, specific projects, company-wide discussions, and other collaboration. Channels can reduce the need for time-consuming meetings, while still keeping everyone in the loop.
In addition to its messaging capabilities, Cliq raises the bar for enterprise chat with a wealth of built-in features, including: 
Group video calls – Cliq’s unique group video calling feature, PrimeTime, removes the chaos of a normal group video call and lets people take turns speaking to the other video callers. Before they can speak to the group, participants must click the “Request to speak” button, and during the video conference.
Audio and video calls – In addition to PrimeTime, Cliq also supports standard, one-on-one and group calls — both audio and video — which users can start right from their chat window. During the call, users can send texts or share files whether they are using the Cliq native or web application as well as one of the mobile apps.
AI-driven communications administration – Cliq delegates administrative tasks to Zoho’s Intelligent Assistant, Zia. Users can create event and meeting reminders in Cliq, and participants receive reminders before their meeting. Additionally, Zia creates the group chat before the meeting, adds all the participants, reminds them of the meeting, asks them to share files, takes notes, shares minutes of the meeting, and archives the group chat for future reference. 
Zoho and third-party integrations – Cliq works with most Zoho apps, fetches information from the other Zoho apps and lets users view it in their chat window. Additionally, Cliq is available as a chat tool inside other Zoho apps. Cliq also works with popular third-party apps including YouTube, Google Drive, Eventbrite, Crashlytics, and 20 more.
Animated emojis – As part of the Cliq launch, Zoho is rolling out nearly 100 new, animated emojis – Zomojis – that have been created exclusively for Cliq. The Zomojis take animated emojis to a new level with their vibrant color and rich detail.
Cliq for the Developer
Beyond its rich, out-of-the-box functionality, Cliq can easily be extended to support the unique collaboration demands of any organization. It offers a platform built with Zoho's own scripting language, Deluge, which allows users to create chat bots in Cliq and use them to automate internal processes.
Similarly, developers can create integrations for Cliq and publish them in the Zoho Marketplace and charge customers to use them. There will be no server requirements, and therefore no maintenance costs. Zoho does not collect any commission for promoting these integrations to customers.
The company is also open sourcing its library of Zomojis under the GPL v3 license, so the animated emojis can be freely integrated with third-party apps. Zomoji keyboards for iOS and Android will also be open sourced and published on Github.
“Developers can use the Cliq platform and integrate Cliq with any software that has an open API,” said Vembu. “It takes no more than 15 minutes to integrate. Once it’s integrated, Cliq bots and commands fetch information for users when needed. For example, users can check traffic in their area with a traffic bot and Cliq gets you all the info you need.” 
Pricing and Availability
Cliq is available immediately as a web application; a native application for Mac, Windows and Linux; and mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. In addition to the Free plan, Cliq is available in an Unlimited plan, which starts at $3 per user per month and goes down by volume. Cliq is also included as part of Zoho One. Additionally, it will also be a part of Zoho's Workplace, an integrated suite of productivity and collaboration apps. 
For more information on Cliq, please visit <a href="https://www.zoho.com/cliq" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.zoho.com/cliq</a>. To learn more about Zoho, visit <a href="https://www.zoho.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.zoho.com</a>. For Zoho news, follow the company on Twitter at @zoho and on Facebook at <a href="http://www.facebook.com/zoho" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.facebook.com/zoho</a>. The latest news about Zoho products is available on the company blog, <a href="http://blogs.zoho.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://blogs.zoho.com</a>.

Zoho Announces Cliq - Unified Chat Software

<a href="https://www.nuxeo.com/?utm_source=Nuxeo&amp;utm_medium=PR&amp;utm_campaign=Simflofy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nuxeo</a> today announced a strategic partnership with <a href="https://www.simflofy.com/?utm_source=Simflofy&amp;utm_medium=PR&amp;utm_campaign=Simflofy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Simflofy</a>, provider of Content Integration Services. The partnership enables Nuxeo’s customers to intelligently meet their ECM objectives by connecting to content where it lives, whether in legacy Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems or business applications, and removes the cost, pain and risk of content migrations typically associated with ECM implementations. 
“Traditional ECM involves storing all of your content in a single repository. But, enterprises have found that this approach simply doesn’t work and are left with a patchwork of business applications and processes built around different silos. With all those existing applications and processes connecting to content, migrating to a new system represents a huge undertaking,” said Eric Barroca, CEO, Nuxeo. “The partnership between Nuxeo and Simflofy takes a more intelligent approach. Organizations get all the benefits of an ECM system without having to move their content. And, when the organization is ready, they can move their content at their own pace, avoiding the pain of a huge migration.” 
Nuxeo is a complete, cloud-native content services platform that streamlines content-intensive processes by presenting information in context. Nuxeo leverages advanced metadata modeling to ensure that knowledge and case workers only see the information they need, facilitating efficient, informed decisions. Simflofy provides connectivity to a broad range of siloed content repositories, including legacy ECM systems, business and productivity applications, cloud storage and Electronic File Sync and Share (EFSS) solutions. Together, Nuxeo and Simflofy help organizations intelligently achieve their ECM objectives.
“Customers around the world leverage Simflofy to break down silos and consolidate content repositories. We help customers that need to manage billions or even tens of billions of documents, and Nuxeo is the only Content Services Platform we’ve found that scales to the numbers that Simflofy’s Content Integration Server was designed to support,” said Mark Lugert, CEO, Simflofy. “We're excited about working with Nuxeo because it is a modern Content Services Platform, built for the Cloud and the world of big data.” 
About Simflofy:
Simflofy breaks down content silos. Simflofy’s Content Integration Services provides access to content from over twenty different Enterprise Content Management and Electronic File Sync and Share platforms through a single service. Those same Content Integration Services can be used to migrate content from over sixty different ECM, EFSS, email servers and other document platforms. Simflofy was designed to support federations and migrations with billions to tens of billions of documents. Simflofy has customers around the world in various verticals including Finance, Insurance, Manufacturing and Government.
About Nuxeo:
<a href="https://www.nuxeo.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nuxeo</a>, developer of the leading, cloud-native content services platform, is reinventing enterprise content and digital asset management. Nuxeo is fundamentally changing how people work with both data and content to realize new value from digital information. Its cloud-native, hyper-scalable content services platform has been deployed by large enterprises, mid-sized businesses and government agencies worldwide. Customers like Verizon, Boeing, Electronic Arts, and the Department of Defense have used Nuxeo's technology to transform the way they do business. Founded in 2008, the company is based in New York with offices across the United States and Europe. Additional information is available at <a href="https://www.nuxeo.com/?utm_source=Nuxeo&amp;utm_medium=PR&amp;utm_campaign=Simflofy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.nuxeo.com/</a>

Nuxeo and Simflofy Partner to Help Organizations Intelligently Achieve Their ECM Objectives

Kleiber Digital, a leading expert in JCR Content has launched JECIS, the very first E-Commerce framework for CMS solutions. Instead of trying to integrate a CMS into an E-Commerce system, JECIS is built directly into a CMS, allowing developers and authors to build commerce-driven Web/Digital Experiences using all the features and capabilities of their CMS solution.
JECIS is based on the JCR Content Repository standard, the foundation of such cutting-edge CMS solutions like Adobe’s Experience Manager, Magnolia CMS, Jahia DX and others. It is expected that JECIS will significantly change the way that commerce driven Digital Experiences will be built in the future.
<ul>
<li>JECIS is installed directly into a JCR compliant CMS, within a few minutes.</li>
<li>No integration needed, no complex commerce engines, no configuration hassle, no costly licenses for E-Commerce or RDBMS required.</li>
<li>Marketers (Authors) manage all the commerce content, from Stores, Products, Clients to Sales Tax, Shipping and Payments, everything. • Take full advantage of the CMS capabilities, from templates/components/dialogs over building Web Experiences, to preview and publishing.</li>
<li>No new languages or systems to learn. Use Sightly, Freemarker, JSP or JS frameworks as provided by the CMS.</li>
<li>JECIS is content-centric. The foundation of JECIS is the commerce-content, not the application!</li>
<li>By taking full advantage of the CMS capabilities, the time-to-market of commerce-driven Web experiences will be significantly lower than with traditional integration solutions, saving time and lowering costs. The big advantage of JECIS however will be running the Web experience. Analytic tools will guide marketers to improvement opportunities and marketers can do the according content updates, immediately.</li>
</ul>
“JECIS does not really compare to the ATG’s and Hybris’ of this world. The objective behind JECIS was not to build another tool, but to build an E-Commerce framework that enables developers to create compelling commerce experiences with commerce content managed completely by Marketers.” explained CEO Giancarlo F. Berner.
With JECIS it is now reality to use the full capabilities of a CMS solution to build pulse-pounding and engaging commerce experiences, without the need of a traditional E-Commerce system.
Why JECIS? Some Background Information 
“Since their inception, E-Commerce Platforms have been a pain to build Web sites with, especially when you compare the process with modern CMS solutions” Giancarlo F. Berner explained. “In 2006 a friend of mine, Ruben Reusser, the CTO of headwire.com, wrote an integration API to use KonaKart within a Magnolia CMS. After building the first Web solution, it was obvious that these integration concepts don’t have a future. We basically lost all the features and capabilities of the CMS” he continued.“ A few years later, in 2010, Giancarlo F. Berner presented a prototype of a JCR compliant E-Commerce API to a group of Adobe PMs at Adobe in San Francisco. At that time, Adobe was using Day Communique to build their site adobe.com. “That presentation convinced me that, if built the right way, it is possible to use a CMS to build E-Commerce Web solutions.” Giancarlo continued.
With today’s launch of <a href="http://www.jecis.com/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">JECIS</a> it is possible to use any JCR-compliant CMS solution to build commerce-driven Web experiences!

Kleiber Digital launches JECIS – The First E-Commerce Framework for JCR-compliant CMS Solutions

<a href="http://canva.com">Canva</a> is a user-friendly design tool that makes it possible for businesses, marketers, bloggers, and other individual professionals to create eye-catching images without graphic design experience.
The online design solution offers users a wide array of features, including drag-and-drop design creation, quality photographs and illustrations, layouts, and fonts. With this tool, users can take their ideas and turn them into a design that can then be printed, downloaded, or shared on social media.
To find out if Canva is the right choice for you and your business, check out this review: 
<h2>Features </h2>
Canva has a large amount of features users can use to great their graphics and designs, including:
<ul>
<li>
Image cropping
</li>
<li>
Adding text to photographs
</li>
<li>
Speech and thought bubble creator
</li>
<li>
Image editing, transparency, straightening, and enhancing
</li>
<li>
Thousands of templates for all possible types of marketing collateral, ranging from social media posts to business cards
</li>
<li>
Grids to ensure straight, balanced designs
</li>
<li>
Photo and image frames
</li>
<li>
Stickers and badges for websites
</li>
</ul>
<img alt="Canva-Review-Image1.png" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Ig_1Yh1kaBjBeTME5bm2WZk-oopwwEU_K0OdS1ZKmcWqh-livTxPi1JhjvZBjiHctazfLal03BFp2G5E37AvR-WC48uc4SF22_Pr1M_-krFLQ8UqiX00ci-x4cBQ7HYduNgN2QNi" />
There are thousands of templates to choose from, with options to use pre-made layouts, to customize those layouts, or to design your own graphic with the given dimensions.
<h2>Ease of Use </h2>
<img alt="Canva-Review-Image2.png" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/cxvmt71P6SAtiL3EZR08ZR1yKxcTt-CLL291yN9qUKSMuK1MXoF12aLtzsGGfVGSk-Gqa6vgY0-767zrmtg11GbAekytpO68amE9uMpIutq-Mwo1_7nLKzYRZVl1NhkabeCzTtNZ" />
Canva makes it incredibly easy to create designs without any design experience or know-how.
When users log in, they are taken to the first dashboard, which lets them select the option for creating graphics with their own dimensions or to click on one of the many templates available.
After selecting a template, users are taken to the above dashboard. They can scroll through the list of layouts, or can create their own from scratch. There are numerous free templates available, but the more high-quality templates require users to pay. These are just $1, so the cost isn’t exactly all that expensive.
Users can add elements (graphics, illustrations, doodles, photos, etc.), text (including pre-made text layouts), different backgrounds, or their own photographs and images. This is a high level of customization and versatility, and all of these actions can be performed through simple drag-and-drop functions.
Canva is very easy to use, which means it takes very little time at all to create stunning images, infographics, or designs.
<h2>Customer Support </h2>
<img alt="Canva-Review-Image3.png" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Zi9OeptG_A5lTghCdYxxf8wt9gfSSSPEa7iggb0dxvo3Dnx0YK18mGWl1b60Qb3_lcIscX8SoF-LuWyXWBcyONzKp7PKqEJWgYv9XhOowMuu0kMaCbkXrYM5DQP-deNpOJqbEB5c" />
Canva has a full support page, complete with a search bar, articles, and tabs that make it easy for users to quickly find solutions for their problems.
There are some contact forms available for big issues, such as billing problems, but it’s harder to find email contacts or phone numbers for the support team. This can definitely be an issue for many users, especially when time is a concerning factor.
<h2>Pricing </h2>
<img alt="Canva-Review-Image4.png" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/vy1LU8UWw4vl9aZ7onFbQOqM35Ih-2xBDRpS-q1PLdUSw9qLhMJQ2oFgiN0Ks2kfdJ4USp2lfLXlG3SGvzBQjNiWRE-DvGvPygS5Q-e5kabvLEQeu081bXEodjeHwWiTF1kkZKEo" />
While users can get a lot of things done, and create great designs, with the free account, the paid accounts do offer far more options that many professionals would find necessary.
If you choose to go with the Canva for Work plan, it will cost $12.95 per month for each user.
The Canva Enterprise doesn’t have a listed price, but does permit teams with more than 30 members. This would be the best option for businesses or organizations with large marketing teams.
<h2>The Verdict </h2>
Canva is an incredibly easy to use, reliable online design tool that has a large amount of loyal users and glowing testimonials.
The drag-and-drop functionality makes designing eye-catching designs simple and quick, even for those that are not tech-savvy or even particularly artistically inclined. There are thousands of templates and layouts available, and even the free options have high-quality images and modern looks that would work very well for all industries.
The pricing plans are inexpensive and fair, especially considering everything that comes with them. However, users can still get what they need out of it without paying a single penny. Those that only use it now and again can always opt to purchase the $1 photographs, layouts, or templates without having to commit to an ongoing payment plan.
The lack of contact numbers is a big drawback, and many users have trouble with billing. This is a definite issue that should not be overlooked when considering whether or not this is the right tool for you. While there are plenty of helpful articles, tutorials, and resources available, many users would find the lack of contact email addresses or phone numbers to be a problem.
<h2><a href="http://canva.com" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Try Canva for yourself!</a></h2>

Canva Review

If your brand is expanding and transitioning to more large-scale campaigns, it needs a landing page platform powerful enough to scale your campaign content. Automating your landing page generation is a step toward improving your marketing strategy and increasing campaign efficiency.
The ideal platform would be able to automate the landing page generation process while maintaining brand consistency and messaging across all landing pages. It shouldn’t just generate one or two landing pages. It should generate 10s to 100s of them – each one with the option to have unique URLs and custom fields.
Updating your landing pages should be as simple as updating a spreadsheet. You start a new spreadsheet and map data fields, such as URL, vendor name, and phone number. Each field is a variable that corresponds to a field in your landing page. With each update to the fields in your spreadsheet, the platform should create new and update existing landing pages in real-time – all the while maintaining the look and feel of the landing pages.
No more are the days of single-handedly making landing pages. Adapt to your brand by implementing tools that keep up with its growth. Choose a platform that auto-generates <a href="https://rallymind.com/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">dynamic landing pages</a> by the hundreds and caters to each individual consumer’s interests.
Optimize your campaign content, while your landing page platform streamlines your landing page generation.

Make the Move Toward Automated Landing Page Management

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

#ffffff

Once a customer has finished purchasing the items they wanted from your site, you need to keep them coming back. Otherwise, you could potentially lose that customer forever.
So, how do you keep them interested? How do you remain relevant to them?
You need to nurture your leads to keep them going through the sales funnel, and that takes more than just a solid branding strategy and quality products.
That’s where <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/out/wishpond" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wishpond</a> becomes useful.
Wishpond is a lead management tool that has a wide array of additional tools integrated into the platform. This makes it easier to take a look at your leads and guide them back through the sales funnel so they buy more products from your eCommerce store.
Check out this review to determine if Wishpond is the right tool for you and your business.
<img alt="Wishpond-Review-Image1.png" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/GevvRrggopDFsUzNcl6mkM1L5CPMnh79_NMG5l37ETYxT3KeTTXSGu4dnmGzRTHktMKuXCd8Fvukoqw-TPjruPtA72pU4ZyCa6uDI-UnCBmiyUZnZJGTJR2O-OclhDnFfQT13pez" />
<h2>Features </h2>
<h3>Landing Pages </h3>
<img alt="Wishpond-Review-Image2-Dashboard.png" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/UTR4ncHSYlJDEEktcDGzPlZzdgHOy_rYHcqywtxhjuu5KCVlE26xXslSRDGiCAQXRF4SZd8ViPogYhTAzbupSm5o_N75jtJRESoFkqQhuJ9jECQ7ZA8YUrUuI5wudj2OtPgoXG8b" />
One of the primary features of Wishpond is the ability to generate and test out your own landing pages. Wishpond does this differently than other platforms in that they’ve designed these pages in a way that is likely to increase the number of leads you generate for your business.
<img alt="Wishpond-Review-Image3-Landing-Pages.png" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/1Bj_Ge10eGU7XhGRKwI6woodOmdUWXu2Y9cu9QBVcZfU5h93WenjbuzkYpLqKD2yKFyOQo3u5lKY1oHVIE5_XHQwbcqGFeR9d563LSXjP6jHOSNJPxFT-WTUn0Urg458Rbprk-yS" />
Once you click on the landing page option from your Dashboard, you are brought to this page. They have a whole host of templates to choose from, with options for either PC or mobile.
Click on one of the many templates, and you can easily dive in and get started on the creation of your landing page.
<img alt="Wishpond-Review-Image3.5-Campaigns.png" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-ZQDk5WqNkRf58viypbrcMm0Qg8hOHZDmVgICEOhGegG4sxB8j7fDCPXrQVca2bR6yB-0V4T-iia375y0hhPXx-TTI8_Qbj-00H6k0evCvz5GyNpAjBnSVkBEamsvBvc6hof41aZ" />
Once you have your landing pages going, the backend allows you to conduct A/B split testing and figure out which campaign is performing the best.
<img alt="Wishpond-Review-Image4-Leads.png" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/QcSmGj9ZEDkJkKRx-YC7gQorNwsg03QcEj7jB-4zaIQVvHsTmd-xnINa1_II1RJmdllqV_fs-YG8EpeLUJfjhso0FGhz7sR8PUhiBrTmZIwJnUMnYUxGSBiKflM7ChUce_q4R6Pb" />
Users can also go a tab over, and get a closer look at how their landing pages are performing. It gives you all of the important stats about your leads, even breaking it down by date. You can then manage your leads for more effective nurturing, including putting them into separate lists.
This dashboard allows your lead lists to be either imported or exported, which would definitely make marketing efforts easier and more effective.
<h3>Marketing Automation </h3>
<img alt="Wishpond-Review-Image5-Automation-Dashboard.png" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/wa-fS_SBkeaXXZBnSSL4BwYizu0xNR7z_7CygbL0Ml6DjMnOeRG40EUF2UVJfCdo8s8uhv74VE2kHeLL1qHoji3vrzLLZgvFNcbMNGHqVGxpWtoGlUysmPaRfLyV8qa311T-MbyM" />
Wishpond offers some excellent email automation tools, making it easier to really nurture the existing leads on your list.
<img alt="Wishpond-Review-Image-6-Create-Workflow.png" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/iy5o0GagUvyrQns8a35jmkpQjaz7OLnQPwhGC1jjf8agINsO6V5ntlk_7f4EOO81VRgWQeZQlp4y5OLn5mXru2VXCgXRhYVuoMdMFwzpv2rPSM_VkoTqm3lKS2TZFvWaIAzKzm9T" />
At the bottom left corner of the of the Automation dashboard, you have the option to create a new workflow.
From there, you’re taken to the above dashboard. This gives options for all of the ways to nurture those leads, from creating a standard workflow to sending out an abandoned cart email.
Regardless of which workflow you choose to automate, you can completely tailor them to your exact standards. You can choose from a whole range of conditions, so your automation starts exactly when you want it to, or when you need it to.
One of the biggest features that works in Wishpond’s favor is the fact you can easily set up these emails in just a few hours, and then keep them running and generating leads long after they’ve been sent out.
<h3>Contests and Promotions </h3>
<img alt="Wishpond-Review-Image5.5- Contests.png" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Ojv1Ub3F6JTurrI4VkfE_qjAl1cTfMbXaRqlxZSFgpnQChN3pKacIvDm-rUSnfiYiyqtoPSrBht5ieq93ECuaUi79S8eZk800C9M5nXNlqZhUHvFMldB4Wl4Gt3GdACrHNjEzfFV" />
One of the best features of Wishpond that you are unlikely to find in most other lead management tools, is the ability to run contests and promotions.
For example, let’s say you want to set up and run a photo contest to promote a new set of headphones you’re selling on your website. You can design the campaign directly through the Wishpond dashboard, and then integrate it seamlessly and effortlessly.
This feature is very straightforward and easy to use, even for those who are not designers or very tech-savvy.
<img alt="Wishpond-Review-Image5.6-Photo-Contest.png" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/KADqbFGFRl7NSoZmrxxcTWnjkWitDxr9CJsT50cTvZ_Fc_GjZQ5qowO2IN3f4_ahjZnHFJ_sMBRROHUWox0WQrfFgeXvBQ3OCuNUwX_8QTjqI0DBjdhKKa3NbtcB4uiHeuWBG23j" />
The modules for these contests and promotions even offer pre-designed templates, so you can just pick one, add your content, and run it without hassle.
<h2>Pricing </h2>
<img alt="Wishpond-Review-Image6-Pricing-Plans.png" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/fKRJ2ZjUGPQnyzc1f01YM0i5u5RzIjvecB-IqrAITjDLK4J7YXj4aHrhXA2WzDXEfxvXzaHwUrX2UJcnSJMLIJJLGqhbPCvyYoH2ihVAApptlx4GP64OADEg4iesfGhMj48WZJIn" />
Wishpond has three pricing plans to choose from, and each of them offers a free 14-day trial that lets you test things out without having to commit right away.
While these plans are a bit pricey, Wishpond has plenty of features that many users would find to be worth the price.
<ul>
<li>
The Starting Out plan is $49 per month and offers unlimited landing pages, unlimited social contests, unlimited popups, email drip campaigns, marketing automation, custom CSS, and up to 1,000 leads.
</li>
<li>
The Everything You Need plan is $99 per month and offers all of the basic options plus A/B testing, custom Javascript, API access, 5 user accounts, and up to 2,500 leads.
</li>
<li>
The Rapid Growth plan is $199 per month and comes with all of the aforementioned features plus first-in-line customer support, free implementation coaching ($1,500 value), unlimited user accounts, and 10,000+ plus leads. The more leads you have, the more the price goes up.
</li>
</ul>
All of the plans offer integrations with popular email marketing tools, such as MailChimp and Salesforce, landing pages, marketing automation, website popups, various forms, and the ability to do A/B testing.
<h2>Customer Service / Support </h2>
<img alt="Wishpond-Review-Image7-Support.png" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/MkhJap3fyU90QOSfy8MVhNbeWcWQPN9ZeYgw_3qsCXDUC8Y4lzvyKdiUa2hW3gZkCRTlPherujAGMfjhhG-YcSvUhL2sTS-45W7JK6ckxyZuMhkEUqdGJ-mHfShIqFiIj9_qiU7N" />
From the homepage, users can scroll to the bottom and find a whole section called Resources, as well as a separate section for Support.
From there, users are taken to the screen shown above, where they can type in their issue or click on one of those blue boxes to be taken to that particular type of help.
The first two pricing plans offer support via chat and email, and the phone support comes when users sign up for the highest pricing plan. The support team seems to be quite responsive, and the website has a whole host of tutorials, articles, and webinars users can check out for help with the lead management process.
The chat box is particularly helpful, especially for those with disabilities that do not make it possible (or at least difficult) to speak on the phone.
<h2>Final Verdict </h2>
Overall, Wishpond is easy to use and has plenty of options for those looking to convert and gain more leads. It also makes it easy to understand what their audience is most responsive to and engages with, which would enable them to adjust their site copy and other marketing collateral.
Some may find it pricey, especially those who need more leads. The final pricing plan is already steep, and the price jumps substantially with each amount of leads. This could be an issue for some people, depending on their company’s budget.
However, the additional tools for email marketing, promotions and contests, landing pages, popups, and forms do make a big difference and set Wishpond apart from other lead management tools.
<h2><a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/out/wishpond">Click here to check out Wishpond for yourself! </a></h2>

Wishpond Review 2017

As part of a series of actions by Google to increase online security, Chrome will flag any HTTP sites using login fields and other input sections as “not secure” starting October 2017. Google has already started marking HTTP sites that collect passwords or credit cards as not secure in Chrome v. 56. Since this change, there has been a 23 percent reduction in visits to HTTP page that prompt a password or credit card info on desktop. 
What are the options to maintain the security of your sites and avoid being flagged?
As Google rolls out these changes, the Chrome team urges websites to transition to HTTPS. HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure that encrypts all communication between browser and website using an agreed-upon “code” that scrambles any messages sent. This keeps information safe from hackers. HTTPS only guarantees a secure connection if users are communicating with real websites, not a malicious website impersonating a legitimate one.
SSL
Aside from transitioning to HTTPS, websites can implement <a href="https://www.devhub.com/blog/2671457-if-ssl-does-provide-a-ranking-boost-devhub-is-ready/">SSL certificates</a>. These certificates establish an encrypted link between browser and web server that HTTP sites don’t provide. The links ensure that all data passed between web server and browser remain private and integral. Allowing automated SSL integration within your domains will certify that your websites will always stay secure. They are quick and easy to implement.
Managing websites/ landing pages with DevHub allows for automated issuance of SSL certificates. This service will help ensure that your websites meet web safety standards and protect your visitors’ information.
“We never wanted to build a company that was scared of what Google would do next…so we always keep up with the latest web standards on behalf of our customers.”

Bulk Manage Website Security with Automated SSL Integration

<h2>The Challenge of Understanding Digital Customer Behavior</h2>
You might think that Fortune 500 companies are so successful that they can easily handle any challenge. In fact, large enterprises face numerous problems and issues that can significantly undermine their businesses.
In the face of constant tough competition, even these companies must constantly work to retain market share and win new markets.

One place where enterprises face various difficulties is website development. This is an essential part of any business, greatly influencing company’s sales, profits, and overall reputation. In this article, we will describe website development practices that are relevant for 2017, and are highly popular among Fortune 500 companies.
The Fortune 500 is 500 of the largest US corporations based on revenue. Published annually by Fortune magazine, the list includes both public and privately held companies with revenues figures that are openly published.
Ambitious companies may set a goal to reach the Fortune 500. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve that milestone due to constantly changing conditions and increased competition. Knowledge of current web development practices provides an opportunity to meet modern market requirements and make it onto the Fortune 500 list.
<h2>User Experience Revolutionizes Web Development</h2>
User experience (UX) has become a key factor influencing the way enterprises conduct business. Forrester research shows that a great user experience significantly impacts revenue: On average, every dollar invested in UX brings $100, an ROI of 9,900%.

There is a huge gap between enterprises that prioritize UX strategies and those that don’t. Let’s consider, for example, how Facebook, #157 in the Fortune list, in 2008 merged Myspace, which used to be the largest social networking site in the world in 2006.
One of the reasons why Myspace lost to Facebook was poor user experience.
At the moment of the company’s collapse, a Myspace employee wrote a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/f09rk/iama_myspace_employee_about_to_be_laid_off_today/">post</a> about the company’s situation on reddit.com. That post drew much attention and many people started to discuss the causes of Myspace’s failure.
The former Myspace user wrote: “I personally find Myspace unusable (moderate older computer) and it got even worse after the redesign of the user interface. A site I can hardly use to listen to a song with load times incredible slow and cpu usage 100% is just not usable for me.”
There were a lot of comments about both poor user interface and user experience. Users were dissatisfied with poor interface design, slow loading time, and the absence of logical structure of web pages. These were considered as the main reasons of Myspace’s failure.

Facebook, with its user-friendly interface, took over Myspace. Thus, user experience is at the core of website optimization.
Today,, many IT industry experts understand the importance of a quality user experience. That’s why there are many UX-related magazines and blogs that teach designers how to make the best websites. For example, a <a href="http://uxmag.com/">Mashable publishing partner</a> offers instructions, analyses, and expert opinions on user experience.
Below we discuss some of the best web development practices that can help enterprises enhance user experience.
<h2>Minimalistic Design: Less is More</h2>
The concept of minimalism is becoming more and more popular in designing the user interfaces of business websites. This trend is followed by many of 500 Fortune companies. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, “perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
The fact that minimalistic design influences people’s attention is based on psychology. According to Gestalt <a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7498455/?reload=true">visual perception laws</a>, minimalism reduces viewer confusion and makes website interaction more effective.

Apple, #3 in the Fortune 500, has long praised minimalist design. Steve Job’s love of simplicity led to Apple’s design revolution. Apple's website has earned a good reputation due to its attractive brand identity and beautiful layouts. Alexa <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/apple.com">ranks</a> this website as #34 in popularity in the US.

This website’s design is minimalistic, with large areas of white space, and focus kept on a main product image. For example, at the time of writing, Apple featured a large image of Apple's Watch series 2.
The focus on main product features and elements makes a website design easier for a user to digest. An effective page should not be overloaded with strong colors, wordy content and intrusive advertising.
<h2>Cards and Grid Layouts Help Structure Information</h2>
Another frequently used web development trend is card design. This helps organize information in neat boxes that create a simple, minimalistic look.
The official website of Toyota, #8 at Fortune 500, reflects this idea. One of the main features of the website is micro-interactions, which provide control, guidance or rewards. They also make the user experience entertaining.

This site structure of the site can be used to simplify the perception of information. It is a creative and practical solution for a website on which contains many sections and pages.
<h2>Interactivity Means Involvement</h2>

Many Fortune 500 companies use striking interaction elements on their websites that are hard not to ignore. This approach to web design is closely connected with the development of such technologies as virtual reality and augmented reality. They expand our perception of how the technology can be adapted for everyday usage.
The leader in this field is Google with its Daydream VR headset. Many other brands also adapt this technology.
With the advent of gadgets and the development of augmented reality technologies, marketing companies have undergone major changes. Websites can now present new products with the help of additional gadgets such as VR headsets. Another new technique is the use of 360º video, which does not require special hardware, and also changes the web development space significantly.

Peugeot, #121 on the Fortune list, conducted a promo campaign by creating a special website promoting the Peugeot 208. This website is an excellent example of new wave of web development and marketing.
At the website you can experience a virtual car ride near a coastline and try to catch a flying dragon with your mouse.
It is a popular practice to develop a separate website to support a new product as a part of a marketing campaign.
The site is not accessible now, but here is a promo video of this campaign: <a href="https://vimeo.com/141514381">Catch the Dragon</a>.

Websites with interactive elements amaze viewers with their beauty and creativity. They attract visitors and allow them to interact with different elements, which has a great influence on the perception of the brand and the company’s image
<h2>Background Videos and Animations Increase Audience Attention</h2>

For example, the main HP website page (#20 on the Fortune list) contains video which presenting the HP Sprocket Photo Printer. This video with vivid colors and dynamic pictures shows product advantages.

<h2>Mobile Friendly Websites Are a New Way of Building Brand Awareness</h2>
According to the data from comScore, “Overall, digital media time spent with mobile is now a whopping 68 percent. The desktop commands just 32 percent of our digital attention”.

In the very near future, smartphones are likely to increase their digital share above the 50% mark. Desktops and tablets will still play a critical role in digital market, but for businesses, it will be important to understand the influence that smartphones have and will continue to have.
Despite this trend, some Fortune 500 website do not represent best web development practices, and are not on the leading edge of mobile adoption. Merkle RKG, a performance marketing agency, noted that about 50% of Fortune 500 company websites don't meet Google’s mobile standards, which will negatively impact their organic search result ranks. Enterprises need to optimize their sites for smartphones both to suit modern uses of the web and to ensure that they rank highly in searches.
<h2>Conclusions</h2>
<ul>
<li>
The best web development practices of Fortune 500 companies are oriented around a customer-based user experience. Companies such as Apple, HP, Peugeot and others have websites that are logically structured and well-designed in terms of technical details and user interface.
</li>
<li>
Minimalistic design is a current trend, and experts have shown a correlation between better perception and minimalism in design. The main focus of a minimalist website should be on the product, and the site should not be overloaded with too many colors and advertising.
</li>
<li>
Card and grid layouts are widespread among the Fortune 500, being used by Toyota, Sony, and many other companies. This design helps organize the information into clear units.
</li>
<li>
Background videos and interactive elements can help focus visitors’ attention on the product. HP and Peugeot use interactive elements in their websites.
</li>
<li>
Adoption for Mobile is an important trend, but many Fortune 500 enterprises haven’t yet made their websites suitable for mobile users. Since Google plans to focus on mobile-friendly sites, these companies will need to make changes soon to remain competitive.
</li>
</ul>

Best Web Development Practices Used by Fortune 500 Companies

Sit down with any business professional, and they’ll tell you all about how absolutely essential marketing is when it comes to building a brand and establishing a strong consumer-brand relationship.
As your business grows and evolves, it will eventually become impossible to maintain personalized, value-driven relationships with every customer or lead that comes your way. This is the point when business owners hire a marketing director to establish performance-driven programs that convert leads into customers.
If the marketing director is doing their job well – and the results keep growing – then the company’s marketing program is going to eventually become too big for them to handle efficiently.
Budget issues are going to pop up. Time and money – precious resources of any business owner – will be shelled out for repetitive tasks like social media updates, emails, and responding to comments on the Facebook page.
Okay, so what are you supposed to do about it?
Invest in marketing automation software.
This is going to play a pivotal role in helping you grow your business and get more leads and sales.

<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/WETfB5_jzbn7hG22mBL_FF3bTMrIjGLTi4CHI4Rkt2RWdRk-W26hmgtUvJ47KTLlNQ3PlgjuwqcKCum9XMnr18xuAc_NdW2syPwn_Iwna0B0m6eLei-csqpR5nOsIvZvGrmHce8H" style="text-align:center" />
<h2>What is Marketing Automation Software?</h2>
Marketing automation is a must-have business software that automates the most repetitive, most common marketing tasks. This includes things like emails, social media, and many website actions.
By using software and its web-based services to automate, manage, and optimize these managing tasks saves business owners valuable time and resources that can be better spent elsewhere within the organization.
Imagine not having to spend hours sending emails, sending webinar invites, doing lead profiling and scoring, creating website forms, doing page building, and conducting A/B split testing.
It would be a dream come true, right? You’d have SO much extra time!
That’s what marketing automation software does.

<h2>The Benefits of Marketing Automation Software</h2>
There are five main reasons as to why your business needs marketing automation software, especially if you’re trying to continue growing and expanding your business.

<h3>1: Marketing automation saves time and money</h3>
With the implementation and utilization of marketing automation software, just one employee is now able to send hundreds, if not thousands, of emails and updates in a significantly reduced amount of time. With that, they are able to do the work of an entire marketing department, yet without the business owner having to shell out the expenses for one.
If you’re like most other small business owners, you don’t have a massive budget to be throwing around. Marketing automation software provides the solution to that problem.
<h3>2: Consistent branding is easier</h3>
<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/liSDnUGqIGhRr7GfIrJrug4hHftvemzOoo8X5QcxG2eXnn2R7Jhu3S0EuEfEe5-oic26dWjhNEgIvs383VENcy-oeoATiDT7aLTHWE1BZfChetWKplEUvmxxM85hGFI6rf4qDdvX" />
<a href="http://www.cms-connected.com/News-Archive/July-2017/Five-Surefire-Branding-Tactics-for-Small-Businesses">Consistent branding</a> is essential for creating and building consumer-brand trust, which drives sales and brings in qualified leads.
With marketing automation, it’s easy to create and maintain that branding presence across multiple channels and platforms, from social media to email newsletters.
Additionally, with all the money you will be saving through the use of marketing automation software, you and your marketing team can spend more time focusing on expanding your marketing efforts to include things like direct mailers or<a href="https://www.textrequest.com/"> texting services. </a>
By expanding your reach, you can cast a wider net and gain more targeted customers than you would have been able to otherwise.
<h3>3: Lead generation and nurturing is faster and easier</h3>
Imagine having to send out <a href="http://www.pardot.com/blog/5-email-marketing-tips-small-businesses/">welcome emails</a> to every single individual lead you connect with.
That would take a vast amount of time and money that you, as a business owner, really don’t need to be spending.
By using marketing automation software, you and your marketing team are able to reach out to a prospective lead from the very first time you interact.
Let’s say your prospective lead likes something you posted on Twitter, and then heads on over to your website. They look around a bit, like what they see, and decide to subscribe to your mailing list.
From that point, you can connect with them immediately through a series of automated actions and solutions. They get a welcome message and confirmation email, and then the automation software takes them all the way through the sales funnel for you.
The marketing automation software also makes it a million times easier to personalize your emails and marketing campaigns, making them more targeted toward yours specific audience. You can build client profiles, taking into account data like past purchase behavior and geographical location.
With a more personalized approach to lead generation, your prospective clients have a targeted sales funnel to go through, and are far more likely to purchase your products and / or services.
<h3>4: Marketing automation offers a high ROI</h3>
<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/2TjCCQA7FwcvStrAKVlJSNHxTomaQQZgQ2yt3TeFKvP5TJ8HxTEEGgbKsZvwdskufa-wKPoiz0qI7Lmz032toOOTQrMwYV3J5AtOpE7-kCUYeAYNth4pfEdu1qF9z9uhzAnxq51h" />
With the automation of your sales processes and the lead nurturing, you can pretty much count on a significant boost in customer retention. Add that to the lead generation, optimization, and management that comes from automating these processes, and you will see an obvious return on investment.
The more customers are flocking to your brand, the more sales you will have. The software really does pay for itself.
<h3>5: Marketing automation software is easy to use</h3>
Considering how marketing automation is all about optimizing and automating the most repetitive of marketing tasks, it’s designed to be easy to use.
Even those employees that are not so tech-savvy will be able to use it with ease, and the vendor you go with when <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/dont-panic-the-ultimate-guide-to-picking-a-marketing-automation-tool/">choosing marketing automation software</a> will provide an explanation and some training for your team.
The best marketing automation software also includes pre-made templates that you can customize through easy-to-use editors that guide you through the entire process from initial creation to final distribution.
There’s no need to spend money on extensive training, or have your employees using coding or anything related to advanced technological background.
The most reliable marketing automation software companies, like Snaptactix, have perfected the process of implementation and make it as easy, versatile, and efficient as possible.
Their software includes critical elements like:
<ul>
<li>
Email automation
</li>
<li>
Marketing automation
</li>
<li>
Landing page creation
</li>
</ul>
If you’re looking to grow your business, marketing automation software is key. This is true regardless of your company size, industry, or budget.

<h4>What’s your go-to marketing automation company? Let me know in the comments below!</h4>

5 Reasons Your Business Needs Marketing Automation Software

Being able to deliver content across channels is one of the biggest challenges a company faces in the modern era.
Thanks to the recent explosion of devices, apps and platforms, consumers are constantly finding new ways to consume content — and they expect their favorite brands to meet and greet them at every turn.
In the old days, you could get away with a traditional CMS for content management and design, because your audience only ever visited your website or app. But those days are well and truly over.
<h2>Get Ready For Even More Channels</h2>
If you think there are too many mainstream channels for your brand to handle at the moment, you’re in for a ride.
The landscape is set to change even more dramatically over the next decade, with technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality and AI home assistants becoming ever more popular.
To survive, brands will need to pivot into these new technologies with speed and quality, all while maintaining their presence on “older” platforms.
With a traditional CMS, such a task would be impossible — and that’s exactly why the world is embracing the headless approach to content management.
<h2>What is a Headless CMS?</h2>
Before we discuss headless content management, let’s take a trip back in time to understand the shortcomings of the traditional CMS.
With a traditional (or coupled) CMS, the content management backend is completely tied to the frontend of the site. This effectively limits what both content publishers and programmers can achieve.
Taking this a step forward we have a headless CMS, one example being <a href="../" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ButterCMS</a>. In this model, the content management backend is totally separate from the front end delivery layer, meaning you can send your content anywhere, to be published in any way, using any technology. For example you can use ButterCMS as a <a href="https://buttercms.com/rails-cms/">Rails CMS</a>, <a href="https://buttercms.com/nodejs-cms/">Node.JS CMS</a>, etc.. This does give you more freedom, control, and security, however it still lacks some benefits of going completely headless.
Similarly, a de-coupled CMS also separates the content from the delivery layer, but it gives you the option of a delivery layer, too.
<h2>Benefits of Headless CMS</h2>
<a href="http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161018005896/en/Gartner-Reveals-Top-Predictions-Organizations-Users-2017">According to Gartner</a>, we’re about to experience a shift in consumer technology that will rock any brand not ready for it.
The consultancy expects that, by 2020, 100 million consumers will shop in augmented reality, while 30 percent of web browsing sessions will happen without a screen.
With a headless CMS, you can be ready for any new channel. Think of it as being channel agnostic.
However, that’s not all headless is good for. Take a look at what else it can do for you:
<ul>
<li>Greater Control: A headless CMS gives you and your developers greater complete control over your content; there are no limitations to any predefined templates or designs.</li>
<li>Everything In One Place: With a headless CMS, you have a single source to distribute all of your content from, which gives you the ability to easily maintain brand standards, no matter the device or platform your publishers are editing or publishing on.</li>
<li>API Ready: Your content is delivered through an API, so it’s less resource intensive and leads to better performance and speed.</li>
<li>Scale &amp; Pivot at Speed: You can scale as high and fast as possible; the lightweight headless CMS allows you to publish as much content as you desire.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Who is Headless CMS For?</h2>
A headless CMS is for any company that wants to future proof its digital presence.
If this sound like you, or your business, then it might be time to consider adopting a headless content management model.
However, if you’re still unsure that all this applies to you, here are some more ways to know that you need to go headless:
<ul>
<li>The Omni-channel Brand: The web isn’t your only focus. You need to reach your audience across multiple channels and want to control the final result of the layout.</li>
<li>Brands Who Want Efficiency: You want to manage all of your content from a single location. You don’t want to manage multiple platforms or use dozens of tools just to get your content out.</li>
<li>Brands Who Want to Scale: You demand the ability to scale. You want to publish as much content as you’d like, without having to pour resources into backend maintenance or storage costs.</li>
<li>You Want to Personalize Content: The headless content management model plays into the hands of brands who are buying into personalization (so, pretty much everybody, right?). That’s because with all your content in one place, it’s easier to tailor before it reaches any front-end delivery layer.</li>
<li>Brand Who Want to Future Proof Themselves: With a headless CMS, it doesn't matter what the future brings in terms of new channels, devices or technology. Your content can go anywhere it needs to be.</li>
</ul>
With all that being said, a headless CMS is still not suited to every project in 2017. If publishing content isn’t a main focus and your website is generally static, the visual presentation of your content isn’t a big concern.
But even in that case, adopting a headless CMS may still make sense in the long-term. After all, you may not need to reach multiple channels and devices right now, but what about in the future? Making the switch before the pressure mounts could save you time, money and endless headaches.
<h2>The Future is Headless, Period.</h2>
Remember when smartphone web browsing overtook desktop browsing? Well, more technological shifts are coming, and just like before, brands will either pivot, or die.
However, buying a responsive WordPress template won’t save you this time. In this fascinatingly (and frighteningly) volatile world of IoT, taking a headless approach to content management is the only way forward. Period.
Channels like Alexa Voice and in-car interfaces are already among us, and the companies who show up on these channels first will be rewarded. And the same applies to whichever new technology is next in line to surprise the market.
Sure, being an early adopter of the headless CMS model can bring some uncertainty, but, the positives outweigh the negatives — especially in the long run.
Are you considering adopting the headless approach to content management? Are you experiencing any barriers to change?

Content Delivery in the Modern Era: Headless CMS

<h3>What is a headless CMS?</h3>
If you know what a headless CMS is, skip this section.
The typical way of building a CMS-powered website is to choose a fully-integrated solution like <a href="https://www.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">WordPress</a> and build your website as a collection of tightly embedded templates. Or if you want more control, you build your own integrated CMS using your preferred tech stack.
Headless CMS solutions like <a href="https://buttercms.com/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ButterCMS</a> are a relatively new approach to content management with many advantages over the “old” way. Headless CMS’s allow you to build websites and apps that are decoupled from their content management tools and integrated via API. This gives you the flexibility to build your front-end using your preferred tools (eg. Rails, Node.js, Angular) while being able to integrate a customized, robust CMS with ease. A headless approach can save your team significant time and money in the initial implementation as well as ongoing maintenance.
<h3>Navigating the choices</h3>
So you’ve decided that a headless CMS is right for you, so you pull up Google and start exploring the options. You find dozens of different CMS’s selling the API-based approach and offering all kinds of features and add-ons. You come across SaaS options charging upwards of a $1000/mo, abandoned open-source Github projects, and confusing terms like “content objects”. You also find articles about WordPress’s API, and using Drupal with separate front-ends.
How do you begin to make sense out of all this? I’ve created this guide to help.
<h3>Breaking down the categories</h3>
Headless CMS’s are a confusing beast. Some new products call themselves “API-first”, whereas many others have evolved to offer an API-based approach.
For example, WordPress recently rolled out a REST API and maintains some client libraries, such as <a href="http://wp-api.org/node-wpapi/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">node-wpapi</a>. Drupal 8 includes a RESTful <a href="https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/api/restful-web-services-api/restful-web-services-api-overview" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">web services API</a>.. Using these API’s, you can integrate any front-end with a WordPress or Drupal instance. Let’s call these “traditional providers”.
On the other hand, there are “API-frst” SaaS offerings like <a href="https://buttercms.com/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ButterCMS</a> that are built solely around API integration.
So, considering traditional vs. headless, what’s the better approach?
It depends. Both options work. If you’re familiar with a traditional open-source solution like WordPress or Drupal, leveraging their API’s for front-end freedom may seem attractive. But ButterCMS and CloudCMS are designed for the headless approach and offer a better developer experience.
For example, WordPress offers official <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/using-the-rest-api/client-libraries/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">API clients</a> for only two languages and no official guides. ButterCMS offers <a href="https://buttercms.com/docs/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">API clients for seven languages</a> and over a dozen guides for various frameworks.
Traditional providers like WordPress can also be severely limited in their flexibility and customization when integrated via API. This sounds surprising, since WordPress powers 27% of the web and is known for its rich, mature ecosystem of plugins that allow you to build anything from a massive publishing website to an eCommerce store.
The problem is that most of the WordPress ecosystem does not address API usage. For example, to enable custom-fields in WordPress requires a <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Custom_Fields" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">plugin</a>and a self-managed WordPress instance. But once the plugin is setup and custom fields are created, there’s no documentation on how the custom fields would be fetched over an API. Underscoring this problem is the existence of yet another plugin called <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-rest-api-custom-fields/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">WP REST API Custom Fields</a> that aims to solve this. However as of the time of this writing, that plugin hasn’t been updated in over two years.
In cases like this, the plugin-based extensibility of traditional providers like WordPress become useless and potentially impossible to work around. Headless solutions, on the other hand, are built from the ground-up to support flexibility and customization. For example, ButterCMS not only allows you to create custom content models and fields, it even allows you to customize the admin UI into user-friendly workspaces.
What headless CMS solutions lack in available plugins, they make up for by integrating into a codebase and tech stack you fully own and understand. This means you can drop in other useful open source plugins or <a href="http://nordicapis.com/why-you-should-build-apps-with-an-api-backend-baas/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Backend-as-a-Service</a> providers as you need. For example, you can combine a headless CMS with an API-based eCommerce backend like <a href="https://www.moltin.com/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Moltin</a> to build a complete eCommerce website without a database (or even a server!).
<h3>Hosting vs Self-hosted</h3>
Another consideration is whether to manage hosting yourself or not.
As mentioned earlier, with traditional providers like WordPress, self-managed hosting may be your only option if you want to customize your CMS beyond default settings. When considering self-hosting management, remember you’re not just dealing with hosting fees, but moreover, full responsibility over making sure your website stays online and is secure. This includes database maintenance and backups, installing security upgrades, and having server monitoring systems in place.
Chances are, your development team doesn’t enjoy spending their time backing up databases, setting up hosting, installing upgrades, and being responsible for monitoring content management system uptime. Going with a hosted solution means you are almost 100% freed from any type of maintenance.
With headless CMSs, self-hosting is an option (eg. CloudCMS offers this), but hosted offerings are more standard. The benefit of this approach is that you never have to worry about maintenance or uptime for your CMS. You get to build your website and move onto more important things.
<h3>Understanding Pricing</h3>
When looking at SaaS providers there are four key areas:
<ol>
<li>Amount of content you can manage</li>
<li>Number of API calls allowed</li>
<li>Number of user accounts</li>
<li>Uptime</li>
</ol>
Different products use different terms in their pricing plans, but generally it comes down to these four criteria. For example, ButterCMS offers unlimited API calls but caps on the amount of content, whereas CloudCMS offers caps on API calls but an unlimited amount of content. Simple, right? Also consider add-ons that you might care about such as publishing workflows, localization, and webhooks.
One important factor to look at is support. When your team runs into a time-sensitive problem, quick assistance from a knowledgeable support engineer is hugely beneficial. Headless CMS providers are popping up all over the world, so in addition to responsiveness, consider timezone and language barriers that could affect communication.
Another thing to pay close attention to is uptime — with a headless approach, your website is highly dependent on your CMS API. In most cases, if your CMS’s API goes down, so will your website as it will be unable to fetch content. For this reason, ensure a near <a href="http://nordicapis.com/6-techniques-99-999-uptime/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">99.99% uptime level</a> guarantee from the vendor, and do proactively prevent data loss scenarios. For example, the ButterCMS Ruby client offers the ability to setup a <a href="https://github.com/buttercms/buttercms-ruby#fallback-data-store" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">local fallback datastore</a> such as Redis so that your website functions even if it cannot successfully connect to the ButterCMS API.
For larger projects, you may be interested in enterprise-level service level agreements and white-glove support such as working directly with a solution engineer from the vendor.
<h3>Evaluation Checklist</h3>
We’ve covered a lot of information thus far. Even armed with this knowledge, making a decision is difficult given the sheer number of options. To help with this, follow this step-by-step checklist when guiding your evaluation and decision:
<ul>
<li>Flexibility: Is the CMS flexible enough to meet the needs of your project?</li>
<li>Uptime: Is the API/SDK resilient and does it meet your uptime requirements?</li>
<li>Content editor: How intuitive is the interface for your content editors?</li>
<li>Support: In what country and timezone is the vendor based, and what level of support and responsiveness do they demonstrate?</li>
<li>Pricing: Is the pricing scalable and predictable for your project (will API-usage based pricing can spike up unpredictably if your website traffic increases)?</li>
</ul>
<h3>Wrap Up</h3>
Remember that the key benefit of a headless CMS is they save your development team time and money. You can’t beat working with your favorite tech stack while having nearly zero maintenance.
If you’re an agency, you’re able to launch your project faster and move on to the next project. If you’re a technology startup, you can knockout your CMS requirements in a day and get back to focusing on your core product.
To maximize this, above all other factors, we recommend choosing your solution based on developer experience. Which CMS is the easiest to integrate? Which CMS has the best documentation? Which CMS has the simplest SDKs? Don’t sweat a few extra bucks here and there on subscription costs — chances are a couple days worth of your development team’s time is much more expensive than the subscription costs you are fretting over.

Headless CMS Buyers Guide

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