The Sixth Floor - Verndale's Web Marketing and Technology Blog

5 Benefits of a Content Management System

You’re a marketer, you sit there daily admiring your website, yearning to make updates, change that banner that’s been up for ten years or even add the most recent award your “award winning” business just received.

But you can’t. You’ve already contacted the agency that takes care of your website, and the best they can do is fulfill your request, earliest, in three days. Bummer.

Leaving you strapped, time and time again, you research any possible ways you can take full control of your website’s content – and not just context, but images, layouts, etc. Then you see it a CMS? Content Management System!

Content Management Systems (CMS), if you aren’t already familiar with what they are, is a computer program which allows you to publish, edit and modify your websites content, as well as maintain from one central interface. Pretty sweet, huh? But while this may sound like a no-brainer to most, there are those who need the question answered – “How do I, and my company, benefit from a Content Management System?”

1) Update and upload fresh content as needed
The wait is over – literally! Now anytime you want to change that banner, update your awards and all that good stuff you’ve been waiting on your agency for, you can do yourself within a matter of hours, minutes, even seconds!

2) Schedule content
Got a product or promotion launch next week, or in a month – no problem! As long as you have the content generated ahead of time (who procrastinates now a day?) you can set it to publish on that day.

3) Integrate with your social media channels
Social media is a large component of a marketing strategy, don’t you agree? So it would make sense for your business to integrate your CMS with these channels. With this, you can easily relay content to your social sites or create ease for users to comment.

4) Generate search friendly content
There is a lot that goes into having content that is friendly to search engines. Luckily for you, a CMS can help with the technical work for you in helping to create XML sitemaps, monitoring user keyword usage and much more which allowing you to focus on other important aspects of your business.

5) Ability to publish at your own will
Wouldn’t it be nice to minimize your costly support requests? As mentioned before, the decrease in third-party resources for updating your website can save a lot of money depending on the billing process of your agency of choice. But not only will you be saving money, you’ll be saving time for attention towards other aspects of your web presence.

Using a CMS can bring a range of benefits, especially for those who do not consider themselves ‘web savvy’ or want a simple platform for updating their website with ease on a regular basis. Now that you may (or may still not) be convinced, it’s time to start thinking about the next process - CMS selection.

Download our free CMS Selection whitepaper.

5 Shocking Stats About Mobile Digital Marketing

The growth of mobile internet usage is transforming the way we engage with content on the web. With 50% penetration of smart phones in the US (source: comScore) and with almost one quarter of all internet traffic coming from mobile devices, addressing mobile has never been more critical (source: Walker Sands). But are marketers really paying attention?

45% of marketers report that their standard desktop site is also their mobile destination with no mobile optimization or app. Source: Adobe 2013 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey
39% of US residents with incomes over $100k read the newspaper on their tablet. Source: comScore
71% of eBusiness managers say they have average or below average mobile expertise on staff. Source: Forrester Mobile Channel Strategy: An Overview
13% of companies are using personalization on their mobile web properties. Source: eConsultancy

But, all is not lost!

33% of digital marketers will add a mobile website in the next 12 months. Source: 2013 Verndale Digital Marketing Survey preliminary data

So what should digital marketing leaders do next?

If you have a mobile strategy in place: Optimize and personalize. What devices are hitting your site? Is your content layout the right one for those devices? How are your calls to action (CTA) functioning compared to your desktop site? Finally, activate your personalization capabilities for your mobile users. Getting them the right information, when they want it is really important given the restrictions of mobile browsing.

If you’re considering a mobile site but have not launched one: Get on it! Consider a responsive site that scales and adjusts content according to the visitors screen size. Do you offer complex transactions and other functionality on your site like shopping, registering or calculators? Consider a mobile app that that streamlines these activities for the user. The first step is to take a look at your business, your visitors, what you offer on your desktop site and make a plan that at least brings your existing functionality to the mobile world…then ask yourself how does mobile enhance our experience?

Take the first step today.

Verndale and EPiServer Present - Beyond “Click to Buy”

Deepening your prospect and customer engagements, it's something every business strives for. We all want to be the destination of choice, understanding our customer needs and deepening their trust. But exactly how can you make this possible?

Join Verndale’s EVP, Digital Strategy, Sean Rusinko, and EPiServer’s Senior Marketing Executive, Bob Egner, as they team up to provide best practices and key benchmarks allowing you to deepen your customer relationship and engagements.

Throughout the webinar, you’ll learn:

A straightforward methodology for researching, identifying and diagramming the buyer decision making process over multiple touch points and devices
How personalization can simplify the buying process and some incremental ways to get started now
Ways to re-engage shoppers who have forgotten about you and get them to come back
Why your website content and e-commerce store need to work together as a seamless unit

Don't miss out, click the banner to register!

MITX Member Spotlight

Recently, Verndale expanded its relationship with the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX) community to drive deeper business and networking connections, gain access to a variety of sponsorship and professional development opportunities as well as support MITX community events like the Innovation Awards and FutureM.

As a proud MITX member, we are honored to be highlighted in the Digital Leadership Member Spotlight. Check out our very own EVP of Sales and Marketing, Ryan Moltenbrey, as he covers who we are, what we do and why Verndale is not like your typical digital marketing agency; we make digital marketing do what it’s designed to do.

For more information on, or if you are looking to join the MITX community, visit their site!

What it Takes to be an EPiServer Certified Developer

Here at Verndale, we are pleased to announce that three additional members of our technical staff are now among Verndale’s growing team of EPiServer Certified Developers (ECD). EPiServer Certified Developer’s are an exclusive group of highly knowledgeable and experienced technical resources. To date, there are 30 ECD’s in North America, and a total of 760 ECD’s worldwide.

This certification, administered by EPiServer, ensures that developers have a deep understanding of the widely-used content management system (CMS), as well as demonstrate a high-proficiency in all aspects of building and delivering integrated digital experiences with the platform.

On March 7^th, three of our Senior Engineers -Trevor Campbell, Abdelghani Bhalla and Chris Pramuka – had 2 hours to complete the in house certification testing filled with 70 multiple choice questions. Soon after concluding the testing, they found out their hard work and long study sessions had paid off, each receiving a passing score. This is a great honor for Verndale, as it’s expected that normally only 1 out of 3 to take the test passes.

Once recognized as a certified developer, not only is a certificate rewarded to prove those developers are equipped to develop EPiServer solutions in the best interest of all parties, but developers are also seen as one of EPiServer’s “VIP Developers” which allows them access to exclusively held ECD meet-ups and seminars.

“The EPiServer Certified Developer (ECD) exam was a very challenging evaluation of our technical expertise with EPiServer. It evaluated a wide range of topics that encompassed all aspects of EPiServer development, configuration and product knowledge,” said Trevor Campbell, tech lead and newly certified EPiServer Developer at Verndale. “The EPiServer Certified Developer (ECD) exam is a true measure that an EPiServer developer has an advanced knowledge of all aspects of the product.”

Verndale is an EPiServer Premium Solution partner and we have delivered numerous websites based on the EPiServer CMS platform in recent years across a range of vertical markets. Based in Boston with offices in North Carolina and Chicago, we now have one of the largest teams of EPiServer Certified Developers in North America, and continually adding to the number of ECDs we have can only further demonstrate our internal and company expertise.

Are you a developer looking to become EPiServer Certified, or a business looking to learn more about the EPiServer CMS platform? Contact your experts at Verndale.

Personalization – How to Improve Customer Experiences

Today, customers are looking for more personalization. This does not just mean personalized content, but the way in which the information is delivered to the user; for example through social channels, mobile devices, tablets, etc.

As a user starts to become more demanding, they expect more personalized and less generic information to be presented. But as a marketer, how can you improve on your customers experiences in offering this personalization? The following 5 step personalization methodology can help lead you in the right direction.

Personalization Methodology:

Define Business Goals – Unless you don’t know what you want to achieve from your personalization targeting, you will never be able to move forward. Create segmented success metrics to help set the foundation for measuring future success rates and return-on-investment (ROI) for any personalized campaigns/content you plan to publish. In order to properly implement personalization into your strategy, you need to track and gain an extensive volume of data to be sure you create the right success metrics for your business.

Identify Persona Groups – Once goals are defined, segregate users into the correct persona group based on success metrics you find through your testing. For example, define the type of visitors you’ll be targeting against each respective goal you’ve defined above. For example a food company might create a persona group called working mothers.

Tag Content Against Personas – This is the core of your personalization implementation. Throughout this step, you’ll define the actual logic which will be applied against each persona group in order to achieve set goals. For each persona group, you’ll define a unique chain of actions which will govern what to do when a certain visitor of a persona group comes across your content. For example, working mothers may be looking for nutritious, easy to prepare meals after a long work day; from this behavior they can then be easily targeted with related recipes, coupons and content.

Implement KPIs – Once goals are defined and persona groups have been identified, measure the progress towards these goals through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Choose KPIs that reflect your business goals, are key to your business success and are quantifiable. Example KPIs include traffic on the “find a store” locator, coupon downloads or simply time on site.

Launch Personalization Test – With all business goals and target groups drafted, it’s time to test. The test plan dictates execution, showcasing key metrics which allow you to further analyze then repeat this methodology process to more accurately set and hit business goals. Some useful personalization and testing tools to help include Adobe Test & Target, CMS based personalization tools (e.g. Sitecore, EPiServer and Kentico) and Google Analytics Content Experiments.

Giving a unique experience to each and every visitor can ensure maximum engagement that convincingly inflates your conversion rate beyond expectations.

51% of digital marketers are

concerned about delivering engaging

experiences

To implement a robust personalization strategy to your web assets, contact Verndale’s experts.

28 Days of Sitecore Rocks – Week 4 Archive

The 28 days of Sitecore Rocks has come to an end. 28 days is a lot to keep track of, I know. So in case you missed a few days, or would like to go back and find one feature you wanted to take a second look at, scan through my four weekly archives.

But for now, here's the final week of the 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks.

Day 23 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: History Table Viewer and Languages

Today's topic in the 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks is the History Table Viewer and Languages tools. The History Table Viewer is a specialized…

Day 24 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Query Analyzer

Of all the features in Sitecore Rocks I would say that the Query Analyzer is in the top three. Due to the sheer power of the Query Analyzer, it's hard to…

Day 25 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Sitecore Installation

In today's edition of the 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks we will be covering the Sitecore Installation tool. This tool automates the installation of a Sitecore…

Day 26 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Hidden Gems - Part 1

Over the past twenty-five days we have covered many of the major features of Sitecore Rocks, but there are also numerous minor features that can…

Day 27 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Hidden Gems - Part 2

Let's continue discussing a few more of Sitecore Rocks' hidden gems. Today we will be covering searching Lucene indexes in the Query…

Day 28 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Plugin Repository

On the final day of the 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks we will be covering the Plugin Repository. Similar to the extensibility of the Sitecore…

A thank you to all who followed along throughout the month of February! If you have any other questions about the Sitecore Rocks platform that I haven’t answered here, please comment below or contact me.

28 Days of Sitecore Rocks – Week 3 Archive

22 Days down only 6 more to go! Get caught up and stay up to date on the latest 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks Posts.

Day 16 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Package Management - Part 1

Sitecore Rocks adds some extremely useful features for working with Sitecore packages. Yesterday we created a new Sitecore package using…

Day 17 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Package Management - Part 2

Today we will wrap up our discussion of the Sitecore Rocks Package Manager by covering package repositories and shared source modules…

Day 18 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Manage - Part 1

Over the next several days we will be diving into the features and functionality of the Sitecore Rocks Manage tool. The Manage tool is…

Day 19 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Manage - Part 2

Let's continue with the Sitecore Rocks Manage tool by discussing the Pipelines, Commands, and Temp Files interfaces. We will see how using…

Day 20 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Manage - Part 3

Continuing our discussion of the Sitecore Rocks Manage tool, today we will be covering the Caches interface. Having an understanding of how and…

Day 21 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Manage - Part 4

Today we will be covering two more interfaces in the Sitecore Rocks Manage tool, Indexes and Statistics. Both of these interfaces are extremely helpful during…

Day 22 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Manage - Part 5

Today we will be wrapping up the Sitecore Rocks Manage tool by discussing the final interface, Validation. This interface is one of my favorite…

Make sure to stay updated this last week as February and the 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks comes to a close.

28 Days of Sitecore Rocks – Week 2 Archive

Another 7 Days of 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks is beyond us. Check out this week’s archive to stay on top of each day’s highlighted feature.

We’re more than halfway through the month, don’t fall behind now.

Day 9 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Presentation Layout

• Now that we know how to work with Sitecore templates and how to create layouts / sublayouts the next logical feature to talk about is presentation…

Day 10 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Pipeline Creation

• f you've ever created a custom Sitecore pipeline you know that there are a couple components needed for it to properly function. Today we will…

Day 11 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Publishing

• Ever forget to publish an item or better yet forget to publish a dependant item like a template? I've been working with Sitecore since 2005 and I still…

Day 12 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Job Viewer

• Have you ever tried to perform a quick publish of an item and sat at the publishing progress screen waiting for the job to begin? Not knowing that…

Day 13 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Log Viewer

• An essential part of working with Sitecore is the ability to interpret the log files in order to troubleshoot issues. The log files are typically the…

Day 9 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Presentation Layout

Now that we know how to work with Sitecore templates and how to create layouts / sublayouts the next logical feature to talk about is presentation…

Day 10 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Pipeline Creation

If you've ever created a custom Sitecore pipeline you know that there are a couple components needed for it to properly function. Today we will…

Day 11 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Publishing

Ever forget to publish an item or better yet forget to publish a dependant item like a template? I've been working with Sitecore since 2005 and I still…

Day 12 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Job Viewer

Have you ever tried to perform a quick publish of an item and sat at the publishing progress screen waiting for the job to begin? Not knowing that…

Day 13 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Log Viewer

An essential part of working with Sitecore is the ability to interpret the log files in order to troubleshoot issues. The log files are typically the…

Day 14 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Media Library

In today's edition of the 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks we will be discussing the Media Library. Ever try to find an item in the Sitecore Media Library, particularly…

Day 15 – 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Package Creation

Creating Sitecore packages is a task that all seasoned Sitecore developers are familiar with. Unfortunately we are also familiar with how easily…

Only 2 weeks left of the 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks. On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you in executing the features covered thus far?

How to Wrap Your Business Around Twitter’s Vine

What can you do in 6 seconds to imprint a lasting impression on your current and prospective users?

Think about it as you read the rest of this post.

The growth of visual and creative continues to accelerate and businesses need to stay on top of the latest trends.

Twitter is. Building on its more visual layout, “Because you have more to show,” rolled out back in September of 2012 - Twitter has done it again with the release of their new video app, Vine.

The Vine application allows users to create a short, looping, six second video in which they can then distribute to social channels (Facebook and Twitter). This video is generated on a smart phone (currently only available on IOS devices) once a user opens the application and clicks on the camcorder icon in the top right. From there the magic happens. Users are given 6 seconds, which starts once they press down on the device screen they are using. Recording can be started and stopped by touching the screen or not over the 6 seconds to produce either one continuous scene, separate scenes or a stop motion effect.

Have you thought of any good ideas yet? Keep reading.

Now that we know how to use Vine, let’s look at a few ways to utilize it for your business. The following are three different ways in which you can wrap your business around Vine and get the most out of the application through your social channels.

Engage users – Offer a quick preview of a full-length video, have your users submit a clip of them utilizing your product or service in a creative way or run a promotional giveaway/contest to keep and get your users involved.
Promote products and services – Shoot six seconds of an employee executing their job function or performing one of your company’s services, display a quick 1 second shot of 6 products you may offer or a quick teaser of an upcoming product.
Get creative – Everything has or is an image. There are so many ways that you can utilize this application to showcase your brand, internal events or even as an advertising opportunity. Sit back, get your creative juices flowing, and generate six memorable seconds that will capture your users.

The sky is the limit when it comes to creative ways you can include this platform into your marketing activities.

Have you generated that creative idea yet? Share by commenting below.

28 Days of Sitecore Rocks – Week 1 Archive

The first 8 days of 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks is out. Did a few days slip by you? Or are you just learning about this month long blog series now? No worries! The following blog topics are the first 8 days made easily accessible for you to scan through and get caught up on.

Day 1 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Introduction

Sitecore Rocks is an extremely powerful productivity tool that bridges the gap between the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and…

Day 2 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Installation and Configuration

In order to get started using Sitecore Rocks and all its great features we need to start at the beginning, installation and configuration. Thankfully…

Day 3 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Navigation

Now that we have installed and connected to a Sitecore instance it's time to start using the many features of Sitecore Rocks. Let's start exploring by…

Day 4 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Advanced Navigation

Now that we have an idea of what Sitecore Rocks has to offer let's explore how to get to these features even quicker. Commandy…

Day 5 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Managing Content

Now that we are familiar with how to navigate and what features are available with Sitecore Rocks let's dive into the features starting with…

Day 6 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Managing Templates - Part 1

Next in the 28 days of Sitecore Rocks is the wonderful world of template management. This topic will be a two part article due to the amount of…

Day 7 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Managing Templates Part 2

Let's continue with managing templates in Sitecore Rocks by discussing field data sources. The issue with working with data sources in Sitecore is…

Day 8 - 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks: Layouts and Sublayouts

Today we will see how Sitecore Rocks can simplify the creation of Layouts and Sublayouts for developers. Without Sitecore Rocks if a developer…

Keep an eye out for next week’s archive, as well as each daily post on my Sitecore Community page and throughout various social channels. And as always, any questions on Sitecore Rocks or Sitecore CMS platforms, contact Verndale.

What do you think about 28 Days of Sitecore Rocks so far? Leave your thoughts below.

28 Days of Sitecore Rocks - What is it All About?

Sitecore Rocks! Don’t you agree? And we’re not just talking about the Sitecore CMS platform, but also the application that will make developers and those who work with content management systems happy, Sitecore Rocks.

Throughout the entire month of February (yes, weekends too) I will be generating a daily blog post for Sitecore Rocks. From implementation to getting you caught up on the latest features, I will provide you the expertise needed to become a Sitecore Rocks expert in just one month, or jog your memory on items you may be rusty on.

To view these Sitecore Rocks blog posts, visit the Sitecore Community Page for your daily dose.

If you missed out on any of the weekly posts, or just want to refresh on a few set topics, you can find a weekly index from the previous week right here.

Don’t miss a thing! Keep an eye out for these daily posts, as well as our weekly index throughout both Sitecore and our social channels!

Selecting a Content Management System: It's Not Like the Flu

Flu season is here, and this year it’s spreading fiercely. So much in fact that here in Boston, Mayor Menino declared a public health emergency.

For those of you who have never experienced the flu, consider yourself lucky. Most that are infected with the virus are stuck in bed with a high fever, sore throat, body aches, chills, fatigue – you’re helpless! There’s no control over how you feel once you fall victim to this devious virus. But the point I’m trying to get at, is whether it be while you’re sick, or say looking to maintain your website, who likes to feel helpless and not in control?

Content management systems (CMS), while they may not prevent you from feeling helpless when you’re sick, can certainly prevent you from feeling that way when it comes to your web assets. CMS web applications make creating, editing and storing content easy and simple for those looking to effectively manage and integrate their daily responsibilities; it allows you to be in control!

And unlike choosing which flu symptoms you get (which would never occur), you can decide which CMS platform will benefit and fit your web asset needs, but how? The following are three CMS comparisons to help avert pitfalls and ensure an optimal CMS selection:

Evaluate CMS Application Strengths and Weaknesses Versus Your Requirements – It’s important to know the strengths and weaknesses of varying functionalities within a CMS platform. These aspects allow you to determine how the platforms applications stack up against what your requirement needs are and help differentiate the CMS’s application functionalities.

Know the Value of a CMS Prior to Selection – A CMSs value is measured by the cash flow it generates. Building an ROI model can assist in measuring both cash flows for the content management systems costs and benefits. For example, costs can be measured by the cost of the CMS software, hardware and labor; while benefits can be measured by productivity gains, cost savings and revenue boosts. Through these measurements, you can easily determine if the CMS implementation should be undertaken or if the discovered costs are too excessive over the expected application life.

Identify and Solidify Your Content Strategy – Organizations need to have a firm grasp on the type of content they are looking to implement on a CMS. This can begin with key decision making, including determining what type of goals and objectives need to be met, identifying which company/service/product information must be available to online users and determining how the platform’s applications will be used and the impact they will have on your online brand.

When it comes to choosing the right content management system, one part is art and another part science; it requires a mixture of qualitative and quantitative analysis. So take the time needed and validate that your organization makes the right decision for the long term. Remember, this is something you can control.

Download our free CMS Selection whitepaper.

Verndale Celebrates the Holidays at the New Corporate Office

2012 has been an exciting year for the Verndale team, not only have we been busy with many new clients, projects and hires, but also in celebrating a milestone – our corporate headquarters move; and what better way to enjoy our new digs during the holiday season than to hold our yearly holiday party right here, at 28 Damrell Street.

Coming up the elevator with the doors opening to suite 300, each member of the Verndale team and their plus one walked into a winter wonderland where fellow employees and a live classical band greeted all with holiday cheer. Once fully in the Verndale office, all were awed with the wintery decorations and snow globe feel that surrounded them.

With a variety of delicious h’orderves being walked around, beverages and a raw bar, Verndale employees relaxed and enjoyed the winter wonderland while meeting new people and catching up with old. As the night went on, various gourmet dishes were offered for those who weren’t full off appetizers and the band switched over from classical holiday tunes to current hits allowing some to share a few dance moves.

Wrapping up the night, a company raffle was held where winners won prizes including Dunkin Donuts gift cards, Celtics and Patriots tickets, iPad minis, flat screen televisions and the list goes on.

The night had come and gone before we knew it, and it was time for employees to say their goodbyes and part ways as the end of another successful Verndale holiday party came.

Special thanks to Laura Foss, Meryl Pinette and Greg Skouteris for all the time and planning they put into this luxurious event; it was both greatly appreciated and a great time for all!

Be sure to keep an eye out for additional photos in our 2012 Company Holiday Party album on Facebook, and don’t be shy to LIKE what you see.

3 Tips on Producing Quality Content

Content, it’s what drives traffic to your website, keeps users coming back for more and showcases your businesses expertise – without it your website would be non-existent to users. With so much content out there, whether it’s textual, visual or aural content, how do you get your brand to stand out from the rest? When looking to produce quality content, keep the following three tips in mind.

Don’t say “Click Here” – Call to actions (CTAs) are crucial to your content strategies; they help drive users to the desired information. But the CTA “Click Here” is one that should be avoided when feasible. “Click” puts too much attention on mouse mechanics, taking the user’s attention away from the interface and more onto the actual mouse they are using, while “Here” does not add any value to the end user. Therefore, if a user is looking to understand what they are about to click on, they will need to focus more on the surrounding copy taking away from scanning the page for relevant information.

Provide Chunked, Scannable Content – Users don’t want to sit there and work hard to get their answers, they want content provided to them in a way that’s easy to scan, process and understand. Therefore, combining content into sizable chunks (e.g. identifying your talking points, defining ‘hero’ content, etc) allows users to efficiently consume the information. Steering away from content chunking may cause users to miss important information, disallow them to find the answer to their queries and eventually leave your site due to poor usability.

Don’t Bury Your Lead – Don’t get caught up in your writing and accidently bury the main point of your article. Users go to the web to rapidly find relevant information, so start your article by leading with the main point, grabbing the users focus and enticing them to go on. Additionally when writing, think like the user, provide straightforward language so they can easily consume the content.

Remember; more is not better, focus on creating quality content, and less on the quantity. Your goal as a marketer is to try to meet the needs of the users your brand is trying to connect with through creating useful, relevant information in a timely manner.

Verndale Holiday Countdown to the New Year

As a child, what was your favorite part of the Holiday Season; the snow, the holiday cheer or what about the daily chocolate calendar (our winner) you were handed on December 1^st? Well since we’re all a little older now and most of us won’t be opening a doorway to chocolate for the next 25 days, we wanted to bring you the same joy and anticipation this countdown brought you as a child.

With that being said, this week launches the first of four weeks filled with daily digital marketing tips and knowledge from our Verndale experts as we count down the Holiday Season into the New Year. The Verndale team has compiled our best and latest content into one knowledge bank, providing information for visitors in all job positions to implement into their marketing strategies for the upcoming year.

When visiting our Holiday Countdown landing page, you will be greeted with a daily holiday "giveaway" starting December 3^rd all the way up to midnight on December 31st. This giveaway could include anything from a free whitepaper, blog post, internal tips and statistics or a chance to win the final countdown giveaway, an Apple iPad mini, with the winner being announced on January 2^nd after we’ve welcomed the New Year.

To enter for a chance at winning the iPad mini, all that you need to do is subscribe to the countdown, in which you’ll receive a twice weekly email sent to your inbox reminding you to come back daily and take full advantage of this information before time runs out. And since we’re in the holiday spirit, we’re going to offer you three additional days to sign up and increase your chances at winning the iPad mini. Only catch is we won’t be telling you when these days are, so you’ll have to visit the countdown daily.

So be sure to check it out, and let the countdown begin!

What Sitecore Digital Marketing System (DMS) Can Do For My Business

In today’s digital landscape, marketers have a variety of complex needs; from simple content management, to robust analytics tracking, to relevant site personalization and multivariate testing. It’s the ultimate goal of any marketer to be able to strategically invest in various channels and fully track the success or failure of their investments to effectively optimize their marketing spend.

Luckily, tools like Sitecore’s Digital Marketing System (DMS) allow marketers to use a fully integrated suite of products that build off of functionality within the Sitecore Content Management System (CMS). This way, marketers can manage content, analytics, personalization, testing, email, and automation within the same interface and leverage all of the data within one location, thus bypassing the need for many platforms, multiple subscriptions fees, and unnecessary administrative work in general. The Sitecore DMS allows marketers to focus on what is most important: attributing all investments and evaluating their success based on return on investment, and focusing on the strategic investments that are being made; the following paragraphs explain how.

The DMS is useful to marketers in two ways which includes allowing a marketer to track, measure and optimize investments in all of their marketing channels, and also leverage all associated user data for more targeted, personalized, and effective communications. Much of the user data that can be used for personalization can be collected through the use of Sitecore’s Web Forms For Marketers (WFFM). WFFM is part of the Sitecore CMS and allows simple creation of forms that capture user data, allowing for this personalization. Data collected from WFFM is housed in one centralized location; the Sitecore Engagement Analytics Database. Utilizing WFFM you can easily create a goal of say, signing up for an email white paper or .PDF download, and assign an engagement value to that action.

The Sitecore DMS can then track any visitor who uses the form to sign up, assign them a value and track their progression through the site, subsequently adding different values as the visitor takes more action. There are three types of site personalization; (1) Ad hoc rules based personalization, such as incoming Google keyword or IP-based location targeting; (2) real time personalization using carefully researched and quantified personas, such as the kind of personalization on Amazon.com; and (3) systematic personalization using explicitly shared data, such as data from a form that is built through WFFM. Using the Sitecore DMS and the data gathered through WFFM, systematic personalization is made much easier and more efficient.

Another very useful feature of the Sitecore DMS is its ability to provide real time analytics of site visitors. Once you have completed scoring your conversions and the technical implementation of any non-page based goals, DMS allows you to analyze the exact value and relevancy of each visitor. This can be invaluable when you’re attempting to analyze the effectiveness of particular marketing campaigns or verticals. DMS provides this information from one convenient location called the Executive Insights Dashboard. From the dashboard you can choose many ways to segment and analyze the data, whether you prefer to see visitors by referrer, value, marketing campaign or many more metrics. I found the presentation and flexibility of these reports particularly useful when analyzing customer data. While this analytical capability is generally available through other programs, one metric that is unique to the Sitecore DMS (and extremely useful) is the “Potential” report. This report uses a formula to calculate how much value you could get from a particular page if its relevancy was increased up to the average level of your site. This provides particularly useful metrics for customizing your web content for the needs of your visitors.

An additional useful feature is the “Value” metric. This metric allows marketers to unify their understanding of marketing investments through a single number. The value number correlates to the amount of business value from each conversion on your website. By creating a single metric of measurement from which to gauge effectiveness you can more easily analyze the successfulness of any given campaign across all of the conversion points on your website. Both the value metric and potential report enable a marketer to understand exactly what your customers need and the amount of business value being generated from digital.

The last thing I want to highlight is the DMS A/B and Multivariate testing capabilities. Through use of the Page Editor feature, the Sitecore DMS puts the ability to test various site configurations in the hands of any marketer. This requires no programming knowledge whatsoever, and is usable right out of the box (no customization is necessary). Testing while using the Sitecore DMS allows you to do several things including:

The ability to manage all your content in one convenient place; this saves time and resources.
Concept, create, test and push live tests via the Page Editor interface, due to the interface’s intuitive and easy to use platform for marketers.
Focus more heavily on the strategy of testing and maximizing your investment due to less technical knowledge required.
Leverage the analytical capabilities of the Sitecore DMS to evaluate outcomes, determine winners and push live to production.

All of these things allow you to spend less time implementing and customizing various platforms and more time focused on how to best target customers and increase overall business value or revenue.

This post only scratches the surface in terms of how the DMS can revolutionize your ability to more effectively market to your customers. It can provide everything from basic analytics to complex email campaign management and customization. You can easily edit your site content without knowledge of programming, and integrate your historical lead data with real time site analytics. Overall, the Sitecore DMS is a robust marketing solution that allows a one-stop shop of marketing data and insights. I would highly recommend the product to any marketer or business owner who is looking for an easy way to improve their ROI and fully attribute all investments made in digital.

Four Golden Rules of Interface Design

Building a web site is important for everyone, even people outside the User Experience (UX) department, to understand usability basics in order to build great web sites. The main goal of our job is to make the end-user happy; everything we do is done and thought out for these users. My UX team is not going to be able to think of everything, therefore, we preach for others to help make informed decisions throughout all phases of the web site development, and ask themselves “Is this good for the user?”

With that being said, the following four are interface design rules that everyone involved in the web site process should consider:

Strive for consistency – We don’t want to surprise or confuse the user, so make sure the placement of menus, icon style and size as well as button shapes and interactions all remain consistent throughout your web assets.
Enable frequent users to use shortcuts – Our goal is to provide a user-friendly display for visitors, for some an increased number of interactions may be desired, but as frequency of use increases, so does the user’s desire to reduce these interactions. So make things easier for these “expert” users by providing shortcuts (e.g. keyboard shortcuts, omnipresent log in, etc.)
Offer informative feedback – Users need to see the consequences of their actions, it can be confusing and disorienting if the interface does not show either that it’s processing or has processed a command that the user has entered (e.g. spinning progress indicator when filtering, confirmation messages, etc). Therefore, every user's actions should be providing feedback, whether it’s a modest response (for more frequent and minor actions) or more substantial responses (for more infrequent and major actions).
Design dialog to yield closure – It’s important for the user to know when a task has reached closure and is at its end, therefore, a dialogue for every task should have a beginning, middle, and end. This provides the user with the satisfaction of accomplishment and completion, allowing them to take a breath and relax at the end of a series of actions (e.g. registration confirmation pages, thank you pages, etc.).

Keeping the preceding rules in mind determines whether the end-user and client’s site satisfaction is met or not. An important thing to keep in mind when implementing these rules is bad interfaces generally lead to unhappy users, which then leaves those involved in the site process to deal with an unhappy client – and I don’t know about you, but we don’t want that.

For additional User Interface rules, check out Ben Shneiderman’s “Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design” obtained from his text Designing the User Interface.

Sitecore Live Mode - What, Why and When

What is Sitecore Live Mode?

Sitecore Live Mode is a configuration which allows a Sitecore website to run off of the full content database, known as the "master" database, as opposed to the published content database, known as the "web" database.

Why Sitecore Live Mode?

There are two distinct advantages to running a Sitecore website in Live Mode. These advantages save both you and the user time by allowing:

Publishing content in Sitecore to be bypassed when running in Live Mode. The content is saved and automatically visible on the website.
Content to be previewed without actually having to log into Sitecore, Live Mode acts as the preview mode. This can be helpful when needing content approved from a user without having to wait for them to login to the Sitecore platform.

When to use Sitecore Live Mode?

There are a couple scenarios that can be beneficial when configuring Sitecore in Live Mode, which include:

In a development environment - With publishing being one of the first have-to’s every Sitecore developer learns, Live Mode eliminates the need to publish changes on a constant basis providing ease when it comes to the question, "Did you publish?"
When there is a dedicated Content Management (CM) Server - Used for previewing content before publishing to the live website, these sites are not usually publicly accessible and solely used for content management purposes.

On the other hand, one scenario when it would not be recommended to leverage Live Mode is in a single Content Management (CM) / Content Delivery (CD) environment.

How to configure Sitecore Live Mode?

Configuring Sitecore Live Mode is very simple. The configuration file for Live Mode, "LiveMode.config," is located in the application root under "App_Config/Include,” much the same as standard Sitecore configurations. Simply rename the file "LiveMode.config.example" without the ".example" extension and Live Mode will be enabled.

The three main settings inside the LiveMode.config which impact the behavior of Live Mode:

Database - This setting specifies which database is to be used for Live Mode. By default it’s set to "master" and in most scenarios should remain as such.
filterItems - This setting specifies whether Live Mode will filter out items that have publishing restrictions. By default it is set to "true" and in most scenarios should remain as such.
enableWorkflow - This setting specifies whether Live Mode respects when an item is in workflow. By default it is set to "true" but can be set to "false" if items that are in workflow should appear on the website running in Live Mode.

Additional considerations with Sitecore Live Mode

There are two additional considerations that should be taken into account when running a Sitecore website in Live Mode.

The first is Sitecore's caching. Out of the box, Sitecore's caches are cleared as part of the publishing process. When running in Live Mode however, we no longer need to publish and therefore the caches aren't cleared on a consistent basis. This leads to inconsistent results on the front end of the website. This inconsistency can be overcome by disabling Sitecore's HTML caching by simply setting the "cacheHtml" attribute to "false" on the site node in the "web.config,” with the default value for "cacheHtml" set to "true."

The second consideration is Sitecore's search indexes. Out of the box, Sitecore's search indexes will crawl and include items in the indexes that have publishing restrictions. Therefore if an item is marked as "Never Publish" then this item is still in the indexes and being retrieved when queried. This leads to inconsistent results on the front end of the website. This inconsistency can be overcome by creating a custom search crawler derived from "Sitecore.Search.Crawlers.DatabaseCrawler" and overriding the "AddItem" method to filter out items which are enabled to be published.

CMS Upgrades: Is a CMS Upgrade Right For You?

Between 2 and 3 years after implementation, organizations with on-premise content management systems (CMS) confront a recurring dilemma - upgrade their CMS to the vendor’s latest release or stay on their current version. With tradeoffs abound for upgrading as well as staying on the current version, how can you reach the right decision over doing an upgrade? First, let’s cover the benefits and drawbacks of upgrading, and then propose a 3-step process to help steer you to the right decision.

Why Upgrade a CMS?

CMS upgrades bring forth a set of key benefits that help businesses be more efficient, reach target markets quickly, and increase effectiveness of business and IT employees. Primarily, the benefits of upgrading CMS applications center on:

Increasing IT flexibility by utilizing the modern technical architecture.
Improving business support through enhanced functionality.
Reducing overall business and IT costs for web content management.

Why Stay On the Current Version?

Despite the benefits to upgrading, there are also several concerns with CMS upgrades. A few key arguments to stay on the current version of your CMS include:

Avoiding IT infrastructure risks and impact.
Preventing business disruption with an application outage.
Preserving budget and utilizing cash for other projects more worthy.
Lessening the reliance on your CMS vendor and relaxing vendor lock-in constraints.

So How Do You Determine Your Best Option?

Reaching a decision over upgrading your CMS is no simple task. The benefits and drawbacks of upgrades can make key decision-makers crazy. To reach the right decision for your organization, you may want to consider the following 3-steps:

1. Lay out your options - Knowing your options is the first critical step in reaching a CMS application upgrade decision. Overall, there are six you can choose from including:

Do Nothing (stay on current release)
Upgrade (to vendor’s most current release)
Migrate to another on-premise product
Migrate to a SaaS product
Migrate to an Open Source product
Outsource your existing application to a 3^rd party service provider

2. Understand your organization’s fit against each option - Once it’s clear what your primary options are, assess and rate your organization’s fit for each option. To assist in this step, utilize an options matrix (Such as the one below) to help you determine when you should pursue an option and when you should not pursue an option.

3. Measure the value of each option through an ROI analysis - Finally, once you’ve profiled your organization against each of the options, take the 2 or 3 options that best match your organization’s profile and quantitatively measure the total cost of ownership and financial benefits through an ROI analysis. Build an ROI model based on three components, including:

Assumptions
Costs and benefits
Risk

By following this 3-step process, you will be armed with the right framework to approach and reach the right decision on upgrading your CMS.

What do you consider when it comes to either upgrading your CMS or staying on your current? We want to know, be sure to comment below.

Verndale’s New Digs

320 Congress St, Boston, MA– this has been home to Verndale’s Corporate Headquarters for the past 6 years, and now it’s time to say farewell. The company’s rapid growth throughout the years has lead Verndale on the hunt for a new large, open and collaborative work environment, with the opportunity to scale over time. And now after a long search process the time has finally come, and on October 1st Verndale’s Headquarters will have a new home - 28 Damrell Street Boston, MA.

While searching for the new location, Verndale was looking for something offering extended work space to satisfy the needs of both employees and clients, but also for an opportunity to expand with the company’s future corporate growth plans. With Damrell Street, Verndale got that. Going into this purchase, Verndale was offered an ownership stake in the 120,000 square foot property, setting the stage for Verndale’s projected growth over the years - a key selling point for this location.

For now, Verndale’s 88 current employees will be occupying the entire 3^rd floor (a 20,000 square foot work space) of the newly renovated 104,000-square-foot, 3-story brick building. This space is equipped with 14 offices, 4 conference rooms (all named after the streets in which Verndale’s Headquarters previously resided), a large, fully appointed kitchen, and a deck with a front row city view.

Conveniently located near Interstates 90 and 93, as well as walking distance from the MBTA Red Line stations Andrew Square and Broadway, the new headquarters office also provides an eased access to employees and clients.

For the Verndale Team, waiting for the announcement of the building location was like a child waiting for Christmas morning. Once released, team members were eager to learn the buildings history, floor and seating plan, as well as surprise features that will be waiting upon arrival.

Leaving the Innovation District behind is bitter sweet for the company. This move is about more than just packing up our desks and moving into a new space, it’s another stepping stone in the brands evolution.

For a sneak peek inside our new home, check out our Facebook Page for photos. Do you LIKE what you see as much as we do? Let us know.

Shipping Out Of Boston (But Only for the Day)

On August 31^st Verndale team members were shipped off to Thompson Island for the company's 3^rd annual summer outing. On a day dedicated to fun in the sun with great food and fellow employees, Verndale team members met at the Black Falcon Cruise terminal in South Boston where they checked out of the office for the day and cruised four miles away from downtown Boston.

The team arrived at Thompson Island and headed straight to the patio which contained a buffet style lunch, lobster and clam bake, along with cold beverages and relaxing island tunes.

With an abundance of activities scattered around, some team members got competitive on the volleyball court and soccer field, while others took in the last few rays of the summer sun and enjoyed the amazing front row city view.

Brining the summer to an end in style, the colorful Verndale team gathered for an annual group picture and wished Thompson Island a farewell until next year as they were shipped back off to Boston.

A special thanks to Laura Foss for once again planning such a fun filled day and Alan Kwan for the awesome photography.

For more photos, check out our Facebook page. And be sure to LIKE what you see!

Is Your Company Blogging To Stay Afloat?

Blogging, you’ve heard it’s a great way to generate tremendous traffic, increase conversions and continuously generate new content for websites, but the question is, does your company have a blog? As the blazing center of social media solar systems that can also incorporate both SEO strategies and community building campaigns, a company blog is the raft keeping your company afloat (both in search results and the end users mind).

But blogging not only drives site traffic and helps increase your SEO efforts; it enhances your company’s overall brand presence by helping with some of the following:

Showcasing Industry Expertise – Encouraging all team members to contribute to your corporate blog allows for further insight on current topics affecting your industry straight from internal thought leaders themselves.
Generating Trust with Prospects – Showcasing your expertise, and answering user queries on a more personal level allows you to build brand credibility. Helpful content provided is used to gain your users trust, eventually setting prospects in motion down the sales funnel as generated leads, with hopes of an eventual sale conversion.
Fueling Your Social Channels – In a social world of real-time search, providing sharable materials across your social media channels is a great way to create brand awareness and increase engagement with your followers.

Taking part in a company blog will not only educate and provide answers to the end user, but those writing the blogs as well. Through blogging, employees gain a better understanding of how to explain services, products and advice in ways the end user can clearly understand.

So bottom line, blogging should be a key part of a company’s marketing strategy if looking to keep your business top of mind, engage with users, track their behaviors, increase leads and conversions and the list goes on.

So is your company ready to jump ship? Share additional ways in which your company blog benefits your business below – we love feedback!

Set It and Forget It? Not in This Case

A lot of thought and process goes behind a website. The proper implementation of search engine optimization (SEO), information architecture (IA), and creative designs may take months, if not longer to eventually bring in your desired target market and traffic. So once your site is completed, great! You’re all set, just sit back, track your clicks and watch conversions occur before your eyes. Wrong.

You don’t just launch your website, and hope all works out. In order to generate any sort of traffic or conversion, once your website is complete you need to nurture it, revise it, grow it, test it, analyze it and continuously watch it. Keeping this in mind, the following are key performances allowing your website to gain the traffic deserved.

A/B Testing – Through creating multiple versions of a web page, each with its own distinct URL, you’re able to determine which page link is the most effective and user-friendly to your desired target market. Frequently performing these tests will educate you on the proper site structure and functionalities end users are looking to come into contact with essentially driving in more prospective traffic and recurring clients.
Email Campaigns - Employing strong email marketing campaigns not only increases and generates brand awareness, but also help you determine what prospects are interested in, allowing you to pin point their targeted needs. This will not only keep your business top of mind, but also provide backlinks to your site.
Social Media Campaigns – With the various channels and the reach you can gain through social media within just a day's time, you’re able to take your marketing one step further. Social media campaigns allow you to connect and engage with prospects, but in a more personal manner.
Analytics - Through powerful tracking tools, you’re able to better understand and improve your visitor’s website experiences, allowing you to make more informed decision on the content you’re pushing through your website. This is important not only in the growing stage of your website, but continuously from the day your website launches.

No website can make it on its own, hard work and dedication must be put forth in order to receive results back. So be sure to test, grow, analyze and repeat.

For more information on how to grow your current website, or where to start when looking to grow a whole new web presence, contact your local digital marketing agency today.

3 Commonly Asked Sales Questions, Answered

Every day I sit at my desk, dialing the phone, wondering, will I get that big sale today? Will I bag that elusive sale that will help me hit my quota? Or will I get turned down, told to stop calling, or maybe even get hung up on? I never quite know what to expect, and am never 100% sure what the end result of a given phone call will be, but I am used to all of the questions that prospects ask me. Sometimes they want to learn more about our products and services, and other times they are calling with different intent. But after tens of thousands of calls, and hundreds of conversations, the following three questions are those most commonly asked:

1. Why do I need a CMS?

A web content management system (CMS) offers businesses and enterprises the ability to easily maintain any web sites under their management. These platforms allow authors to submit and update web content without the requirement of deep technical knowledge. With the proper platforms and integration, a CMS can improve customer loyalty, usability, as well as conversions due to organized, targeted content, based on user behavior.

2. What is the best CMS and why?

Depending on the size of your business, budget, and needed functionalities, the CMS platform you choose for your website will vary. You need to find a system that gives you the ability to structure content (the system should never restrict you from creative development), track traffic patterns, and integrate small-scale SEO solutions. Below are some of the CMS platforms that we have deemed “best of breed.”

Verndale offers CMS platforms that satisfy all business types. For larger enterprises, a Sitecore CMS platform may be the best fit, while mid to smaller size businesses may steer more towards Kentico or Sitefinity CMS platforms.

3. What is the difference between a subscription based CMS, a proprietary CMS, and an open source CMS?

A proprietary CMS solution is owned by the vendor and built by the vendor, for the client. Prior to the development of subscription based CMS platforms and Open Source Platforms, almost all websites were built on proprietary CMS systems. The advantage of a proprietary CMS is that the client gets exactly what they want to a T. Unfortunately that is where the advantages stop. Proprietary CMS platforms are outdated, and cost much more than any other type of CMS. They are also owned by the vendor, thus making it impossible for the client to leave a vendor, without rebuilding their site.

An open source CMS refers to a free platform where a community of individuals is constantly making updates to the CMS platform’s code. Open source platforms are regularly updated to the latest versions automatically as changes occur, usually at no extra cost. For some this platform may be a good fit because there is no additional budget required. But one of the main problems with a community support team, and no licensing costs is that any clients faced problems tend to take longer to fix.

With the purchase of a subscription based CMS license, comes better security and fast, always accessible support. Improved speed and security are important for most businesses because it cuts down on both development time and cost. Subscription based CMS platforms tend to also have much better versioning control. Though subscription based CMS platforms may require a higher initial budget, in the long run, the combination of overall cost, the improved support and functionality, and improved versioning control make the subscription based platforms far superior.

Understanding these three questions are critical, as CMS implementation is a core element of Verndale’s business. Hopefully answering these three commonly asked questions allows both current clients and prospects to get a better understanding of the benefits in employing a CMS platform.

For any further questions, please feel free to contact me directly!

Designing for Internationalization

Let’s imagine for one minute, you’re researching for a new car. You come across General Motors Chevy Nova. Ratings are high, it’s equipped with what you’re looking for – they’ve got your attention. Now imagine the same, but for someone residing in Central and South America who may need the website in Spanish. “Nova” slides across the homepage banner, but in Spanish “No va” means, “It Doesn’t Go.” It may take a little more convincing that this vehicle will be a great long term investment. Don’t you agree?

When it comes to website development for an international audience, the first step is to ask yourself the “golden question;” across the supported countries or regions, is the content/layout/navigation varied? The answer to this question will help you define the direction the interface needs to support; the difference from the interface being fully localized (to the supported countries) or just multi-lingual (to the supported language).

Once this direction’s determined, the next step is to define the cultures or languages you’re looking to target, and ensure that your website will satisfy all visitors. In defining these elements, four design processes should be followed, which include:

Defining User Requirements – Determine your target audience, the user’s needs, which countries/cultures need to be supported, and the elements needed to adapt to these regions.
Creating Proper Site Organization – Organize your content (i.e. by country or region), define your navigation variances (i.e. can you add or remove certain sections?), and define layout variances (i.e. does your website support multi-directional reading, or require special branding support?)
Creating the User Experience – If appropriate, associate the user with a country/region, provide persistent selection controls (i.e. dropdown menus, list of links, modal), use familiar symbols to display these controls (i.e. flags, languages), and provide formats that users are comfortable with (i.e. currency, phone numbers).
Creating UI Guidelines – Use layouts that can scale (i.e. translations can cause varied string lengths, some regions/countries may have more content), create forms that are translation friendly (i.e. ensure error messages are appropriate for all audiences), create navigation systems that can adapt (i.e. navigation can be varied across each region/country, use symbols that can be interpreted by all), and be aware of cultural interpretations (i.e. colors, symbols, and word choice).

With so many cultural conventions to remember in your website development, spending time focusing on each of these processes can ensure that you’re offering the most user-friendly, relevant site to answer user's queries with accurate information.

For more information on designing for internationalization, be sure to contact Verndale.

Responsive Web Design – The What, How, and Why

Desktop, Smartphone, Tablet; today we’re designing for more devices, input types, and resolutions than ever before. Determining which device a user will be going through to read your content is impossible, and once published online is at the mercy of those who view it.

With one billion people using a mobile device as their primary source of internet usage, tablets becoming widely popular as of late, and game consoles providing users with a widescreen, television-centric web, developers must start considering the best method to reach their users. This, as Google has recommended, is “responsive” web design.

What is responsive web design?

Responsive web design (RWD) is a technique which allows developers to create flexible web pages by leveraging media queries from the Cascading Style Sheets 3 (CSS3) specification. This flexibility allows the layout of a web page to scale to the viewing environment while maintaining a single URL for both your desktop and mobile content, making it easier for users to interact with that content.

How do I generate a responsive web page/design?

In order for a design to be responsive, the following three attributes are needed:

A flexible, grid-based layout- Based off of percentages instead of pixels, a fluid grid allows developers to define scalable columns, gutters, divs, and text.
Flexible images and media – Images, videos, sliders, etc. must all be scalable to fit devices, and will often have a max-width defined. This enables media to scale down to fit the altered screen of the web page.
Media queries – As mentioned above, these not only account for the media type, but the size of the viewpoint (resolution).

Why do I want to use responsive web design?

This technique could make or break the user-friendly experience you are looking to provide. Without a mobile strategy in place, even a slight drop in a browser below the expected minimum width of your web page could alter the reader’s experience resulting in a bounce, when a possible opportunity could have been presented. Responsive web design also has an advantage over other types of mobile strategies in the sense that it isn’t used to optimize the user experience for only mobile devices, but all devices. A properly implemented responsive site should not only gracefully scale down to an iPhone, but up to a large widescreen monitor and beyond.

Though responsive design is already supported by 70-80% of web traffic and by more than 90% of mobile devices, it may not always be the answer. Sometimes a mobile optimized site, a mobile app, or responsive design in conjuncture with one of those will make more sense than a fully responsive solution.

There’s a lot to consider when determining the best mobile strategy for a project; and with the mobile web estimated to overtake desktop web usage by 2014, you can understand why responsive web design is becoming a most popular.

3 Digital Marketing Activities to Keep Your Business Top of Mind

For most, every day consists of a routine. You focus on your job, sprinkle in a little personal life, which leaves only a few hours left to rest your brain until going into repeat.

With so little time, how do you take advantage of these small windows to engage prospects with your brand? It’s up to marketers to make it simple, providing intuitive access to relevant information in digestible pieces. With an understanding of your audience, try extending the following digital marketing activities to keep your business top of mind.

Call-to-Actions – CTAs are a key lead generation component urging users to take immediate action on relevant topics, which should be included throughout all of your marketing channels – web site, social media, emails, press releases, etc. Your CTAs should be included above the fold with an ample amount of white space to ensure it does not get lost in the overall noise of the page. Be sure you don’t throw a CTA onto your page just to have one, determine which design and color scheme generates an increase in click-through and conversion rates through continuous A/B tests.
Social Media Buttons – These are great CTA’s for any business looking to stay top of mind throughout various channels. Place social media buttons throughout every page of your website, and include the top ones for your company in any emails (general or nurturing), to allow users friendly methods ensuring clients and prospects can stay updated on any news, products or promotions your company may be offering.
Targeted Email Marketing Campaigns – Yes, email marketing is still extremely relevant in today’s digital marketing mix. Since many marketers today believe in the Law of 29, which states the average prospect will not turn into a customer until they’ve viewed the message 29 times, it’s important to reinforce your message. Targeted and timely email marketing will help keep your company top of mind, while also driving the right traffic, the appropriate web assets and associated communication - all while building lasting relationships.

Companies that utilize a good mix of the above activities will further engage, increase brand awareness and stay top of mind with its audience - maximizing the little time left in a day.

Getting the Most out of Support

If you work with a company that produces or supports a piece of specialty software or custom programming, then you'll likely need to communicate with your support staff at some point. To have a smooth experience, and build out a strong future relationship with your support staff, I’ve included the following to keep in mind when an issue arises.

Why Communicate with Support?

It's important to remember that the members of your support staff are not mind readers. When you come across a problem, they don't know that you’re having difficulties until you communicate this with them.

It's an old adage, but the squeaky wheel does get the oil. Your support staff doesn't want to have you suffer, and they definitely don't want you to store up a half dozen issues before contacting them. If you have access to support, then you’ve likely already paid for it, and therefore should use it.

Knowing When There's a Problem

It's often difficult to know if something that you’re experiencing is a bug or if it's an expected behavior. As a rule of thumb, if something isn't working the way you expect it to, then it's a good idea to contact support. You could have found a bug that needs attention, or might have been using the software in a way other than was intended. Your support staff will be happy to instruct you on the correct usage, suggest a work around, or log a bug as needed; it’s always wise to address problems as they come up.

Starting Communications

The process of contacting support will vary depending on the company with which you’re working, but this may include sending an e-mail or logging the details of an issue into a bug tracking system. If you aren't sure of how to contact support, find out. In your initial contact, you should present the problem as clearly as possible by stating the following:

What the behavior was.
What you did in order to produce the behavior.
If an error message is present, include the exact error message that was displayed.

Following up

Your responsibility doesn't end once you send that initial report. If your support staff has questions, do your best to answer them promptly. If they need you to verify that the problem is resolved, attempt to verify, but if not, let them know you’re unable to dedicate time for verification.

Support is a two way process with both sides trying to resolve a problem. An issue, case, or bug is often more complicated than it first appears, so being active in the process will help bring your problem to a quicker resolution.

The "Everyone's a Beautiful Snowflake" Approach to Training

Over years of training both customers and employees, I have often found it helpful to keep in mind that everyone is a beautiful snowflake. That is, each person has a unique background and personality that allows them to see the world in a slightly different way than everyone else. When training a group, it's often important to remember this when a member of the group isn't catching on. In these instances, an alternate training approach is often required.

While it's impossible to know what will work for a given individual, it's important to have a variety of general approaches at your disposal to apply to whatever topic you happen to be discussing. Below are some of my favorite techniques that go beyond the standard person-in-front-of-a-PowerPoint-presentation approach.

Get Visual

Talking about concepts is well and good, but a picture can often make an idea much more clear. I had struggled for some time with trainees on the concept of perpendicular lines until I simply drew what I meant on a piece of paper. I’m quite fond of illustrating concepts and workflows on a whiteboard, which can be a handy supplemental device used along with a formal presentation.

Use Analogies

To some, visual pictures aren't as strong as a mental image, and this is where analogies can help you out. Pick something that's common and that’s a relatively good analog to what you are explaining. Coming up with a good analogy is sometimes tricky, but it gets easier with practice. I am known for often using car analogies in the workplace. I'm not a car guy by any stretch of the imagination, but find that most of those I’ve worked with are familiar with the main parts involved, which makes for an easy point of reference.

Use Acronyms and other Mnemonic Devices

When faced with a procedure that must be remembered in specific sequence, there are some that can simply remember the sequence, but for others it’s much easier to remember if an acronym or other mnemonic device is used. You likely used these in school when you had to remember the colors of the rainbow (red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet = Run over your granny because it's violent) or even to remember the tuning on your ukulele (GCEA = Good cooks eat a lot). The use of mnemonics isn't new, but you may find using them a handy training tool.

Don't Forget Your Space

In addition to remembering that people (both trainees and trainers alike) are beautiful snowflakes, it’s important to remember that training locations are beautiful snowflakes as well. While you may have the occasion to teach in a state-of-the-art facility with smart boards, working projectors and an iPad for every student, that doesn't mean that less advanced training venues don't have their merits. If it's a beautiful day outside and you have access to an outdoor venue, don't be ashamed to use it. You might not have your PowerPoint on a 10 foot screen or a huge whiteboard, but you can always draw on a notepad and fall back on actually connecting with people in getting a concept across. We’re all human; your trainees might be able to focus and absorb your material better when they are out enjoying the nice weather instead of daydreaming about it within the confines of an air conditioned conference room.

Remember, not everyone learns in the same way. So as you develop your training materials, try to think of alternate approaches so that you aren't put on the spot in the middle of a presentation.

Let Content Marketing Take the Driver’s Seat

Many businesses are realizing the power of content marketing (as an inbound marketing technique), knowing they have control of personally reaching out to prospects to generate relationships. But recent studies have shown inbound marketing is on the rise due to improved ways to share content, growth in social media, and the increase in ROI. And with the overload of content within search results on the web today, implementing a strong content marketing strategy is needed to get noticed and receive high rankings.

But what exactly is content marketing? Content marketing's primary goals are to position a business as a credible expert by delivering relevant content throughout various channels over time, ultimately motivating a change in buying behavior. This content can be delivered in multiple forms, varying from videos, blogs, webinars, emails, white papers, and even social media. But no matter the channel, publishing amazing content throughout your marketing assets is essential in reaching and engaging with your target audience.

Along with this amazing content, research, planning, and structure are required in order to generate a great content marketing strategy. For those of you looking to continue to build your current content marketing strategies, the following best practices can be used to help guide you further:

Verify your target audience – As mentioned before, creating great content is a key element; but if it’s not reaching the proper market, why take time creating it? Content drives the internet, and users are looking for the answers to solve their problems. Take the proper time to research and identify your target audience, and use that information to develop content they’re specially looking for. Finding the answer to this question will help you on the quest to provide further relevant and engaging content for your audience.
Create content with a strong hook – Creating capturing headlines can draw users in, but it’s keeping them hooked into your content that may be the underlying problem. This is where creating compelling content comes into play. Don’t just provide answers, provide examples – explain why your business or products could help or answer user’s queries. Be sure to include relevant, recent information which not only benefits users, but is enjoyable to produce. When examining content, the voice behind can be easily determined, and can greatly influence user’s perceptions.
Publish and promote – Until your great content gets shared, is it really that great? Publicizing and promoting your content through multiple channels is essential in reaching your target audience because realistically, great content can’t deliver itself. Engage with your audience, and extend your content through social channels to help drive further conversation about the current business challenges your prospective clients may be faced with. Build trust with your content, and it will pay dividends in the future.

Developing content and staying on top of the latest trends can be somewhat overwhelming. Use these tips to create more content, inform your prospects, and ultimately build your sales funnel. Organize your content into an editorial calendar to help you stay on track and possibly ahead of schedule. Also, remember that re-purposing content will help extend it throughout your marketing assets by developing the right balance of new and existing content. So, re-energize your writing skills, and start using the content you create to educate, inform, and convert your prospects into customers.

Quick Questions with Paul Caponetti – Verndale’s 2011 Sitecore MVP

Last week Sitecore released their list of 2011 Sitecore Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), which included Verndale’s very own Sr. VP of Development, Paul Caponetti. This award now gives Verndale two Sitecore MVPs, with Sean Connell receiving the award in 2010, further extending the company’s backbone of Sitecore expertise.

So how does it feel to be named a Sitecore MVP? I sat down with Paul Caponttei and asked just that, as well as got the dirt on his long standing membership within the Sitecore Developer community.

Q: Can you describe how you are feeling about winning this title?

A: Getting this award is less about me, and more of a validation that the development team here at Verndale is pushing the limits and churning out top notch Sitecore sites. The dedication, ability and sheer breadth of web knowledge is something you can’t find everywhere.

Q: What do you like most about working with Sitecore?

A: In a word, flexibility. Rarely is there a time where I come across a problem I can’t solve using Sitecore’s framework. Even rarer is a time I come up with a solution that Sitecore renders infeasible. A lot of CMS platforms restrict the developer to one technology, one language, limited configuration, etc, where Sitecore has made an obvious effort to keep the product as open and flexible as possible.

Q: Is there a particular Sitecore Implementation that you most proud of?

A: It’s too hard to pick one, but I can say the work we have done with lucene and Sitecore's advanced database crawler module is the most interesting topic of late. Most sites restrict their use of lucene to Sitecore items where we have started crawling some more non-standard things like security credentials, user profiles, third party databases and media item proprietary content.

Q: How do you feel this award will benefit Verndale as a whole?

A: I believe having two MVPs on staff at Verndale will help to portray the company as one of the masters of the Sitecore platform, and rightfully so. With over 20 certified Sitecore developers on staff and experience all the way back to Sitecore v4, the title is well deserved.

As a Sitecore MVP, honored individuals are offered numerous benefits including access to technical resources such as alpha versions of Sitecore software, first release modules, full access to the Sitecore Developer Network and download section and invitations to major events.

Congratulations Paul!

Getting Your Creative Juices Flowing With Mind Mapping

As a designer, have you ever sat there and tried to figure out what your next thought or design may be? You may spend countless hours starting then erasing the work in front of you hoping that a more complete vision will suddenly just appear in your mind, and you can officially get the ball rolling. This has happened to me countless times, before I finally decided to take time and mind map these thoughts.

Mind mapping is a simple but powerful tool that many designers use to help fire up their thought process when generating ideas for a new project. This brain storming technique allows designers to visually represent all the ideas that are aimlessly floating around in their heads, and get them neatly organized on paper. Mind mapping can merely be compared to an artist’s “blank canvas”, allowing you to connect and grasp your ideas using them as a visual outline. It’s a simple process that surely gets a designer’s creative juices flowing.

In creating your own map, all that’s required are the basics, a piece of paper and writing utensil, then let the mind flow. The first step in creating your mind map is coming up with a common word, or your first idea. From there, every idea following this first thought stems out, creating a new, further developed idea. Before you know it you’re forming new ideas and concepts, allowing your mind to stretch and explore different words that you’ve never thought could possibly influence your design.

The different stems of your mind map can extend as far as your mind may take you, consisting of a multitude of items including words, ideas, names, things, thoughts, nouns, verbs and even small sketches. All of these elements laid out on a piece of paper allows designers to clearly visualize and structuralize their ideas, helping to achieve a clear view of where these ideas are being influenced and generated.

As a designer, I find myself frequently creating mind maps; I like to see where the explorations of words can take me. With a mind map, I can expand on existing ideas and clarify my thoughts to develop an even greater concept in a clear, laid out manner. Mind mapping allows you to steer away from that designer block frustration, and allows you to release those “not so good” ideas to make room for better ones.

Four Key Takeaways From Avinah Kaushik’s Keynote at SES NY

On Tuesday, March 20^th, myself and other members of Verndale’s Digital Strategy team attended SES New York, the leading search and social global marketing event. The SES Conference and Expo is a multi-day event where attendees can participate in over 70 sessions, workshops and clinics focusing on tactics and best practices brought forth by industry experts and leaders.

There were many great presentations given throughout the conference, but I’d like to provide some takeaways from the always inspiring and informative keynote by Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist Avinah Kaushik, where he focused on Business Optimization in a Digital Age:

1. Get beyond the 2% - The average website sees a 2% conversion rate, which many marketers tend to latch onto and "hyper-optimize" around those 2%. But what about the other 98% that didn't convert? Just because they didn't conduct the defined action, should they be ignored? Avinash couldn't stress enough that ignoring insights and activity from that the 98% is detrimental to improving performance. Rather than adjusting your strategy to the 2%, analyze patterns to determine why the 98% didn't convert and make adjustments for this huge pool of potential converters.

2. Understand the economic value of a social visit – It’s important to understand the value of your social traffic as well as its generated shares, and luckily, Google has made this easier with their new release of Social reports within Google Analytics. These reports allow for you to fully measure the value of your business’s social channel by providing the social media and business metrics you are looking to track. By tracking the content people share, and where they’re sharing it from, you’re able to generate more of this engaging content to have shared among your core fan base.

3. Be “less wrong over time” with controlled experiments – Avinash couldn’t stress enough about how marketers need to focus on long term as well as the short term value of users. In order to determine how to achieve this long term value, perform tests to establish where the right and wrong investments may be, while considering the specific business goals and campaigns which best drive your business’s strategy. Avinash suggested this may be done by reaching out and optimizing to a larger group of people, as well as utilizing more than one metric to avoid hindering a clear understanding of your situation. This will help you gain a better insight on your content’s engagement and value.

4. Stay focused – This is the most important theme to keep in mind in order to generate conversions while saving on marketing costs. Never lose sight of the bottom line with your marketing strategy, which is all about “price and cost margins, as well as market share and market size volumes,” as Avinash stated. Maintain this focus while making sure you understand and test your strategies as you continue through the marketing funnel to avoid “being less wrong” over time.

I’m looking forward to working with members of our digital strategy team to utilize the latest techniques from SES NY while continuing to provide highly-optimized websites and campaign analysis to Verndale’s current and prospective clients.

6 PPC Optimization Tips for SMBs

Many small to medium businesses leverage pay-per-click (also known as cost per click) search ads to drive sales to their website and generate conversions online. While many companies decide to invest in paid advertising online, they do so without taking time to understand how PPC works. There’s a lot that needs to be taken into consideration in order to generate a respectable return-on-investment that many may forget, or just be uneducated on in general. The following are 6 basic PPC tips for SMBs to leverage whether using Google, Bing, or Facebook to drive traffic to your website.

SEO your PPC landing pages: Both Google and Bing pay attention to how well optimized your landing pages are for the specific keyword you are bidding on, so ensuring that your landing pages are optimized is crucial. Having a well optimized page can be the difference between a top ad position and a low one – it also lowers your cost-per-click.
Separate branded and non-branded keywords: When setting up your PPC account, make sure to structure your different campaigns wisely. A good way to do this is to separate branded terms (ex. Verndale) for your business, and general non-branded terms (ex. Digital Agency).
Test your ad copy: Testing your ad copy is a good way to improve click-thru rates and conversions. But remember, insistently improving click-thru rates is not a good thing. In cost-per-click bidding, every click costs you money. So make sure you have specific language in the ads that only brings in qualified visitors, otherwise you may exhaust your budget without converting.
Use negative keywords wisely: A good way to filter out the riffraff is to use negative keywords. For example, if you are creating a campaign for a school’s graduate program, and want to make sure college students don’t click on your ad, you may want to ad “bachelors” and “undergrad” to your negative keywords list to filter out users using these terms.
Use phrase and exact match: By default, most PPC platforms broad match the keyword you are bidding on. This means that Google or Bing will serve your ad for any keywords that seem relevant to the actual keyword you input. This can cause your ad to show up for variants that are not relevant to the products or services your company offers. By using phrase and exact match, you can more specifically target the users you want to bring to your site.
Don’t compete with your own SEO: If you are ranking number one for a particular term organically in the search engines, don’t bother spending cash on top ad positions for that keyword as well. 42% of users click on the first search engine result, and paying for that click doesn’t make sense if you are already at the top of the search engine results page. This is common for SMBs on branded terms.

Implementing these tips into your PPC strategy can help your business both save money while, as mentioned before, still drive the traffic you’re looking for to your website. But if you’re still looking for a few more tips, contact the Verndale PPC team for additional information about PPC best practices, campaign management, and cost per conversion optimization.

Pinterest for Business: Not Just Another Pinteresting Blog Post

It feels like every time I access the World Wide Web, I come across another new social media platform. While some have quickly gained momentum as "the hottest" social channels to hit the internet, we can all agree that social media is here to stay. While Twitter and Facebook remain top of their industry, 2012 kicked off as a visual year with a potential social channel game-changer, Pintertest.

Brief history – I’m not going to sit here and write another blog post about what Pinterest is, but for those of you who may not be familiar…Pinterest defines itself as a pinboard-style, social photo sharing website allowing users to create and manage theme-based image collections. Since its launch in 2010, Pinterest has already generated over 10 million registered users and nearly 12 million monthly unique visitors – the fastest independent site in history to surpass 10 million monthly unique visits. With a 145% increase in site visits since the start of this year alone, numbers like these have strongly influenced businesses and brands as they evaluate their social media initiatives and consider joining this growing platform.

What makes this platform stand out from the rest? – Pinterest allows you to curate, “like” and share content – sound familiar? But what other social media platforms don’t offer that Pinterest does is the option to segment this content onto different “boards” – essentially organizing content, creating clean visuals for both you and followers. This organized look is not just grouped by set titles such as “friends,” “interactions,” and “experience;” the title of personalized boards can get as creative as you’d like – the more creative the better!

On top of organization, this platform enables users and followers to “repin” content. You may think of it as similar to sharing, and in a way, it is. But “repining” takes content one step further; it allows followers to adopt and index content into their ‘library’ for future reference. Repinning, a key social activity of Pinterest, is one of many best practices for building a strong network of followers.

And most importantly, Pinterest directs users’ traffic to the original website the content came from. Yes, other social media platforms allow you to post and share links, but with Pinterest, those steps are unnecessary. Simply clicking the “pin it” button (either embedded in the website or in your task bar) grabs both the image and the source link to give the original creator credit.

What are some best practices for businesses? – Regardless of your target market, Pinterest enables you to showcase your products, services, blog posts, or any “pinnable” content that may generate traffic to your website. Based on your business type, knowing which content to present to users may come as a challenge, so here are four best practices to help you filter out what works from what doesn’t.

Invest in time – Like any other social media platform, an ample amount of time is needed to observe any progress. This time is needed in order to build a relationship and figure out what attracts the target market you look to reach.
Target your audience – Keep track of users “repining” and “liking” your posted content. If it’s someone relevant to your industry – return the favor, or even possibly follow them! Remember, you can choose which users’ boards you follow, so if only a few are relevant, stick to those rather than following a full account. In Addition to incoming users, be sure to seek out industry-related boards or profiles utilizing the Pinterest search field (permanently embedded on the top left of Pinterest pages) to identify other users interested in related content.
Get personal - Don’t just post your products and services; make a board or two covering extensive interests. For example, create a board based on the location of your business or interesting facts such as attractions, events, tips, etc. – get creative!
Engage – Once you’ve gained followers, engage with them through “repins,” “likes,” and “mentions” just as you would through other social channels. Additionally, it may make sense for your business to stay active with followers by holding contests and promotions through your boards. Providing new and creative ways to keep your audience engaged can lead to a more memorable experience for your brand.

What do you think? – Is Pinterest right for your business, or is it a social media platform where you struggle to find value? With rapid increases in the site’s popularity and businesses jumping on board, there’s no better time than now to explore the opportunities with this new platform. Is your business already on Pinterest and experiencing positive results? Share your success stories with us – we’d love to hear about them.

The Role and Importance of Information Architecture

Information Architecture (IA); it defines your site’s goals, is the foundation for great web design, and establishes a clear and well-documented plan for what you are about to do. Information Architecture is the skeleton of your website from which all other aspects are built - including form, function, metaphor, navigation and interface, interaction, and visual design; but why is all this important? The following illustration from UXmatters.com displays their interpretation of an information architecture iceberg. I feel this does a great job demonstrating the six primary layers involved in framing an effective IA process. To further explain this illustration, I’ve provided a brief description of each layer, starting at the iceberg’s foundation:

6: IA Research: In order to build the ideal information architecture, both quantitative and qualitative research is required to determine the people and intended audience coming to your website, as well as the short and long-term goals. This research can include monitoring user behavior, search analytics, content analysis, etc. Throughout this process, one can define site goals and prepare the layout for the upcoming build.

5: IA Strategy: Once thorough research has been completed, you’ll need to determine what strategy we want to employ. Would a single, multi, or cross domain work best? For those of you who may not be completely familiar with these, let me further elaborate. For the purposes of this conversation we are going to talk about the strategies as they pertain to as single mode of interaction; e.g. a desktop browser. Single domain strategy is the simplest and most basic; it involves organizing the information with one taxonomy and navigation system. Multi-domain strategy deals with more complex systems where the multiple sections can share attributes, taxonomy or features. A cross-domain strategy is the most complex, and deals with multiple taxonomies, and navigation systems.

4: IA Management: Once the groundwork is laid out and you’re familiar with the purpose of your page, it’s important to understand the processes and rules required to implement and conserve the effectiveness of that chosen IA. Nurturing your site’s professional growth, performance, regular output, and maintenance are just a few practices to consider throughout the IA management process.

3: Information Relationship: Next, defining the information relationship is essential to ensure that the targeted information provides the proper flexibility and extensibility. This means allowing content to relate to other pieces of content, and allowing that to be extended beyond the site (newsletters, RSS feeds, etc) while taking future growth into account (mobile site, mobile app, etc).

And now we’re getting to the top of the illustration, the “surface” of the IA process. This is the part that users & clients see, understand and interact with. None of this is possible without the research and groundwork that supports this visible portion.

2: Information Organization: When landing on a website, visitors expect a user-friendly navigation structure, along with content relevant to the information they’re searching for. When configuring your IA layout, information organization is a key best practice area; classifying by terms, content sources, vocabulary, etc. By formally grouping this information, the peak of the iceberg (navigation), is easily accessible by design peers and clients.

1: Navigation: Finally, you need to think about how visitors use the site to find targeted information, or get from one place to another, either through search, user recommendations, or a hierarchical menu. For the local navigation, consider implementing lists of topics, menus of choices, or a short list of related items. When it comes to determining what sections should be used for the global navigation system, look at the site’s structure listings and identify the key areas. Since these sections will appear on every page of the site, enabling users to jump quickly between sections, a couple best practices to keep in mind include limiting the number of your global navigation elements between five and seven, as well as incorporating the company logo as part of the link back to the site’s homepage.

As you can see, one cannot expect to just write content or build functionality, put it onto their website, and expect people to find it. Developing an effective information architecture is an essential step allowing users to quickly, easily, and intuitively find your produced content. Remember when implementing your IA, the only information that can be appreciated is the information a user can find.

5 Best Practices of Content Management for Content Authors

The Web has completely changed the way businesses communicate with their clients, prospects, employees and partners. Content is still used to help, maintain, sell and service customers, but is produced and distributed faster than ever before. Content management has become a vital component to collecting, managing and then publishing organized, targeted content to inbound customer touch points.

There are two fundamental components of content management - content and process. Typically, content authors are responsible for uploading new content to the website, editing content that needs to be changed and removing content when necessary. The content management system (CMS) gives content authors the ability to easily manage their Web content without requiring any technical knowledge. A while back, we posted a few best practices of content management for developers because it is important for developers to make sure the CMS is set up in the best possible way so that content authors can use the CMS efficiently. This post demonstrates some of the best practices for content authors that will help ensure proper use of the CMS.

Content Sharing

One of the benefits of having a CMS is using it to share or syndicate all of the great content that you worked hard at creating. Content authors should take advantage of content sharing through the CMS. Using a Meta tag strategy, content editors can repurpose content without worrying about duplicate content issues. Different CMSs (e.g. Sitecore, Kentico, Sitefinity, Crown Peak) may have different ways of developing this process, but once the process is in place, it will reduce the maintenance of sharing content for the content authors.

Content Archiving

As content grows on your website, it can begin to affect its performance, especially if there are several different versions of the same content on the site. Content authors should handle archiving very responsibly so the site performance is never impacted. Content archiving can be scheduled ahead of time or done manually by the content author. Either way it is important for content authors to archive outdated versions of content.

CMS Previewing

Content authors should use the previewing feature of the CMS to review content styling and grammar. For some larger organizations, it might make sense to use one server as a previewing environment and then publish to a second server once the content is finalized. This way you will view the content in context (with the server generated HTML and CSS) before it is published online so you can inspect the final format of the page.

SEO Attributes

Using the CMS, content authors can easily edit the SEO attributes on each webpage through the dashboard. Content authors should use the company’s keyword strategy to create keyword-rich title tags, descriptions and URLs for each page. This will ensure they are fully optimized and the content is search-engine friendly.

Workflow Automation

While every CMS offers a different form of workflow automation, it is important to learn how the process flows within your system. Workflow processes are put into place to streamline the content publishing procedures and ultimately reduce turnaround time. Content editors should become very familiar with the workflow, reviewing the process regularly to see if there are any unnecessary steps that should be eliminated. Read this post if you’re trying to set up workflow automation with the Kentico CMS.

As a content author, your challenge is not only to develop content, but to ensure the CMS respects your brand, maximizes your content, and minimizes your efforts. If you or your content authors are having trouble with content creation, content editing, content publishing, or any other technical CMS topics, then sign up for CMS Training.

The 6 Most Commonly Asked SEO Questions

While Verndale’s prospective and current clients ask us a variety of questions concerning SEO, the search engines, and what all the jargon really means, there are a handful of questions we’re asked almost on a daily basis. Based off a department poll, I’d like to share with you the 6 most commonly asked SEO questions, along with a response to each.

1. Why is SEO important? (Why should I pay attention to this ‘Google Stuff’?)

Search engine optimization is essential for anyone who wishes to win new business by appearing prominently within the search engine results pages. If someone searches for the products or services that you offer and your website does not appear, they will click through to a competitor.

2. Should companies do-it-yourself on SEO, or seek the help of a consultant? (I’ve been reading some SEO blogs, what else do you need to know?)

SEO Consultants spend a lot of time keeping up to date with the latest techniques and trends. In addition, SEO is becoming increasingly sophisticated, for example, through usage of social media influences. It is difficult for companies using a DIY approach to be as effective as those who employ the services of a consultant. In addition, if a company invests in an employee with a focus on SEO and that person moves on, the knowledge moves on as well. However, a consultancy firm will always have a skilled resource available for you.

3. Assuming SEO measures are being implemented correctly, how long does it typically take to see results? (Jargon-aside, when do I get to see results?)

There are a number of factors that influence how quickly results will be seen. They include the age of the website, how relevant it has been in the past, and what authority it has gained through in-bound links. So, it can be a few days, several weeks, or longer before useful results begin to emerge.

4. Should companies make use of an existing CMS or blog engine for SEO? (Does my CMS impact SEO?)

As long as the Web pages are accessible to search engines, and do not present barriers - Google considers more than 200 signals to identify the focus of a page - it does not matter which CMS or blog engine is used.

5. Is there any relationship or correlation between SEO and social networking? (What’s does my company’s Facebook activity have to do with SEO?)

The importance of your website, often known as its reputation or authority, has a strong influence on your search engine rankings. Historically, this importance relates solely to link building and the development of back links to your website from other sites and online directories. However, the growth of real-time search and universal search now provides multiple channels to develop mentions and signals to build the authority and trust of your website. Additionally, substantial SEO benefits can be gained through social media, where online users participate in communication and communities.

For example, your website’s reputation and authority can be increased through mentions by influencers and experts, supporting causes, presences within key networking sites, customer communication, product reviews and so on. So there is now a strong relationship between social networking and successful SEO activity.

6. What’s the final takeaway from all of this? (What’s this all about?)

Search engine optimization involves a range of on-page, on-site, and off-site elements. Relevance is particularly influenced by the keywords, phrase placement, and metadata associated with your web copy; all of which provide essential signals to the search engines regarding your website's topic and theme. And remember, there are multiple channels to develop the mentions and signals to build the importance of your website.

Sitecore Mobile: How to Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly, Fast on your Phone

Sitecore and mobile phones; it’s a huge topic holding a vague title. It could mean this is a blog post on creating a mobile-specific site somewhere in a content tree, setting up content for ingestion by a mobile app, or even mobile content authoring in Sitecore. Let me rein it in a little and say this blog is about the fastest, and what we consider to be the best, way to get a mobile view of your current website onto the screens of everyone’s smart phones.

I hear the yelling already - that just skinning a site for mobile isn’t a valid mobile strategy, and I agree, it’s not. But I think having a mobile view of your site is a valid first step in creating a full mobile strategy, if only to create momentum in this modern direction.

So we have a full-on website developed in Sitecore, all laid out the way we want and ready to be rendered in any way we please. Creating a mobile view of this site should be a breeze, right? For the most part, it fortunately is, as long as you have a few things in place.

We are going to need a centralized point where every page’s lifecycle touches early on. For me, this is a Page Load event on a centralized base page for the rendering of all “full site” web pages. This allows you to easily centralize your logic for “should I be showing the Default view, or Mobile?” You will also want every page’s layout to be specified in the __renderings field (or the “Presentation” menu ribbon) as opposed to being added via treelist or other means. This keeps the developer from having to re-write a mobile version of any logic, ingesting a treelist of callouts to layout on a page to use the mobile version of that callout.

Now we are ready to begin, let’s see what we are up against. For one, new devices are always being released to the public with new browsers, screen resolutions and user agents. To keep tabs on what a request looks like coming from a Droid X vs. iPhone 4s vs. <insert newest greatest smart phone here> is a part-time job on its own! To solve this problem we use the “Mobile Device Detector” (trac.sitecore.net/MobileDeviceDetector) Sitecore shared source module and the WURFL database. This will make a trivial task out of figuring out not only what kind of device is requesting a page on your site, but what its manufacturer is, what resolution its screen is, what version of what software it’s running, etc. WURFL is a veritable mobile device goldmine of information, and with it you could get as granular as having a specific rendering for devices that are mobile, not a tablet, with 800x600 pixel resolution and are manufactured by Motorola (not that you would, but it’s nice to say you can).

As far as screen resolutions go, I have to note that having a responsive design that reacts to varying resolutions is a great approach for a site intended to render on varied mobile devices with wide spread resolutions and pixel densities (http://www.abookapart.com/products/responsive-web-design). Note that responsive design only deals with the layout of pages at different sizes, while the mobile device in Sitecore can render completely different HTML per device.

Great, now we have the mobile device detector installed and know what kind of device is requesting a page on our site, now what? Now we do a couple standard Sitecore things:

Create a device for mobile with a rule (Mobile Device Detector adds the ability to choose rendering device based on rules) to encompass the desired mobile devices.
- Add a proper fallback device (usually “Default”).
Setup a new site node in the web.config to respond to a host header characterizing the mobile site (usually “m.sitename.com” as opposed to “www.sitename.com”).
- Note not to setup the default device as your new mobile device, we will leave the device up to the Mobile Device Detector.
Create a mobile base layout item and aspx file.
Create any mobile-specific callouts or modules you want on your mobile site as Sublayouts.
Setup the standard values of your page templates to use the new mobile base layout, and any applicable sublayouts for the mobile device.

Now we are getting close! We have Sitecore ready and willing to render mobile versions of any page through your mobile base page layout. To test this, remember, you can use the query string param ?sc_device=<device name>. The last piece to the puzzle is taking care of every situation with respect to which site is being accessed, with what viewing preference, and on what device. This will be what dictates when to render a full page versus a mobile page, when to redirect someone to the “www” site or to the “m” sub domain.

In most cases it is best to create an interstitial page when switching from mobile to full site to ease the jolt of seeing a different layout. Also, most sites will have a “view full site” link somewhere in the mobile base page, and vice versa in the full site. Here are all possible scenarios of a request coming to your site, given that you have a link option to view full site or mobile site, you have created an interstitial page and not all pages have mobile layout defined:

Without a viewing preference set (cookie) to mobile or full site
- Request a page without a mobile layout defined
  - On www.
    - On a mobile device - redirect to m. and follow rule below
    - On a computer - render the page using the default device
  - On m.
    - On a phone - put URL in session and redirect to interstitial page
    - On a computer - redirect to www.
- Request a page with mobile layout
  - On www.
    - On a phone - redirect to m.
    - On a computer - render the page using the default device
  - On m.
    - On a phone - render the page using the mobile device
    - On a computer - redirect to www.
- Select "View Full Site" on m. - redirect to www. and set a cookie to "Default"
- Select "View Mobile Site" on www. - redirect to m. and set a cookie to "Mobile"
With viewing preference (cookie) set to Mobile
- Request a page without mobile layout
  - On www.
    - On a phone - redirect to m. and follow rule below
    - On a computer - redirect to m. and follow rule below
  - On m.
    - On a phone - put URL in session and redirect to interstitial page
    - On a computer - put URL in session and redirect to interstitial page
- Go to a page with mobile layout
  - On www.
    - On a phone - redirect to m.
    - On a computer - redirect to m.
  - On m.
    - On a phone - render the page using the mobile device
    - On a computer - render the page using the mobile device
With cookie set to Default
- On www.
  - On a phone - render the page using the default device
  - On a computer - render the page using the default device
- On m.
  - On a phone - redirect to www.
  - On a computer - redirect to www.

Given the actions above, there are a few things that the Mobile Device Detector does not get you. The main thing being if you are on a phone and request a page on www that does not have mobile layout, you will load in the full site base page and not know you are on a phone. To find out if you are on a phone you can use this piece of code, specific to the Sitecore Mobile Device Detector, to find the device first attempted to render through via the rules available on all device items (note this was reflected from the DLL given in the module):

private static DeviceItem GetRulesDevice(Database database)
{
    DeviceItem[] all = database.Resources.Devices.GetAll();
    DeviceItem[] array = all;
    for (int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++)
    {
        DeviceItem deviceItem = array[i];
        RuleContext ruleContext = new RuleContext();
        foreach (Rule<RuleContext> current in RuleFactory.GetRules<RuleContext>(new Item[]
        {
            deviceItem.InnerItem
        }, "Conditions").Rules)
        {
            if (current.Condition != null)
            {
                RuleStack ruleStack = new RuleStack();
                current.Condition.Evaluate(ruleContext, ruleStack);
                if (!ruleContext.IsAborted && ruleStack.Count != 0 && (bool)ruleStack.Pop())
                {
                    return deviceItem;
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return null;
}

With this piece of code, and the list of situations above, you can create a mobile base page and default device base page that function according to what we feel are best practices for a site with a mobile view.

Note that the Mobile Device Detector allows for a “View Full Site” link to have a query string variable for sc_device=default and persisted=true. This will show the site in whichever sc_device you choose for the rest of the session, but it will not allow you to switch to another device until you clear cookies or start a new session. For this reason we had to create our own cookie to handle these cases (as noted above).

In summary, making a mobile view of a well-made Sitecore site is not an insurmountable task, and can be attacked in a generic way for any type of site. Nearly all major sites have at least some mobile device strategy, and adding a mobile view of existing content is an easy first step.

Kentico CMS Version 6: Kentico’s Largest Upgrade Yet

Kentico CMS is frequently making updates to enhance their platform, but the recent upgrade to version 6 constitutes as their biggest release ever. Taking slightly more development time to release v6.0 as it did to develop all previous versions (from v3.0 to v5.5 R2), Kentico CMS developers can finally take advantage of the recent upgrade improvements as they develop new websites and update existing sites with version 6.

One may be asking, “Why should I upgrade to Kentico CMS 6?” As a Kentico Certified Developer with experience updating existing sites, from v5.5 R2 to v6.0, I can confidently say v6.0 provides features and improvements that allow for a more rapid, flexible, and productive development for both developers and users. There are many new features to talk about within version 6, but I’d like to share some insight on two major improvements in particular that make v6.0 a complete customer experience management platform – Kentico’s Enterprise Marketing Solution (EMS), and the new E-commerce feature.

Kentico’s newest product, the Enterprise Marketing Solution (EMS), is an integrated Customer Experience Management solution – serving as an extension of Kentico’s CMS Ultimate Edition with additional marketing and enterprise features. Kentico EMS enables marketers to achieve instant marketing results by providing a complete and fully integrated suite of tools to quickly deploy campaigns, acquire valuable data, and increase their ROI. With EMS, marketers have increased control over the measurement of their digital marketing activities with features like A/B testing, Campaign and Conversion Management, Lead and Engagement Scoring, and Content Personalization – increasing productivity within your sales and marketing teams.

Kentico’s new E-commerce feature now contains a better user interface; Kentico version 5.5 R2 and older models were built from 4 different namespaces, while version 6 was condensed to one namespace containing default implementation of all providers and their methods. Additional version 6 e-commerce features include new site separation, new product types (including paid membership donations, e-products, and bundles), shipping calculations, and text options for ordering customized products.

With the addition of these two features, Kentico CMS 6 provides developers, marketers, and content administrators with a highly flexible and robust CMS and customer experience management platform. Has your company upgraded to Kentico CMS 6 yet?