Articles - Page 66

Brightspot Illuminates the Future of CMS with Human-Controlled, AI-Powered Storytelling 

matt-garrepy

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

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

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

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

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

5 Reasons Your Business Needs Marketing Automation Software

mike-johnston

<h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/simple-intranet636x0-is.jpg" /></h2>
<h2>Ready In No Time At All</h2>
You’ve got enough on your plate without delving into the fickle details of intranet design. The beauty of using an intranet template is its pre-designed nature, which inherently brings speed and convenience of deployment. These templates have an extensive range of business modules and tools, all of which have been designed and tested for usability and functionality already. Pick and choose which features your organization will benefit from and include these while chopping off any unneeded ones. As an example, if your business does not need a shared documents function, then it’s as simple as selecting not to have this function included. It’s a fallacy that the use of a template means mandated features and a rigorous structure. In fact, you can even go as far as customizing color and font to reflect your organization’s unique identity! An intranet template makes deploying intranet incredibly convenient, and enjoyable.
As well as this, managing a <a href="https://www.myhubintranet.com/simple-intranet/">simple intranet</a> on an ongoing basis is a straightforward process with an intranet template. Even the non-technical person will find it a breeze to navigate, adding and deleting users, creating content and updating pages. Familiar file faces and intuitive administration tools mean you’ll be able to hit the ground running, and your people will love you for it!
<h2>No More Signing A Blank Check</h2>
Everyone wants to get the right bang for their buck. The trouble is, often when organizations try to build their own intranet from scratch or attempt some similar do-it-yourself solution, this can be the same as signing a blank check. Unless you have an intranet professional in your business, then as confident as your team may be heading into the project, there’s a good chance they’ll run into unforeseen issues. More often than not, companies find themselves sinking more and more resource into the design of their own intranet, when the use of an intranet template deployed by a professional could have had the job done for a fraction of the time and price.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/intranet-blank-check636x0-is.png" />
The only way to truly guarantee a strong return on your investment, with upfront, controlled costs, is to partner with an intranet provider. A good provider will sit down and map out the process with you on day one, so you can clearly understand at your end what to expect from your investment. For example, at MyHub they offer a fixed monthly fee which covers unlimited data and number of users, as well as ongoing support. No more escalating costs when you find out an additional feature needs to be updated! The end result is a very affordable, cost-effective solution.
<h2>Why Not Get The Best?</h2>
Partnering with an intranet provider keeps your business ahead. Chances are, your intranet provider will have worked with organizations similar to yours, and know which features and tools add the most value for your specific needs. Instead of spending the time yourself, making decision after decision on various features, your intranet provider will ensure you get the right solution to keep your business moving forward. An intranet template means taking advantage of best practice in the industry — it’s your provider’s job to keep you abreast of the latest developments in intranet design so that you can focus your energies elsewhere. The specialist knowledge that comes from using an external professional is immensely valuable. At the end of the day, running your business is what you do best—why not leave the technical stuff to those who do it every day? This way, you can be out there focusing on your operations, while we focus on keeping you winning behind the scenes.
Great, simple intranet has a strong structure and intuitive navigation. Intranet templates make achieving this incredibly easy, and ensure you get the best framework for your platform. Built-in signposts, widgets, iframes and menus guarantee that your employees will be able to quickly find their way around your intranet and enjoy it too. Again, experienced intranet providers know all the best techniques to creating a well-structured intranet, and already have the templates for this. Templates are pre-tested for ease of use and are optimized with the perspective of the end user in mind. It’s this kind of focus that means an intranet template ensures your organization gets the best solution possible. Unless you have the expertise in-house, and a lot of time to burn to develop the appropriate site map, main menu and navigation, then perhaps an intranet template will be a great choice.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/intranet-software621x0-is.jpg" />Another reason intranet templates may be the simple, high quality solution you’re after is their advanced search capability. It’s all well and good having a zany, aesthetically pleasing intranet… But if your people can’t find what they want in a few clicks, disengagement is just around the corner. Pre-designed, simple intranet templates make this challenge simple. They’ve already tested and created the appropriate functionality with businesses like yours, and have a great search capability extending to key words, themes, tags, names, titles — the list goes on! No fumbling around, just the data you want in an instant.
<h2>Peace Of Mind</h2>
Imagine your competitor scrolling through documents, conversations and posts from your company’s intranet? Not a pleasant thought and one that a cloud-based intranet provider ensures will never happen. All security matters are taken care of, from updates to back-ups, secure document filing, SSL encryption and file permissions. Internally and externally, your security concerns are handled by professionals using the latest industry best practice. No need to train someone internally to keep abreast of this, or spend the time designing a robust system up front. Simple, convenient, and most of all, safe.
<h2>Roll Out A Simple Intranet… Now!</h2>
There’s no need to reinvent the steering wheel. Sure, there are some circumstances where you may have the time, energy and expertise necessary to roll out a fantastic intranet, in which case, great! Chances are, like most other business owners and executives, time is of the essence, and intranet isn’t something you can afford to sink vast amounts of resource into. Using an intranet template is a very easy and cost-effective way to implement a premium, professionally designed and delivered, simple intranet.
If you’re struggling with the design for your intranet and you’d like some expert advice, get in touch with the friendly team at <a href="https://www.myhubintranet.com">MyHub Intranet</a> today. Take advantage of our free trial offer and see for yourself how easy it is to deploy a simple intranet design template.

A Simple Intranet: It's Here!

The more your business grows, the more tools you rely on to get things done. This little guide will give a list of the ten more important online tools for small business owners.
Let’s get started.

<img alt="access, close-up, computer" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/pexels-photo-306198.jpeg" />

<h2>1: Google Docs / Google Drive </h2>
What It Is: 
<a href="https://www.google.com/docs/about/">Google Docs</a> is an online word processor that makes it easy to create a variety of different types of documents. These documents can be shared with your team through a shareable link or directly through email, with options to allow them to either just view it or to edit it. This makes collaboration simple and immediate, as everything is done in real-time. All changes are also saved immediately, and the documents are stored directly.
<a href="https://www.google.com/drive/">Google Drive</a> is a lot like <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/">Dropbox</a> in that it stores all of your Google documents (and any other files you wish to share) in one place. It also syncs all of your devices with the cloud for easy access, no matter where you are.
Considering how easy it is for systems to crash, or for files to accidentally be deleted from a computer, these tools are absolute must-haves for any business owner.
Pricing: 
Google Docs is free, and Google Drive offers its users 15 GB of storage space for free.
<h2>2: Slack </h2>
What It Is: 
<a href="https://slack.com/">Slack</a> is a cloud-based collaboration tool that makes it possible to share messages, documents / files, and images with your team. It works on any device, so users are not restricted to just their phone or just their PC.
Rather than having to gather in a meeting room, spend hours playing “phone tag”, or waiting for important emails to arrive, business owners can collaborate with their team in real-time.
Pricing: 
Small teams can use it for an unlimited amount of time for free. There are two upgrade packages available for $6.67 and $12.50.
<h2><img alt="Grayscale Photo of Computer Laptop Near White Notebook and Ceramic Mug on Table" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/pexels-photo-169573.jpeg" /></h2>
<h2>3: Website Builders </h2>
What It Is: 
<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/key-website-builders/">Website builders</a> are key online tools for small business owners, allowing them to create stunning websites without having to be a designer. Most of them are easy to use and affordable, with numerous design templates and options available. Whether you need a static page or are looking to build your eCommerce store, there are plenty of website builders available for every need, purpose, and industry.
Pricing: 
Pricing varies considerably, as it depends on the company and the pricing package you choose. The link provided within this section will take you to an overview of some of the best website builders available, and each description includes pricing information.
<h2> </h2>
<h2>4: Canva </h2>
What It Is: 
<a href="https://www.canva.com/">Canva</a> is an incredibly versatile online tool that makes it possible for users to create eye-catching images for their website, blog posts, social media posts, business cards, and any other type of marketing collateral.
Pricing: 
The very basic plan is completely free for an unlimited amount of time. If you don’t need to create anything super fancy, this will work just fine. The next plan up allows users to collaborate on designs with their team, and this plan costs $12.95 per month. Finally, the most expensive package offers far more than the others do, but the prices are not listed on the website. Instead, users must contact Canva to get their quote. This is the best option for large businesses with large marketing teams.
<h2>5: Hootsuite </h2>
What It Is: 
<a href="https://hootsuite.com/">Hootsuite </a>is one of the best social media management tools available, letting users manage all of their profiles from just one dashboard. Users can easily find and schedule content for their profiles, as well as use the built-in analytics to measure their ROI and other metrics. As a business owner, time is incredibly valuable. Hootsuite saves time.
Pricing: 
The very basic plan is limited, but free. The others range from $19 per month to $99 per month, to $499 per month. There is also an Enterprise package but, like Canva, users must contact the company to receive a quote.
<h2><img alt="coaching, coders, coding" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/startup-photos.jpg" /></h2>
<h2>6: Google Analytics </h2>
What It Is: 
If you’re serious about driving traffic to your business’ website, and want to know where your traffic is coming from, then <a href="https://analytics.google.com/">Google Analytics </a>is a must-have tool. It can be a bit overwhelming when you first use it, but it gets easier as you spend some time navigating around it. Through Google Analytics, you can see how many sessions your website has, where your traffic is coming from, and what your most popular content is. Additionally, you can set up milestones/goals and eCommerce tracking. This helps you focus on the channels or platforms that produce the best results.
Pricing: 
Users who have fewer than 5 million impressions per month can use Google Analytics free of charge. This is typically not a problem for most small business owners, or for those who use it for a personal website. That monthly limit is removed if you have a current AdWords campaign running, assuming your AdWords account is neither suspended nor disabled.
<h2>7: Pardot </h2>
What It Is: 
<a href="http://www.pardot.com">Pardot</a> is a B2B marketing automation tool that strengthens the marketing efforts of small business owners and their marketing team. It offers a wide array of tools that help businesses establish meaningful and lasting connections with their customers and other companies within their industry, generate more pipeline, and helps the sales team to close more deals. Business owners can generate and nurture more leads, getting them through the pipeline quickly and efficiently.
Pricing: 
Pardot has pricing plans that range from $50 per month/ per user to $300 per month / per 5 users, on up to $3,000 per month. No matter what your needs are, there is a pricing plan that fits your budget and brand.
<h2>8: Mailchimp </h2>
What It Is: 
<a href="https://mailchimp.com">Mailchimp</a> is one of the most trusted and widely used email marketing tools, used for sending out e-newsletters and promotions. It makes it possible to expand your business by sending out stunning emails, advertising, building your brand, and connecting with an eCommerce store.
Pricing 
The most basic plan, intended for completely new users, is free. The upgrade starts at $10 per month, and the other plan is an additional $199 per month.
<h2>9: Intuit Quickbooks </h2>
What It Is: 
<a href="https://quickbooks.intuit.com/online/">Quickbooks by Intuit</a> is an online accounting tool that organizes all of your finances in one place. It’s easy to navigate, makes the basic accounting tasks easier to complete, and offers advanced tools for when you need them. With this tool, business owners can send invoices that accept cards, take payments with free bank transfers, and set up invoices with payment notifications. Users can also record what they spend and what they earn, as well as separate earnings and expenses by categories for better records.
Pricing: 
The most basic plan is $10 per month, the next one up is $24 per month, and the most expensive package is $35 per month.
<h2>10: Buzzsumo </h2>
What It Is: 
A strong content marketing strategy is one of the most salient aspects of any small business, and <a href="http://buzzsumo.com/">Buzzsumo</a> helps users create that. This tool helps you find trending content within your industry, as well as influencers who are most likely to share your content and increase its reach. It has analytics built in that shows how well your content is received and where it is being shared.
Pricing: 
There is a free trial available, and then it costs $99 per month after that. It’s not cheap, but it’s definitely a must-have tool for strong content marketing.
<h3>What are your favorite online tools? Share in the comments below! </h3>

Top 10 Online Tools for Small Business Owners

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

Content Delivery in the Modern Era: Headless CMS

If compare rookies with no coding experience and web developers whose job is creating websites in a professional manner, you will come to a reasonable conclusion. Though both groups of users employ different methods to go online, they tend to achieve maximum results with minimum efforts. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/1200kh630_31097x0-is.jpg" />
For this reason, MotoCMS released Skyline – a <a href="https://www.motocms.com/website-templates/motocms-3-template/63777.html" target="_blank">new website template</a> that provides its owner with limitless functionality possibilities, requires minor expenses of resources and fits any possible business. 
<h2>Drag &amp; Drop Block Editor</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/skyline-business-website-design-blocks.gif" />
The primary feature that reflects the ease of a website customization process with Skyline is the drag &amp; drop Block Editor in the <a href="https://www.motocms.com/" target="_blank">website builder</a> from MotoCMS. It will do good for an amateur who needs facility for creating a professional website, as well as for an expert who requires a simple tool to churn out several websites at the same time. Just pick any block in the list and drop it on a page to start customizing the layout.
<h2>100+ Content Blocks</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/skyline-business-website-design-100-blocks.jpg" />
Skyline combined more than one hundred blocks with ready-made content, so you could have dozens of possible layout variations to choose from. All blocks are divided into categories according their purpose. 
<h2>20 Ready-to-Use Pages</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/skyline-business-website-design-twenty-pages.jpg" />
Skyline is a perfect website template for highlighting each part of your business because it is really hard not to find a particular page for a particular goal. Introduce your company to the full with the enormous number of pages: 
<ul>
<li>Home</li>
<li>About Us,</li>
<li>Contact Us</li>
<li>Careers</li>
<li>Team</li>
<li>Profile</li>
<li>Services</li>
<li>Single Service</li>
<li>Gallery</li>
<li>Projects</li>
<li>Customers</li>
<li>Privacy Policy</li>
<li>Events</li>
<li>Single Event</li>
<li>Testimonials</li>
<li>Prices</li>
<li>503</li>
<li>FAQ</li>
<li>Blog</li>
<li>Contacts</li>
</ul>
<h2>4 Additional Home Pages</h2>
Another feature for both expert website creators and first-timers to benefit from Skyline is the set of extra home pages: Skyline Black, Dentist, House Construction and Travel. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/skyline-business-website-design-home-pages1024x0-is.jpg" />
If you are related to one of the niches, do not be shy to set one of Skyline’s additional home pages and, thus, create your website faster in many times. As for web developers, if you are among them, take advantage of these extra mockups to make websites for various businesses and save a tremendous amount of time you spend on completing the project.
<h2>Professional Blog</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/skyline-business-website-design-blog-functionality922x0-is.jpg" />
A blog is still a must-have for any website owner, taking the own job seriously. Skyline includes the ready-made functionality for creating a professional blog that have all the odds to bring the lion’s share of traffic to your web resource. Add new posts, publish and edit them easily with an intuitive interface of the MotoCMS admin panel in your copy of Skyline.
<h2>SEO Settings</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/skyline-business-website-design-seo-settings992x0-is.jpg" />
Get tools to optimize your website page by page. Enter necessary keywords, titles, descriptions and ALTs for images, add 301 redirects of any URL registered under your site domain, hide or reveal pages for search engines to index them, set Hide Canonical and No-follow attributes and more.
<h2>Responsive Design</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/skyline-business-website-design-responsive.jpg" />
To provide the audience of your website with a positive user experience, it should be available on each platform and web browser. Skyline is a responsive website template that automatically fits any smartphone and tablet. So you don’t have to develop an extra version for mobile devices because you already got one that can guarantee the users of your web portal a high usability level.
<h2>24/7 Customer Support</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/skyline-business-website-design-support.jpg" />
Whether you need an expert advice, you are new to the website creation process or just want to get more details that concern your website and the admin panel from MotoCMS, contact the MotoCMS support center that is available 24/7 and free of charge during one year. 
<h2>Skyline Free Test</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/skyline-business-website-template-home-page.jpg" />
Became interested in Skyline? Go ahead and <a href="https://www.motocms.com/website-templates/motocms-3-template/63777.html" target="_blank">test Skyline free of charge</a>. Log in to the MotoCMS admin panel with Skyline right now with your email or social media account. Test the CMS and the template before launching your website and if you like the final result, the specialists will transfer all demo progress for you to get a ready-made website.

Push The Limits of Developing a Website with Skyline From MotoCMS

I took Publii, one of the newest up and coming free website builders for a spin to see how it worked and what it brings to the table compared to what’s available today.
<h2>What is Publii?</h2>
Publii is an open source website builder that runs off of your desktop instead of over the internet. It’s creator, Bob Mitro, has been in the web business for over 10 years. Bob started TidyCustoms prior to creating Publii. TidyCustoms is an online service for website optimization, and that was one of his key goals coming into the Publii project. Speed.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/publii-app1005x0-is.png" />
The popularity of website builders like Shopify and WordPress has led to a ton of developers cranking out themes that are bloated, and they risk adding page load time unnecessarily. This isn’t always the case of course, but there’s no way to test the thousands of themes individual effects on page-load times. Additionally, using several plugins to add site features or security adds to the issue. These two factors, in turn, slow your page-load speed and hurt your SEO rankings. There are steps you can take to speed up these sites, but you can only get so far. Finding a well-developed theme and keeping plugin use to the minimum are important factors in reducing page-load time.
Publii set out to change the game by acting as a CMS for static blogs. Other website builders use a database, which is good for more complicated websites but is a bit overkill for blogs. By giving the user just what they need, the page load time can be increased significantly.
<h2>Publii’s Key Features</h2>
Work Offline: This feature earns big points from me. It’s one of the only website building platforms that lets you work offline and sync your updates when you have internet access again. This is a big benefit for travel and outdoor bloggers who may not always have a reliable internet connection (if any). Instead, you can work offline and create posts directly on the platform rather than re-create the posts from a Word document when you have a connection.
Another great benefit to offline page building is site previews even without an internet connection. Publii has a built in page preview that can show you the mobile layout with the simple switch of a toggle button. It also has a built in inspector element to display HTML
Speed: Since most of the bloat was cut out from what other website builders offer, page load times are significantly shorter than the same post built on a different platform. There are, of course, other variables that affect page load speed that need to be taken into account. Publii also took care to not remove too much from the modern-day CMS platform and kept things like themes and automatic responsive design available.
Easy to Manage SEO Tools: It has built in search engine optimization tools that let you control things like the page title, slug and meta information. You can also tag posts to be indexed or not for each individual page or post.
Turn Key Functionality: Many times when I’m building a client’s WordPress page, there are a handful of plugins that I would consider “Must Installs” and a few more on top of that which will likely need to used to fulfill client requests. These plugins do add to the page bloat I mentioned earlier, but I would consider essential. Publii, however, has many of these tools already built into each vanilla install. For example, you can choose to show or hide publishing date and time, show post author, include social sharing icons or even show related posts based on your assigned tags. These can be controlled as a default for your entire blog, but can also be enabled or disabled on individual posts. It’s always better to have more control than less in these types of situations.
Separate Custom CSS &amp; HTML: With any theme provided by a blogging platform, you typically need to edit or add some extra CSS to match your brand vision. Publii has a separate container for custom CSS, so you don’t have to scroll through an entire CSS document to edit yours in. This also helps prevent removing an important piece of CSS that could break how your site displays.
In addition to the separate CSS Location, there is also a separate HTML location for adding things like Google Analytics tracking, Pinterest page verification and more to the head, footer and body areas of your website.
You would need at least four or five plugins on other website builders to get the functionality of a vanilla Publii install. Plugins are a great tool for developers, but if their creators stop updating, it could leave you with a broken website in extreme cases.
What to Consider Before Choosing Publii as Your Website Builder
Like all website builders, each has their own drawbacks. Publii is not an exception, so it’s important to understand the things you’ll need to do before pulling the trigger on a CMS.
You Will Need Some Very Basic Website Setup Knowledge: Since Publii syncs your file structure to an FTP site, you’ll need to know how to link your FTP site to it. Another good thing to understand is how an FTP site syncs with the folders in your file path so you don’t inadvertently break your site paths the next time you sync to your site.
Additionally, you’ll want a good grasp of FTP file structure so that a year down the road your site’s backend isn’t an unorganized mess.
Have Your Website Organization Planned Out: If you’ve previously had experience with website builders like WordPress, you should be able to figure out where everything is relatively quickly and get going. Those newer to user-friendly website builders will have a bit of a steeper learning curve, but there are explanations for most of the features in Publii. 
Either way, you will want to have a site structure organized prior to firing up Publii to begin creating content. Publii uses a few core themes which will provide the layout, look and functionality to your blog. However having a plan for the types of categories, posts and menu items you will have will go a long way to getting everything set up smoothly when you start publishing content. Without one, you might be a little more lost than you otherwise would be in WordPress or Shopify.
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
Publii hasn’t been around for too long respectively, but I see it growing in the future as more bloggers become aware of it. The lightweight platform that is built for speed will surely scratch an itch that some of the more cumbersome website builders would be overkill for. Why not <a href="https://getpublii.com/" target="_blank">try it for yourself</a>?

Publii Review - The Light Weight Open Source CMS

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

Headless CMS Buyers Guide

Liferay, Inc., which makes digital experience <a href="https://www.liferay.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">software for enterprises</a>, today announced a new initiative intended to reinvent the Liferay open source community experience to better support its growing international needs.
Liferay has introduced a dedicated Liferay Developer Relations team, a new <a href="https://community.liferay.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Liferay Community website</a> and a new Liferay Community instant-chat vehicle to make it easier for the open source community to engage. This latest initiative is intended to provide a high quality community experience that supports and inspires members to engage with one another, helping them to build their applications and to collaborate on open source projects both locally and internationally.
“The Liferay Community belongs to its members, and will always be exactly as healthy and vibrant as its members make it – that’s who it exists for,” said Bryan Cheung, CEO, Liferay. “That said, Liferay has the responsibility – and opportunity – to ensure that all community members are empowered to have their needs met and are able to share their ideas efficiently and effectively to achieve ever greater success with their applications.
“As the communities built around these projects mature, we as a business recognize the importance of transitioning away from directing community efforts and towards facilitating engagement. Doing so places developers at the helm and enables the Community to grow in directions that it self-determines.”
Liferay Developer Relations Team
Liferay has <a href="https://community.liferay.com/news/introducing-the-liferay-developer-relations-team/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">created a dedicated Developer Relations team</a> who have the remit to inspire, educate, assist and encourage Liferay’s community of developers in their collective efforts to make innovative applications using Liferay open source technology. This multi-national team, which comprises individuals well-known within the Liferay community, also plays an important role helping members raise ideas and concerns with Liferay-employed engineers, with the ultimate result of improving projects for everyone’s mutual benefit.
“Building the team was no easy task,” said Zeno Rocha, Principal Developer Relations Advocate, Liferay. “We needed people who were technical and could empathise with developer’s pain points, so they could listen, and — most importantly — take action. We are confident we have found individuals who can relate to these problems and also tell the story behind the tech to inspire others, and now they are working hard to help the Community succeed in their projects.”
New Liferay Community Site
Previously, each of the dozen-plus independently developed Liferay open source projects had its own website, resulting in a disjointed experience for community members. To address this, Liferay has now introduced a central site at <a href="http://community.liferay.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">community.liferay.com</a> that is designed to enable each project team to continue evolving its specifically tailored web presence, while also providing a unified experience for the Community as a whole.
The new site has been designed to offer a more inviting, modern and functional space. It enables developers to discover, understand, and utilize and collaborate on the full family of Liferay-supported open source projects and related services and software from the core Liferay CE portal software to its native mobile development and file sharing tools, UI and software development tools and related services.
Liferay Community Chat
Until now, community members have had two platforms for communication, with technical questions discussed on the Liferay Forums and extensive technical posts available via community blog posts. Now, to equip developers with a much more instant channel for communication, Liferay has introduced new <a href="https://communitychat.liferay.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Slack-powered chat functionality</a> for the Liferay Community. The platform includes designated channels for each Liferay project and user group, making it simple for members to chat in their own languages and coordinate meetups across the community.
The Developer Relations team is starting to see the impacts of its latest initiative. In less than one month, 296 people have added Community Chat to their working environment, and a total of 6,494 messages have been sent. Of these, 46% were direct messages, which suggests people not only have a place to share and discuss ideas in public, but are also creating meaningful relationships in private.
Readers can find out more about the Liferay Community and its free open source projects for content management, mobile app development and enterprise file sharing at <a href="https://community.liferay.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://community.liferay.com</a>

Liferay Puts Open Source Community In the Driving Seat with New Tools and Developer Relations Team

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

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When thinking about which landing page platform to use for your brand, the quantity of your landing pages matter just as much as their quality. Choose a platform that can generate many landing pages, all the while keeping personalization at scale without compromising quality.
The benefits to having more landing pages are the various conversion and inbound marketing opportunities. More landing pages means a higher chance that visitors convert, in addition to more places to display social media links and promotions.
More landing pages also mean more targeting opportunities. Most leading landing page platforms have integrated analytics that gather information from incoming traffic, such as location, interests, search activity, and more. This will give you more data to work with to optimize your marketing campaign.
With each landing page platform comes unique strengths that cater to each brand’s needs.
It’s also important to keep in mind that most features are universal across all landing page platforms. To list a couple of strengths of some leading platforms: Unbounce has a vast array of features including full customizable templates and fast page load times; Leadpages allows for generating quick high-quality pages; Instapage has a user-friendly interface with diverse templates; OptimizePress provide options for a more “branded” look; <a href="https://rallymind.com" target="_blank">RallyMind</a> deploys 10s to 100s of landing pages with unique fields.
The ideal landing page platform is able keep up with both small and large-scale campaigns with the ability to efficiently customize specific fields within each landing page. Rethink scalability for your brand.

Rethink Scalability When Generating Landing Pages

If you are looking for new ways to increase your online sales, you might first want to look at your website. There are so many common errors when it comes to Ecommerce web design that you could actually be missing out on a significant volume of sales as you read this.
So what can you do to optimize your website and ensure that your visitors turn into customers? In this article we sum up the top 8 errors that could be slowing down your online sales, from website speed to checkout. Investing some time on improving these aspects of your site could be much more cost-effective than other traditional approaches such as advertising and spending endless marketing dollars, and bring you greater results.
<h2>1. Your site is too slow</h2>
Because of the nature of Ecommerce sites, any issue causing visitors to drop off can have a very significant impact on revenue gains compared to a regular site. And when it comes to speed, a mere 2-second delay in loading time is enough to drive a great number of visitors to drop off your site. In fact, <a href="https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/">47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less</a>.
Ensuring optimal speed is also particularly important to Ecommerce sites because heavy integrations (such as with payment and shipping providers) can significantly slow down website performance.
If your site isn’t performing optimally, you could potentially be missing out on up to 47% of your sales, so looking at your hosting options and upgrading if necessary could bring you incredible returns.
Another common issue with Ecommerce sites is downtime caused by sudden surges in traffic, for example during special promotions such as Black Friday. It is essential to plan ahead for these traffic increases, because if you don’t you could be losing out on the majority of your sales.
<h2>2. Your product descriptions are insufficient</h2>
Web users are used to finding all the information they need in one place, and fast. With that in mind, ensuring that your product pages cover all necessary selling points and provide as much information as possible could dramatically lower drop-offs.
Try and include not just a product description but also more specific information, such as sizes, materials, weight and dimensions; you never know what your customers may be looking for.
This applies to product images too. Many Ecommerce sites fail to provide appropriate images, or they only provide one image, which is normally insufficient for the average online shopper. Remember that images are often the most direct way for customers to become familiar with the product, and they will normally look at them before they read the product descriptions. Make sure to include several images from multiple angles and, if applicable, in different colors.
<h2>3. Your website navigation is too complicated</h2>
If there’s something that can be said of today’s online customers it’s that they are used to the best. We have become accustomed to finding information easily and intuitively, and your site navigation is a key factor in ensuring this is the case.
Unfortunately, if your site navigation is poor­­ – whether the functionality is jittery or the navigation design is too complicated – the majority of your visitors will drop off. With a website, a positive user experience is simply an aspect that cannot be ignored.
This also applies to how you categorize your content. Think about what the most common categories for the products you sell are on other Ecommerce websites, and ensure your site reflects these. By making your site as familiar as possible to your users you will make it easier for them to find what they need.
A good way of ensuring your site’s navigation is optimal is to come up with top 10 user journeys through your site based on 10 different types of customers. You can then test to see if the site navigation for each of these products makes sense, and optimize accordingly.
Here A/B testing can play an instrumental role, allowing you to test different approaches and looks and to see which ones are most effective.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/pablo2014.png" />
<h2>4. Your search bar is useless</h2>
Product categories are important, but for customers who already know what they’re looking for in your site, a search bar is a very convenient shortcut. Most of these customers would find it an incredibly frustrating experience if they had to click through sub-sections and categories to find their desired product.
But search bars can also backfire and lead to drop-offs if your products are not optimized with keywords and tags. In that case, the user would only be able to find a product by searching the product name, making it difficult for users to compare different products of the same category (eg. smart TVs).
When setting up your product pages, make sure to assign keywords and tags to all content, and to include all possible permutations; you never know what keyword your users are going to search.
Another way of optimizing your search bar is to enable filtering, whether by category, size, color, etc. This will make it easier for users to sift through all your content and easily find the products with the exact specifications they need. You can also enable content sorting by tags, such as most popular, lowest price, etc.
<h2>5. Your site is not optimized for mobile</h2>
This is where I would normally throw a stat on how many of today’s online sales are carried out on mobile devices. But mobile shopping is now so pervasive that such stats have become obsolete; mobile is the mainstream way of shopping online.
It therefore goes without saying that it’s essential to ensure your Ecommerce site is optimized for mobile. And that is probably the single most important takeaway from this article. If you don’t have a mobile site, you don’t have a site.
Remember that optimizing your site for mobile means not only allowing users to browse your products online, but also to make a purchase. Mobile sites should provide the same shopping experience as on desktop, from browsing to payment. Here, ensuring that the checkout process is extremely streamlined for mobile is really key. If it’s hard to make a purchase, they won’t make a purchase.
Most content management and Ecommerce platforms nowadays provide mobile optimization, so that shouldn’t be a problem for most companies, but if you’re using an older platform this may be something you need to add on and make an investment on as soon as possible.
<h2>6. Your checkout is too complicated</h2>
Checkout is a time when many online customers drop off. This could be for a variety of reasons, <a href="http://blog.agilitycms.com/blog-posts/ecommerce-checkout-pages-8-features">which we covered in our previous article</a>, but the top ones are:
<ul>
<li>There are too many checkout steps. Many customers will get frustrated by a checkout process that is too long or that requires too much information. Try to keep it to just a few steps. On the other hand, keeping it to only one step may be detrimental too, making the user feel overwhelmed, so always aim for two or three.</li>
<li>It requires them to create an account. Having to create an account is often an unnecessary annoyance, especially if a customer has no immediate plans to shop again on your site. Always include the option to check out as a guest. However, giving users the option to create an account at the very end of the purchase process is a good way to build up customer loyalty and provide them with additional benefits that will keep them coming back (order history, saved payment and shipping details, etc).</li>
<li>Offer a variety of payment options. Credit or debit card are not the only ways to pay for products online! Consider including other options such as Apple Pay or PayPal and your customers will be happy.</li>
<li>There is no support available. Support is simply an essential service for Ecommerce sites. If your customers encounter a problem during payment, many will seek to solve the issue before dropping off. If support is not available, you will simply lose these customers. Live chat is a great option for quick support on Ecommerce sites!</li>
</ul>
<h2>7. You don’t provide product recommendations</h2>
Although this won’t necessarily lead to customer drop-offs, a lack of personalized content could be costing you significant revenue gains.
Personalization is increasingly becoming a sought-for feature in content management, but it’s especially effective on Ecommerce sites. There are two common types of personalization:
Tag-based personalization
Tag-based personalization can be set up by assigning tags to all your products. Your platform will then pull up products of similar tags as “recommended content” on a product page. This may catch the eye of your customers, leading them to make additional purchases.
Machine learning personalization
This type of personalization is more complex and relies on user personas to provide personalized content. For example, certain user personas will be associated with certain types of behaviour, so a website visitor exhibiting that type of behavior will be assigned to that persona and shown product recommendations relevant to it.
Through personalization you can make your website content highly relevant to each individual, encouraging them to purchase additional products and generating extra revenue.
<h2>8. Your site doesn’t look trustworthy</h2>
Finally, it might surprise you to hear that your site’s design can have an immense impact on how your website is perceived in terms of security. So regardless of the security measures of each site, a site that looks good and slick will feel more secure to your customers.
You can get around this by building a site that looks modern and responsive, and which feels familiar to your customers in terms of design and functionality. This applies especially to your checkout pages.
Customers are also used to coming across trust badges during checkout, even if they don’t stop to examine them. Including these will provide your customers with peace of mind that their payment details are secure.
Other things that may give your customers the impression that your site isn’t secure include being redirected to a separate domain or site to pay, providing a checkout process with a different design or style from the rest of your site and not allowing customers to create an account and view previous orders.

The Top 8 Ecommerce Errors That Could Be Slowing Down Your Online Sales

Having to call your web design company or developer every time you need to make a simple change on your website should be a thing of the past. Companies can no longer afford to rely on such an inefficient process for every tiny content update, as users and customers expect information to be up-to-date at all times.
Thankfully most Content Management Systems (CMSs) today allow you to make content edits and updates yourself. However, not every CMS is ideally suited to efficient, non-technical updates, nor is every one easy to manage when you’re working with multiple content editors.
In this article we give you a rundown of the benefits of instant content updates, as well as the key things you should look out for when researching a CMS platform, from the standpoint of content updates.
<h2>Why instant updates</h2>
When a CMS enables you to make instant content updates, this usually means that you can log into your CMS platform, find the relevant page where you would like to make an update, and easily make it without need for support.
Content changes can vary a lot, from a quick address update after an office move, to publishing a new article. Sometimes a content update involves creating new pages or adding new modules to a page, although this kind of functionality really depends on the type of CMS you choose.
Being able to log in and change content yourself means that you can ensure your website is always up-to-date. For example, if you have an event coming up and you only just realized one of the event details on your website is incorrect, you can easily go in and make a last-minute edit. Having to wait on a developer, on the other hand, would be useless in this scenario.
Regularly updating your website is also important for another reason: Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is because regular and relevant content will allow your site to be noticed by search engine crawlers, which will award it a higher ranking and enable your target audience to easily find your content. Sites that are static, no matter how much old content they hold, will struggle to remain relevant to search engine crawlers. Being able to regularly update content yourself is, therefore, a key way to increase your inbound leads.
Companies can also benefit from instant updates materially, by generating additional revenue and saving costs. For example, instant updates enable you to take advantage of new, time-sensitive opportunities, such as relevant special offers or promotions. On the other hand, updating your site content yourself is also a much more cost-effective way of keeping your website up-to-date, as developers and web agencies often charge fees for every content update they carry out.
All-in-all, empowering your team to keep your website updated themselves is the way of the future, and companies who are still relying on third parties to update content are really missing out on all the benefits outlined above.
However, not all CMS platforms are equal and not all will allow you to efficiently manage your content to the same degree. If you’re looking for a CMS that allows you to deliver your own content updates, here are a few things you should be looking out for.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/pablo2011.png" />
<h3>1. Multiple content editors</h3>
Is your site content going to be managed by one or multiple editors? Either way, looking for a platform that enables access to multiple editors will be the safest choice, particularly if your company is growing.
This means finding a platform that can be extended to multiple users, each receiving an individual login that they can use to access the platform. Ideally, the platform should allow you to track changes by editor and history, so you are always aware who is updating what and when.
The best CMSs also allow you to provide different levels of access and permissions, from contributor to admin. This reduces the risk of mistakes or intentional attacks on your site, as you can make sure that users accessing the backend are only able to modify whatever is relevant to them.
Finally, the ideal CMS should provide you with tools to allow your teams to work together. Things such as being able to preview content together, to assign tasks, to group content changes and report on these changes will make collaboration among your team easier and lead to less errors and better content updates.
<h3>2. No technical knowledge needed</h3>
Although most CMS platforms allow you to access the backend to edit content, not all of them are non-technical. This means that non-developers and non-technical users can’t easily update content without the aid of a developer.
Ideally any non-technical user should be able to log in, find the relevant page and easily input or modify the text. Or if they’re publishing a new blog post, they should intuitively be able to set up a new article, modify the settings, input all text and images using a text editor, add metadata and publish.
Unfortunately not all CMSs are non-technical and intuitive enough to allow any user to edit content, which can lead to time-consuming and inefficient content management processes. Some CMS platforms are in fact focused on developers, which is a great option if these are the people who will be making changes to the website, but not so great if they’re not.
Another aspect that, ideally, a CMS should allow editors to manage is page layouts. Of course, any major design changes that require coding will have to be done by a developer, but at the very least non-technical users should be able to add new page elements or reorder existing ones. Many CMSs also provide page templates, so that non-technical users can build brand new pages and easily add the appropriate modules.
This means that simple pages can be built very fast and still look good, without the need for a developer to come in and work on every single new page.
<h3>3. Cloud-based</h3>
The CMS of the future is cloud-based. By being hosted in the cloud, a cloud CMS allows you to log into the platform and update your website simply by using your regular web browser. This means that you can quickly make content updates no matter where you are, without the need to physically be in the office. All you need is an internet connection!
Ultimately, this allows you to make time-sensitive updates, or to make quick changes outside of office hours. This also means being able to update content on mobile, which of course requires a content management interface that is mobile-friendly; another thing to keep in mind when choosing a CMS.
<h3>4. 24/7 Support</h3>
Finally, it is very important that your CMS provides technical support, preferably 24/7. This way, if your content editors are experiencing a difficulty updating or publishing content, the support team can promptly fix it for you and prevent you from missing out on key revenue or traffic.
Working exclusively with a developer, on the other hand, means that you are again constrained by their schedule and availability, so that the necessary updates can’t be made instantly. It’s all about enabling your users and customers to access and use your site at anytime, and proprietary platforms offering good support are best suited to ensure this.

Why Your CMS Should Allow You To Make Instant Content Updates

GraphCMS, a startup from Giessen, Germany has officially announced the public launch of their identically called product. It is the first headless content management system that fully utilizes the power of GraphQL. Open-sourced by Facebook, GraphQL is a new architectural pattern for APIs that provides significant speed gains in developing digital products. With GraphQL-powered APIs, developers can build future-proof content experiences that are well-suited for the requirements of tomorrow’s devices.
GraphCMS enables developers to build powerful content APIs in a matter of minutes, while it gives content editors all the tools they need to manage their content. The hosted content APIs can then be easily consumed by websites, apps or any other platform or partner. The founders describe their product as content microservice, as it fits in any tool chain dealing with content.
“We are excited to finally launch GraphCMS. Going headless is the right choice if you want to build a sustainable content strategy and we quickly realized the potential of bringing GraphQL into that equation. Developers love our generated GraphQL-APIs as they provide a much improved developer experience compared to REST-APIs”, says Michael Lukaszczyk, CEO and co-founder of GraphCMS.
The GraphCMS team has years of experience in content management and API design. In addition, Michael says: “This is just the beginning and we are excited to bring significant improvements to the world of content management. We want to enable developers and content editors to easily create the best digital experiences they can think of, without having to struggle with REST-APIs.”.
To learn more about the product and GraphQL in content management, visit the website and start building for free at <a href="https://graphcms.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://graphcms.com</a>.

GraphCMS Brings GraphQL to Headless Content Management

It's always been pretty simple to create a blog with Wix but with the release of Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) it just got a whole lot easier. Let's take a look how easy it is to create a blog using Wix ADI.
Before you get started, you'll need a Wix account which you can get for free by <a href="https://www.wix.com/" target="_blank">signing up</a>.
Once you have a Wix account, log in and click on Create a Website.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2017-07-01-at-54546-pm-lg864x0-is.png" />
You will then be asked what type of website you'd like to create. Click on Blog.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2017-07-01-at-54732-pm-lg686x0-is.png" />
Now you'll be asked if you wish to use the standard Wix editor or Wix ADI. Choose Start with Wix ADI.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2017-07-01-at-54858-pm-lg839x0-is.png" />
Now it's time to tell Wix ADI what type of blog you want to create so it knows what to build for you. For the sake of this tutorial, I'll choose Food Blog.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2017-07-01-at-55109-pm-lg683x0-is.png" />
You'll then be asked if you need any of the optional features. If you do, click yes and next. If not, click no and next.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2017-07-01-at-55223-pm-lg759x0-is.png" />
The next optional step will be to enter address information. You can skip this or fill it in if you like.
Then it's time to upload your logo and fill in your social media information, etc.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2017-07-01-at-55559-pm-lg504x0-is.png" />
Click next and the Wix ADI will launch, getting ready to build your website.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2017-07-01-at-60016-pm-lg.png" />
Once you click Start you'll be asked to choose a style that appeals to you.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2017-07-01-at-60110-pm-lg709x0-is.png" />
Once you've chosen a style, the Wix ADI will begin creating your home page.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2017-07-01-at-60208-pm-lg.png" />
Once it's done, you'll be shown the initial version of your new website.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2017-07-01-at-60310-pm-lg892x0-is.png" />
Now that you have the initial design, you can tweak to your needs. Click the play icon on the bottom right and the ADI will walk you through the rest of the creation process!
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2017-07-01-at-60409-pm-lg740x0-is.png" />
I won't walk you through the rest as it's pretty self-explanatory and differs based on the individual users. Enjoy the process and feel free to leave me a comment below to let me know your thoughts!
If you haven't signed up for Wix yet, <a href="https://www.wix.com/">get a free Wix website of your own</a>.

How to Create a Blog with Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence)

CMS Kickoff 26

Find out at CMS Kickoff 26, January 13 - 14, St. Pete FL

What's the future of CMS in the AI era?

Explore a wide range of informative articles, insights, and industry updates. Stay informed and ahead of the curve with our diverse collection of news and posts covering the latest trends and developments in the industry. Page - 66