Articles - Page 43

What I Mean to Say: A Practitioner Perspective on AI, Semantics, and Content Evolution

msalvatierra

In another dramatic shift to the content management and digital experience landscape, Episerver <a href="https://www.episerver.com/company/press-room/episerver-to-acquire-optimizely-the-worlds-leading-experience-optimization-platform">has announced</a> its plans to buy Optimizely. 
Episerver, the customer-centric digital experience platform, is recognized as a leader in the <a href="https://www.episerver.com/reports/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-digital-experience-platforms">Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms</a>. With the acquisition of Optimizely, an innovator in experience optimization, Episerver appears to be ramping up its competition with enterprise DXP players like <a href="https://www.adobe.com/marketing/experience-manager.html">Adobe</a>, <a href="/acquia-launches-new-open-digital-experience-platform/">Acquia</a> and <a href="/sitecore-updates-experience-platform-and-experience-commerce-releases-new-sitecore-content-hub/">Sitecore</a>.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gartner-magic-quadrant.png" alt="Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/09/gartner-magic-quadrant.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/09/gartner-magic-quadrant.png 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/09/gartner-magic-quadrant.png 1432w" /><figcaption><a href="https://www.episerver.com/reports/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-digital-experience-platforms">Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms</a></figcaption></figure>
In today’s data-driven market, experimentation has become essential. Today's brands need to adapt to consumer changes faster than ever and create more personalized experiences based on data. By combining Episerver’s content and commerce capabilities with Optimizely’s experimentation and optimization, marketers will now be able to build custom digital experiences that get smarter over time and drive more purchases and conversions. 
<h3>Better control of layouts, logic and more</h3>
Together, Episerver and Optimizely will enable organizations to run better experiments across both frontend layouts and backend logic with easy-to-use, tailored recommendations. According to Episerver, the combined power will give organizations the ability to optimize the entire experience across multiple touchpoints while increasing revenue, improving productivity, and realizing cost savings. 
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/layouts-and-logic.png" alt="Layouts and Logic" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/09/layouts-and-logic.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/09/layouts-and-logic.png 785w" /><figcaption>Layouts and Logic</figcaption></figure>

<h3>Improved Outcomes</h3>
A/B testing has long been an established practice for marketers, helping teams to develop more unique, highly targeted digital experiences for each customer – while scaling to thousands. These "experiments" can help drive transformation, enhance customer engagement and improve brand differentiation.
Embracing a culture of experimentation is driving improved outcomes for many brands, particularly those leveraging the enhanced capabilities of a digital experience platform. Leading platforms like Adobe and Sitecore have integrated deep personalization and analytics into their offerings, and testing has become a key pillar of the experience optimization stack. 
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/outsized-results.png" alt="Measure the outcomes of every action" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/09/outsized-results.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/09/outsized-results.png 785w" /><figcaption>Measure the outcomes of every action</figcaption></figure>
That said, companies are no longer limiting their experiments to A/B testing, and instead are expanding their efforts (A/B, C/D and so on) across all aspects of the digital experience. Episerver's move to incorporate Optimizely into their platform demonstrates a growing demand for more insight around consumer data, as well as greater speed and control over adapting the digital experience. 
<h2>Optimizely: A Proven Platform</h2>
Optimizely is a leader in experimentation and progressive delivery. Founded in 2009, it became synonymous with A/B testing, subsequently building a broader suite of testing tools for marketers. Its proven platform has run over 2 million experiments across the user journey to optimize the customer experience for some of the world’s most prominent brands like Peloton, Nike and Uber.
The union of Episerver and Optimizely will combine an advanced set of customer-centric digital experience capabilities with more freedom to experiment, enabling digital teams to replace guesswork with evidence-based outcomes.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/dLMqzpXcZNNUoM1_OxXHAQW1ztCKyaZL4aVhaJAVs1_UVxT0KktqrmanWkG0uW0SU0QF346MtL2UJUhVp2dv5XCrDERdCgK9E-lUEC6ns7owJUTODlJOOsATD1DccyehEvOnINOn" /></figure>
<h3>About Optimizely</h3>
<a href="https://www.optimizely.com/">Optimizely</a>'s leading platform offers a complete set of digital experience optimization technologies – including AI-powered personalization and experimentation – which encompasses A/B testing, multivariate testing, and server-side testing. Optimizely enables brands to deliver more relevant experiences driven by data, including Gap, StubHub, IBM, The Wall Street Journal, and many more. To learn more, visit optimizely.com.
<h3>About Episerver</h3>
<a href="https://www.episerver.com/">Episerver</a> empowers businesses to scale through the most customer-centric approach to digital experiences. Its Customer-Centric Digital Experience Platform™ features best-in-class content management and robust commerce, both backed by AI-powered data and personalization solutions. The platform has consistently earned industry, analyst, and media recognition for its vision, capabilities, and customer commitment. Episerver’s 900+ partners and 825+ employees in offices around the globe are proud to help more than 8,000 brands enrich their customer lifetime value, increase revenue, and grow their brands.

Episerver To Acquire Optimizely, Adding Experimentation And Optimization To DXP

paris-tuzun

In a year that’s already seen major shifts in strategy from enterprise software vendors, Sitecore is shaking things up with the appointment of <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/company/news-events/press-releases/2020/09/sitecore-names-steve-tzikakis-as-chief-executive-officer">Steve Tzikakis as its new CEO</a>. 
Effective immediately, Tzikakis will take the reins from Mark Frost, who over the last three years successfully led Sitecore through a radical transformation of its business, transitioning to a multi-product company with managed cloud and SaaS offerings. Frost worked closely with the Sitecore Board of Directors during the past several months on the transition plan and will remain on in an advisory role. 
Tzikakis is an experienced digital transformation technology leader with a strong track record for translating vision and strategy into world-class, go-to-market execution – and the ability to bring together teams and ecosystems to drive rapid growth. A 13-year veteran of SAP, Tzikakis spent the last five years as President of SAP’s South Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, spanning more than 43,000 customers, 19,000 partners, 4,700 employees, and 85 nationalities. While in this role, Tzikakis doubled business in the region. 
This announcement follows a <a href="/sitecore-updates-experience-platform-and-experience-commerce-releases-new-sitecore-content-hub/">major release to Sitecore’s flagship products</a>, Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) 10 and Sitecore Experience Commerce (XC) 10, as well as the launch of <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/company/news-events/press-releases/2020/07/sitecore-leverages-ai-for-smarter-management-of-images-and-video">Sitecore Content Hub 3.4</a> – which offers enhanced Digital Asset Management (DAM) and smarter orchestration of images and video.
“Global Markets today are undergoing monumental shifts, and the need for digital experiences that fabricate and define Human Connections are becoming more important,” <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tzikakis_today-is-a-very-special-day-on-my-journey-activity-6706590350095523840-ndmi">said</a> Tzikakis. “Our customers and partners can expect to see us accelerate our global expansion plans and innovation of more market-leading cloud and SaaS solutions, while further increasing our customer-centric DNA.”
Given Tzikakis’ background and experience, it’s clear that Sitecore is shifting its focus to global reach and brand awareness. This may be due in no small part to rising opportunities within digital transformation. The market’s reaction to COVID-19 has resulted in significant turmoil and budget slashing, but areas like eCommerce have been bright spots as businesses adapt to new B2B and consumer behaviors. With a new product model and the introduction of managed cloud and SaaS, the company seems poised for growth.
<h3 id="about-sitecore">About Sitecore</h3>
Sitecore delivers a digital experience platform that empowers the world’s smartest brands to build lifelong relationships with their customers. A highly decorated industry leader, Sitecore is the only company bringing together content, commerce, and data into one connected platform that delivers millions of digital experiences every day. Leading companies including American Express, ASOS, Carnival Cruise Lines, Kimberly-Clark, L’Oréal, and Volvo Cars rely on Sitecore to provide more engaging, personalized experiences for their customers. Learn more at <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/">Sitecore.com</a>.

Sitecore Names Steve Tzikakis as Chief Executive Officer

The principle of “think global, act local” has been used in a wide variety of contexts, from tackling environmental issues to managing business strategies. At its core is a simple, perhaps even algorithmic idea: that solving big problems requires an understanding of the smaller components.There’s no question that we live in a global economy – one where international companies are thinking across time zones and driving supply chains that stretch across our planet. While digital transformation has made our world more accessible, websites have struggled to provide a truly localized language experience.Translation: we want to think global, but often miss the local.That’s where Weglot comes in. The France-based translation solution is providing a dynamic alternative to the deprecated (but now resurrected) Google Translate, and elevating the role of localization. With over a hundred languages and a bevy of backend features, this easy-to-use service will have you saying “thank you” (or merci, gracias, dankie) in no time.In this review, we’ll explore Weglot, dive into its pros and cons, and touch on some of the CMS and eCommerce plugins available on the market. But let's start with some of the foundational concepts that impact website translation – and how Weglot is answering these challenges.<h3>The Value of Website Translation</h3>It goes without saying that English has become a global language for many applications, particularly in business and technology. But it’s simply not enough to have your website content available in a single language. Again, this is part of the charter to “act local” even if you’re connecting or selling on a global scale.Take eCommerce as an example. If the details for a product are in a language you don’t understand, are you more inclined to buy it… or seek out another source?The fact is, if you can’t communicate with your customers, you’ll be losing out on sales. With so many diverse languages being spoken across the globe – or even across the street – it’s clear that translation is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity.Here are a few more reasons why you should add translation to your website:<ul><li>Attract new customers: Simply put, a multilingual website can help you reach a broader audience. While most content online is written in English, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/262946/share-of-the-most-common-languages-on-the-internet/">only 25% of internet users are native English speakers</a>. By adding more languages to your website, you’ll reach a larger segment of customers both in new regions and within your own. As an example, Spanish is the second most spoken language in the U.S. – so by going multilingual, you could expand your reach both domestically and internationally.</li></ul><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/weglot-website-audience-stats-per-language.png" />Source: Statista<ul><li>Increase sales: As noted above, people are more likely to buy products when they’re presented in their own language. When you provide a translation for your customers, you’ll make it easier for them to search and find the products or content they’re looking for. You’ll also build trust and enhance loyalty.</li><li>Reduce bounce rates and increase conversions: According to CSA, 72.1% of users spend all their time on websites that are in their own language – and <a target="_blank" href="https://csa-research.com/More/Media/Press-Releases/ArticleID/31/Survey-of-3-000-Online-Shoppers-Across-10-Countries-Finds-that-60-Rarely-or-Never-Buy-from-English-only-Websites">60% of people never buy from English-only websites</a>. Based on these stats alone, it’s clear that your website visitors are less inclined to bounce – and more inclined to convert – if they have access to their own language.</li><li>Improve SEO: In almost every case, Search is what brings people to your website. With a multilingual SEO, your website will be indexable and optimized in multiple languages. And if your competitors aren’t offering translated content, you have even more of an advantage from a search perspective.</li></ul><h3>What about Google Translate?</h3>Historically, there have been two options for translating websites in multiple languages: build and maintain separate websites, or add a translation tool like Google Translate.While the former solution provides significant manual control over the frontend experience, it also requires more management. This might be OK if your products are markedly different depending on the region or country – or if you’re maintaining only two languages. But what about 50? And how do you track hundreds of changes across different dialects without losing control?For this reason, many companies have relied on Google Translate to provide a quick, easy, and free solution for translating content at the browser layer. While Google Translate features a wide range of language options, there’s no manual control over the translation itself. Further, the rendering on a webpage is clumsy at best, making the frontend expression less desirable.To confuse the matter, Google deprecated their Translate service in early 2019, meaning it was no longer available for new applications. With no sunset date in sight, companies were scrambling to find an alternative solution. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-translate-widget-is-free-again-for-some-websites-to-use/370104/#close">But according to Search Engine Journal</a>, Google is resuming support as of May 2020 in an effort to support the global response to COVID-19.<h3>The difference between translation and localization</h3>While translation typically refers to the automated process of converting text on a website or webpage (like Google Translate), localization is the ability to adapt your website’s content to a specific region through language, design, and even cultural elements.Localization can go much further than altering the dynamic text on your website’s frontend. In a truly localized application, the entire customer experience is geared to a user’s regional and linguistic preferences. That might include landing pages, emails, logo graphics – multiple dimensions of their journey.Obviously, automating all of these components requires varying degrees of human support. For that reason, translation serves as the bedrock, and companies can elect to further enhance their localization posture as desired. But the more localized you can get, the more relevant and compelling the experience.<h3>What is Weglot?</h3>Weglot is a platform-independent website translation tool that helps users and organizations transform their websites into multilingual experiences. Weglot finally delivers the best of both worlds, allowing you to have both manual and automatic states for your translations.Easy to use and quick to install, Weglot is designed to work with almost any kind of content management system (CMS) or website. It’s also unique in that it provides professional translation and multilingual SEO services as part of their offerings.<h3>Features</h3>Here are some of the top features you get with Weglot:<ul><li>Quick installation: Weglot is compatible with all CMS and website technologies. All you need to do is install the plugin to your website and configure it all with no code.</li><li>100+ languages: Weglot features one of the most robust libraries of language translations.</li><li>Team collaboration: Invite your team members and collaborate on translations together inside Weglot.</li><li>Context Editor: When translating a page, you need to see where the content resides and what kind of content it is (e.g. title or text). Weglot’s context editor allows you to translate inside an editor and see the website design and structure.</li><li>Automatic, manual, and human translation: In addition to rapid, automatic translation, you can edit translations manually. If you need help or additional bandwidth, you can order professional translation services and get the translated content in 48 hours.</li><li>Visitor auto-redirection: Weglot can detect a user’s language and redirect them to feature content in their language – automatically.</li><li>Localized all along the way: Weglot can translate everything from your landing page to the e-mail confirmation in your customers’ language, providing a deeper level of localization.</li><li>Dedicated customer service: Problems? Weglot offers world-class customer support via email.</li></ul><h3>Optimized SEO</h3>As we mentioned before, SEO is crucial to driving visitors to your website. With Weglot, you can optimize your SEO across your translations and improve your search performance. Here’s how:<ul><li>Create a unique URL for each version of your page. For example, with a Spanish version of your pages, you will have an “/es/” subdirectory.</li></ul><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/kjC8q74LcJtKtkzYNEqNexSnTX4xvyFW3zAXwF6yfVMQueY-be6UAYAKkTeqIgNIO1c5ZP2oT-m1aCS2BfYr0ab5RKe_nQkn4FkQIu6nBaMxvko_h3Kks1awOUcvP34ffp7u6vsPlVTShnaGqw" /><ul><li>Adding hreflangs in your source code. These tags let Google know you have different versions of the same page and favor indexing of these pages.</li></ul><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/weglot-hreflang-attributes.png" /><ul><li>Have your content translated into the source code and not just dynamically. Weglot translates the content on the server side so your content is translated in your source code – not at the browser layer.</li><li>Detect and translate SEO tags. For example, here are two websites in English and Kazakh:</li></ul><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/vkJycrQRCjUJU2z7YsR5zP6rg-jtWjiXffKj1WNc3DQXqJmogDfaSBW0b2I46ylirY1s-Iuqomv9zT6laPcskgtXGRSFRX4ENrDEmsu2aqa5vfXxWTXT1jdqByQNj1BCoxdszig4VXy1IG0K7A" /><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_BQHkMVhzi8K_SWuOXsgbDkPfm1LsUKD5c-xXZkUh6PLrkHdy_nFSnVvio2Vs3fNH0Dcr7IOtIlOqFFHtZn8nur40WqlU0_qtX-d3I3hxM9lkTPSheNstpuLV65mzjTiRe_KNNiETf5y7kiTZg" /><h3>How to add Weglot to your website or CMS</h3>Integrating Weglot is very easy – and it doesn’t even require touching any code. All you have to do is install the plugin and configure Weglot to start translating.When you install the app, you’ll get an API key from your Weglot account. Copy paste the API key in your CMS and you’re good to go:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/how-to-add-weglot-to-your-website-or-cms.png" /><h3>Pricing</h3><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/weglot-princing.png" />With Weglot, pricing is generally based on how many languages you want to offer, and the number of words you need translated. Pretty simple to understand, and very easy to upgrade in the future.It’s worth noting that Weglot offers a free plan that translates up to 2000 words for one language. Not bad if you have a very small site with a single additional language.Weglot offers monthly and annual pricing plans. With the annual, you get an extra 2 months of free translation, which is a nice bonus. Each monthly plan offers a 10-day free trial, and there are 5 tiers:<ul><li>Starter: € 9.90 / month for 1 translated language and up to 10,000 words</li><li>Business: € 19 / month for 3 translated languages and up to 50,000 words</li><li>Pro: € 49 / month for 5 translated languages and up to 200,000 words</li><li>Advanced: € 199 / month for 10 translated languages and up to 1,000,000 words</li><li>Enterprise: € 499 / month for unlimited translated languages. The word limit is not listed on the website but you can contact Weglot to learn more about your custom translation needs.</li></ul>You can sign up for a trial for <a target="_blank" href="https://dashboard.weglot.com/register?fp_ref=solodev">Weglot</a> here.<h3>Final Thoughts</h3>There’s no question that Weglot is one of the most practical, user-friendly translation solutions on the market today. It supports 100+ languages with automatic, manual, and professional translation capabilities. It’s incredibly easy to install on both websites and in CMS, and it’s currently available as a plugin for platforms such as <a target="_blank" href="https://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.shopify.com/">Shopify</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wix.com/">Wix</a>.Like any software, there’s always room for improvement. Weglot's translations can sometimes be a bit fickle when it comes to dynamic content – specifically anything that loads via Javascript. iFrames can also be a little difficult to troubleshoot, and there seems to be a lag time of a day or two before you can manually override a translation. The good news is that their support is incredibly responsive.When it comes to pricing, Weglot can get a little pricey for websites with lots of pages. For an enterprise, this is more than manageable. But for mid-tier sites going from free Google Translate, there could be some sticker shock.That said, it might just be worth every penny. Or centavo.<h3>About Weglot</h3><a target="_blank" href="https://weglot.com/">Weglot</a> is a SaaS tech start-up that helps businesses turn their websites multilingual. They offer a fast, simple and user-friendly way to translate and display your translations without bothering your developers.

Review: Weglot brings powerful translation for multilingual websites and CMS

2020 has been both a challenging and active period for content management platform providers. Despite battling the persistent headwinds of COVID-19 and the looming specter of economic uncertainty, it’s clear that businesses are embracing digital transformation at all levels of the market – and shifting resources from physical to virtual.
This has been a transformational period for some vendors, particularly those focused on digital experience (DX). In fact, <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/five-fifty-the-quickening">a recent study by McKinsey</a> suggests that we’ve just experienced 10 years of eCommerce growth in the last 3 months.
As the study suggests, that pain you feel in your neck might just be digital whiplash.
Market challenges aside, this has clearly been a dynamic news cycle for the CMS industry. Soon after Acquia <a href="/acquia-launches-new-open-digital-experience-platform/">released its new Open Digital Experience Platform</a> with the vision of bringing marketers and developers closer than ever, Sitecore announced a major release to its flagship products: Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) 10 and Sitecore Experience Commerce (XC) 10.
What’s more, both releases follow the recent launch of <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/company/news-events/press-releases/2020/07/sitecore-leverages-ai-for-smarter-management-of-images-and-video">Sitecore Content Hub 3.4</a>, which offers enhanced Digital Asset Management (DAM) and smarter orchestration of images and video.
Based on these releases, it seems like the pandemic hasn’t slowed down the rise of digital experience. On the contrary, with DX becoming the lifeblood of many organizations, companies are working harder and faster than ever to provide the best customer experiences online. Sitecore’s latest updates reflect this goal, bringing marketing and IT teams together and allowing them to work more efficiently.
<h3 id="what-you-can-expect-from-sitecore-s-new-releases">What you can expect from Sitecore’s new releases</h3>
As a legacy leader in the CMS space, Sitecore commands a strong footprint in the enterprise market. This is both an advantage and disadvantage, as their monolithic ecosystem has been challenged over the past few years by mid-level market solutions with smaller pricetags. As digital and content professionals demand greater freedom and control over their martech stack, they have embraced API-driven and <a href="/contentstack-introducing-headless-cms/">headless platforms like Contentstack</a> to shape experiences across a broadening landscape of endpoints and devices.
What’s evident is that Sitecore is responding to their market shifts, investing heavily in the transformation of their products and services to meet a changing world – one where flexibility is essential. At the enterprise level, there continues to be demand for well-architected, highly integrated solutions that provide the trusted scalability for distributing content across a multitude of channels, and making the “Holy Grail” of personalization less of a myth to marketers.
If you’re not familiar, Sitecore is composed of four integrated products: Sitecore Experience Platform, Sitecore Experience Commerce, Sitecore Experience Manager, and Sitecore Content Hub. When combined, they form Sitecore Experience Cloud: the end-to-end content, commerce, and personalization platform.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5T7qzvHbEcE7rzExxw3BkwoQQBUel03jMcvE_mKuofsJTpiINkmy4uQLWIsh6u7sBE7QYlujU4stKWnS2v0jT1QeNN7SyMsNRgPrsJ1Vbh3YafLk4T3VDP1BLANbQkWvOQ0HdiTRT2tfsyyQwg" alt="" /></figure>
If you’re interested in diving deeper into each of Sitecore’s products, <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/products">click here</a> for more details.
<h3 id="sitecore-experience-platform-xp-10">Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) 10</h3>
The new Sitecore XP 10 comes with updates such as enhanced analytics reporting, ASP.NET Core headless development, and Sitecore Containers – which provide greater efficiencies across teams. Now, IT and marketing can accelerate customer success by aligning workflows and timelines, evolving customer experiences quickly, and deploying data-informed updates or new experience elements faster than ever.
Sitecore XP 10 features new innovations around usability and performance. The updated editing environment offers an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, and provides real-time insights for multisite and multilingual experiences as content is created and published – giving marketers the knowledge they need to drive improved conversions.
In addition, Sitecore XP 10 includes enhanced reporting that enables marketers to make informed decisions with more granular visibility, specifically with how personalization is driving performance. It also includes improvements to out-of-the-box forms and enhancements to email and marketing automation.
With full container support, XP 10 eliminates that problem with smooth deployment flows between environments through consistency, isolation, and reproducibility.
XP 10 also makes collecting, analyzing, and acting on enhanced customer data faster for marketers, providing even deeper insights for audience segmentation to strengthen personalization capabilities across channels and grow customer loyalty.
Other XP 10 updates include:
<ul>
<li>Enhanced data capabilities coupled with the ability to extend targeting with auto-personalization.</li>
<li>Horizon editing interface, providing in-context insights across multilingual and multisite experiences.</li>
<li>Updated connector functionality for sending current visitor Experience Database® (xDB) information to Salesforce Marketing Cloud in real-time, enhancing Salesforce marketing automation.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="sitecore-experience-commerce-xc-10">Sitecore Experience Commerce (XC) 10</h3>
The new Sitecore XC 10 release truly reflects the market shift towards eCommerce. It provides more tools to drive higher average order value and revenue with dynamic product bundling and new promotion capabilities.
For example, using the new product bundling capability, brands can sell related and complementary products and services together at one price, driving higher order value and selling more products and services.
Sitecore has also been doubling down on their container infrastructure for deploying their solutions. To accelerate time-to-value and increase agility, Sitecore XC 10 includes broad support for <a href="https://www.docker.com/">Docker</a> and <a href="https://kubernetes.io/">Kubernetes</a>, making the deployment process more lightweight and faster than ever. Containers are generally complex, particularly Kubernetes, and require an advanced level of expertise to manage successfully.
<h3 id="sitecore-content-hub">Sitecore Content Hub</h3>
Formerly Stylelabs – which was acquired by Sitecore in 2018 – the new Sitecore Content Hub provides a 360º view of your content landscape, helping you manage every dimension of your marketing content through a single, integrated solution.
More than a DAM, Content Hub provides a broad array of features. Along with housing all of your digital assets, media, and content elements, Content Hub allows users to “feed” their Sitecore personalization with AI/ML content tagging and Image Similarity. The entire system is designed to integrate with Sitecore CMS and Experience Commerce, so you can seamlessly organize your assets and plan around content production and operations – and power your campaigns for the right channels, regions, and audiences.
The other cool aspect of Content Hub is its marketing resource management, allowing teams to sync more effectively and collaborate across workflows. Content Hub also features product content management, so you can control versions of catalogs and eCommerce items and more personalized web-to-print capabilities.
If you’d like to try out Sitecore, you can request a demo <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/request-a-demo">here</a>.
<h3 id="about-sitecore">About Sitecore</h3>
Sitecore delivers a digital experience platform that empowers the world’s smartest brands to build lifelong relationships with their customers. A highly decorated industry leader, Sitecore is the only company bringing together content, commerce, and data into one connected platform that delivers millions of digital experiences every day. Leading companies including American Express, ASOS, Carnival Cruise Lines, Kimberly-Clark, L’Oréal, and Volvo Cars rely on Sitecore to provide more engaging, personalized experiences for their customers. Learn more at <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/">Sitecore.com</a>.

Sitecore Updates Experience Platform and Experience Commerce, Releases New Sitecore Content Hub

It’s impossible to deny Wix.
Just ask supermodel Karlie Kloss, the star of their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4meDcOLeWSs">2019 Super Bowl ad</a> – and founder of a <a href="https://www.kodewithklossy.com/">code camp for young women</a>.
In 30 seconds, she shared her personal Wix website with millions of viewers, highlighting features like the Wix Pro Gallery and SEO Wiz (both catchy names for an event that involves a lot of catching). 
Needless to say, it was a touchdown.
Kloss isn’t the first celebrity to promote Wix as the world’s premier website building and content management platform. A quick YouTube search will bring up the likes of Jason Statham and Gal Gadot in a 2017 Big Game spot. And it’s no surprise they can foot the bill for these heavy hitters and massive media buys: at last count, Wix is host to 160 million websites.
That’s worthy of a Super Bowl ring. Or five.
Wix has certainly established itself as the go-to solution for small, do-it-yourself entrepreneurs (think local florist or photography studio), competing with other “pre-fab” solutions like <a href="/squarespace-7-review/">Squarespace</a> and <a href="/weebly-review-2016/">Weebly</a>.
Like these platforms, Wix has always lead with simplicity. Basic templates and attractive themes allow for mobile responsiveness and limited control over images, color, content, and other dimensions. You can easily add features like photo galleries or browse the Wix App Market for some nifty integrations. It’s also one of the only platforms that allow you to animate elements and offers an AI-driven design bot that (sort of) assists with simple tasks.
When it comes to offering more advanced designers the freedom to explore and customize – while still delivering a low-code experience – Wix has generally fumbled the ball. But the game might be changing with Editor X.
<h3 id="introducing-editor-x">Introducing Editor X</h3>
Previously available as a closed beta program, Wix recently launched its new Editor X, specifically built for web designers and digital agencies that are seeking to push the aesthetic limits without the hassle of coding from scratch. Much of the emphasis has been on adopting drag-and-drop feature sets, which has been the main focus of many CMS platforms – the most popular being <a href="/gutenberg-2-years-later-is-wordpress-better-off/">Gutenberg</a>.
Wix has now entered the competitive field with Editor X, combining advanced drag-and-drop capabilities with cutting edge responsive design, flexible grids with full breakpoint control, and advanced CSS editing and control (in fact, you don’t even need to know CSS). For designers who are seeking to create more bespoke, hand-crafted experiences, Editor X could be a win.
“Gifted and talented creators have the ability to see the invisible and create the unimaginable,” said Wix Co-founder and CEO, Avishai Abrahami. “Until now these creators’ only option was platforms with restricted design freedoms or limited business web infrastructure that demanded code and multiple plugins. With Editor X, we’ve built the world’s best CSS editor and designed a radical new creative landscape for designers and web professionals, one in which the technology keeps pace with designers’ visions and enables them to swiftly create breathtaking websites, applications and digital experiences that continually raise the standard of the web.”
Here's a short video introduction to Editor X:
<figure class="kg-card kg-embed-card kg-card-hascaption"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bpEHKYd51cY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><figcaption>Introducing Editor X</figcaption></figure>
<h3 id="what-features-come-with-editor-x">What Features Come with Editor X?</h3>
<a href="https://www.editorx.com/">Editor X</a> is made with designers and agencies in mind. It offers advanced layout capabilities that allow you to create more complex website designs for any device – all without using code.
While that’s the main selling point of Editor X, it actually comes with a number of additional features and capabilities for development, business solutions, digital marketing, and SEO.
Main Features
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/HVzjSdXdJCfiAg_T3SxrcCqzypCRDEhp2tyjBcSsc9noz5agWsbPDz5Jx8FF9TM1NZdXVsjScpkEqT0kGvdA5uavmE79DPZWq34zUt8xXy-RAd2MAG142nDy-xCZGKxv_qdnwBMwZA8GNJUPng" alt="A picture containing electronics, table, monitor, deskDescription automatically generated" /><figcaption>Editor X Responsive Views</figcaption></figure>
Editor X manages to solve some of the biggest challenges facing modern designers and web professionals – from custom code to no code. The core <a href="https://www.editorx.com/features">features</a> include:
<ul>
<li>Breakpoint Precision: Create custom breakpoints, rearrange layouts, choose what to show or hide, and fine tune sites at every viewport.</li>
<li>CSS Grid: Design with CSS – without even thinking about CSS! Editor X brings a truly accessible, easy-to-use gateway to CSS.</li>
<li>Flexbox Technology: Let your content automatically adjust to every screen in single, multiple, and repeating layouts.</li>
<li>Custom Code: Integrate custom code and connect to internal/external APIs.</li>
<li>Integrated Business Infrastructure: Access Wix’s expansive range of business solutions to manage multiple sales channels, set up online bookings and scheduling, improve SEO performance, and more.</li>
</ul>
Design &amp; Layout
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/2F6sAkhXXmMn6_jYC4rKjBcvMrQfnsK-lqI1ACjWUfHJL-aKce6TkUJ-tfyqBaSf4RcVQ_v5grWu8mHz_YnusRc_VjLQ0V_BJhbVQU7vjQu36VQ0GZ3Od_aY9ya29C-dnFy3DWliYPFzrbGzow" alt="A screen shot of a computerDescription automatically generated" /><figcaption>Editor X Aligning Elements</figcaption></figure>
Editor X was built to expand the Wix design potential. It offers granular layout capabilities that allow you to create complex website designs for any device, all without using code. Some of the coolest design features include:
<ul>
<li>Grid Layouting: An advanced two-dimensional layout system based on CSS grid.</li>
<li>Docking: Anchors elements to a specific position as the viewport changes.</li>
<li>Stack &amp; scale: Reorient media for seamless responsive behavior.</li>
<li>Text scale: Create scalable font sizes as part of a design solution.</li>
<li>Flex Layouter: A smart layout system that relies on Flexbox technology for automatic reorganization of content while resizing.</li>
<li>Custom Breakpoints: Tailor designs to any viewport, not just classic devices.</li>
<li>Flexible canvas: Leverage resizing handles to instantly see and customize your design across viewports.</li>
<li>Advanced sizing control: Define your element as fixed or fluid, using wide support for modern CSS units.</li>
<li>Wix Design System: Features sections with built-in responsive behavior matched to the color palette of your site.</li>
</ul>
Development
Editor X also provides plenty of tools for developers who want to add custom code and build data rich websites. Some of these features include:
<ul>
<li>Dynamic Pages: Design one-page layouts or create unlimited pages – each with their own content, URL and SEO.</li>
<li>Database APIs: Use data APIs in your website’s front-end or backend code to manage and organize data.</li>
<li>Built-in IDE: Make coding more productive using the built-in IDE, equipped with syntax highlighting, code completion and more.</li>
<li>Custom Interactions: Create unique user interactions by triggering events when visitors perform specific actions.</li>
</ul>
Business Solutions
Running an online business always requires a few third-party applications. With Editor X and the Wix platform, you can have all of it in one place. Add an eCommerce store and accept payments, or a member section where customers can sign in and manage their personal accounts. You can also offer live chat, set up automations to collect leads, and <a href="https://www.editorx.com/features/business-ecommerce">so much more</a>.
The Wix App Market offers a wide range of integrations like form generators, social plugins, marketing tools and more. But builder beware: like open source marketplaces, many of the apps are made by third parties – and aren’t guaranteed by Wix.
Web Solutions
On Wix, every website you build is completely hosted – and includes an SSL certificate (which is being deprecated and replaced by TLS). Wix provides automatic updates, so your websites stay secure without any hassles or concerns over managing your own security requirements.
You can also search, purchase, and register domains directly through Editor X.
Marketing &amp; SEO
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/19u-wog6LhGCOi3lLpgMVChee4T3Kcx2xuCEK1NLbBzoDAUZrbNpoGNFI0jlt6xL1zv5LZM0ne1hPlxoBP-KpJVvx6a8ajhu_nkAP0MLsJvuDrAKl4XPe3FVk7Ba8lwxR5lpklq4BxR3ZZiCdA" alt="A screen shot of a clockDescription automatically generated" /><figcaption>Editor X SEO Settings</figcaption></figure>
In addition to providing basic SEO tools such as XML site maps, structured data, canonical URLs and 301 redirects, Editor X offers custom SEO plans and email marketing. Every website comes with a tailor-made SEO package that helps ensure your websites rank decently on Google. You can also drive traffic with professional email marketing campaigns, and review how visitors interact with your client sites by tracking visits through their built-in analytics tools.
<h3 id="performance">Performance</h3>
So far, Editor X looks a bit like “Weapon X.” It’s got everything that’s been missing from Wix and gives designers and agencies a more customizable platform to build on. Why choose anything else?
One word: performance.
When testing the <a href="https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.editorx.com%2F">page speed</a> of <a href="https://www.editorx.com/">editorx.com</a>, the score is staggering 34 out of 100 – almost exactly the same as the Rotten Tomatoes score for “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” That’s not good.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/nsje8VvBnPAjtAcOsfn-F19_BGM9JgOsUeJs4MOxkeNski7caip-zddZcI1bb1brGYdJlwChaywa25b1oTQ69St5e7LN_nL6mZAAK-4QP79S128N8e4orDa6JNhvT62ri_R6IX7iO4w1IAK4qg" alt="Editor-X Page Speed Screenshot" /><figcaption>https://www.editorx.com's Google Page Insights Score</figcaption></figure>
This is not a problem unique to Editor X, of course. All website builders since Dreamweaver have been plagued by the code bloat problem. In case you’re not familiar, code bloat is unnecessarily long or wasteful code that slows down websites. A lot.
When Squarespace pioneered code-free website building and attracted millions with its style and aesthetics, it seemed like everyone could build websites with no working knowledge of HTML and CSS. Over time, as it became more complex and conflated, the entire platform evolved into a page-loading nightmare.
If performance really matters, you might want to think twice about Editor X. 
<h3 id="conclusion">Conclusion </h3>
Editor X was conceived with designers in mind. And it tends to deliver with a richer, more complete set of tools and greater domain over the design experience. Even a small business or solopreneur that craves more control could get a lot of value out of Editor X. The problem lies with performance: if page speed and loads times are critical – and you have a larger, more expansive website – you might want an enterprise-worthy solution that can handle the demands of a content team.
Ready to try it out? Click <a href="https://users.editorx.com/signin?sendEmail=true&amp;view=sign-up&amp;originUrl=https:%2F%2Fwww.editorx.com&amp;loginCompName=Signup_H&amp;referralInfo=Editorx_Signup_H&amp;postLogin=https:%2F%2Fmanage.editorx.com%2Faccount%2Fsites&amp;overrideLocale=en&amp;forceRender=true">here</a>. 
<h3 id="about-editor-x">About Editor-X</h3>
<a href="https://www.editorx.com/">Editor X</a> is an advanced creation platform for designers and web professionals. The platform combines cutting edge responsive design with smooth drag and drop. Those that want to can add custom code and use a powerful CMS to build data-driven sites and complex web applications. Editor X offers an unparalleled range of integrated business solutions from a leading eCommerce infrastructure to professional marketing and SEO tools. Editor X is part of <a href="https://www.wix.com/">Wix.com Ltd</a>.
<h3 id="about-wix">About Wix</h3>
<a href="https://www.wix.com/">Wix</a> is leading the way with a cloud-based development platform for over 170 million registered users worldwide. Wix was founded on the belief that the Internet should be accessible to everyone to develop, create and contribute. Through free and premium subscriptions, Wix empowers millions of businesses, organizations, artists and individuals to take their businesses, brands and workflow online. The Wix Editor, Wix ADI, a highly curated App Market, Ascend by Wix and Corvid by Wix enable users to build and manage a fully integrated and dynamic digital presence.

Wix Introduces Editor X, Offers Designers Advanced Tools for Building Custom Websites

Graphic design has always been one of the more elusive layers of the digital stack. While websites have become increasingly more dynamic (think FontAwesome for iconography), custom graphics – at least the really good ones – continue to rely on third-party apps like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.
For CMS users, that means generating graphics outside the system and bringing them in separately. And for many content creators, it means relying on a graphic designer to do the job – someone who knows their way around Bezier Curves, or if a font is serif or sans serif.
For many design professionals, the more advanced tools of the Adobe suite will likely stay the course (although Sketch and UXPin have become great alternatives for prototyping). But they’re also not the domain of the layperson or laydesigner who simply wants to jazz up their blog or social post with a cool graphic.
Now, thanks to Canva, almost anyone can produce beautiful, custom graphics that feel like they were created by a professional agency – and start for free.
While Canva’s paid subscriptions offer more robust features and access to enhanced imagery, even their basic account lets you create some pretty awesome stuff. In just a few minutes, you can watch a design tutorial, master their intuitive tools, and drag your way to a gorgeous social media graphic or poster art.
Canva isn’t new to the graphic design scene, but they’re now integrating with CMS platforms to streamline content creation. We did a fresh review of the platform and its features, and checked out their Canva “Button,” which makes it even easier to launch Canva within your app or page, make a dynamite graphic, and publish it to your website without leaving your platform.
<h3>What is Canva?</h3>
Canva is a SaaS-based graphic design platform that lets users create beautiful graphics and visual content. That can be almost anything: presentation elements, posters, templates, background patterns, photographic imagery, and more. It’s available for both desktop and mobile, and features millions of graphics, images, fonts, templates, audio, video and other assets that are “off the shelf” and available to use in your own designs.
Founded in 2012, Canva has been something of a startup wunderkind. Last year alone, their valuation doubled from just over $3 billion to $6 billion – and they now boast an active global user base of 15 million subscribers across their free, Pro, and Enterprise offerings.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/canva-sample-image.png" /><figcaption>Sample Facebook Cover Template</figcaption></figure>
How was Canva able to grow so rapidly? Well, it’s more than just having a great product and word-of-mouth social exposure. 
Simply put, Canva solved a problem that no one had managed to crack: making good design accessible to everyone.
There’s no questioning the value that design brings to a brand’s communication and its impact on customer experience. It’s like an unspoken language that can either help – or hurt – your brand’s perception and reputation. While every business relies on design to reach and influence their audiences, it’s not always attainable or cost effective for basic, everyday applications.
The other problem has been the complexity of graphic design programs. Photoshop can takes weeks (or more) of training to perform even the most foundational tasks, and may be overkill for most content creators. Vector graphics are on a whole other level of complexity, and really necessitate a skilled designer to create custom logos, iconography, and other assets.
This is where Canva is changing the game by offering a platform for novice or even non-designers. It simplifies the process by offering libraries of beautiful, modern design elements that are easy to access. Users can select from stock photos, background patterns, fonts, templates, and even music and videos inside an intuitive drag-and-drop interface – and customize them into their own graphic design creations.
Guy Kawasaki, who joined Canva in 2014 as Chief Evangelist, <a href="https://www.canva.com/learn/guy-kawasaki-chief-evangelist/">describes it as “a platform for democratizing design</a>” – just like how Macintosh democratized computers and eBay democratized commerce.
<h3>Create all kinds of visual content</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/canva-templates.png" /></figure>
Canva offers a sandbox of design tools and learning resources which are all available through its online SaaS portal. You can sign up for free in just a few seconds and even connect with your preferred social media account.
The first thing you’ll notice on the Canva website is the Template categories. This makes it easier for casual users to find what they need quickly and not fumble through expansive libraries like the major stock houses provide.
What’s great is that all of the template elements are ready-to-use. That means they work seamlessly on your "canvas," allowing you to drag and reposition in exactly the way you want. You can also import your own logos, images and graphics and instantly remove solid backgrounds to isolate elements (think of a headshot getting cut away from a background to use in a new layout). 
Once you settle on your graphics and images, it’s simple to add custom text to promote sales offers, event details, and more.
The main design sections include:
<ul>
<li>Social Media: Create graphics for channels like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.</li>
<li>Personal: Design custom invitations, postcards, planners, t-shirts, and even resumes to promote your personal brand. </li>
<li>Business: Build presentation templates, website graphics, logos, business cards, and tools like invoice and proposal templates. </li>
<li>Marketing: Make posters, flyers, infographics, brochures, newsletters, menus and more.</li>
<li>Education: Create lesson plans, worksheets, certificates, storyboards, bookmarks, class schedules and other educational resources.</li>
</ul>
There is also a “Trending” section where the most popular templates are displayed. These can include seasonal specific elements for major holidays or events. Need to make a Christmas graphic for your homepage hero? You can quickly create a custom holiday theme with beautiful images, iconography, background patterns and more.
<h3>Canva Features</h3>
It’s true that Canva has a lot of off-the-shelf components, and some users might worry that they’ll be using the same graphics as other brands. But Canva allows you to be free with your own designs, giving you the ability to edit graphics and templates, compose unique layouts, import your own logos and elements, and truly make any design your own.
Canva’s user-friendly editor makes it all possible. The sidebar menu includes:
<ul>
<li>Templates: Search thousands of templates by keywords to find exactly what you're looking for. </li>
<li>Uploads: Import a custom image, logo, or video from your computer and place it in your design template.</li>
<li>Custom graphic control: Group and position elements on a page and hyperlink graphics.</li>
<li>Edit imagery: Adjust the transparency and settings on photos, add artistic filters, and crop to custom sizes.</li>
<li>Elements: Select from a huge cache of free illustrations such as geometric shapes, stickers, charts, gradients, lines, connectors, and icons.</li>
<li>Text: Add and edit text within your composition. You can add a heading, subheading, or body text to your template, and also add links.</li>
<li>Videos: Browse a wide variety of free videos to add to your webpage or post. You can choose from one of the main categories or search for specific content.</li>
<li>Backgrounds: Add colors, patterns, or create your own custom backdrop.</li>
<li>Folders: With a paid Pro or Enterprise subscription, any images you purchase with a license will be displayed in a “Purchased” folder – and the photos and elements you like will be displayed in a “Likes” folder. Additionally, you can create your own custom folders.</li>
</ul>
These are just some of the core features that Canva provides, but what’s really amazing is how simple it is to start using the entire suite of tools. Unlike Photoshop, there’s no complexity around layer controls or color settings. In minutes, the most novice technical user can get a sense of the navigation and start creating custom graphics.
<h3>Learning, Training, and Tutorials</h3>
Canva’s learning resources are a huge part of their value offering. From the “Learn” tab on their homepage, you can access a library of resources, from design basics to business branding. You can also browse ideas and inspiration from articles that show you how to edit photos or design for print applications.
Canva offers its tutorials through their "Design School," which features classes like “Personal Branding with Dr. Talaya Waller.” Each course provides a wealth of insights and actionable instructions for creating your own successful projects.
As if the software wasn’t awesome enough, the learning resources make Canva nearly indispensable – which explains their explosive growth.
<h3>Canva Integration</h3>
Canva’s API has everything developers need to integrate Canva with their apps, enabling access to photos, images, and online media inside the editor. Currently, Canva has integrations with major platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Dropbox, Giphy, and Mailchimp.
The newest and most popular integration is called the Canva "Button," which allows users to design with Canva without leaving the webpage they’re working on. Imagine writing a new blog and suddenly needing a custom graphic. By clicking the Canva Button, you can automatically launch the Canva editor and design a graphic or select an image. Once completed, you simply click "Publish" and your creations are pushed to the appropriate part of your page or experience.
It only takes a few of lines of code to add the Canva Button, but it does require a Canva account for a user to make the activation. To learn more about the Canva Button and how to integrate it with your website, click <a href="https://www.canva.com/button/">here</a>.
<h3>Canva and Content Management Systems (CMS)</h3>
Canva is steadily broadening its integrations with CMS platforms. For content creators, this eliminates the extra steps of uploading designs manually from Canva and switching back and forth between apps. It also gives the non-designers on any team the ability to add beautiful images and graphics to their pages within the CMS, making their content more compelling. 
While several platforms already offer a native integration, <a href="https://about.canva.com/wordpress/">WordPress provides a plugin</a> for designing custom graphics for your blog or website. Browse millions of graphics, images, and layouts in Canva – and once you're finished designing, your creation is automatically inserted into your WordPress post for publishing.
<h3>Pricing</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/canva-pricing.png" /><figcaption>Canva Pricing Plans</figcaption></figure>
Canva offers three plans: Free, Pro and Enterprise. Anyone can <a href="https://www.canva.com/signup">sign up for a free account</a> and start creating right away. But like any "freemium" software model, it does have its limitations. For example, you can't resize your designs for different form factors, and there are only a few hundred graphics and images to choose from. But with 8,000 templates to peruse, you can create some pretty cool designs – and it's all free. 
The Pro subscription, which is considered the "best value," is $9.95 per user per month (if paid annually). It's really an incredible deal when consider what you get: access to an expanded library with millions of images and graphics, over 60,000 templates, and the ability to create your own custom "Brand Kit." This is one of the most powerful features in the Pro, as it gives you control over your visual identity by collecting reusable assets like logos, fonts, colors and more – so you can maintain your brand standards.  
The Enterprise plan is built for teams, enabling you to manage Brand Kits for multiple properties or customers. You also get access to permissions that lock down template elements and limit access to specific team members, so you can protect your brand ecosystem. There's also 24/7 support, which is more apropos for an enterprise engagement with lots of customers and users. 
Licensing for graphics and images can always be tricky, particularly with stock libraries. With Canva, there's an upside and a downside: if you cancel your subscription, you won't be able to access or use any of the elements that were stored in your account. However, you can continue using the elements you created during your subscription period (for example, a blog image on a specific post). 
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
Canva is making good design more accessible, and it's worth checking out – particularly if you're a content manager or digital marketer. It's a natural addition to your CMS stack, but also brings significant value to gig-minded solopreneurs and enterprises alike. 
Like the name suggests, it's your "canvas." But you don't have to be Picasso to make it beautiful. 
To get started with a Canva account, click <a href="https://www.canva.com/">here</a>.
<h3>About Canva</h3>
<a href="https://www.canva.com/">Canva</a> empowers users to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content. Featuring a simple drag-and-drop user interface and a vast library of templates and design ingredients such as fonts, illustrations, stock photography, video and audio content, and the power to include content from the web such as Giphy and Google Maps, anyone can take an idea and create something beautiful. Canva  is available on the web, iOS and Android.

Canva “Button” Gives CMS Users Integrated Graphic Design Tools for Visual Content

Acquia continues to challenge the market with the recent launch <a href="https://www.acquia.com/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-launches-new-open-digital-experience-platform">of its new Acquia Open Digital Experience Platform (DXP)</a>. This is another bold step for the company, which continues to innovate on top of the open-source Drupal content management system. In recent years, they have invested in several strategic acquisitions that have fueled their transformation as a full-fledged customer experience platform.
When the company <a href="https://www.acquia.com/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-announces-majority-investment-vista-equity-partners">received a major investment from Vista Equity Partners</a> last year, there was some uncertainty about the future roadmap. Customers were vocally concerned about Acquia’s commitment to Drupal and the impact to the user experience. The concern was perhaps warranted given Vista's previous acquisition of Marketo for $1.79 billion, which led to led to significant changes across the company and the platform. 
At the time of the transaction, Acquia’s co-founder Dries Buytaert stated that the acquisition of Acquia would be beneficial to Drupal, and their mission to serve open source communities would remain firm. The plan was to grow Acquia’s presence in the blossoming Digital Experience Platform (DXP) category, while staying loyal to the open source Drupal core at the same time. In <a href="https://dri.es/acquia-to-receive-majority-investment-from-vista-equity-partners">a blog post</a>, Buytaert said:
“This investment should be great news for the Drupal and Mautic communities as we'll have the right resources to compete against other solutions, and our deep commitment to Drupal, Mautic and Open Source will be unchanged. In fact, we will continue to increase our current level of investment in Open Source as we grow our business.”
<h3>The New Platform</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/acquia-dxp.png" /></figure>
The Acquia Open DXP endeavors to bring marketers and developers together with an easy-to-use platform. It allows them to collaborate around building and orchestrating multi-user customer journeys across all models of customer interaction, such as touchscreens, chat, voice, and more.
The Acquia Open DXP is composed of both the Acquia Marketing Cloud and Acquia Drupal Cloud, and integrates their acquired technologies – including AgilOne, Mautic and Cohesion – with their existing core. The result is a single, open, easy-to-use platform that can be quickly deployed.
"The digital experience market continues to grow, and the subsequent need to create, manage, and deliver those high-quality digital experiences remains essential," said IDC's Jacob Groshek. "The impact of COVID-19 is only going to heighten that demand moving forward. Acquia's launch of their new Open DXP centers around empowering developers and marketers to collaborate in driving agile digital transformation across an organization. Their new Open DXP is both a timely and comprehensive response to the needs of the market.”
The expansion of marketing automation is key to Acquia's strategy. The category has gained tremendous ground in the recent years, and is expected to <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/443593/global-marketing-software-spending/">grow to $25.1 billion by 2023</a>. While big players like Hubspot and Salesforce dominate the industry, combining the features of a DXP with the enhanced capabilities of a customer data platform (CDP) will help Acquia reposition their value and compete more effectively.
<h3>Features</h3>
As mentioned, the Acquia Open DXP consists of both the Acquia Marketing Cloud and the Acquia Drupal Cloud. The combination provides a complete platform for building more personalized digital experiences that are powered by data. 
The Acquia Marketing Cloud is the essential foundation for collecting and managing customer data and driving personalization strategies. Features include:
•  Customer Data Platform (formerly AgilOne): With a built-in CDP, users can create a 360-degree view of each unique customer by integrating data across back-end and front-end systems. With open, customizable machine learning models, marketers can gain insights into new customer segments based on observed behaviors and product affinity, leverage predictions to understand likelihood to engage and convert, and deliver next-best offers and actions.
•  Personalization (formerly Acquia Lift): Leveraging data from the CDP, users can develop targeted campaigns to deliver the next-best offer across all touchpoints of the customer journey.
•  Campaign Studio (formerly Mautic): With Campaign Studio, users now have access to rich marketing automation features that are powered by Acquia's CDP. Create email campaigns that meet your custom brand requirements while easing the process with drag-and-drop builders and other simplified capabilities. Like the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Campaign Studio offers dynamic content features that allow for greater email personalization – all in one place.  
•  Campaign Factory (formerly Maestro): Campaign Factory gives administrators the power to centrally manage multiple, distributed Campaign Studio instances, helping you scale marketing operations across your lines of business – from brands to regions to localized teams. Campaign Factory provides a layer of critical governance over global digital marketing operations. 
The Drupal Cloud has also evolved, and now offers a more robust set of tools. Developers can build and customize services while marketers can do more with minimal code and drag-and-drop capabilities. Some of the core features include:
•  Site Studio (formerly Cohesion): New for marketers, Site Studio introduces a low-code experience for designing websites for different devices and interaction types – without the need for an advanced developer.
•  Developer Studio: Built with more advanced developers in mind, the Developer Studio introduces Cloud IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) to build, stage, and deploy new Drupal sites and applications.
•  CMS Migrate: Includes newly added tools to accelerate migration to Drupal 9 from older versions of Drupal or any legacy CMS.
•  Site Factory: Newly updated to support Drupal 9, Site Factory enables organizations to centrally manage, deploy, and scale sites and applications.
•  Edge CDN: A global network of over 200 points-of-presence (PoPs), Edge CDN provides dependable delivery of digital experiences by continually optimizing availability and performance, and mitigating risk associated with increasing volatility in traffic due to more online customer engagement.
•  Edge Security: A new security-as-a-service solution, Edge Security mitigates catastrophic security threats in real time by leveraging data-driven insights to dynamically update and protect all sites and experiences from malicious attacks, helping to ensure brand trust.
<h3>About Acquia</h3>
<a href="https://www.acquia.com/">Acquia</a> is an open Digital Experience Platform to give enterprise companies the ability to build, operate, and optimize websites, apps, and other digital experiences. Acquia produces better business outcomes for CX leaders by enabling organizations to build, host, analyze and communicate with their customers at scale through websites and digital applications.

Acquia Launches New Open Digital Experience Platform

Kontent.ai - Agentic CMS

Meet the world's first Agentic CMS

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Reid Hoffman, the serial tech entrepreneur and founder of LinkedIn, once said: “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.”
Of course, in the world of open source software like WordPress, it’s hard to know exactly when anything will launch. And when it does, there’s certain to be a lot of bugs.
That was the case with Gutenberg, the long-awaited upgrade to the WordPress visual editor that was first introduced in late 2017. At the time, the WordPress editing experience had grown stagnant, and content managers were hungry for new page building capabilities. There’s no question that the impetus to develop a more robust editor was a reaction to the rise of authoring platforms like Medium and easy page-building competitors like Wix and Squarespace.
But as is often the case in software, things don’t always go according to plan. And when they don’t, end users are the first ones to let you know.
Time flies, and it’s hard to believe that it’s already been over two years since Gutenberg’s launch. Much like the printing press of its namesake, the first edition was fraught with issues and drew a lot of negative feedback. Nonetheless, it brought the promise of more modular page building capabilities within a modern, React-based UI. This helped circumvent some of the massive tech debt and backward compatibility challenges that exist with WordPress, favoring a more forward-leaning solution over fixes to the core software.
Over time, users have adapted to the good, the bad, and the unpredictable. Now, Gutenberg has graduated to a core role in the WordPress platform. In fact, the WordPress 5.0 release in 2018 <a href="/the-first-release-candidate-for-wordpress-5-0-is-now-available-and-sadly-it-brings-gutenberg-with-it/">featured Gutenberg as the default editor</a>, cementing its place in version history. But fear not: the WordPress Classical Editor is still available and supported, although it should be officially sunset on December 31, 2021.
Change is always scary – especially for long-term users. While some of the early adopters have grown to prefer (or even love) Gutenberg, the general reaction continues to be tacitly negative.  So far, Gutenberg has amassed more than 3,000 reviews with an <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/">average rating of 2/5.00</a>. Considering two years have passed since Gutenberg was released, the reviews indicate the major issues with Gutenberg – specifically the UX – have yet to be resolved.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gutenberg-reviews.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/07/gutenberg-reviews.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/07/gutenberg-reviews.png 626w" /></figure>
When it comes to WordPress reviews, users seldom hold back (just read a few of the posts and you’ll see more rants than raves). While Gutenberg hasn’t garnered a lot of stars, the picture isn’t all bad. The most common reactions are that it’s slow, not intuitive, and requires a lot of extra mouse clicks to get where you’re going. But many users agree that it’s heading in the right direction and addressing persistent issues like accessibility.
After two years of pressure-testing in the real world of web development and CMS, we’ll look at what Gutenberg gets right – and where it misses the mark.
A Brief Overview of Gutenberg
If you’re not at all familiar with Gutenberg for WordPress, it’s a visual editor with a dynamic drag-and-drop interface. It fully replaces the WordPress TinyMCE editor (aka the Classical Editor) as the default editor within the package. Most of this is being spearheaded by <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a>, the open source development company behind WordPress.com
Unlike the Classical Editor, Gutenberg uses “blocks” rather than text fields to manage content. In fact, everything in the experience is represented as a block: the paragraphs, buttons, images, quotes… everything. By using the inherent drag-and-drop functionality in the editor, you can arrange the order of your blocks around your specific content needs.
The block-based model is nothing new. Visual editors such as Wix and Squarespace are similarly designed, helping users create and manage content faster and easier. In addition to these platforms, there are also page builder plugins for WordPress such as Divi, Elementor and Beaver Builder, which use drag-and-drop functionality with a simplified UI. All of these feature embellishments have empowered content editors to be more productive with less coding.
With more than 74.6 million websites using WordPress, including major brands like Disney, TechCrunch, BBC America and more, the platform’s pervasiveness is undeniable. But this level of market penetration is understandable: content managers and editors want to focus on content, not code – and from the beginning, one of the main selling points of WordPress has been its low-code/no-code experience. It abstracted most of the complexity with building and managing websites by relying on libraries of pre-programmed themes and plugins. These widgets, both diverse and abundant, enabled any user to add functionality to their website – from schedulers to lead forms to shopping carts – with just a few clicks.
There was, however, one big exception: the TinyMCE editor. It still required editing HTML for deeper customizations. 
Open source platforms struggle to provide a roadmap that is both complete and reliable, and WordPress is no exception. While the market waited for improvements to the visual editor, other plugins emerged to address the challenges. When assessing the pros and cons of Gutenberg, it’s easier to compare it to these alternatives to see where the opportunities and issues exist.
How does Gutenberg differ from the Classical Editor &amp; How it Compares to Page Builders
So how does Gutenberg stack up against the Classical Editor and other page builder plugins? Well, the rise of these new block-based options has certainly stoked innovation. That said, it’s important to keep in mind that while Gutenberg is quite similar to these other WordPress page builders, it’s currently not a good replacement. In fact, WordPress doesn’t even classify Gutenberg as a “page builder” per se. While it might evolve to one in the future, WordPress more appropriately refers to it as a “block editor.”
Let’s compare just a few of the more notable features between Gutenberg and other page builders:
1.     Drag &amp; Drop Capabilities
Traditionally, to type text, insert content, or write code using the Classical Editor, you would have to manually shift your content around by cutting and pasting. With Gutenberg, you can assign each content component as its own block – such as a paragraph – and re-arrange the order of your blocks by simply dragging them up and down. 
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gutenberg-dragging.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/07/gutenberg-dragging.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/07/gutenberg-dragging.png 737w" /></figure>
Paragraphs aren’t the only content blocks types. With Gutenberg, you can define headings, rows, columns, images, buttons, symbols, custom boxes, and even templates as blocks – and use the same drag-and-drop features to reorder your content. 
Although Gutenberg offers this slick drag-and-drop block feature, you’ll be compromising on customizations. For example, you can’t adjust the height and width of elements or add custom margins and padding, and elements can only be aligned to the left, right, and center. You can get around some of these limitations with additional CSS classes, but that means more coding and complexity. It all comes down to how much control you want over the details. 
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gutenberg-image-aligning.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/07/gutenberg-image-aligning.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/07/gutenberg-image-aligning.png 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/07/gutenberg-image-aligning.png 1499w" /></figure>
2.     Front-end Visual Editing
There’s no question that Gutenberg does a better job than the Classical editor of displaying your front-end styling within the visual editor. That said, it doesn’t provide the same level of accuracy as when you’re using a page builder like Elementor or Divi. With other page builders, you can see all of your changes rendered in the back-end – so you know exactly what your page will look like when published. With Gutenberg, you still need to manually click on the “Preview” button to see a draft page, which can be limiting from a content management perspective. For example, here is how a page looks in back-end editor versus in the preview mode:
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/preview.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/07/preview.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/07/preview.png 650w" /><figcaption>Back-End view of the page</figcaption></figure>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/backend-editor-2.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/07/backend-editor-2.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/07/backend-editor-2.png 885w" /><figcaption>Preview of the page</figcaption></figure>
3.     Design and Styling
While Gutenberg is a big step up from the TinyMCE Classical Editor, it still falls short of page builder plug-ins when it comes to customizing styles. The Gutenberg editor will reflect any specific theme you’re using, which is quite useful – but that’s the extent of it. Page builder plug-ins not only offer complete control over styling from the ground up, but you also have the ability to override your theme’s visual settings.
We’re just scratching the surface on the pros and cons, but does this mean you should ditch Gutenberg for a page builder? Not necessarily. It all depends on what you want to accomplish. If your website has a simple layout and you want your content to fit harmoniously into a theme, going with Gutenberg might be a good idea. But if you crave more control over your page layouts and styles, a page builder is likely your best bet.
To Gutenberg… or not to Gutenberg?
That is the question! The answer? Well, that’s a little more complicated…
The real Gutenberg could never have imagined the evolution of his printing press. If only he could marvel at the invention of four-color digital presses that can instantly print thousands or even millions of impressions – all with a few mouse clicks. Sadly, innovation is sometimes slower than we would like it to be, and mistakes are all part of the process.
Much like these digital presses, the Gutenberg editor is a milestone in the evolution of the WordPress platform. It continues to demonstrate the commitment of the open source ecosystem to serve the needs of millions of web developers and content creators, each with their own set of goals – from managing a basic blog to crafting a custom experience.
Making things more “user friendly” is key to any software’s growth, and that’s where Gutenberg is endeavoring to shine. Unfortunately, it’s still not at a point where page builders like Divi or <a href="/elementor-hits-3-million-sites/">Elementor</a> compete. But that’s the beauty of WordPress and its ecosystem of plug-ins: there’s an incredible amount of choice, and that only seems to be expanding.
Custom is always the costliest commodity, and even the real Gutenberg knew that. That’s why his first books were simple and limited in their scope. But over time, the block components became more elaborate and decorative, and font styles more abundant. Eventually, it all felt “custom.”
The same might happen for the modern digital incarnation. The real question is: when?

Gutenberg, 2 Years Later: Is WordPress Better Off?

If you’re a digital marketing professional, you’re probably familiar with the <a href="https://chiefmartec.com/2020/04/marketing-technology-landscape-2020-martech-5000/">Martech 5000 “Supergraphic”</a> that’s published annually by Chiefmartec.com. It depicts the complete landscape of marketing technologies across a range of categories such advertising, content management, eCommerce, and more – all with tiny, painstakingly positioned logos.
Now, if you haven’t seen this graphic before, consider yourself warned: you’ll never look at digital marketing technologies the same way again.
The 2020 edition of this mindboggling compilation was released a short while ago, and while the persistence of COVID-19 has consumed every facet of the daily news cycle, it’s worth a hard look. Why?  Because once again, the field of technologies has ballooned at an unimaginable pace.
According to Martech Conference Chair Scott Brinker (the “Chief Martec” and creator of the graphic), the entire landscape grew by 13.6% to a total of 8,000 tools. In addition, 1 in 5 of the solutions were new to the diagram since last year, which is nearly the equivalent of the entire 2015 Martech landscape.
Perhaps the most compelling metric? Since 2011, the landscape has swelled by a remarkable 5,233%.
Brinker also reported that the churn rate – which might include a technology being acquired, sunset, or going out of business – was 8.7%. 615 tools were removed since last year’s 7,040 count, but even with that, the growth of net new tools was 24.5% with 1,575 new tools added.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/martech-landscape-2020-martech5000-slide.jpg" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/06/martech-landscape-2020-martech5000-slide.jpg 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/06/martech-landscape-2020-martech5000-slide.jpg 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1600/2020/06/martech-landscape-2020-martech5000-slide.jpg 1600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w2400/2020/06/martech-landscape-2020-martech5000-slide.jpg 2400w" /></figure>
What’s New in the 2020 Martech 5000 Supergraphic
Let’s start with the obvious: for the first time, the graphic looks like a piece of abstract art. Or maybe even a map of the Kingdoms of Westeros.
Regardless of your interpretation, this new design is a marked departure from the previously structured compositions, which accentuates the organic nature of the ecosystem. It also reflects how fluid and amorphous the industry has become, and how the shape is constantly shifting.
The concept of a map is perhaps the best metaphor, with the technology logos being organized compactly into six “continents” with a number of sub-categories as “countries.” These include:
<ul>
<li>Advertising &amp; Promotion: SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and Social Media Advertising</li>
<li>Commerce &amp; Sales: Sales Automation, Customer Support, and CRM (Customer Relationship Management)</li>
<li>Content &amp; Experience: CMS (Content Management Systems), SEO, and Marketing Automation</li>
<li>Data: Data Analytics and Web Analytics</li>
<li>Management: Project Management Software and Communication Software</li>
<li>Social &amp; Relationships: Social Media Management</li>
</ul>
The other big change is where the growth is happening across these categories. Below is how much each has grown since last year:
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/martech-category-growth.jpg" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/06/martech-category-growth.jpg 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/06/martech-category-growth.jpg 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/06/martech-category-growth.jpg 1600w" /></figure>
While stalwarts like Advertising and Promotion appreciated modest gains, Data lead the way with double-digit growth. Specific areas such as Data Governance and Privacy, Video Marketing, Conversational Marketing and Chat, and Project and Workflow management saw the highest percentages of change, signaling that companies with mature stacks are now focused on harnessing their data assets and optimizing their investments.
The Impact of COVID-19 on Martech
Brinker’s 2020 research was collected before most of the world had ever heard the word “coronavirus.” The Supergraphic was published in the thick of the COVID-19 lockdowns – and while many areas of the world have reopened, resurgences in places like the U.S. continue to stir uncertainty in the markets.
In his article supporting the 2020 Supergraphic, Brinker taps his crystal ball, forecasting that the marketing technology industry will remain strong despite the effects of COVID-19. While he believes there will be short-term damage, the long-term outlook is positive.
While the future is always a little foggy, the pandemic has further obscured the prospects for the Martech landscape. First and foremost, companies may be more risk-adverse, pushing off digital transformation projects to meet budget cuts. Additionally, venture capital investment may be more difficult to secure, putting more pressure on startups.
On the bright side, this challenge has forced brands and organizations to pivot their operations to digital. Consider <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/23/21232401/zoom-300-million-users-growth-coronavirus-pandemic-security-privacy-concerns-response">Zoom’s jump from 10 million daily users to over 300 million</a> since the beginning of the lockdown; this ripple effect was felt across many categories as a direct result of the crisis. As companies continue to embrace digital operations – from collaboration to eCommerce to service – Martech may continue to experience broad growth.
An Interactive Martech 5000 Database
Including 8,000 logos inside a graphic is not an easy task. And if you’re trying to decipher the various players from a printed page, you might need a magnifying glass.
The good news is the Martech 5000 Supergraphic also comes in the form of an interactive database, making it easier to browse the companies along with their domain names, year founded, headquarter location, and even their Linkedin and Twitter handles if available.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/martech5000-database.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/06/martech5000-database.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/06/martech5000-database.png 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/06/martech5000-database.png 1209w" /></figure>
You can sign up to see the database <a href="https://martech5000.com/about">here</a>. To read the Chiefmartec article and download the Supergraphic in all of its glory, <a href="https://chiefmartec.com/2020/04/marketing-technology-landscape-2020-martech-5000/">click here.</a>
About Chiefmartec.com
<a href="https://chiefmartec.com/">Chiefmartec.com</a> is a leading online authority for marketing technology. Started in 2008 by Scott Brinker, the blog offers deep insights on strategy, management, and culture – as well as articles and interviews with Martech leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Scott also serves as VP platform ecosystem at Hubspot.

Marketing Technology Landscape Grows 13.6% in 2020, Supergraphic Now Features 8,000 Tools

When it comes to SEO, there are a number of tools that can help improve your website’s performance. And that’s the problem: you often need multiple resources to manage a comprehensive SEO strategy, and few platforms offer complete solution with the right mix of features.
While Siteimprove has built a strong reputation around their industry-leading <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/accessibility/">accessibility scanning and monitoring solution</a>, their SEO platform boasts some powerful enterprise features for enhancing search while simplifying the overall management.
We took a fresh look at Siteimprove SEO to see what gives it an edge – and how their all-in-one platform can help power your search and Digital Presence Optimization (DPO) strategies.
<h3 id="the-impact-of-covid-19-on-seo">The Impact of COVID-19 on SEO</h3>
The Coronavirus pandemic has unquestionably changed the way we live. But it’s also dramatically elevated the value of SEO.
With more people working from home, streaming video content, and ordering goods online, internet usage has increased exponentially. While businesses have begun to reopen in most places, the effects of COVID-19 have had a profound and lasting impact on digital experience.
From events to food service to hospitality, almost every industry has been forced to transform their operations. As businesses continue to become more reliant on digital strategies, SEO is playing an even bigger role for driving leads and competing online.
<h3 id="seo-made-simple">SEO Made Simple</h3>
Digital professionals already know how challenging it is to manage a successful SEO strategy. With dozens of tools flooding the already overloaded <a href="https://chiefmartec.com/2020/04/marketing-technology-landscape-2020-martech-5000/">MarTech landscape</a> – from analytics to keyword research to linking – the choices can feel overwhelming.
Siteimprove SEO helps cut through this complexity by combining the most essential tools in one place and integrating their capabilities. This makes the SEO job less cumbersome while providing more actionable insight and value.
We’ve already mentioned Siteimprove’s best-of-breed accessibility platform. These features go hand-in-hand with SEO, as accessibility is built on structured website tagging and labeling. Search engines love these components, so fixing your accessibility means improving your SEO. It’s relatively easy to add Siteimprove’s accessibility scanning and monitoring to help flag ADA compliance violations.
<h3 id="an-all-in-one-platform-for-optimizing-search">An All-in-One Platform for Optimizing Search</h3>
While no platform can bring everything together in one place, Siteimprove gets pretty close. Here are some key features worth noting:
On-Page Diagnostics 
Siteimprove incorporates 66 unique SEO checks, including scans for missing meta descriptions, spelling mistakes, broken links, poor readability, and links to unsafe domains. Based on all the checkpoints, it then calculates your SEO score, measured on a scale of 0-100.
There are four separate categories: Technical, Content, User Experience, and Mobile Standards. Each category gets its own score with their total making up the overall score. The scoring system allows users to easily identify what needs to be improved and where they should direct their efforts. This makes managing and understanding your SEO much easier. The following ranges give an indication of how your website is doing:
- Red: 0-49 (poor)
- Orange: 50-89 (average)
- Green: 90-100 (good)
A score of 90+ will place your website in the top 5% of all websites, according to Google’s performance metrics. Making your score higher will improve your SEO, user engagement, and user experience – thus increasing conversions.
Keyword insights 
The Keyword insights feature allows for advanced keyword discovery and monitoring. Through a direct integration of <a href="https://search.google.com/search-console/about">Google’s Search console</a>, Siteimprove SEO helps you learn how Google’s search engine sees your website and which queries make your website appear in search results. With Keyword Insights, you can identify keywords that drive traffic to your website and see their search volume, estimated traffic, competition level, and even a specific keyword’s potential ranked from low to high.
Search Engine Analytics 
With Siteimprove, you can see where your visitors are coming from and how engaged they are with your content. Search Engine Analytics provides statistics on visitors from search engine referrals, their county, and even the devices they use. With all the data at your fingertips, you can enhance your digital strategies and focus your campaigns based on incredibly useful metrics.
Backlink checks 
Backlinks are hyperlinks that live on other websites that lead back to your website. Backlinks are an important part of any SEO strategy, as search engines use backlinks as an indicator of your domain authority (essentially how popular or important your website is). With backlink checks and analysis, you can see which sites are publishing links back to you, and identify links that boost your ranking or even put it at risk.
Duplicate Content Finder 
Duplicate content is a problem almost every web or content manager faces. Google and other search engines work hard to index pages with distinct information, and duplicated blocks of content can be seen as manipulating SEO to win more traffic. Even if duplicate content includes things like printer-only versions of pages, the search engines can’t always tell which version to display. Consequently, your page may rank lower or even be excluded from search results. While canonical tags can be used to combat this, it’s good to avoid the problem in the first place.
With Siteimprove, you can search and identify duplicate content, compare the percentage of similarity between pages, and provide page view statistics. Armed with this data, you can take action to remove or properly tag your duplicate content and improve your rankings.
Content Optimization 
With Siteimprove, you can map specific keywords to where they should appear in your content. You can even get recommendations on how to optimize your overall content for keywords.
Accessibility 
As we already mentioned, Siteimprove is well-regarded for their accessibility solutions. But improving your SEO can help support your overall accessibility – and adding Siteimprove’s scanning and monitoring tools can help give you a clean bill of health around violations.
Siteimprove’s scanning and monitoring tools check your website for a range of accessibility issues and compile scoring based on WCAG 2.0 ratings for A, AA, or AAA standards. If you have a big site, you can use automated accessibility checks to simultaneously test hundreds of pages. You can then generate actionable reports that allow you to remediate any issues and track your improvements for regulatory or governance requirements.
<a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/accessibility/">Click here</a>  to learn more about Siteimprove’s accessibility solutions.
<h3 id="integration-with-cms-platforms">Integration with CMS Platforms</h3>
Siteimprove works seamlessly with most content management systems. It offers a set of pre-built plugins for specific platforms, as well as integrations developed in collaboration with CMS vendors. There are also a number of community plugins that have been developed and supported by third parties. Siteimprove does feature an <a href="https://api.siteimprove.com/v2/documentation">API spec with complete documentation</a> for building custom integrations.
<h3 id="pricing">Pricing</h3>
Along with their suite of SEO tools, Siteimprove offers multiple enterprise products through a subscription-based model. While they don’t offer pricing on their website, you can contact their sales team to develop a custom quote around your organization’s needs and goals.
You can also get a free demo of the software <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/request-a-demo/">https://siteimprove.com/en-us/request-a-demo/</a>
<h3 id="about-siteimprove">About Siteimprove</h3>
Siteimprove offers the world's most comprehensive cloud-based Digital Presence Optimization (DPO) software. The Siteimprove Intelligence Platform provides eye-opening insights that empower more than 7,500 teams to create higher quality content, drive better traffic, measure digital performance, and work towards regulatory compliance—all from one place. We are also proud to offer best-in-class technical support, academy courses, services, and technology integrations.

Siteimprove SEO Provides All-In-One Capabilities for Enhancing Search Performance

Shopify Inc. has announced the release of Shop, a first-of-its-kind mobile shopping app designed to create a more intuitive online shopping experience from product discovery to package delivery.
We are setting out to reimagine the online shopping experience for customers — to provide them greater convenience, transparency, and personalization. As a result of social distancing and stay-at-home measures, customers have become more reliant on online ordering than ever before as it becomes more challenging to stay connected to the brands they love.
Designed to bridge the gaps in online shopping, Shop offers users the ability to easily discover local businesses, receive relevant product recommendations from their favorite brands, check out effortlessly, and track all of their online orders. We’ve brought together our expertise in commerce and proven features from Shop Pay, a one-click accelerated checkout, and Arrive, an app to track online orders, to make purchasing and order tracking frictionless for shoppers. To date, Shop Pay has processed over $8 billion in sales, while Arrive has been used by 16 million shoppers to track their ecommerce orders.
In a world of increasing physical separation, we want to help businesses deepen their connection with their customers and, over time, understand what they want to continue to build trust and loyalty.
“Shopify has focused the last decade on solving complex problems for entrepreneurs by making commerce seamless and accessible,” said Carl Rivera, General Manager of Shop. “Now, we want to do the same for customers. We set out to solve the common pain points in the customer’s shopping journey today, while developing specific features, like local business discovery, that will be relevant today and in the future.”
Shop’s features include:
<ul>
<li>Local filters: Shop’s users can locate nearby merchants to support local businesses. The app identifies businesses currently offering shipping, pick-up, and highlights return policies.</li>
<li>Seamless payment and checkout: Through Shop Pay, shoppers have fast and easy checkout across all brands on the app.</li>
<li>Transparent tracking: With the innovative technology of Arrive, all order and tracking information is stored in one convenient place. Tracking shows the status of each package and provides real-time updates.</li>
<li>Customized recommendations: Through personalized recommendations, like new releases and deals from the brands shoppers love, Shop ensures merchants’ customers consistently rediscover the storefronts of their favorite brands, as well as new brands.</li>
</ul>
The iOS and Android app are available to <a href="https://shop.app/" rel="noreferrer noopener">download</a> in the app store today. For more information, please visit <a href="http://shopify.com/shop" rel="noreferrer noopener">shopify.com/shop</a>.
About Shopify
Shopify is a leading global commerce company, providing trusted tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business of any size. Shopify makes commerce better for everyone with a platform and services that are engineered for reliability, while delivering a better shopping experience for consumers everywhere. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Shopify powers over one million businesses in more than 175 countries and is trusted by brands such as Allbirds, Gymshark, PepsiCo, Staples and many more. For more information, visit www.shopify.com.

Shopify Unveils Its Consumer App: Shop

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<a href="https://www.magnolia-cms.com/" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">Magnolia</a> today announces the launch of Magnolia 6.2, the latest version of its leading content management system (CMS), designed to manage connected experiences.
Along with a series of new features, Magnolia 6.2 provides a headless digital experience hub, which aims to take managing digital experiences in headless and omnichannel environments to the next level.
Within the hub, marketers can use Magnolia’s Visual Single-Page Apps Editor to re-use content across all channels and digital touchpoints, while maintaining autonomy for creating and editing all layouts and content. It also enables previewing of any experience before publishing.
Additional features mean users will be able to curate collections of content and data from external sources — with no programming required. Magnolia 6.2’s Multisource feature also allows for dynamic integration of multiple content repositories, whether on-premises or cloud, giving marketers a single access point to all available content and data that’s needed for greater personalization.
As an open platform, Magnolia 6.2 enables customers to choose the exact systems they need and helps them accelerate integration using Magnolia’s<a href="https://www.magnolia-cms.com/product/connectors.html" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener"> Connector Packs</a>. New connectors to Salesforce Marketing and Commerce Clouds, Marketo, Adobe Analytics and more enable marketers to get out-of-the-box integrations to industry leading marketing technologies.
Commenting on the launch of Magnolia 6.2, Tim Brown, CEO at Magnolia said: “Brands today are expected to deliver personalized customer experiences across a myriad of different touchpoints. But it’s not easy. So much of what’s available to marketers today is either split into silos, lacking in integrations or overly-reliant on IT and developer support. For all the talk of great digital experiences, too many CMS’ rely on cumbersome architectures that don’t put the end user first.
“That’s what we set out to change with Magnolia 6.2 and our new headless digital experience hub. Our latest update lets marketers assemble experiences, instead of just entering content. It brings together all available data and content for personalization, no matter where it lives. The result is a platform that takes digital experiences to the next level; providing a more powerful resource for marketers, less hard work for developers, and ultimately, a better digital experience for customers.”
To find out more about Magnolia 6.2, visit the <a href="https://blog.magnolia-cms.com/author/antti-hietala/magnolia-6.2-headless-for-marketers.html" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">release announcement</a>.

Magnolia announces new 6.2 release, with first ever headless digital experience hub

The most popular open-source headless content management system (CMS) <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=t5_FPcCTthEU0ymmYwQjMlFRUUpcDIxkDMaj-n8FfDcxPFAyPp_9LakdMWyMGO-h" rel="nofollow">Strapi</a> can now be deployed in less than two minutes on DigitalOcean. The company announced today that it has been listed on the <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=CKiPFiyUkEchztZjtKbXx6K9AjCb9BL9F24ABm8ezw1QIjXzl_S7VSrVcUazuUtjHoDmRsXsgJqAIWIPnrHzlRqh2LA5RHIW2BzKUaQYVXtYSsSQOC8aF6CM6jrkkvOz" rel="nofollow">DigitalOcean Marketplace</a> with a preconfigured one-click option.
<blockquote>Strapi’s  mission is to make content management and delivery as easy as possible  for developers and end-users,” said Pierre Burgy, co-founder and CEO of  Strapi. “Our availability on the DigitalOcean Marketplace enables users  to deploy Strapi with one-click, saving them time and deployment  headaches.”</blockquote>
Strapi works with all the JAMstack static site  generators like React, Vue.js, Next.js, Nuxt.js, Gatsby.js or Angular  supports both SQL and NoSQL databases and can be deployed anywhere:  Amazon Web Services (AWS), Netlify, Heroku, a dedicated or virtual  private server. The release of the <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=zp_N1CXQvF7NZGkv3G8p2ofk3RBDzkn-ORi4RELCgW2Z2hxWYZ3FeAaD_7wN5B7954MFXzfz0EAY4qTjz940q1GOd-f11kEB323kuUlLtD7PeAbCl5cG4aviH2hqNxNJZToKDxuJrNrhE8OLQnLRbyOhS7LwOvHfyKMPY1S7-1k=" rel="nofollow">platform.sh one-click deploy button</a> last week and DigitalOcean this week gives developers the option to  save time installing Strapi instances directly on their favorite cloud  platform in minutes.
“With this new ‘Strapi Marketplace app,’  developers can spin up Strapi instances easily and almost  instantaneously,” said Chris Sevilleja, founder, Scotch.io, and web  community manager at DigitalOcean. “With support for both REST and  GraphQL application programming interfaces (APIs), Strapi is a very good  option for the A in the JAMstack, a powerful backend that just works  with all JavaScript static site generators.”
On Thursday, March 12, Sevilleja will be hosting a <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=7lXANVhSHyzPu0FbqEDy63Qee8GAL2n6RWVgZtkhxUxOQOg7SfWl_SBPOP424czPdpRwoa6QzJHYE6OMBpBLSJ39oFg7PQYdXEHkvPaHM3Taeobu9l50RSGI39Es0sbqYNJZvFS2CN8r_vrnZONFEA==" rel="nofollow">webinar</a> discussing JAMstack best practices and ways to set up API layers by  running a headless CMS on DigitalOcean Droplets, featuring Strapi. To  create a Strapi Droplet go to: <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=Reg2XsTvoKgAV_9tgC8JTLGpB8xD9sdkQmoCOwYp5qQgfsTQ-hJ7-JEKz-ij5qDYTf3R145TQoUghIaJBvZH7zNkvDRFsa7ZkpyhMaEqjDPAtlDLAWhlEP0yQ5uBjem7upmh5x02YhyXlOlk9WSn0ZjAJ1b2wBkIZJJ5qZJAd28=" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/strapi</a>.

Headless CMS Strapi now available on the DigitalOcean Marketplace

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