Critics

Critic: Gráinne Logue

grainne-logue

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<p><span style="font-weight:400">Data is fast becoming a valuable part of business strategy. It gives companies the information they need to analyze trends, decipher customer expectations, and discover exciting new opportunities for growth. These “insight-driven businesses” (a term adopted by Forrester) are growing by more than 30% annunally and this is just the beginning. Predictions from </span><a href="http://yokellocal.com/blog/7-customer-experience-trends-2018"><span style="font-weight:400">Walker Info</span></a><span style="font-weight:400"> indicate that by 2020, 86% of customers will consider customer experience to be the most important factor in their purchasing decisions.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">Consumers no longer have the luxury of time to peruse shopping aisles and this has forced many retailers to shut up shop in recent years. These customers are turning to online shopping instead and they have begun to expect a more personalized and unique shopping experience that is tailored to their individual preferences and lifestyles. This shift has been in motion for a while, but the fact that many retailers have been slow to respond has resulted in the closure of circa </span><a href="https://coresight.com/weekly-store-trackers/"><span style="font-weight:400">7,000 stores </span></a><span style="font-weight:400">from the impact of online shopping in 2017 alone. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">Now, in 2019, it’s absolutely essential for retailers to focus on improving their digital retail approach in order to enhance customer experiences. This particularly applies to larger retailers who are stuck between a rock and a hard place due to the higher expectations customers have of them in comparison to the fact that niche retailers often find it much easier to provide these sought-after personalized shopping experiences. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">A survey by data marketing company </span><a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/10/25/1300518/0/en/Segment-Survey-Finds-Consumers-Will-Spend-More-When-Their-Shopping-Experience-is-Personalized-but-Most-Retailers-are-Missing-the-Mark.html"><span style="font-weight:400">Segment</span></a><span style="font-weight:400"> surveyed over 200 shoppers and found that this personalisation can result in higher revenues and an increase in customer loyalty (44% of customers said they would shop with that retailer again in the future). In fact, in an </span><a href="https://www.accenture.com/t20150523t052453__w__/gr-en/_acnmedia/accenture/conversion-assets/dotcom/documents/global/pdf/strategy_3/accenture-global-consumer-pulse-research-study-2013-key-findings.pdf"><span style="font-weight:400">Accenture study</span></a><span style="font-weight:400">, 82% of customers who have switched loyalties and moved to a new retailer said that a better customer experience would have prevented them from making the switch. A lack of focus on providing these personalized experiences has been one of the main instigators of the department store shutdowns across the US in recent years.</span></p>
<h2><span style="font-weight:400">The Shift to Data-Driven Experiences is Easier Than You Think</span></h2>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">The technological changes involved in changing your approach to data are pretty straightforward, albeit time consuming. It’s all about shifting your business mindset and processes to make the most out of the data you have.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">The amount of data available to businesses today can be overwhelming and many companies find it daunting to extract valuable customer insights from a data stream that never seems to end. One of the main issues causing this is the silo epidemic that’s ever present in large companies across the world. Sales, marketing, and customer service departments often work off different CRMs and it is impossible for employees to collaborate with a focus on the customer, which is essential to create an optimal <a href="https://www.devhub.com/blog/2674033-types-of-data-powered-experiences-dpes/" target="_blank">data powered experience</a>. When you take into consideration the fact that these departments often don’t even know each other personally, the problematic nature of this knowledge gap becomes even more evident. This leads to an inconsistent and disconnected customer experience that does nothing to encourage customer confidence in the business. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">This lack of communication results in very little customer insight and a whole lot of unnecessary noise that marketers struggle to organize into valuable information. What usually happens to this collection of data is that it’s sifted through on an ad-hoc basis which again provides little consistency in addition to insufficient growth in the business. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">The key to solving this situation is to take a new approach to the data and marketing strategy within your business. Data is useless to your business unless you know what to do with it. Finding and utilizing the correct data, organizing it, and making it available to everyone who needs it within your business will allow you to engage with customers on a much deeper level than you ever have. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">This educated information should encourage websites to move towards a more tailored experience that responds directly to an individual rather than simply a persona. A data management platform is useful in this instance to help to make sense of the data noise at your fingertips. This can organize your data to show which parts of your customer experience need the most attention.</span></p>
<h2><span style="font-weight:400">Customer Experience = How a Customer Interacts with a Brand or Business at Every Touchpoint</span></h2>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">The correct usage of analytics and data is empowering businesses to take a new, engaged, and more educated approach to delivering an optimal customer experience.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">Each touchpoint provides an opportunity to impress and fulfil the needs of your customer, and once you have a data profile of your customer you have all of the information needed to do so. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">Touchpoints include any way that someone can engage with your business or brand, such as websites, commercials, online advertisements, email, social media, support calls, store visits, and purchasing a product to use. This is where you can evaluate how effective your content offers, email campaigns, and CTOs are so that you can then customize them to the needs of each customer. It’s also a great way to see how your customers usually interact with your business, i.e. via mobile apps or web.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">The first thing your customer will think about before even thinking about your product is the experience you offer to them. It doesn’t matter how great your product or pricing is if you deliver a bad experience as this will stop people from turning into customers. The good news is that creating a data-driven customer experience will enable you to adapt to the changing preferences of each of your individual customers. The right data will help you to refine your customer experience, UX, analytics, and data to help you maintain and acquire profitable customers. </span></p>
<h2><span style="font-weight:400">Never Stop Refining Your Strategy</span></h2>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">Your data-driven customer experience strategy should be regularly refined every time you collect significant data via these touchpoints. Utilizing this data will help you to adapt to new trends quickly and stay on track with the evolving preferences and behaviors of your customers so that you stay ahead of your competitors.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">Once you’ve gathered enough data, you can delve deep into the relationships between the different behavior patterns of your customers which will then become a key factor in your marketing efforts. This data can then help you to create an even better customer persona that is based on the actions of your customers instead of assumptions about what they want. This will enable you to provide suggestions of other products they may be interested in as a result of their previous purchases.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">The success of your company ultimately depends on how well you know your customers, and retrieving the right data is the key to gaining that knowledge. Improving your customer experience will make your business smarter, more agile, and equip it with the information it needs to survive in this rapidly changing data-driven environment.</span></p>
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Data Powered Experience: The Future of Marketing

<p>Quintype can be best described in three alliterative words; the “publisher’s publishing platform”. Everything in this headless CMS is directed at the dedicated content creator, and all aspects from the design to the UI to the UX are focused on the content.</p><h2><strong>Getting Started</strong></h2><p>Getting started couldn’t be easier. You can get a free trial from the homepage and from there you’re taken to your Workspace. The Workspace is the hub from which all of your content can be created, pushed and managed to any scale.</p><p><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/q1_b9rpsg.png" /></p><p>It really is very simple but it’s far from basic. The Workspace places top priority on posts and the content management, which isn’t as common in a CMS as you’d think.</p><p>Getting into the application was incredibly easy and well designed. There were just a few short clicks between signing up and getting right into the central hub of the site.</p><h2><strong>Design</strong></h2><p>The design you’re met with when you enter the Workspace is reflective Quintype’s entire aesthetic – simple, easy to use, and content focused.</p><p><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/q2a_kaasrn.png" /></p><p>Quintype is incredibly intuitive to use and everything follows a WYSIWYG formula that never feels clunky or under-utilized. Everything just seems to flow. Want to change the header? The steps are clear. Want to add a hero image? Two clicks and you’re in.</p><p>The basic template I saw on the trial I used was eminently readable and well put together.</p><p><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/q2_yuwylb.png" /></p><p>Quintype have more expansive design features available once you subscribe to their service, which they say will help you establish your brand guidelines and “deliver custom design templates”. The templates shown on <a target="_blank" href="https://www.quintype.com/">their site</a> are of a high quality with a design aesthetic that could suit any size of business and any style of content. Simplicity and a content-first approach sums up the approach of this CMS to their templates and layouts.</p><p>The backend, where all the real hard work takes place, is focused entirely on managing your content and making it as easy as possible to get your stories in place.</p><p><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/q3_hfuyum.png" /></p><p>Their text editor is clean and easy to use, with an ability to layer in different images, hyperlinks, quotes, tables, slideshows, and question and answer sections. All of these are tool tipped and easy to use with clear instructions. It makes creating and polishing content incredibly easy and it comes out in a lovely, crisp layout that’s very easy to read. From a design perspective, Quintype is really sharp.</p><p>As Quintype is a headless / decoupled CMS. clients also have complete control over their front end development.</p><h2><strong>Usability and Support</strong></h2><p>Quintype is one of the easiest to use sites I’ve tried in quite a while. It’s intuitive without losing finesse. It’s a powerful CMS that places a lot of focus on the articles and stories. In my opinion, the placement of the content as the primary focus on the homepage of the Workspace offers a key differential from the likes of WordPress. Everything felt like it was in easy reach or just a short click away.</p><p><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/q4_n5sdsr.png" /></p><p>Everything you could want to access is clearly labelled and presented with as little jargon or proprietary language as possible. Do you want to add Facebook or Twitter integration? Just go to Settings and Social Sharing. Within three clicks, you’ll be ready to set yourself up.</p><p>Quintype has an extensive FAQ and Help section that covers everything you could need when you get started. I had an extensive look through everything and it seemed to cover every base you could reasonably expect to query. The answers were detailed and clear.</p><p><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/q5_qlr87r.png" /></p><p>If the Help Section isn’t doing it for you then they have multiple support languages and online chat support. In addition, you’ll receive regular emails with helpful tips and tricks for using Quintype after signing up and you can also book a free demo to run through how to get started. These aren’t like those annoying emails you often get when you sign up to an app either; you know the kind that basically just want you to level up to a pro plan? Nope. The emails I received from Quintype offered genuine and quality support and really helped to enhance my user experience and motivate me to use the app.</p><p>The readily available free help and support and the effort that these guys put into making sure you know exactly what you’re doing from the get-go is commendable.</p><h2><strong>Key Features</strong></h2><p>Quintype’s scalable server capacity is a key feature of their offering. Sometimes a viral article or piece of content can stretch your web server to breaking point and beyond. Quintype’s scalable servers react to large traffic events by increasing your bandwidth as and when you need it.</p><p>Their custom ad monetization service looks really interesting too. They have a mix of native advertising and custom ads that are in line with your branding, with the overall aesthetic being key.</p><p>I also really liked their different product offerings. There really is something for every content vehicle, large or small. Their AccessType feature is heavily geared towards reader subscriptions with metered paywalls, pay per article, recurring payments, multiple levels of access, coupon codes, gift subscriptions, and more.</p><p>It’s a spectacularly powerful service that immediately puts them in the same sphere as a service like Patreon, except with better fee structures and more control. It’s a massive potential upside for them.</p><h2><strong>Pricing</strong></h2><p>Packages start from $99 depending on your needs.</p><h3><strong>Pros</strong></h3><ul><li>Easy to use.</li><li>Clean design and intuitive UI structure.</li><li>Very clean and professional templates with potential for custom development.</li><li>Different site-packages for different website needs such as Bold, MeType, AccessType and Ahead.</li><li>All with their own styles and individual features.</li><li>Scalable server capacity to handle viral stories without changing your entire hosting package and all the costs associated with it.</li></ul><h3><strong>Cons</strong></h3><ul><li>The pricing structure isn’t viewable on the site for understandable reasons this early in their business but it may put off some potential clients.</li><li>The templates aren’t endlessly customizable in the same way as WordPress which isn’t a bad thing in my opinion but might not suit some.</li></ul><h2><strong>Final Verdict</strong></h2><figure class="media"><div data-oembed-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXzlMw8Zfk4"><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:100%;height:0;padding-bottom:56.2493%"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mXzlMw8Zfk4" style="position:absolute;width:100%;height:100%;top:0;left:0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe></div></div></figure><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.quintype.com/">Quintype</a> is an excellent, powerfully built CMS that scales to any business’s needs. It’s clean design and content focused aesthetic is perfect for companies with multiple editors and writers who need one place to manage their workflow and production. It’s one of the best content management systems I’ve seen of this type and it has the potential to make a big splash as it grows its user base.</p><p>Other great articles to read:</p><ul><li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/superdesk-digital-newsroom-review/">Superdesk Digital Newsroom Review</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/9-essentials-your-enterprise-cms-should-deliver-in-2019/">9 Essentials Your Enterprise CMS Should Deliver in 2019</a></li></ul>

Quintype Review - A True Digital Publishing Platform

<p>As religious organisations and churches have grown and evolved, the processes involved in running them have become even more complex. Managing a church now requires a much more comprehensive approach than simply relying upon a church leader to run everything. And this is where <a target="_blank" href="https://sites.faithlife.com/?utm_source=superbwebsitebuilders&amp;utm_medium=partner&amp;utm_content=partner&amp;utm_campaign=sitesreviews">Faithlife Sites</a> comes in. Faithlife Sites wants to take all of the work involved in running a church and make it easier. Let's see how they do it with a Faithlife Sites Review.</p><p>Using a church CMS, users can create and customize their church websites using a variety of automated tools designed to take the background work out of running a church so that ministers can focus on their community priorities.</p><p>Let’s look at how and if Faithlife Sites CMS has accomplished this goal.</p><h2><strong>Getting Started</strong></h2><p>Many website builders and content management systems make the initial integration part of their service quite difficult to get on board with, but with Faithlife Sites the initial pathway is pretty straightforward. Upon signing up (for free) you’re asked for the usual basic details of<i> name, email and phone number</i> before continuing on to the main dashboard.  </p><p><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screenshot-2019-05-09-at-15.png" /></p><p>It’s from the dashboard that the real power of Faithlife Sites as a hub for any and all church needs is revealed. It’s seriously impressive. After you claim your church group, you’re taken to <strong>My Faithlife</strong>, which is where you can manage all aspects of a church community in one place. The transition from signup to dashboard, to actually getting started with the site design, is intuitive and well laid out.</p><h2><strong>Design</strong></h2><p>The website design is clean and easy to navigate. Nothing important is hidden away and there is a clear demarcation between <strong>My Faithlife,</strong> which is more of an end user part of the site, and the website/community manager sections.</p><p><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screenshot-2019-05-09-at-15-1691093724549.png" /></p><p>The themes available for the site CMS are limited and there are only six in total, but they are perfectly suited for the needs of this target audience. There is also a selection of stock images that are free to use in the website builder itself.</p><h2><strong>Usability and Support</strong></h2><p>The support on Faithlife Sites is outstanding. They have an extensive help section which covers almost every part of the site and they are contactable via phone, email, and web chat via their help portal. There are also dozens of informative videos to talk through almost any query you could have.</p><p>The usability of the site is a key part of the appeal of this CMS and you can tell that they’ve invested a lot of time researching their target demographic. Nothing in the site – from the initial sign-up and community management section, to the website builder – seems out of reach to even the most technophobic end user. The design of the site helps enormously, as it is clean, well-labelled and intuitive to the point of basic. This is a good thing, though, and I found myself getting up to speed with their system very quickly.</p><h2><strong>Key Features</strong></h2><p>The excellent website builder is the key selling point here. Some content management systems make website building and structuring seem like a labyrinthian process, but Faithlife Sites makes it incredibly easy. All of the pages are laid out on the side of the window in simple layers. Want to edit the home page? Just click on the home tab. Want to edit sermons or your about page? Just click on that page and then click on the piece you want to edit.</p><p>The process of building a site using this CMS is incredibly simple and could be quickly picked up by almost anyone, in my opinion. The design aspects of the pages are limited but easily customisable in an intuitive way. You can also view your prospective site as it appears on a desktop screen, mobile, and pad. This is a small thing but it adds a lot of value.</p><p>The community management software in Faithlife Sites is also incredibly powerful. With a minimal amount of work, you can start building an online church community that has a forum, combined calendar, group chat, and bulletin boards in easy reach that are easily controlled by a team of admins.</p><p><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bulletins_gofy9g.png" /></p><p>There is also an excellent structure in place for taking and processing online donations that will be extremely useful to any church group. This is easily navigated and seems reliable.</p><h2><strong>Pricing</strong></h2><p>Faithlife Sites pricing is scaled depending on the size of your congregation. You can set up a basic site free of charge and premium packages start from $16.67 a month (when paid annually).</p><p>All packages allow users to collaborate online with unlimited team accounts, run different presentations in multiple rooms concurrently, build presentations from any computer, anywhere, get over 5,000 free church graphics, and interact with the congregation by sending alerts directly to their phones, among other features.</p><p>Higher value packages include free stock imagery, pro Media library, over 16,000 motions, stills, and mini-movies from Graceway, Church Motion Graphics, Dan Stevers, FreeBridge, Igniter, and Playback.</p><p>This is a competitive pricing structure that incentivizes users to get a custom domain for their church rather than sticking with the basic free package that uses a subdomain structure.</p><h2><strong>Pros</strong></h2><ul><li>Incredibly easy to use</li><li>Vast support system to help almost anyone to complete their website</li><li>Free multimedia for a professional look</li><li>Competitively priced</li><li>Powerful community management dashboard that’s easy to navigate</li></ul><h2><strong>Cons</strong></h2><ul><li>Getting access to the initial page can be a little confusing as you have to find your church group on a map or via search.</li></ul><h2><strong>Final Verdict 4/5</strong></h2><p>Faithlife Sites is an excellent CMS that is incredibly easy to use and I highly recommend it for any church group that wants to go online. It’s such a powerful and simple CMS that there may even be a market for it outside of the church sphere, if they ever choose to go in that direction.</p>

Faithlife Sites Review

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<p>Enterprise SEO is one of the best ways to increase revenue and drive more traffic to your site. The term itself is used in reference to search engine optimization for larger organisations with comprehensive websites (usually 1000+ pages).</p>
<p>Every business should have an SEO strategy in place, but enterprise SEO is absolutely essential for organisations with 1000s of products or services to ensure everyone and everything is working in sync. This means that the digital marketing team managing enterprise SEO will be much more specialized than that of a smaller company.</p>
<p>Rather than managing multiple areas of the site, each team member takes accountability for their own specific niche in order to increase traffic. Given the size of enterprise organisations, even the most minimal increase in website traffic can account for a significant number of new visitors.</p>
<p>Whilst the general SEO principles are the same as when dealing with non-enterprise businesses, these larger sites require SEO strategies that can scale. So let’s take a look at 3 key strategies that are proven to provide optimal results.</p>
<h2 id="3-key-enterprise-seo-strategies">3 Key Enterprise SEO Strategies</h2>
<h3 id="1-keyword-selection">1. Keyword Selection</h3>
<p>Keyword selection is a fundamental part of traditional SEO and it’s even more important when applied to enterprise. In addition to keyword volume, enterprise SEO managers also have to analyse ranking difficulty, search intent, and existing results.</p>
<h3 id="2-template-optimisation">2. Template Optimisation</h3>
<p>When managing 1000s of website pages in enterprise SEO, it’s essential to use a template containing all of the necessary tags so that you don’t have to go through each page individually. Anyone familiar with WordPress will have used these tags before, such as meta descriptions and image ALT.</p>
<h3 id="3-constant-content">3. Constant Content</h3>
<p>Creating and publishing quality content is instrumental to enterprise SEO and a company blog is one of the best ways to bring visitors to your site. All content types such as videos, images, and text can be utilized here. Studies suggest the users engage more with longer content, but resourceful short-form content that aligns with keywords in the user’s search shouldn’t be overlooked.</p>
<p>A mix of short and long-form content is usually best, but it’s a good idea to test different types and variations of content to see what works better for your audience when starting out. Always ask these two questions when you create a piece of content for your site:</p>
<ul>
<li>Does the content provide value to the user?</li>
<li>Is the content original, engaging, and informative?</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="using-an-enterprise-seo-platform">Using An Enterprise SEO Platform</h2>
<p>Large-scale SEO projects will benefit immensely from using an enterprise SEO platform. A good platform will help the digital marketing team to maximize productivity and results whilst minimizing errors. Finding the right software to support your Enterprise SEO efforts is one of the best ways to achieve your objectives and a worthwhile investment.</p>
<h2 id="the-bottom-line">The Bottom Line</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.devhub.com/enterprise-seo-pages/">Enterprise SEO</a> can be tricky but it can provide a high ROI once it’s done correctly. With a well-structured team and a detailed enterprise SEO plan in place you can guarantee that your site will receive a significant increase in high-quality traffic. And with the right software, you can maximize your results even further.</p>
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Gráinne Logue

Articles by Gráinne

Articles by Gráinne