The New Umbraco 8 is a Marketer’s Dream
Patrick Delehanty — April 20, 2019 — April 20, 2019
In 2019, there’s no doubt that marketers are looking to streamline and expedite their marketing efforts with easy to use, efficient, and customization tools at their disposal. We always get the question “What CMS out there gives me full creative and integration control, and allows me to create the true digital experience that my customers (and business) deserve?”
To answer this question, I always recommend the Umbraco CMS, dubbed “The Friendly CMS” by Umbraco HQ and validated by being Microsoft’s #1 open source installation in the world. With Umbraco, you’re able to build, execute, and scale the most true to brand digital experience that your business envisions. In fact, in February of this year, Umbraco HQ released the long awaited Umbraco 8, the latest and greatest in Umbraco updates, and I wanted to share below why these new features make Umbraco 8 the perfect match for any marketing team.
VARIANTS
First up are Variants. There’s no doubt that 2019 is the year of personalization, and providing a relevant experience to consumers and website visitors that’s based on their specific needs and search intent should be a top priority of any marketing team. In fact, according to a study conducted by Infosys in 2017, 31% of consumers wish their shopping experience was far more personalized than it currently is, while the 2017 State of Personalization Report found that 71% of those surveyed expressed some level of frustration when their experience is impersonal. A quick couple of other key findings include:
- 44% are likely to become a repeat buyer after a good personal experience
- 37% will be less likely to make a purchase from a brand if they get information wrong about them
Pretty telling stuff, but how does Umbraco 8 help here? With the introduction of Variants. Variants allow properties of content on your website to change based on a set of rules about your visitors and their behaviors. For instance, you can show different pieces of content based on rules like:
- Language
- Location
- Campaign
- Channels
And more!
How marketers benefit: Variants allow you to provide your website visitors with a more relevant and personalized browsing experience that leads to higher website engagement, including leads and sales.
INFINITE EDITING
Are you slowly losing patience (or sanity) clicking around your CMS to edit a piece of content or media (like an image) that lives on a page, only to have to click all the way back to the page you were just editing afterward? Umbraco 8 is going to change that with the introduction of Infinite Editing. Infinite Editing is a frictionless editing experience that allows you to edit pieces of content and media in once place without clicking around your CMS, costing you time and sanity. This means you can be editing a page on your website, click on a piece of content or media on that page, make specific changes to right there in your window (which are then effective across the website), and get back to creating or editing your page!
Here’s a great explainer video from Umbraco:
How marketers benefit: Infinite Editing gives you the ability to edit pieces of content and media without losing your place in the Umbraco CMS, reducing time spent clicking around trying to find content and media, and putting your time where it matters most – creating great content that engages and converts your website visitors, all in one place.
CONTENT APPS
In the most simple of terms, Content Apps are a new feature in Umbraco 8 where a website owner or content editor can add a tab to a piece of content or media items in the editing interface of Umbraco. These tabs allow you to create tabs, or apps, that are specific to the piece of content or media item that they live on. These apps can be anything you want them to be. Here’s a screenshot from a great blog post at Codeshare called What are Content Apps in Umbraco v8:
In this blog post, you’ll also see a few potential ideas for Content Apps:
- Scratch pads
- Site previews
- Live chats
- Search results
Now, all of these ideas are just a few of the things that Content Apps could potentially do for you, but it’s important to remember that whatever you create Content Apps for that you’re doing so in a useful and helpful way, and not just creating apps for the sake of apps.
Here’s a great explainer video from Paul Seal at Codeshare.co.uk:
How marketers benefit: Content Apps are a new feature that will allow you to create content/page specific tabs to enhance the creation and optimization of your content ongoing, giving each page and piece of content it’s own set of tools and features.
CONCLUSION
But that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. Umbraco 8 is chalked full of new features, as well as the features we’ve come to know and love from previous Umbraco updates, and if for some reason you can’t find a feature or Umbraco package that fits your needs, you can integrate that tool seamlessly with Umbraco. When it comes to building world-class, user-focused websites, there’s simply no one that does it better than Umbraco. Enjoy Umbraco 8!
Originally published here.
Digital & Social Articles on Business 2 Community
(21)
