Articles - Page 69

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

matt-garrepy

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<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/branded-landing-page-variations466x0-is.jpg" />
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How Companies are Increasing ROIs with RallyMind's Landing Page Management Technology

mike-johnston

Online shopping has not only become quite an ordinary thing nowadays but almost replaced a tiresome procedure of visiting real shops for a lot of people worldwide. That’s why it’s not surprising that the number of online stores is increasing rapidly day by day. Being an owner of the online store, you’ve definitely realized that the quality and variability of the products you offer to your customers is just a half of success in your business. Your main trump card that makes you competitive today is a well-developed eStore website that provides its customers with good user experience due to its smooth performance and perfect functionality.
MotoCMS eCommerce templates are the very solution you can take advantage of to occupy a reputable place online. &lt;a href=”https://www.cmscritic.com/a-look-at-motocms-as-an-ecommerce-solution/”&gt;Since their launch&lt;/a&gt; more than a year ago, the functionality for creating an eStore with MotoCMS has been significantly improved. 
The recent example is the update 1.2.9 that brought shipping functionality, lazy loading and a bunch of other improvements. Let’s focus on the refined MotoCMS eCommerce functionality in more details to show you all the advantages it provides.
<h2>Attractive Collection of eStore Templates</h2>
MotoCMS offers you a rich collection of professionally designed &lt;a href=”https://www.motocms.com/website-templates/motocms-ecommerce-templates/”&gt;responsive eCommerce templates&lt;/a&gt; that fit various business niches and can become a perfect solution for any online store. Minimalistic design gives a clean and airy look to an online store pages and allows showcasing products of any kind in the best light thanks to different types of galleries.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/1-1.jpg" />
The user-friendly admin panel of each template includes a handy drag-and-drop editor to create new layout sections and content elements right away. The &lt;a href=”https://www.motocms.com/“&gt;website builder&lt;/a&gt; from MotoCMS empowers you to manage a wide range of widgets and adjust their settings directly in a web browser.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2.jpg" />
<h2>MotoCMS eCommerce Functionality</h2>
The Store section within the admin panel from MotoCMS provides you with various tools for creating a fully-featured online shop. 
<h2>Dashboard</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/4-1.jpg" />
On the Dashboard, you can find the detailed statistics on your customers and their orders including lifetime sales, products, daily orders and customers, lastest customers, total order price, order date information, and order status.
<h2>Orders</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/5.jpg" />
The Orders tab gives you complete information about all orders of your eStore customers. Here an online shop administrator is able to:
<ul>
<li>
add new orders for customers manually;
</li>
<li>
check customers billing and shipping details;
</li>
<li>
apply discounts with promo codes;
</li>
<li>
choose a payment method (Manual Payment, PayPal, 2Checkout, PostFinance, iDeal, Skrill, PayOne);
</li>
<li>leave a comment for the current order either visible to the client or seen only by your staff.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Products</h2>
The Products tab enables you to sort your products in the way convenient both to you and your customers, specify custom properties and values of your goods and set up various discounts for sales and holiday promos.
Catalog
This section contains the full list of your online store products and includes all the necessary information about each of them: thumbnail, name, SKU, UPC, price, visibility, and quantity. You can quickly find the product you need using a search field. Thanks to the update 1.2.9 that we mentioned before, you can delete existing products in a catalog in one click with the checkbox near each list element. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/6.jpg" />
You are able to create new items, configure their main settings, add short descriptions, images, set weight, length, width and depth for shipping purposes, hide or show them using the visibility feature. You can also set a specific amount for a product, a discount price, a special price for a certain date range, a discount price for bulk purchases, and define your product tax class.
Furthermore, the Categories tab inside Catalog helps you to sort and organize your products in the proper way. You can also mark them with specific labels to inform your customers about the current availability of the definite items.
Brands and Categories
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/7_1.jpg" />
These two sections are aimed at categorizing your products so that the customers can easily find the very product they need. You can sort out your products by brands creating and editing your brand title, URL, brand image, and description. You are also able to group your products according to various categories and add these categories to your navigation menu. Furthermore, SEO settings such as Meta Keywords and Meta Description will help you to improve the position of your products in search results.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/7.jpg" />
Discounts
This section allows you to set discounts of two types (by percentage or by fixed price) for your goods to make your clients happy thanks to sales and holiday promos. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/8.jpg" />
Properties
Set up additional custom properties and values for your products such as composition, size, color, and others to give a more detailed description of the goods you offer. The number of values you are able to add is unlimited.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/9.jpg" />
<h2>Customers</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/10.jpg" />
The Customers section contains a list of all your customers, including their billing information and allows you to manage your clients' accounts. Here you can add profiles of new customers manually, find out a customer's status (active or inactive), track orders etc.
<h2>Templates</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/templates.jpg" />
To redesign your online store pages, take advantage of the Templates tab. Once you pick a necessary page, click on the layout to start the editing process. The properties for each page is also available on the left panel of the admin panel.
<h2>Special Widgets for eStore</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/widgets990x0-is.jpg" />
Alongside with the traditional MotoCMS widgets, MotoCMS eCommerce templates contain a set of special widgets that enable you to fully customize the look of your online store according to your own needs and requirements. 
<ul>
<li>
Cart and Profile Widget. Gives you an opportunity of inserting a shopping cart button within the necessary section (Header, Content or Footer) that will take your customers right to their cart. 
</li>
<li>
Search Widget. Enables your customers to search for necessary products on the Store page.
</li>
<li>
Breadcrumbs Widget. Allows you to add a breadcrumb navigation menu to the pages to redirect your customers right to the section they need.
</li>
<li>
Product List Widget. Helps you to create a good-looking and functional product gallery for your customers. It contains the list of all products that is separated into categories based on type, size, shape, etc. with their thumbnail images. You can set up the number of the products to be shown on the page (from 1 to 100) or in one row (from 1 to 4) and provide your customers with an enlarged image of the product. 
</li>
<li>
Product Categories Widget. Allows you to customize the appearance of your products categories. 
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Settings</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/general.jpg" />
In the Settings section, you can customize currency for your products price, manage taxes, payments systems, email options, your online store design and much more. Let's take a look of a recently featured Shipping tab.
Shipping
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/shipping.jpg" />
The shipping calculation feature helps you set a product shipping cost. It allows you to choose a measurement system, taking into consideration the region of your activity and set a product shipping cost according to actual and volumetric weight with Shipping rates. As an eStore manager, you are able to add different shipping methods to make the shipping process more convenient to its customers.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/shipping_method.jpg" />
Another feature related to shipping of goods is choosing a calculation method for a particular product. To do this, you should go to the settings of a commodity you want to edit. There are two values you can take advantage of – Fixed Price or Dimensional.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/calculation.jpg" />
To put it in a nutshell, MotoCMS eCommerce functionality can definitely become the best solution for creating any kind of online store. See for yourself and test any web theme from the collection of MotoCMS &lt;a href=”https://www.motocms.com/website-templates/motocms-ecommerce-templates/”&gt;responsive eCommerce templates&lt;/a&gt; free of charge within the trial period.

Refined MotoCMS eCommerce Streamlines the Creation of Your Online Store

“Alexa, is it supposed to rain today?”
Alexa, Siri, Google Home, and other smart devices have shifted how people consume content. It’s no longer enough to just have your information available in a visual presentation on a web page or mobile app. Users want to interact with content; to ask questions, get information quickly, and ask follow up questions.
The Internet of Things (IoT), while not a new concept, is still a relatively new industry. Brands are continuing to learn how to get their content onto the latest device while consumers are ready to get their hands on whatever device comes out next. This usually leads to marketing and IT teams scrambling to keep up with customer demands while also trying to ensure the quality of their digital experience stays intact.
The Shift: Content is Now a Conversation
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What does shifting the way we think about content actually mean? When creating content for the IoT it’s important to remember that your users won’t be reading your information off a screen and clicking on what they want to learn more about, they’ll be asking questions, sometimes multiple questions, to get the information they’re looking for. They’ll also only be able to digest a certain amount of information at a time – your content needs to reflect this new type of interaction.
Your Content is Only as Good as the Platform
You can build out all the amazing content you want, but if you don’t have a platform that can deliver it to the IoT, your customers won’t be able to consume it. This is why many brands are turning to Content-as-a-Service (CaaS) as a way to meet the content needs of their customers without bogging down their IT departments with constant demands for device compatibility.
CaaS, or Headless CMS as some call it, is a way to separate your content from your presentation layer, using APIs to connect to various devices; therefore, future-proofing your content. This means your content can be pushed to devices like Alexa, Siri, and other IoT devices via APIs. 
“Alexa, what’s for lunch?” | Building Alexa Skills for Gettysburg College
When students started to request the ability to ask Alexa about the campus dining menu, Rod Tosten, VP of Information Technology at Gettysburg College, and his team took the request to heart and starting to think about building out an IoT strategy for Gettysburg College, starting with Amazon’s Alexa.
As the most visited page on the website, Gettysburg campus dining seemed to be the most logical place to start. Tosten and his team created an Alexa Skill to allow students to ask about campus dining – what’s on the menu, hours of operation for each location, and more. Building off of this first Skill, they continued to create Skills for both the campus phone directory and campus news.
Gettysburg College uses dotCMS as their content management system in order to feed content into their Alexa Skills using various methods, depending on the information needed. For example, the campus dining Skill uses a JSON call request to get a JSON object and parse the response to pull out the content needed. The college’s news Skill, which reports on sports news, mentions in the media and more, hits RSS Feeds from the CMS in order to report headlines, summaries, and more detailed story information. Though Gettysburg College Alexa Skills use different methods to pull information from their CMS, all content is stored in dotCMS so it only has to be added one time and in one location.
Tosten’s Considerations When Developing for Alexa
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Developing for Alexa and other smart devices requires a shift in how you think about content and how it will be consumed. Tosten and his team noted four main considerations when designing and developing an Alexa Skill that both marketers and developers need to keep in mind.
<ol>
<li>The content: What information are you trying to share with the user and where is it? How much processing does it take to form the content into speech? How should the content be formed to work easily with a web browser, speech, and mobile display? This is related to the CMS or information/web service.</li>
<li>The conversation and flow: How will the user interact with Alexa and the content? This results in an intention and utterance, or sentence structure, model for Alexa to follow to help it know what words are important and what types of words might be in each question. Think about what the user is going to need in regards to help or guidance to get the correct information.</li>
<li>The speech and card presentation: What sentence format is desired? What language issues are there? For example, should 123 be pronounced as “one two three” or “one hundred twenty-three”? How should the content be displayed for the Alexa App card on the mobile phone?</li>
<li>Implementation Strategy: How are the issues or considerations in the above going to be implemented or translated into a Speechlet that will handle the requests by the user?</li>
</ol>
Tosten on the Future of IoT
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1QBpvA2bsyE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
We’ve come a long way with smart devices and the platforms to support them, but looking to the future of IoT, Tosten feels it’s not hard to see that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be a key part of what comes next. The future will require smart devices to be even smarter – they’ll need to not only be able to know how to retrieve content and go back and forth with the user in conversation, but they’ll need to learn who the user is and their habits in order to make the experience more seamless. AI integrated into IoT devices, like Alexa, will better anticipate the user’s needs when they seek information and be able to converse with the user on a more personal level.
For more on what the future of IoT holds as well as an in-depth look at how Gettysburg College is using Alexa Skills, <a href="https://dotcms.com/clients/dotcms-and-content-as-a-service">check out these videos</a>.

How the Internet of Things is Shifting the Way We Think about Content

To open an online store is not a tough thing. Yet, to make sure your new store generates sales at its max is going to take a good thought from you. Simply providing required products or services is not enough, a store owner must accompany them with an outstanding customer experience, both digital and real-life. At <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com/?utm_source=makeyourstorevisitorsstay&amp;utm_medium=top-link&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic" target="_blank">nopCommerce</a>, an open source eCommerce platform, we constantly monitor and analyze the latest eCommerce and design trends and well-doing shops’ experience, we brought together some tips that would help you to make shoppers out of random store wanderers.
<h3>First page</h3>
What do your customers see first on your site? Is it clear with just a quick glance what your store is all about and where they can find required information? Leaving a site with no action there is a matter of seconds, so it is extremely important to keep the homepage precise and informative at the same time.
<img alt="Homepage with a clear design" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/1450x0-is.jpg" />
The above screenshot of a homepage has no extensive text or irrelevant info. Simplicity is combined with a clear call to action. Further navigation made easy with the links to categories. Special offers and promotions are also highlighted.
Setting up your value proposition and making it clear how you’re different from others is also important, especially when you convey some rather more targeted values. Make your customers aware of what you stand for within first moments on your site. As shown on a homepage below, a company explicitly demonstrates its attitude towards sustainability:
<img alt="Homepage with a value proposition" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2450x0-is.jpg" />
For some businesses, quick customer support is often required. If this is your case, place contacts or a live chat on the homepage too, and make it impossible to miss.
<h3>Product selection and comparison tools</h3>
For stores with large collections, product sorting and filtering are must, unless you are ready to let your customer go feeling lost in the abundance you offer. Let your visitors browse by color, size, materials, price category, etc.
<img alt="Product sorting and filtering" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/3450x0-is.jpg" />
Another good idea is to suggest your clients pairing options (for example, wine with ideal snacks) or DIY product design.
<img alt="DIY product design" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/4500x0-is.jpg" />
Comparison tables also make it easy for your customers, especially if you sell mid-range to expensive consumer goods, like electronics or cars. They help people to select among a set of alternatives comparing their advantages and disadvantages according to a number of criteria.
<img alt="Comparison tables" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/5450x0-is.jpg" />
<h3>Products ratings and reviews</h3>
According to BrightLocal, 74% of consumers trust business more if they read positive reviews. This tool is a great way to add credibility to your site and help your customers get the best item.
Try to organize the ratings in a way that they are as detailed as possible, for example, breakdown what previous customers liked and disliked about the product in three categories: customer support, tools &amp; features, and fees. Different customers might be more sensitive to some of these categories than to others, it helps customers see whether the product is likely to be a good fit for them.
<img alt="Detailed raiting" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/6197x162-cropx549y100-is.jpg" />
<h3>Checkout with no friction</h3>
The importance of a fast and convenient checkout is well-known and much discussed. Summing up all the great ideas, include all your costs upfront because no one likes finding out that after filling all required information and proceeding to payment a product is going to cost significantly more; provide guest checkout option for those who want to stay anonymous.
<img alt="Guest checkout" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/7880x402-cropx31y105-is450x0-is.jpg" />
Keep your checkout pages simple with no upselling, no testimonials, and no social sharing cues – fewer steps and faster process to finishing.
<img alt="Easy checkout" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/8450x0-is.jpg" />
Implement “Save for Later” button in your checkout, it gives users time to consider the purchases and at the same time makes it easy to complete next purchases.
<img alt="Save for Later" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/9393x221-cropx11y392-is250x0-is.jpg" />
<h3>A pleasant after purchase experience</h3>
Some companies pay less or no attention to an after purchase user experience, meanwhile, according to Monetate, returning visitors convert twice more likely than new visitors.
What can be done <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com/blog/51-how-after-order-emails-can-drive-sales-and-improve-customer-experience.aspx?utm_source=makeyourstorevisitorsstay&amp;utm_medium=blog-link&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic" target="_blank">after purchase</a>? Customize your “Thank you” page. A good idea could be placing some tips on the product usage. Alternatively, you can keep it minimalistic and leave the information for your confirmation letter. Fill the confirmation letter with detailed information on delivery, returns, and warranty, provide shoppers with links to contact your customer service representatives, offer some discounts for next purchases, outline how exactly the shoppers can get most out of your product and suggest some complementary goods.
Important, don’t forget about real life unboxing experience of your customers. Keep your brand voice in every detail.
<h3>Images</h3>
No matter what you sell, needless to explain why quality of your pictures matters. Ensure to provide high resolution appealing images, because they really can help you close the sensory gap between walking into a store and shopping online.
<img alt="Good product images" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/10450x0-is.jpg" />
<h3>Final note</h3>
There are basic tips, but every store is unique. You don’t have to rush to implement them all, test carefully different options to find out what works best for your business.

How to make your store visitors stay, buy and come back

Key Website Builders: A Comprehensive Overview

Reverse Proxy is the tool performance marketing agencies need — in order to keep up with the changing mobile web.
Simply put — <a href="https://www.devhub.com/">Reverse Proxy</a> creates a mirror image copy of the advertiser’s website with all of the content the same, except phone numbers can be replaced with call tracking and the ability to add embedded analytics is a lot easier. DevHub’s proxy technology can read a current site/ landing page’s content and can replace key actions with those that are measurable i.e. calls, form fills, downloads, coupons etc.
As more retailers are getting better at building their web experiences i.e. websites. Reverse Proxy allows brands/ agencies to mirror a site on a unique domain. This is important as agencies need to place their analytics in order to optimize search engine marketing campaigns. Utilizing reverse proxy allows agencies to use their internal tags, A/B testing and analytics to measure ROI without having the client administering shared access or placing new tags – while protecting sensitive site data.
DevHub's proxy technology is getting smarter by the minute as new platforms get analyzed and the ability to proxy 98% of websites is closing in on 100%.
DevHub's proxy uses the latest web search best practices to ensure sites are not indexed as proxy is primarily used for performance marketing/ attribution.
Evidence of DevHub’s global prominence in servicing performance marketing agencies with reverse proxy in 2016,is evident in the numerous customers who deployed proxy solutions ahead of Google’s Expanded Text Ad requirements – based on DevHub’s growing arsenal of tools in web experience.
DevHub's <a href="https://www.devhub.com/performance-marketing">Reverse Proxy</a> solution is dynamic and supports all Bing and Google Expanded Text Ad requirements. An important feature which minimizes downtime is our proxy technology's use of robust caching – from images to page content – ensuring the site is always being served – and campaign dollars are being measured.
One way to leverage DevHub's Reverse Proxy technology is through our APIs which allow for:
<ul>
<li>Account provisioning</li>
<li>Deploying SSL at Scale</li>
<li>Analytics Reporting</li>
<li>Adding/ Disabling proxies</li>
<li>Sandbox environment for testing</li>
<li>Bulk update URLs</li>
<li>Automate domain registration</li>
</ul>
And we are thinking about what is next for proxy…allowing site publishing – by leveraging a site(s) existing assets to build from versus starting from scratch …think…
<ul>
<li>Hide distracting navigation elements to tighten the conversion funnel</li>
<li>Write your own optimized copy and call to actions</li>
<li>Add any of DevHub's modules or integrations to pages</li>
<li>And of course.. track every interaction the visitor does to get the full view of how the campaign is performing</li>
</ul>

Are You Using Reverse Proxy?

Launching your business website, you expect to benefit from your online presence. You take good care of your website proper layout and navigation, make it responsive and provide your customers with the most relevant content. Unfortunately, all your efforts can come to nothing if you aren’t able to ensure your website seamless performance 24/7.
<h3>Make Uptime Monitoring One of the Main Priorities</h3>
Uptime is one of the most important factors that determines your website success or failure. It is an indicator of your “website health” and a decisive component of running an online business. That’s why it should become one of the main concerns of any website owner.
Tracking your website uptime enables you to get “a wake-up call” about website outages as soon as they occur and and, maybe, question your hosting provider. You have an opportunity of resolving these issues before they become critical and badly affect your business.
<h3>Website Downtime Is Your Budget Buster</h3>
To tell the truth, downtime is an inevitable thing that happens even to the best websites. It can be caused by a poor web hosting, traffic overload, plugin or theme-related problems, hacking attempts or malware, or just by force majeure such as natural disasters.
If your website is down it can significantly affect your business. Downtime can result not only in lost sales and decreased profits. What is more harmful, it can cause bad user experience that will result in the loss of your business credibility and push your customers into the competitors’ grasp. To prevent this, you should consider a few things.
<h3>Choose a Reliable Hosting</h3>
With a proper web hosting provider, you will always feel safe and sound. A good provider will constantly ensure that the hardware is in perfect order and the servers are never overloaded so that downtime can’t happen to your website.
And even if it happens a reliable provider will immediately take control over the situation. Without a moment’s delay, he will inform you and other clients about the downtime, clearly explain its reason, and start fixing the problem.
<h3>Check Your Website Every Time You Change Anything</h3>
After making any changes in the settings, installing a new plugin or updating never forget to check your website performance. Some installations or updates can go not so seamlessly as you’ve expected and result in the White Screen of Death. The sooner you know about the problem, the quicker you’ll be able to solve it thus preventing your customers from the bad user experience.
<h3>Remember to Make Regular Backups</h3>
A good backup strategy is of vital importance for data security. A backup is your effective defense against any data loss giving you an opportunity of restoring original data. Most hosting services provide this option as an add-on. You can also use a plugin to automate the process.
<h3>Take Care of Your Website Security</h3>
Hacking attempts are a growing threat nowadays. According to Sophos Security Report, on average 30,000 websites are hacked daily. That’s why you should take basic precautions to avoid this problem. Make sure your username is more original than “Admin”. Use a strong password consisting of at least 8 characters and using a combination of lower-case and capital letters, numbers or other symbols.
Change your password at least once in 60 days. Use a security plugin or extension and run a website security scan on a regular basis. And if something unforeseen really happens to your website, never forget to inform your customers about it not to lose their trust.
<h3>MotoCMS Uptime Monitor Is Your Reliable Guard</h3>
It goes without saying that you can’t constantly track your website uptime, opening and closing the browser day in, day out to make sure it works properly. MotoCMS Uptime Monitor will perfectly cope with this task for you and help you avoid problems caused by an unexpected downtime.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/intro1000x614-cropx0y54-is.jpg" />
MotoCMS Uptime Monitor is a service that enables any MotoCMS customer to keep a close eye on a website performance 24/7. Don’t forget to turn on email notifications on your smartphone. Because once your website is down, you will get your first email about your site crash. Why first? Because as soon as everything is fixed and your website is up and running, you’ll receive one more automatic notification.
<h3>How to Subscribe to MotoCMS Uptime Monitor</h3>
If you are not a MotoCMS customer yet, you can easily become one and build your online business with <a href="https://www.motocms.com" target="_blank">a website builder</a> from MotoCMS by yourself. Any MotoCMS customer is always able to subscribe to the Uptime Monitor service in a personal account. The subscription will enable you to track your website with the interval you choose and receive instant email alerts.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/uptime-monitors.jpg" />
The process of subscribing is as easy as ABC. You should log into your &lt;a href=”https://accounts.motocms.com/site/login”&gt;MotoCMS personal account&lt;/a&gt; and add a domain name for “Uptime Monitors” by pressing “Add New” button in the appropriate section. There are 3 types of available subscriptions you can choose from according to your business needs: “Starter”, “Developer” and “Ultimate”.
<ul>
<li>The Starter Plan is a basic one that will perfectly suit the owners of one website.</li>
<li>The Developer Plan is a good idea for the businesses with several websites or the web developers who make their first steps in a career. The plan enables you to permanently monitor up to 5 websites.</li>
<li>The Ultimate Plan gives experienced web developers an opportunity of tracking an unlimited number of their clients’ websites.</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/subscriptions.jpg" />
Moreover, you are free to choose between monthly and yearly subscriptions. You can check and upgrade your plan to a better one anytime with the help of “Upgrade Plan” button within the “My Subscriptions” tab. As soon as you subscribe to the Uptime Monitor, you will get a full access to all the necessary information concerning the status and downtime of your site.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/analytics.jpg" />
To cut a long story short, never let your business reputation or your bank account suffer because of your website downtimes. Don’t waste time and do everything to ensure that your website is always up and running, providing you with satisfied customers and increasing your income.

Make Sure Your Business is Always Online with MotoCMS

Best Video Experience

Give your audience the best video experience

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<a href="http://www.volusion.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Volusion</a>, an all-in-one website builder for retailers and brands, today unveiled Volusion 2, a new and significantly upgraded version of its software platform, underscoring the company’s refocus on the needs of small to medium sized businesses by helping them start selling on their websites faster. As part of this launch, Volusion also unveiled a new website, complete with an updated logo, branding and an improved UI, designed to engage with more founders in the SMB target market. These upgrades were driven by Volusion founder and CEO, Kevin Sproles, who recently returned to the helm of the company and helped it reach a new milestone, more than $25 billion in total transactions.
“Small and medium businesses deserve the same robust website features and level of service as the established enterprise,” said Kevin Sproles, Volusion CEO. “Since returning as CEO, my number one goal has been to get Volusion refocused to help these entrepreneurs succeed.”
Volusion 2, unveiled today, and currently in use with select Volusion clients in beta, represents a significant upgrade to the company’s core technology, which provides faster development cycles for Volusion clients (e.g.. adding new features and responding to demands at record speed), far surpassing what is currently available in the market. At launch, Volusion 2 integrates with Shippo, Paypal, Stripe and soon Zapier, Yopto, Square, Xero, and Amazon. Key features include:
<ul>
<li>Quick &amp; intuitive store setup to start selling immediately: Storefront editing is displayed in real time and visible across multiple view-ports for easy changes to any font, text, or product – no code required. Accelerated onboarding with PayPal and Stripe enables merchants to take payment before buyers have completed their site registration processes.</li>
<li>Secure checkout, free SSL, and full-site HTTPS: Merchants can now host checkout on their own secure domain/URL so shoppers never leave their site. Included free on all Volusion plans, while other market players provide this feature for an added fee per month. And with full-site HTTPS merchants get an SEO boost from Google, resulting in more traffic and sales.</li>
<li>Mobile-optimized all around: With more shoppers on mobile than desktop, Volusion 2 is optimized for mobile conversion. Merchants can manage their entire store on-the-go, anytime.</li>
</ul>
Volusion’s Vow: Making Success Accessible With Volusion, merchants can access everything they need to create a business, and sell products online, in one solution:
<ul>
<li>Easy to use DIY: Store set-up in minutes and customize with drag and drop ease – no coding required.</li>
<li>Experts to do it for you: Volusion offers experts on-demand to help with custom design, marketing, SEO, and social media – either a la carte or in an ongoing plan.</li>
<li>Uptime upends industry standard: 99.9% uptime is guaranteed – and if it’s not met, money is issued back to merchants.</li>
<li>24/7, 365…100 percent of the time: That means Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day… there is a live person at Volusion to answer questions and provide support for founders.</li>
</ul>
New Volusion Branding and Website
The new Volusion website is geared toward helping customers – new and existing – more easily find help and learn how to start and grow their businesses.
<ul>
<li>A bigger spotlight on customers: Volusion has put greater emphasis on the customer, with tips to help start or grow their business, and features more real life customer successes and results. Sproles regularly talks with and visits customers, and invites them to Volusion’s headquarters, to stay connected on the features and support they find most valuable.</li>
<li>Revamped Resources section: The resources section includes a revamped Help Center with expert written support articles and tutorials, a blog with fresh e-commerce insights, and guides that share online business resources.</li>
<li>Ask Us Anything: The right help is on the way with the “Ask Us Anything” feature enabled across the entire website. Questions are answered typically in under 10 minutes and from the right commerce consultant within the company based on the customer’s request.</li>
</ul>
As part of its focused strategy, Volusion sold its cloud-based enterprise solution, Mozu, in October, 2016. Each Volusion employee and product are now 100% focused on SMB, which has resulted in increased revenues for the e-commerce company. Since Sproles’ return, Volusion has increased the average store revenue by over 8%, and processed more than 23M orders in 2016, generating over $3.6B in sales for Volusion merchants. Because Volusion doesn’t charge transaction fees, merchants keep more of that revenue. On average, a Volusion active merchant generates over $216k in revenue, more than 5x that of our leading competitor. 
To learn more or to start creating your business on Volusion, visit <a href="http://www.volusion.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.volusion.com</a>.

Volusion 2: Revamped and Refocused on SMB Market

<a href="http://www.progress.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Progress</a> (NASDAQ: PRGS) today announced the release of Progress® Sitefinity™ 10, the latest edition of its web content management system, popular for its ease-of-use and rapid time to delivery. With today’s release, Progress delivers new user authentication and security capabilities making social authentication on websites a capability available to any organization.
Enabling visitors to log into websites using their existing social and email IDs including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Github and LinkedIn has been proven to increase website registrations and conversions. And when marketers have access to the rich customer data associated with these third-party sites, they can offer customers a more personalized, dramatically enriched digital experience. But the complexity of building these capabilities has made it extremely time and labor-intensive, forcing many organizations without the requisite resources or developer skillsets to forgo using this valuable tactic.
With the Sitefinity 10 content management system (CMS), Progress has radically simplified the authentication process. With out-of-the-box capabilities for third-party authentication for major social and email accounts, Progress now makes it easy for any organization to use social logins to drive the success of their digital marketing initiatives. 
Progress has also added significant new security capabilities to the Sitefinity 10 CMS, with a standards-based implementation layered on top of OpenID Connect and IdentityServer3, making enterprise-grade identity management and security accessible to small and large organizations alike. IT administrators can rely on Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS) or LDAP to automatically authorize website users by mapping active directory roles to Sitefinity content management roles. In addition, Progress Sitefinity 10 CMS is the first solution to empower digital marketers to work with Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) images, without the inherent security concerns associated with embedded malware.
Additional features new in the Sitefinity 10 CMS include:
<ul>
<li>Sitefinity Site Shield: Website managers can invite stakeholders to secure websites that are under development, without having to grant back-end permissions. This feature is ideal for product managers and web agencies that need to secure approval from end clients, legal and PR teams that are not active CMS users.</li>
<li>Export / Import Site Data: Developers can streamline the development of new websites by easily creating starter kits and moving website components, together with their data, from one Sitefinity CMS instance to another. </li>
<li>CDN Support Improvements: Businesses can now serve the latest content to their visitors by implementing a cache-control header strategy with full control over the cache settings for site images and pages delivered by their CDN.</li>
<li>Azure Cloud Support Improvements: Progress Sitefinity 10 CMS enables developers to take advantage of the latest Azure SDK to deploy Sitefinity websites in the cloud. </li>
</ul>
According to Gartner, “People generate valuable information about themselves each time they consume a service or make a purchase. An identity economy has emerged, and consumer identity information is the new gold. Consumer identity data is a powerful sales and marketing tool that allows organizations to better know their customers and deliver personalized services. It improves customer service and helps build customer loyalty.”<a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_-7971989814454064102__ftn1" name="m_-7971989814454064102__ftnref1">[1]</a>
“Our customers choose Progress Sitefinity CMS because it is easy-to-use, can scale and is affordable. The release of the Sitefinity 10 CMS bolsters those differentiators by adding out-of-the-box capabilities for user identity management for reduced time to market and total cost of ownership of sites,” said Anton Hristov, Director Product Marketing, Progress Sitefinity. “Additional Sitefinity and Digital Experience Cloud features further the enablement of digital marketers to optimize the user experience and improve conversions across sites and devices without costly custom implementations.”
Progress Sitefinity 10 CMS is available immediately. For more details, please visit <a href="http://www.sitefinity.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.sitefinity.com</a>.

Progress Sitefinity 10 Delivers Cutting Edge User Authentication, Security, Management and Productivity

DevHub is a <a href="https://www.devhub.com/">Web Experience Platform</a> – brands and <a href="https://www.devhub.com/case-studies#agency">performance marketing agencies</a> use DevHub to streamline deployment of sites as part of larger marketing strategy. This is achieved cost effectively- through robust APIs and cloud hosted infrastructure.
DevHub offers an arsenal of unique tools to enterprises that are managing a high volume of template-driven sites. Companies go to market faster while ensuring conversions, security, brand compliance and web standards are consistent across the web experience.
By focusing on this specific set of challenges, the DevHub platform simplifies the administrative buy off process with simple contracts. Deploying much more rapidly (&lt;30 days) and more cost-effectively than conventional CMS providers. This is DevHub.
Unlike large CMS providers, DevHub provides custom services that make it nimbler when addressing the needs of this segment of the market. Through their APIs they can co-exist with other providers supporting analytics, advertising, and CRM and other third-party services critical to both site and campaign performance -see Integrations: <a href="https://www.devhub.com/integrations/">https://www.devhub.com/integrations/</a>
A core strength of DevHub is its segment expertise. As companies continue to develop multi-channel marketing initiatives, the demand to service a high volume of sites will continue to grow. They will face challenges with maintaining those sites in a cost-effective fashion without the single-source publishing and administrative capacity of a DevHub.
The total cost of ownership for DevHub when addressing this specific challenge is likely to be a fraction of what one would expect when considering an alternative provider. DevHub typically bundles on-boarding services/ migrations, reducing implementation time and the need for the customer to develop a high-degree of product-level expertise when compared to conventional CMS options. This flexibility and responsiveness lets the customer focus less on the “building” or implementation and plan instead for the lower cost of basic maintenance.
DevHub's market sweet spot is the “<a href="https://www.devhub.com/devhub-landing-pages">Scaled Landing Pages</a> for Full Funnel Attribution” or “<a href="https://www.devhub.com/">co-op marketing</a>” or “<a href="https://www.devhub.com/multistore">franchised</a>” organizations leveraging a multi-channel digital marketing strategy. Business within this sector are performance driven so conversion accountability is critical to securing budgets. The mid-tier segment of this market has a unique set of demands (high site volumes, limited IT resources, limited budgets, short execution cycles) that DevHub addresses better than the alternative CMS systems.

DevHub Identified as the Go To Web Experience Platform for Performance Marketing Agencies and Brands

<a href="/products/bigcommerce">BigCommerce</a> is a popular eCommerce platform that helps newer, growing brands take their business to the next level with a free 15-day trial. On average, those stores that use <a href="/products/bigcommerce">BigCommerce</a> grow twice as fast as the industry average!Because BigCommerce is designed for growing brands, the process for using it should be pretty straightforward and intuitive.The platform is updated regularly, and it has been proven to appeal to both new and seasoned businesses. Must be pretty diverse, right?I decided to check it out for myself. Keep reading for my BigCommerce review.<h2>Getting Started</h2>It’s definitely easy to get started with BigCommerce. It’s an easy sign-up and log-in process. Here’s how it went down:First, you enter your login information. This will take you to a screen where you select what you want to do.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-1943x0-is.png" />If you still aren’t entirely sure what to do, you can scroll down and select one of the links. I found that to be particularly helpful.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-2939x0-is.png" />From this Dashboard view, I first started out by customizing my store. I wanted to focus on creating an ecommerce space that followed the same branding as the rest of my business.<h2>Usability</h2>From the dashboard, I chose the ‘Storefront’ tab, presented on the left scrollbar with white text on a dark grey background. Overall, this looks very sleek and user-friendly.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-3935x0-is.png" />There are drop-down menus to give users additional options, something that is especially helpful when you’re still figuring out the best way to go about things.A great number of free themes are available, but you can also choose to purchase a theme. The process is easy and it’s simple to navigate.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-4939x0-is.png" />There are themes available for each industry, better enabling users to offer the best shopping experience possible for their customers and maintain consistent branding.For each theme, there are updates, different style options, and some helpful information.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-5923x0-is.png" /><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-6676x0-is.png" />It gives you a list of all of the features each theme offers, tells you what each theme is offered for, and then gives links to resources for when you need help and documentation.Once you’ve got your theme chosen, you can move on to the logo portion of the setup.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-7726x0-is.png" />This area’s super easy to navigate, straightforward, and versatile. Upload your logo, or add some text as a placeholder, and you’re good to go.You can also add a Favicon, located at the bottom there, which adds a little icon to the tab on the user’s browser. This is a great way to further maintain consistent branding, and lets users know which page they’re looking at just by glancing at the tabs.From there, you can start setting up the carousel of your homepage.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-8935x0-is.png" />This is SUPER easy to use, with text boxes that are easy to type in and edit. In the screenshot above, I’ve swapped out the default text for some of my own, giving you a better example of how this section is done.Moving on down the left menu, let’s go to ‘Web Pages’, which is where you piece together your actual store.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-9933x0-is.png" />Click on a page to get started. In this case, I started with ‘Shipping &amp; Returns’, because it was first.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-10931x0-is.png" />Once you click on it, you’re taken to the above page. There are several options, but it’s easy to understand and not the least bit overwhelming.There’s an easy-to-use text box, so you can edit your content directly. Once you’re done with the content of your page, you can scroll down for the remaining options.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-11855x0-is.png" /><h2>Design</h2><h3>Responsiveness</h3>BigCommerce has definitely taken great strides to make sure their store templates are as responsive as possible, complete with mobile optimization. As demonstrated in the above screenshots, this platform makes it possible for users to customize a lot of the template elements, making it more unique to their business and brand.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-12.png" />This screenshot is an example of that. As you can see, the template fits neatly within the borders of the screen, and the design is sleek and user-friendly.It’s easy to navigate, and doesn’t look cluttered or misaligned like many other ecommerce platforms do when viewed from a mobile device.<h3>Store Templates</h3>BigCommerce offers a huge range of ready-to-use templates in various styles, allowing users to meet the branding requirements that best align with their business.Even better is the fact this platform takes things one step further and arranges the templates by industry, making it easier for users to select the most effective theme possible.<h2>Features</h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-13181x0-is.png" /><h3>Marketing</h3>BigCommerce has tons of marketing options for your store, all of which are pretty easy to use and allows you to track them with various types of analytics.From there, you can streamline your channels to better allow you to serve customers across your various social media platforms.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-14.png" />It works really well, but it would be helpful to have a few more channel options available, such as Twitter and Google+.<h3>Apps</h3><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-15931x0-is.png" />A wide range of useful apps are available, including both paid and free apps. They are broken up into categories, so users can best determine which apps will accelerate the growth of their business.The apps all seem to be very reasonably priced for everything they offer.<h2>Extras</h2>With BigCommerce, there are several extras available to users. This includes additional social media links, email templates, and even gift certificate templates.<h3>Blogging</h3>There is a blogging option available through BigCommerce, which has a very basic blogging platform that resembles WordPress.It’s easy to use, straightforward, and even has SEO options available to help boost the visibility of the user’s content.<h2>Pricing</h2>BigCommerce offers a 15-day free trial period, which gives you plenty of time to decide if this platform is the right one for you and your business. After that, you have a range of price options, all with their own features. All options include a 10% savings if you pay annually, rather than monthly.The most basic price option is a full-featured online store for $29.95 per month, which comes with a whole host of features and everything you need to run a successful eCommerce store.The next option offers optimized lead conversion and customer group management, with a price of $79.95 per month. The next, and final, option starts at $249.95 per month and offers everything plus high-volume security and faceted search.The pricing page clearly showcases which features each package comes with, both with text and visuals – making it very easy to determine which package is right for you.<h2>Conclusion</h2>BigCommerce is an easy-to-use, highly efficient option for ecommerce owners. It’s got plenty of features, including marketing and offering the ability to streamline consumer shopping across multiple channels.The template options are customizable and versatile, and the high level of security on the Pro package is definitely worth the price.Blogging for your business is a great way to reach new audiences, interact with current customers, and keep your sales funnel alive and thriving. The blogging feature built into this platform makes it easy to regularly publish (and schedule) content for your customers.For more information, visit the BigCommerce site <a target="_blank" href="http://bigcommerce.evyy.net/c/12549/185949/2941">here.</a>Have you used BigCommerce, or are you interested in giving it a try? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

BigCommerce Review - An Easy to Use Choice for eCommerce Shops

As a Macbook Pro user, I've always found it frustrating how difficult they can be to upgrade. I realize of course that most of this is due to the way they are built but another aspect is absolutely Apple's desire to have you just upgrade the whole laptop rather than individual components. Otherwise, your Macbook might last too long right?For this reason, I was pretty excited when I received a request from Tardisk asking me to review their Macbook storage expansion device. I was, admittedly, at first pretty skeptical about how well it would work but I am happy to report I was wrong. It works flawlessly and is probably one of the most efficient and cost effective ways to upgrade your hard drive on your Macbook.I should start by pointing out that this is more upgrading your storage than literally upgrading your hard drive although the intent is to make it feel like a single unit. Let me walk you through how the Tardisk worked for me but before I do so, here's a quick video outlining the concept behind the product and it's functionality. The Tardisk comes in two different sizes; 128 and 256 GB and is available for Macbook Air and Macbook Pro laptops.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/tardisk_review_-_1622x0-is.jpg" />The concept behind it is pretty cool. You basically insert the Tardisk into your SD card slot on your Macbook and follow some instructions and it “pears” (their term, not mine) with your Macbook hard drive to form one large partition of space. The best part is that you don't lose any speed or performance!<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/tardisk_review_-_2622x0-is.jpg" />The only downside of course is that it effectively renders your SD card slot unusable as, once it's installed, you don't want to be removing it. The good thing though is that you can pick up an SD card reader (such as the one below) on Amazon for under $10:When you open up the packaging, you will see the Tardisk is a small metallic hard drive perfectly sized for your SD card slot.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/tardisk_review_-_3443x366-cropx304y483-is.jpg" />The drive definitely feels well built and not like some cheap piece of junk that's likely to break or cause you problems. You can tell they worked hard on making it not only look good but match the overall style and aesthetics of your Macbook. Once inserted, you can't even tell it's there (other than the fact that the SD card slot is full that is), it seamlessly fits in with the Macbook body.Installation was pretty straight forward. I wouldn't say it was super easy but it wasn't complicated either. They do a good job of walking you through the steps but I wouldn't give one to my Grandma and expect her to be able to do it. I'd probably give it to someone who's comfortable navigating their Macbook and can follow instructions without getting nervous about the results.I won't go into how the process works as the process can be seen here: https://www.tardisk.com/pages/faq and the setup video is far easier to follow than for me to type out. Let me just say that total time for me was about an hour because I had to do a time machine backup. If I had been doing these regularly, it would have likely taken 1-2 minutes.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/insert800x0-is.jpg" /> I've been using the Tardisk in my Macbook for the last week or so and can comfortably say I've encountered no issues. My Macbook is just as quick as it was before, the only difference is that I have an extra 128GB of hard drive space. I'm suitably impressed with the Tardisk. I love that these guys found an elegant solution to a problem that's long plagued Macbook users and I'm excited to share the news. It's affordable, works beautifully and is crafted with care.If you need an elegant way to upgrade your Macbook storage, look no further. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tardisk.com/">Go grab yourself a Tardisk</a> and start “pearing” today.

Tardisk Review - A Simple, Effective Way to Upgrade your Macbook Storage

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

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