Articles - Page 86

Bland Brands Beware: Optimizely’s New Identity Brings Human Creativity to its Agentic AI and AEO Ambitions

matt-garrepy

Let's face it, there simply is no other CMS that has even come close the the level of popularity that WordPress has managed to achieve. It's an admirable accomplishment that is well deserved. WordPress has taken what used to be complex functionality that only technical people could accomplish and dumbed it down to make things, for the most part, easier for the average user. As with most things however, it's only a matter of time before a better solution comes around. Nothing can stay on top forever so the question I will pose today is, what will it take to dethrone WordPress?
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigstock-on-the-throne-59317109600x0.jpg" />
In this article, I'm going to reference  <a href="https://ghost.org/"> Ghost </a> quite a bit. The reason is simple, there are still some things I feel they are doing incorrectly but for the most part, they are following what I consider to be a successful strategy.
<h2>Branding</h2>
If there's one thing Matt and his team have done well, it's branding. Branding is the key to everything. If you can get your brand out there and make it stand for something, you are pretty much guaranteeing yourself success. What is WordPress known for? Simplicity.  
The funny thing, however, is that it simply isn't the easiest CMS out there but none of that matters because for years, they've been telling you it is and so has everyone else. That's the key to branding. It doesn't matter if there's a better product out there, if you can convince people your product is the best at something, you will conquer the market. People will not only believe you, they'll tell everyone else they know that it is as well, if only to appear as though they know what they are talking about.
That's in no way a slam against WordPress or the people using it either. It's simply the way marketing works and has worked for years. Word of mouth is a powerful thing and WordPress certainly wins that battle. 
The downsides to this kind of thinking, however, is that people will often recommend it immediately without any thought even if it is indeed the absolute worst tool possible for a situation. The same applies to any brand.
<h2>Theme Availability</h2>
There are plenty of content management systems out there that offer nice themes but WordPress is, again, the king in this arena. There are more themes for WordPress than any other CMS in the world and that's an impressive achievement. Why are there so many? First, people are using the product therefore theme developers know they have an active community of users who they can convert into potential customers. Second, creating themes for WordPress is relatively easy to do (and there's good documentation showing how to do it). Third, the product is very flexible and easy to manipulate meaning the opportunities to create something unique exist for developers allowing them to be less limited with their imaginations.
Is it the perfect system? Of course not, but there are plenty of very successful theme companies making millions of dollars selling WordPress themes. Something that cannot be as easily stated when it comes to other CMS out there. Sure, there are lots of great Joomla template houses but nowhere near as many as WordPress.
<h2>Plugins</h2>
No plugin system is perfect but WordPress has the advantage that their plugin system offers huge amounts of additional capability to users of the product. This is largely thanks for the open source model that WordPress operates under. Freely available code means the massive community now has the ability to extend the product on their own and that means a large number of freely available themes. There are some premium ones as well but the bulk are free and updated regularly.
<h2>So what will it take to dethrone the king?</h2>
We've seen some successful upstarts come out of the wood work to try to take a piece of the pie and some are doing quite well in gaining momentum. One particular contender that comes to mind is Ghost. The product is far from perfect but managed to come out of nowhere, generate a ton of interest via their Kickstarter campaign (a brilliant marketing strategy) and gain the interest of theme developers. As a result, there's a brand new  <a href="https://www.cmscritic.comhttps://www.cmscritic.com/themeforestcategory/blogging/ghost-themes?ref=cmscritic"> Ghost Themes </a> category in Themeforest and plenty of themes being submitted to it daily.
To beat WordPress one must focus on a several step process:
<ol>
<li> Focus on Marketing to Developers 
 The right product needs to target themselves towards the massive blogger community (like Ghost has) and focus on marketing to the developers. If you can get developers on board and get them working on pounding out themes and plugins for the product, then the product will be in the position to start attracting the interest of the userbase.</li>
<li> Offer a Migration Path 
 Implement an easy migration path for those already on WordPress to easily move to your platform. This is something that currently does not exist within Ghost but needs to in order for them to succeed. Yes, they have the beginnings of a method ( <a href="http://ghostforbeginners.com/how-to-transfer-blog-posts-from-wordpress-to-ghost/"> shown here </a> ) but it's still not easy enough. People who have invested large amounts of time pounding out content on WordPress don't want to go through a million steps just to move their stuff over. A simple one-plugin process that imports from WordPress would be the ideal solution. Granted, the fact that one currently exists (even if it is a bit complex) is better than nothing.</li>
<li> Offer Hosted and Self Hosted Options 
 Here's another way Ghost has attempted to duplicate the WordPress recipe, by implementing a hosted solution. The problem is that Ghost has offered this only as a paid option which has limited appeal to the millions of people on WordPress.com that currently don't pay a dime. If Ghost was to alter their monetization platform to offer it up for free with paid upgrades, they'd be in a better position to compete. As it stands right now, I don't think they have chosen the right path as of yet. Furthermore, the pricing is too high in my mind. $10 / month, while it may not seem like much is simply too high for a beginner pricing model.</li>
<li> Build up a Community
 The next step is to build up a community and stay active in it. If you can show that your community is active and that your developers (or at the very least, a team of volunteers) are actively answering questions and encouraging users, this will naturally make other potential users feel like they won't be left alone in the dark if they move to your platform. Nobody wants to move to a platform with an inactive community. If you can make people feel welcome and supported, they will move.</li>
</ol>
<h2> Conclusion </h2>
Those are my thoughts as of the moment. I'll be adding to this article as more ideas come to mind but I think it warrants an interesting discussion. I'm not suggesting that WordPress needs to be dethroned either but rather opening up a discussion for those to celebrate the success of the product and to offer up recommendations for other projects looking to become more successful. I personally feel WordPress will be around for many more years and will continue to evolve in its functionality and I'm looking forward to seeing how things change.
What do you think? Join in below in the comments.

What It Will Take to Dethrone WordPress

mike-johnston

MailChimp is integrating their service into so many other apps it is almost time to ask: “Which service does not have MailChimp integration?” The latest apps to join the list are: Pinterest, Instagram, and Hootsuite.
<h3>Put a Pin in it</h3>
Pinterest has a sharp inclining user base to say the least. With over 100 million (yes I said million) unique site visits in one month it is easy to see why it has MailChimp's attention.
<blockquote>“Pinterest ‘lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web' with anyone. This popular pioneer in the new trend of visual bookmarking is a free service for everyone.”</blockquote>
So Pinterest is wildly popular attracting more and more users because of its easy to share pinboard style interface. Do you want to have a fun way to “bookmark” your interests? Done. Do you want to share these “pinboards” with whomever you wish? Done. But why is this integration between MailChimp and Pinterest attractive to businesses already using MailChimp for email newsletters?
For years a challenge for a typical company was connecting to their customers. It seems that the larger the company the easier it is for a communication gap to develop between said company and the end customer. What are our typical customers interested in? How do they communicate everyday? These questions beg answers and marketing departments need to tailor campaigns to the customer demographic and easily track the success or lack of success of a particular campaign. “Oh what ever can be done?” (southern ‘damsel in distress' voice)
Aha, now we see why this app integration and others like it are so meaningful for a company. If company “A” is submitting traffic on networks that potential customers frequent, company “A” stands a much better chance of engaging these individuals perhaps becoming part of their “circle” if you will.
Now you may think that it would be difficult to work with this “merging” of two different apps. MailChimp does not do “difficult”.
<blockquote>“To use this integration, head over to the Pinterest Chimplet. We’re always trying to find new ways to accomodate the needs of our users, and this integration is no exception. Type in your Pinterest username and you will instantly see a drop-down menu of your individual boards to choose from. You can create your campaign using all of your pins, or your pins from just one board!”</blockquote>

Make your Pinterest “pinboards”, add them to a MailChimp campaign, and share share share.
<h3>Instagram</h3>
Another MailChimp integration is with Instagram. Like Pinterest, Instagram has grown tremendously. Over 27 million users in a little over 2 years. Simple and easy photo sharing, “Instagram is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends.”
Now MailChimp can pull in your instagram photo stream and share via an RSS campaign. ‘Hang on, maybe I do not want all photos going out over to a MailChimp list.” They thought of that.
<blockquote>“You will find that not only can you choose to create your RSS campaign from your Instagram username, but you can also create a campaign from a common hashtag, like #pugs.”
“Now let’s say you’re managing your company’s Instagram account. You’d like to send a campaign using not only your company’s images, but also all of the images taken by other users who have tagged your company’s account. You can do that, too! Just select “Include photos uploaded by or tagged as this hashtag” and enter your company’s Instagram username.”</blockquote>
<div>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2013-11-11_07_11_23-mozilla_firefox_1125x0_tvhcfk.png" alt="Instagram_Integration" />
Pictures are so engaging it only makes sense to share!
<h3>Hootsuite</h3>
With all these social media outlets it could be a full time job just keeping them all up to date. You could use some type of social media management dashboard or something right? Well fortunately there are services like Hootsuite.
Social media management is powerful alone, but now you can link to MailChimp campaigns and push them out to your social networks. Hootsuite's stats are an added benefit to using this integration of social media and email campaigning.
<blockquote>“The link to your campaign will be shortened with HootSuite’s link shortener, ow.ly, instead of our link shortener, eepurl. The ow.ly link shortener allows HootSuite to track how the campaigns are shared across your social networks. Now you can see stats on your email campaigns’ social reach in context with the rest of your social-media metrics, from within HootSuite.”</blockquote>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/hootsuite_stats.jpg" alt="hootsuite_stats" />
<div>
These latest integrations can bring businesses closer to their audience. These add-ons make it easier to communicate effectively across not only email, but social media as well.
</div>
</div>

MailChimp Integrations, the Saga Continues

commercetools, a leading headless e-Commerce platform, recently announced the acquisition of Frontastic, a composable frontend platform. 
The purchase comes just a few months after commercetools announced a $140 million <a href="https://commercetools.com/press-releases/commercetools-secures-140m-series-c-funding-round-to-accelerate-global-growth" target="_blank">Series C funding round</a> – a plump investment, to be sure, and one that the company hopes will broaden the reach of its game-changing commerce technology for creating differentiated user experiences.
It's worth noting that commercetools was one of the earlier headless commerce platforms on the scene, helping to shape the modern standards for headless commerce. Their decoupled environment now enables a multitude of commerce capabilities across an ever-growing network of channels and endpoints. Like other platforms in the composable field, commercetools also embraces the <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH principles</a> – providing a truly open, modular environment that enables businesses to quickly embrace innovation and respond to change.  
"We've been partnering with the Frontastic team since the very beginning and see a huge market opportunity for their Composable Frontend Platform around the world," said Dirk Hoerig, CEO, and Co-Founder of commercetools. "With this powerful combination, we're bringing the MACH (Microservices, API, Cloud, and Headless) movement to the mid-market as well as to digital business teams so that more companies can benefit from modern commerce experiences."
commercetools has enjoyed a strong presence in Europe and North America, but their global aspirations are clear. Their expansion will undoubtedly be bolstered by their "Leader" position on <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/4005295/magic-quadrant-for-digital-commerce" target="_blank">Gartner's 2021 Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce</a> – making this their second consecutive year in this coveted segment. 
<img style="max-width:487px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-digital-commerce-2021-quadrant-graphic.png" alt="Gartner Magic Quadrant for digital commerce 2021 Quadrant" />
In a previous article, we featured commercetools as one of <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/" target="_blank">our Top Headless Commerce Platforms</a>, so be sure to check that out.
<h3>What is Frontastic?</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/frontastic-header.png" alt="frontastic workflow" />
Based in Germany, Frontastic is a composable frontend platform for API-First e-Commerce and headless CMSes. It enables brands to build websites quickly and easily with headless capabilities by removing the complexity for developers – and giving business teams autonomy and flexibility. 
Frontastic combines four tools:
<ol>
<li>An API hub that includes standard integrations for commerce, content, search, and connectivity to any API.</li>
<li>Developer tooling that includes a CLI to manage components with a built-in workflow to go from development to testing to production.</li>
<li>Frontastic Studio, an easy-to-use interface that enables teams to manage pages, components, navigation, and layouts.</li>
<li>Frontend delivery via a Progressive Web App (PWA) – which provides great performance and an app-like user experience – and server-side rendering that ensures fast delivery and SEO-friendly pages.</li>
</ol>
While their combined capabilities have yet to be fully explored, the existing partnership between commercetools and Frontastic will likely enable a more efficient time to integration.
"We're excited to become part of the impressive commercetools growth story," said Thomas Gottheil, CEO, and Co-Founder at Frontastic. "We created Frontastic to help enterprises build the best shopping experiences – regardless of which commerce platform they use. By joining forces with commercetools, we can support even more brands on a global scale."
<h2>The impact of headless commerce and MACH architecture</h2>
As companies accelerated their digital transformation strategies throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the retail industry – hit hard by the shutdown of brick-and-mortar storefronts – drove the leap to digital commerce. To be sure, many organizations already had an integrated strategy for selling in both physical and online stores. However, in the throes of the pandemic, those online stores became their only channel, and they invested heavily in e-Commerce solutions that could amplify their capabilities and be quickly deployed.
You've probably heard the buzz around MACH and the evolution of composable architectures. If not, let's start with the basics: MACH is an acronym for Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless. While the MACH architecture is a relatively new concept, it's quickly gaining popularity due to its modular nature – allowing businesses to compose the best tools to meet their exact business requirements and scale their experiences rapidly. 
The <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/" target="_blank">headless</a> approach has moved from niche to normal. While the "<a href="https://www.akana.com/blog/composable-architecture" target="_blank">composable architecture</a>" concept is much newer, it's also becoming more popular as digital transformation enters its next wave. And it makes sense: leading up to Covid, digital stacks were already becoming decoupled and less monolithic, all driven by the rise of the <a href="https://www.openapis.org/" target="_blank">open API</a>. Much of this investment in a composable enterprise is driven by the rise in composable commerce and its impact on the application landscape. 
Gartner predicts that by 2023, organizations that embrace composability will <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3986490/composable-commerce-must-be-adopted-for-the-future-of-ap" target="_blank">outpace the competition by 80%</a> in implementing new product features.
commercetools, which made the exclusive 2021 list of privately held "unicorn companies" worth over $1 billion, has experienced accelerated growth over the past year, with recent customer wins that include Alcon, Debenhams, Direct Wines, Express, LEGO, L.L. Bean, Screwfix, Volkswagen, and Zenni Optical. With the addition of the Frontastic composable frontend technology to the company's product portfolio, commercetools is building a broader set of commerce technology services to support global enterprises – and ultimately reinvent e-Commerce.
<h2>About Frontastic</h2>
Founded in 2017, Frontastic is a composable frontend platform that unites business and development teams to build amazing commerce sites on headless – fast. It connects to any API to unify tech landscapes and provides the necessary tools so commerce teams can focus on innovating new features. Within a short time, the company has successfully established itself as the new standard for commerce frontends, with its customers seeing up to 50% higher conversion rates and up to 50% faster time to market.
Find out more about Frontastic on <a href="http://www.frontastic.cloud/" target="_blank">www.frontastic.cloud</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/frontasticGmbH" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, and <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/company/frontastic-gmbh/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.

commercetools Acquires Frontastic, Adds Composable Frontend Capabilities to Headless Commerce

paris-tuzun

Composite image of the commercetools and frontastic logos on a blended background

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ar_vr_visual_search_0.jpg" />
Nowadays, millennials who grew up with smartphones in their hands are the economic force of our time. As a result, digital technologies are stepping in to take over customer service.
In this article, I will be sharing information about the latest digital technologies such as VR, AR, Voice search, and Image search and their impact on customer experience along with vivid examples of each.
First, let's talk about the customer experience and why it is so important for businesses. Are some transformations needed here?
<h2>Digital Technologies &amp; Customer Experience</h2>
Customer experience (CX) is not the same as user experience (UX). CX is a broader notion. It represents every step of the journey from when users compare prices to when they try the product, including when they resort to customer service if their needs aren’t met.
The influence of the customer experience should not be underestimated when it comes to a company’s success.
Harvard Business Review writes that organizations that can skillfully manage the entire experience reap enormous <a href="https://hbr.org/2013/09/the-truth-about-customer-experience" target="_blank">rewards</a>. Among them are enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced churn, increased revenue, and greater employee satisfaction.
With the tough competition, customer experience changes tremendously. Only ten years ago customers were happy to see smiling and pleasant sales people and were open and satisfied with being sweet talked.
They were ready to buy products if polite people presented different products. Now, these types of tricks do not work anymore because almost everyone knows that it’s a trick.
When internet banners appeared many companies started to use them as their primary source of marketing, but nowadays people have banner blindness. 54% of users don’t click on<a href="http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/top-reason-users-dont-click-banner-ads-they-dont-want-be-diverted-from-their-current-1504178.htm" target="_blank"> banner ads</a> because they do not trust them, and a whopping 33% of internet users find them <a href="http://downloads.pagefair.com/reports/adblocking_goes_mainstream_2014_report.pdf" target="_blank">utterly intolerable</a>.
The customer’s attention is hard to catch. A <a href="http://advertising.microsoft.com/en/cl/31966/how-does-digital-affect-canadian-attention-spans" target="_blank">study</a> from Microsoft Corp showed that the average person’s attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. As a result, our attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish.
New technologies help to attract people to products and build a great experience.
While competitors make vivid product presentations using Virtual and Augmented reality, a company may remain disconnected and lose clients.
<h2>Virtual Reality</h2>
According to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality" target="_blank">definition</a>:
Virtual Reality (VR) – is a digital technology that uses <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_headsets" target="_blank">Virtual reality headsets</a>, sometimes in combination with physical spaces or multi-projected environments, to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that simulate a user's physical presence in a virtual or imaginary environment.
VR is changing the customer experience in such fields as retail, education, healthcare, and others.
The Chinese retail store Alibaba launched a <a href="https://twitter.com/AlibabaGroup/" target="_blank">VR-campaign</a> where customers, with the help of headsets, can visit shopping centers in different countries and buy products they need.
<figure><img title="Click and drag to move" />​<figcaption>Source: twitter.com/AlibabaGroup</figcaption></figure>
Companies in the automobile industry such as <a href="http://www.autonews.com/article/20170123/RETAIL07/301239817/jlr-bringing-virtual-reality-to-showrooms" target="_blank">Jaguar</a>, Volvo, Audi, and others launched virtual showrooms. Viewers can enjoy different destinations from inside and outside of a new automobile with the help of headsets.
<figure>
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<img title="Click and drag to move" /><figcaption>Source: autonews.com</figcaption></figure>
With VR headsets customers can choose the location inside and outside of the car, look around, and perform limited test drives. This technology reduces physical space at stores, travel expenses, and logistics costs while differentiating the customer experience.
VR technologies are also applied in real estate. Customers do not have to drive to another city to find the right estate. Photos within ads usually don’t provide enough information about the property. The technology gives a prospective buyer a “feel” for the property by providing customers with a 3-D picture of the estate or even a virtual tour.
The application of Virtual reality in healthcare has therapeutic value. It may transport clients to a calm beach or silent forest to rest and meditate, or they may enjoy some virtual activities such as swimming, for example, while waiting for treatment.
<figure>
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<img title="Click and drag to move" /><figcaption>Source: medicalfuturist.com</figcaption></figure>
As seen above, Virtual reality can open new horizons for customers. It lets them undergo a unique experience which was unlikely some years ago.
According to <a href="https://www.statista.com/topics/2532/virtual-reality-vr/" target="_blank">Statista.com</a>, the total number of active Virtual reality users will reach 171 million by 2018.
VR provides an opportunity to drive luxurious cars or chose new real estate from home. It also improves job fields such as healthcare and education.
<h2>Augmented Reality</h2>
Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that adds different computer-generated elements such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data to a real-world environment.
AR technology became familiar to many people thanks to the Pokémon Go mobile app. However, since that time, it has found other uses outside of games.
Let’s have a look at how Augmented reality influences the customer experience.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go9rf9GmYpM" target="_blank">Pepsi provided</a> an excellent example of the power of AR advertising when they installed digital HD screens on bus shelters to portray events such as a rampaging robot or a prowling tiger using AR technology.
Snapchat is an image messaging and multimedia mobile application that adds funny masks to people’s faces using Augmented reality. This app is very popular. It has 13,364,113 <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.snapchat.android&amp;hl=en" target="_blank">downloads</a> in the Google Play market.
<figure>
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<img title="Click and drag to move" /><figcaption>Source: itunes.apple.com</figcaption></figure>
AR is also used in E-commerce. For example, Gap displays its “DressingRoom” app where people can “try on” clothes without ever entering a store.
<figure>
​
<img title="Click and drag to move" /><figcaption>Source: engadget.com</figcaption></figure>
The Augmented reality market is growing, and the global market for AR products will surge 80% to $165 billion by 2024, according to researcher <a href="https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/augmented-reality-ar-market?utm_source=globenewswire.com" target="_blank">Global Market Insights</a>.
Research firm IDC predicts that 30% of consumer-facing <a href="http://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/advertising-marketing-to-invade-virtual-augmented-reality-in-2017" target="_blank">companies</a> in the Forbes Global 2000 will experiment with AR and VR as part of their marketing efforts in 2017.
<h2>Visual Search</h2>
The Visual search mechanism works by сomparing the pixels in an uploaded image to millions of other images to identify and return results that are similar. Facebook determines who’s in the photo by applying this technology in addition to Google’s image search.
Instead of typing in a query such as ‘black case’ which may return thousands of general results, users can upload an image to narrow it down to something specific.
Visual search is making it much easier for consumers to find exactly what they are looking for.
Here are some examples of how visual search is applied by some companies:
<h3>Amazon</h3>
Amazon <a href="http://www.techrepublic.com/article/amazon-visual-search-integration-will-make-it-even-easier-to-shop-on-the-samsung-galaxy-s8/" target="_blank">introduced</a> a visual recognition mobile app, integrated into the Samsung Galaxy S8, giving consumers the ability to snap a picture of something, search for it online, and then buy it if they want among Amazon's catalog of products.
<figure>
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<img title="Click and drag to move" /><figcaption>Source: ibtimes.com.au</figcaption></figure>
<h3>Facebook’s face detection</h3>
You may have noticed a square box that appears on everyone's face that lets you tag a person in a picture. Facebook uses a facial recognition software called “DeepFace.” This software calculates a unique number (“template”) based on a person’s facial features such as the distance between the eyes, nose, and ears. DeepFace detects whether two faces in different photos are the same person with 97.25% accuracy, regardless of lighting conditions or angles.
Visual Search makes the life of a customer much easier. Now people can find something that they like with a single click, compare prices, and then buy it if they want.
<h2>Voice Search</h2>
Voice search is a technology that allows users to find what they need on the Internet by speaking on a mobile phone or computer.
Thrive Analytics <a href="http://www.thriveanalytics.com/blog/?p=361" target="_blank">showed</a> that a compelling number of people are using digital personal assistants:
<figure>
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<img title="Click and drag to move" /><figcaption>Source: moz.com</figcaption></figure>
The report revealed that 56% of adults use Siri, Google Now or Cortana.
These numbers will only rise according to the technology development which will better interpret and understand user’s requests and commands.
The rising interest in voice search pushes brands and companies to take Voice search seriously as it might fit into their customer experience strategies.
Consumers now expect faster, more relevant, personalized, and frictionless experiences. Voice search, powered by machine learning, will play an integral part in how brands go about meeting these expectations.
Some brands are already succeeding in implementing voice search.
Domino's Pizza has<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/markets/article-4729438/Voice-command-Domino-s-pizza-Amazon-s-Alexa.html" target="_blank"> launched</a> an app that allows consumers to order pizza with voice command via Amazon's Alexa, removing the need to go through a menu and click to order their choice.
Thanks to this, the company is increasing the number of channels by which consumers can get what they want.
<h2>Conclusions</h2>
To win at customer experience is becoming harder. The latest technologies such as AR, VR, Visual search, and Voice search have an excellent opportunity to grasp the customer’s attention for a longer period of time and influence their decision towards purchasing a product.
<ol>
<li>Using the latest technologies such as AR, VR, Voice search, and Visual search you provide new ways to connect with customers and offer unique, memorable interactions.</li>
<li>The newest digital technologies are already here. VR can transport customers to wherever they want to go, or it can engage them in super realistic games.</li>
<li>AR now helps people choose what to wear and find out which staff is the most suitable for their home using a single smartphone.</li>
<li>Voice search lets us find things we need without searching by hand, and visual search allows us to find things we like by using a single picture.</li>
<li>Many people are impatient and don’t want to type their query; they would rather ask Google to find everything for them.</li>
<li>To provide customers with the best experience, a company should make the best of itself by using these growing technologies.</li>
<li>Customers are more cautious than ever; they will turn away from brands that don’t align with their values and needs.</li>
</ol>

Digital Technologies That Will Transform the Customer Experience in the Future

When it comes to innovation, the world of Content Management is at the forefront. With ever changing requirements and technologies and the ever increasing power of social media, change is happening every day. These days, a CMS has to be agile and innovative to survive.Today, we're going to announce our pick for Most Innovative CMS for 2014.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/most_innovative_cms200x0.png" alt="most innovative cms" />This year, one CMS showed us how truly innovative they were and that CMS was Sitecore.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/logo_black_with_tagline400x0.png" />With the <a href="/exploring-the-newly-announced-sitecore-8/">introduction of Sitecore 8</a>, we saw first hand how Sitecore aims to innovate and stay on top of the latest trends and this year, we feel they are on the top of their game and worthy of this award.Sitecore 8 brings to the table a ton of new features such as:<ul><li>Automated Testing &amp; Optimization: Marketers can feel confident that the customer experience is being optimized constantly, in real time, through every interaction, over any platform. This confidence travels up through the marketing organization, all the way to the Chief Marketing Officer.</li><li>Resulting Focus: Because customer experience testing and optimization occurs effortlessly, marketers can now focus on other critical tasks. </li><li>Customized for Each Business: The customer experience can be managed based on how the business runs, not how the software dictates. </li><li>Consistent Customer Experiences: Sitecore 8 breaks down the silos among functions, enabling them to work together to create a consistent customer experience. </li><li>The Whole Picture: Marketers gain a complete view of how customers are interacting with the company, even in other systems, websites, or with other permission-based, customer- facing functions. </li><li>Insight Sharing: Marketers can provide insight about customer interactions to other organizations/functions within the company.</li></ul>To get the full details on this release, check out their Sitecore 8 page: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.sitecore.net/Platform/Sitecore-8.aspx">http://www.sitecore.net/Platform/Sitecore-8.aspx</a>Congratulations to the team at Sitecore. Keep innovating!

2014 Critics Choice Winner - Most Innovative CMS

<a href="http://www.elgg.org/" target="_blank">Elgg</a> has released an update with a focus on improving their documentation for the benefit of their users.
The open source social networking platform has been around for a number of years. It enables businesses, schools and universities to create their own social networks and applications.
<h2>Learning Elgg Has Never Been Easier</h2>
Along with a number of bug fixes and general tweaks, version 1.9.6 is laregly about Elgg's documentation. Specifically, the update has involved moving moving pages from <a href="http://docs.elgg.org/">docs.elgg.org</a> to <a href="http://learn.elgg.org/">learn.elgg.org</a>. Here's what got moved around:
<ul>
<li>“Finding plugins” page moved.</li>
<li>“Plugin order” page moved.</li>
<li>“Getting help” page moved.</li>
<li>“Duplicate installation” page moved.<a href="https://github.com/Elgg/Elgg/commit/53dfaca85a65ebba492bef45947d935c037eb0f8"> 
</a></li>
<li>“Backup and restore” page moved.</li>
</ul>
The purpose was of course to migrate Elgg's user documentation from <a href="http://docs.elgg.org/">docs.elgg.org</a> to <a href="http://learn.elgg.org/">learn.elgg.org</a>, which was a much needed move in my opinion. The new home for Elgg's documentation is far easier to navigate, and is easier on the eyes.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elgg700x0.jpg" />
Not only will this update help existing users, but it should also allow potential social network developers the chance to learn more about what Elgg can do.
The full list of bug fixes and updates for Elgg 1.9.6 can be found here.
Also, you can discover more about Elgg via our CMS Directory.

Elgg 1.9.6 released

Liferay, Inc., the enterprise software vendor, has announced the arrival of the <a href="https://www.liferay.com/platform/overview">Liferay Digital Experience Platform</a> (DXP).
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elcomcms9_5-1_prvhxm.jpg" alt="2014_liferay_logo.400x0" />
This new platform has been designed by Liferay to help companies create and manage experiences that support the end-to-end customer relationship. 
This includes giving organizations a full view of their digital customers, and also to manage consistent, personalized customer experiences across; websites, mobile sites, social channels and in-store touch-points.
<h2>The Evolution of Marketing</h2>
Ambitious businesses of today understand that marketing has indeed evolved.
Customers now demand an optimized experience from start to finish, and Liferay is attempting to help brands facilitate that with this release.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/digital-bank-single-customer-view-teller-view.png" alt="Digital Bank - Single Customer View - Teller view" />
Edwin Chung, Liferay's VP of Product Management, discusses this further:
<blockquote>
“Businesses today are moving beyond a narrow focus on marketing to look at the whole experience of their customers.
Liferay DXP helps companies present the right personalized experience for the moment: frustrated customers need help, not targeted offers, while a great service experience is an opportunity to upsell. 
By deeply integrating with the systems that support business units and processes, companies can act on customer sentiment and history to give customers the right resource or offer when they’re ready for it.”
</blockquote>
<h2>Liferay DXP: A Summary</h2>
With Liferay DXP, sales, marketing, support and service teams can truly work together for the good of customer experiences.
Liferay's new platform assembles a comprehensive view of the customer from separate systems, uses that insight to improve customer interactions, and integrates those interactions to the company’s operations.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/digital-bank-financial-dashboard-consumer-view.png" alt="Digital Bank - Financial Dashboard - Consumer view" />
Liferay DXP also enables partners and employees to interact with customers to influence sentiment and support the relationship.
Here's how it all works:
<ul>
<li>Flexible architecture for transformation: Liferay allows you to quickly implement digital strategy and adapt to new digital technologies with reusable microservices and integration with existing applications. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Experience management: Customer-facing business units that touch customers can design highly personalized experiences, from marketing campaigns to customer service processes, by targeting useful information, offers, and resources to user segments and individuals.</li>
<li>Single view of the customer: Liferay DXP creates a single customer profile aggregated from all of the customer’s interactions with the company, along with important data points such as customer sentiment, interests and significant conversions.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Engagement data: Improve customer experiences with access to engagement data such as video content views, click-throughs on targeted content, community activity and social metadata.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Support for innovative interfaces: DXP is designed to be used with modern UI and app frameworks favored by savvy front-end and mobile developers.</li>
</ul>
Additionally, Liferay's approach to their Digital Experience Platform, is three-fold:
<ol>
<li>To really cover the (complete) customer journey: Liferay's portal heritage makes Liferay DXP much more adept at serving the entire customer lifecycle from prospect (anonymous website visitor) to customer (signed into website) to advocate (inside the customer portal, inside the customer support system, etc). Other products with more CMS heritages result in more focus on just the prospects part of it. Liferay's banking that it's uniquely capable here because of that portal legacy. .</li>
<li>To target all audiences, not just customers: In addition to customers, Liferay DXP is for an organization's partners and employees. Purpose of making sure Liferay DXP was capable of this is to enable better internal collaboration and efficiency within. .</li>
<li>To be a complete business platform: Liferay DXP facilitates collaboration and frees up previously siloed information between business units, on the strength of its integration into backend systems.</li>
</ol>
For more information about the Liferay Digital Experience Platform, <a href="http://liferay.com/liferay-dxp">check out their website</a>.
And as always, you can explore more via the <a href="/liferay">Liferay Hub on our CMs Directory</a>.

Liferay Digital Experience Platform Unveiled: End-to-End Customer Experiences

Shopify - The global commerce platform

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The popular website builder, LightCMS, has released a number of new features, including a new responsive checkout, an improved form builder and some new templates to boot.
Chosen as one of our recommended website builders over at <a href="http://websitebuilderscritic.com/" target="_blank">Website Builders Critic</a>, LightCMS is a powerful platform with a Partner Platform aimed specifically at web designers.
This new set of features could be the last of many LightCMS releases in 2014. The platform has come a long, long way this year thanks to enhancements made to <a href="/lightcms-rolls-out-blogging-enhancements/" target="_blank">blogging</a> and <a href="/lightcms-to-offer-ecommerce-functionality/" target="_blank">eCommerce</a> functions, among other things.
<h2>Responsive Checkouts &amp; New Templates</h2>
The LightCMS checkout system has been revamped with responsive design — just in time for the holiday season.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/checkoutfull700x0.jpg" alt="LightCMS " />
Shoppers will now experience a seamless and fully responsive shopping experience, regardless of the devices they use for making purchases from your online store. The checkout system adapts to tablets, mobiles in a way which maintains LightCMS' elegant style.
Also, there are two new responsive templates on offer are called, “Civet” and “Liberty”. Both look pretty cool.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-1.jpg" alt="LightCMs" />
<h2>Even Better Form Building</h2>
As pointed out in my LightCMS review, one of LightCMS' strong points is its form builder. It's impressively powerful, yet extremely easy to use. With it, you can create simple contact forms, or highly detailed questionnaires.
Well, now it's even better because it looks better.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/formbuilder700x0.jpg" alt="LightCMS" />
The newly updated looks the form builder inline with the rest of LightCMS' elements, which also got an upgrade earlier in the year. Functionality wise, nothing has changed, but it's a welcome upgrade nonetheless.
For more information about these new updates, check out the LightCMS blog.
Also, you can explore more of LightCMS via our CMS Directory. Plus, our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLncwHtiOYBh1zXpX2UasMzG1JMa3kPAuq" target="_blank">LightCMS video tutorials</a> will give you an insight into what LightCMS can do.

LightCMS Releases Responsive Checkout & Improved Form Builder

<a href="https://www.myhubintranet.com/intranet-design/"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/intranet-design-1638x0-is.jpg" /></a>
A CMS intranet can be a pain to set up. We’re not all technology experts, and sometimes rolling out a new system is daunting, to the point where we avoid it all together.
MyHub have just released their free guide to <a href="https://www.myhubintranet.com/intranet-design/">designing an intranet</a>, and we’re here to give you the rundown on it. Overall we think it’s bang on, and well worth a read if you’re struggling with implementing a CMS intranet design, or even contemplating the task. Given that our aim is eliminating the feeling you can get when you don’t know where to start, we see this as an awesome guide to help to get going as well as taking you right the way through to launch.
<h2>Why Bother With A Guide?</h2>
So you’ve decided you might want an intranet. Great! You see the value of a connected environment, but don’t understand all the IT jargon. Time is of the essence and you don’t have the hours to read through every piece of information out there. The idea of winning over your CEO and your ground staff, then deciding on what type of intranet, which provider, how to train staff, how to manage content… It’s all a bit much. 
That’s why you need to read this intranet design guide. Setting up an intranet may seem like a very simple task from a high-level perspective, but when you sink your teeth into it, there are complexities to navigate. From SSL to HTML, trying to implement an intranet from scratch can be a daunting project! Instead of going it alone, use the guide as a light for the path. 
<h2>How Can The Intranet Design Guide Help?</h2>
Simplicity is the main reason, written by experts, the design guide takes decades of experience and puts it all in one place, in words normal folk can understand. It’s been written with non-technical staff in mind, as well as time poor executives, so while being comprehensive, it’s all structured in a manner to save you lots of precious time. No weighty jargon, just a practical resource for staff at all levels.
Essentially, the guide ensures your intranet is fit for purpose, from a design, usability and functionality perspective. Instead of spending valuable time and resources on a trial-and-error set up to find out what works for your organization, MyHub’s guide provides you with a tool to look at your organizational issues, and match this with the correct design from day one. The result? An intranet implementation that is smooth, and successful.
Whether you’re introducing an intranet for the first time, or re-doing an existing solution, this guide is a useful resource. Its principles and quick tips mean that regardless of your unique situation, some value is added.
<h2>What Does It Cover?</h2>
Everything you need to know. If it’s related to setting up an intranet, and you need to know it, it’s all covered. From intranet types, through to design, templates and hosting options, you’ll find practical tips and advice to ease the implementation process. Here’s a quick look at a few of the areas touched on:
<ul>
<li>how to get started</li>
<li>planning your intranet</li>
<li>different issues an intranet can solve</li>
<li>hosting options</li>
<li>launch costs</li>
<li>different types of intranet</li>
<li>standard intranet features </li>
<li>intranet design best practice</li>
<li>making the most of intranet design templates</li>
<li>intranet security </li>
<li>best practice examples</li>
</ul>
It’s true, much of this information is already out there on the web. What we like about this guide is that it’s all in one place. Not 14,440,000 different search results.
<h2>Who’s It For?</h2>
If you’re implementing or designing an intranet, this is for you–especially if you’re an executive or manager overseeing the implementation by staff. Saying that, it’s also really useful for the team members who are dealing with all the details. 
It’s clear enough that it could be used by people who’ve never had an intranet before, but doesn’t dumb things down, so if you’ve got some good background knowledge and are looking to revamp your intranet, this could still be useful. The MyHub team aim to show that an intranet doesn’t have to be implemented by IT experts, so it’s a lot more accessible than most intranet guides for non-technical personnel.
<h2>Where Can I Find It?</h2>
The guide is free to download from the <a href="https://www.myhubintranet.com/intranet-design/">MyHub Intranet website</a>. We all know how useful a CMS intranet is, so this will help you begin the process of setting up your company intranet, and participate in the many benefits. Like many others before, you’ll soon find the intranet becomes an indispensable organizational tool.
Included in the guide is a fantastic reference section, linking other useful information, as well as more detail around specific intranet topics such as creating engaging content, governance, performance management and security.
As well as this, there are a range of links to wider intranet issues. From how they can support employee engagement initiatives and improve internal communications, to enhancing opportunities for joint working and collaboration across organizations… The list goes on. This is a great area to spark ideas around maximizing the return on investment for your intranet.
The team at MyHub, are always happy to provide advice and assistance wherever possible. <a href="https://www.myhubintranet.com/book-demo/">Get in touch</a> with them today for an informal discussion about any aspect of the guide or indeed implementing an intranet generally. They’d love to hear from you.

Intranet Design Guide Released & It's Completely Free

Selz, an eCommerce solution which integrates with existing websites, has released a handy content editor.
Thanks to its recently released <a href="https://selz.com/blog/new-store-pro-app-make-store-even-beautiful/" target="_blank">Store Pro</a> feature, Selz has expanded its functional scope past Facebook and WordPress integration, giving users a fully functioning stand-alone store with its own domain name.
The Selz team has been busy in recent months, improving things like its <a href="/selz-releases-new-shopping-cart-app/" target="_blank">shopping cart app</a>, <a href="/selz-steps-up-google-analytics-integration/" target="_blank">Google Analytics integration</a>, <a href="/selz-gives-users-more-uploading-power/" target="_blank">uploading power</a>, and more. Let's take a look at what the content editor now brings.
<h2>Point, Click, Type</h2>
The new Selz Content Editor allows you to style your product descriptions just the way you want them. Now you can tidy things up with headings, bulletpoints and links. 
All you need to do is click on the example text and start typing. For further editing options, you can highlight a bit of text, which will automatically bring up a pop up text formatting editor.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/content_editor.png" alt="Selz Content Editor" />
You can go bold, italic, add a link, use 2 different heading sizes and even bullet or number your points. The result? Clear product descriptions that are even more gorgeous than before.
Naturally, the main purpose of the contend editor is to give users more power over the look and feel of their product listings. It's not the most powerful content editor around, but it's certainly a start. Plus, it looks extremely simple to use.
You can check out the Selz announcement of this update <a href="https://selz.com/blog/new-feature-content-editor/" target="_blank">via their blog</a>.

Selz Rolls Out Content Editor

<a href="http://www.oxwall.org/" target="_blank">Oxwall</a>, a CMS for social networking websites, has released some notable updates in the form of Oxwall 1.7.2.
Seen as a steady solution for a number of years, Oxwall is a free and open source software package for building social networks, family sites and collaboration systems.
Let's take a closer look at what's new.
<h2>Avatars, Messaging &amp; Flagging Improvements</h2>
“Finally!”, the Oxwall team said via their announcement. Users can now choose avatars from their existing photo albums. It's been a long time coming, but it's here now at least.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/capturecapture700x0.jpg" alt="OXwall Avatars" />
Selecting an image to be your avatar will also allow you to crop it before it goes live.
Oxwall have continued to add to their new Messages plugin, which is another essential feature for a social networking CMS. Here’s what they came up with:
<ul>
<li>Increased conversation body area;</li>
<li>Improved conversation list (back icon, attachment indicator, group actions);</li>
<li>Text formatting for input;</li>
<li>Various performance optimizations</li>
</ul>
The Oxwall team also conceded that, “flagging content has always been an underdeveloped aspect in Oxwall. We are focused on optimizing daily experience with Oxwall, that’s why we came up with a new, completely redesigned moderation interface in the admin area.”
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/img_18112014_171039700x0.png" alt="Oxwall Flagging" /><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/img_18112014_171039700x0.png" alt="Oxwall Flagging" />
This new interface will be populated with various types of flagged content for administrators to review.
For more information on Oxwall 1.7.2, check out the <a href="http://blog.oxwall.org/2014/11/oxwall-1-7-2-beta-release" target="_blank">official blog announcement</a>, as well as the <a href="http://oxwall.org/1.7.2/CHANGELOG.txt" target="_blank">complete changelog</a>. You can download Oxwall 1.7.2 <a href="http://www.oxwall.org/download" target="_blank">here</a>.
Plus, you can explore more of <a href="/products/oxwall/" target="_blank">Oxwall via our CMS Directory</a>.

Oxwall 1.7.2 Brings Avatars & Messaging Improvements

[<a href="http://gutensite.com/">Gutensite</a> is a very cool online CMS that is free but can be extended for a small fee. What's unique in my mind about this product is the beauty of it's design and the wonderful choices you get with their design library. We recently took a look at the system and put together this Gutensite review.
Gutensite is extremely easy to use and very reminiscent of Squarespace (a similar product) but much quicker and more attractive in my opinion.
Here is an example of the type of design you can have with this product (this is only one of many design choices you get):
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gutensite2-575x384.jpg" alt="Gutensite Review" />
As I mentioned previously, the design and beauty of this system are second to none. It is very well laid out with a very attractive and intuitive interface as you can see from this next screenshot of the control panel interface:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gutensite1.jpg" alt="Gutensite Review" />
In fact, I like it so much I would not hesitate to call it the best free online CMS that I have seen to date. It has some incredible extensability and has specialized modules for various unique functions.
It has a few addon features ($40 give or take, which is very, very cheap) such as the ones below:
<ul>
<li>MLS importing and realty listing functionality.</li>
<li>E-Commerce module.</li>
<li>Intranet module that provides functionality to use it for a corporate intranet platform.</li>
<li>SendStudio E-Mail Marketing</li>
</ul>
Here is a full breakdown of what you get with the free edition and some detailed explanations on the available addons:
<a href="http://www.gutensite.com/overview/What-Is-Included">http://www.gutensite.com/overview/What-Is-Included</a>
Check it out, you won' t be disappointed.

Gutensite Review - An Introduction to the New Online CMS

<a href="https://lemonstand.com">LemonStand</a>, the cloud-hosted ecommerce solution, has just announced the arrival of $1.25M worth of seed funding from; BDC Capital, Hank Massey, Paul Rochester, Silicon Valley based angel investors Barry X Lynn, and others.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/lemonstand.png" alt="lemonstand" />
The platform is aimed primarily at businesses, from small all the way up to enterprise level, rather than to first-time online merchants.
LemonStand intends to use the proceeds to invest in continued product development and to accelerate its recruitment of new web design and agency partners.
<h2>“Breaking The Mold”</h2>
According to Matt Roberts, the Associate Director of the IT Venture Fund at BDC Capital, LemonStand are going places:
<blockquote>
“LemonStand has broken the mold for cloud based eCommerce platforms.
They give web designers and agencies full control over the online shopping experience. Through a highly customizable solution they provide the tools and support needed to drive better results for the retailers they work with.” 
</blockquote>
The target in LemonStand's crosshairs is the trillion dollar online retail market that is growing more rapidly than ever.
As I mentioned, LemonStand's focus is on small and medium-sized online retailers who often work with web design agencies on their brand and marketing strategy.  
Built on a secure and scalable cloud-based architecture, LemonStand endeavours to combine the ease of use and operational benefits of the cloud, along with the power and flexibility web designers usually only find with open source and enterprise platforms.
<h2>Built for Web Designers</h2>
LemonStand's Founder and CEO Danny Halarewich also chimed in with his views on the product's position in the ecommerce industry:
<blockquote>
“We built LemonStand for web designers and their fast growing clients. They no longer want to work with outdated, complex, and high maintenance server based platforms, but have been frustrated with the limited flexibility of the many cloud based ‘do-it-yourself’ solutions out there.
Anyone who’s had success growing an eCommerce business knows that slapping up an online store in 15 minutes that looks just like hundreds of others out there isn’t good enough.”
</blockquote>
With a growing base of hundreds of web design and agency partners in over 15 countries, LemonStand’s investment plans center around continuing to build the best solution, tools and community for web designers, agencies and fast growing retail brands.
For more information or a free trial, visit LemonStand at <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://lemonstand.com&amp;sa=D&amp;ust=1462355557888000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGJE4DY7NoIWOVQyPpw7thyTvH8Eg">lemonstand.com</a>
And as usual, you can explore more through the <a href="/lemonstand/">LemonStand Hub on our CMS Directory</a>.

LemonStand Secures Additional $1.25M in Funding

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