Why Business Catalyst? Published January 20, 2014 An Explanation for the Joel Media Group, Incorporated and its Partnership with Business Catalyst
Over the past five years, we been implementing the Adobe Business Catalyst platform as an option for our clients with e-commerce and content-managing website needs. To our delight, our customers have not only been enjoying the intuitive admin, which helps them manage their content, store and customers with ease, but we have also noticed a 300-500% increase in traffic to the site thanks to Business Catalystʼs robust site-hosting platform. Our extensive training and familiarization of their platform has allowed us to manage and provide the necessary customer service for the hosted accounts, employ intuitive custom-designed user interfaces, and train our customers to effectively manage their own sitesʼ content and marketing campaigns through the online Business Catalyst Admin Panel. Here are some of the selling points for having a Business Catalyst website: Flexible Content Management Business Catalyst gives you full creative control over your sites. With a one-stop approach to content management, Business Catalyst makes it easy to customize the look and feel of your client sites using just HTML/CSS, and without the hassles of constrictive theming frameworks. Save Time with templates, pages and modules Save time, preserve consistency and avoid duplication with templates. Simply insert the page elements you want to reuse in the template, and wrap your pages in them. To add extra functionality, just layer on our built-in modules with a point and click approach. Search engine friendly Search engine optimization is essential for any website, but begins with a system that supports best practices. Business Catalyst comes with the right features outof-the-box, with 301 redirects, SEO friendly URLS, customizable meta-tags, and integration with Google's webmaster tools. Fool-proof real-time editing Business Catalyst provides an intuitive yet powerful in-context editing tool. Browse your website just as a visitor would through a web browser, then simply point and click to edit content in real-time. Create unique mobile experiences Completely customize the look and feel of your site across a growing range of phone and tablet devices. Just assign desktop, tablet and phone variations of your template, using the latest technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and jquery, and our server-side detection takes care of the rest.
Access while on the go Keep an eye on your business performance from across the globe. Experience our full Admin Console on any tablet device, with HTML5 charts for reports and ipad support for our WYSIWYG editor. Accurate device detection Easily render mobile-optimized content based on your visitor's device type using a simple system tag. We're continually updating our database of device types, meaning you can say goodbye to manually adding detection code for the latest devices. Dynamic, Extensible Modules Say goodbye to plugins or custom server-side coding, and add dynamic business functionality your sites using a range of built-in modules. Quickly and easily implement advanced features such as announcements, event bookings and blogs with a point and click approach. Blog Module This integrated blog module allows you to keep your blog on your site without having visitors leave it, allowing this extremely SEO-friendly module to attract more potential customers to the site. Comments Allow your customers to comment on Announcement, Blog and Product posts, allowing for an understanding on how to better market to them. Complete with anti-spam and rules control, allowing for ease of comment management. Site searches Integrated site search engine allow you to help visitors find what theyʼre looking for faster. Customize a site search engine with a point and click approach. Create as many search engines as you like, simply choose the content youʼd like to include, then insert the search module on a page. Photo galleries With stunning photo galleries you can upload your images, designate your gallery folder and insert the module on a page instant photo gallery. Complete with interactive Lightbox effects and intuitive navigation for visitors. Rotating ads Sell advertising space with ad rotators. Many sites sell advertising to help boost profits and revenue. Business Catalystʼs ad rotators module lets you rotate
advertisements in HTML, Flash or image format, then track impressions and click-throughs to measure ROI. Self-help with announcements and FAQs Every business has news items, press releases and questions that visitors are constantly asking. With Business Catalystʼs announcements and FAQs, you can turn your website into a 24 hour self-service center saving valuable time answering customer emails. Promote and manage booking events The bookings module makes collecting bookings for a seminar, concert or event simple. Customers fill in a booking form and then you can optionally collect payment, set capacity limits and automate follow up emails prior to the actual booking date. Point-and-click menu building Dynamic menus let you keep your menus consistent, with a simple point and click approach. Just add your menu items and insert the module inside a page or template. Every time you add a new item, itʼs instantly visible on the website, saving you valuable time. Building your own web apps without coding Business Catalystʼs Web Apps framework provides a powerfully simple way to build basic web applications using a point and click approach. From real estate listings to business directories, you can define mini-databases of items and allows users to add new items via an intuitive interface. An Online Store, Built-in and Ready If and When Needed Give your client an SEO-friendly online store, without the pain of custom coding or tedious configuration. Business Catalyst includes a powerful ecommerce platform out of the box, that letʼs you easily use HTML/CSS to completely customize the online shopping experience. Sell Anything Online Start selling your products or services online, complete with inventory management, product attributes, plus size and weight for shipping. You can also upload eproducts and charge for downloads, limit download allocation and more. Easy order management, with integrated CRM Every order created is linked to a unique customer record in your built-in CRM database, allowing you to keep a complete history of customer orders or to offer customer loyalty bonuses to repeat purchasers
Boost sales with discounts, vouchers and referrals With powerful sales tools such as discount codes, gift vouchers, referral tracking and affiliate programs, you can help your online store boost profits and deliver better bottom-line results. Easy billing and shipping integration Business Catalyst automatically integrates with a global range of payment gateways and shipping providers, making online store setup a truly turn-key experience. You can view our full list of supported payment gateways here and shipping providers here. Automate recurring orders If your payment gateway supports it, Business Catalyst allows you to sell products with built-in recurrence, meaning you can easily sell on-going subscription services. Automate recurring orders If your payment gateway supports it, Business Catalyst allows you to sell products with built-in recurrence, meaning you can easily sell on-going subscription services. Import, export, migrate Business Catalyst allows you to import products via a simple spreadsheet format, making migrating your existing database a breeze. Our powerful export tool also provides an easy format for backing up your product database. Web Forms & Integrated CRM Business Catalystʼs built-in customer database (CRM) system integrates with all the web forms, online store orders, memberships and content management features of your clientʼs site, enabling them to provide better service for their customers. Drag and drop web form builder From basic contact forms through to surveys, donations and newsletter signups Business Catalystʼs powerful web form builder helps you deploy web forms faster, without the need for server-side coding. Simply select the fields you'd like to capture, then drag and drop to arrange their order. Effortlessly capture customer leads Every customer action from web form submissions to online store orders - is automatically captured in your CRM database, linked to the customer's unique contact record - meaning they can filter, search and manage their leads with just a few clicks.
A live feed of customer activity Business Catalyst gives you a real-time view of your customer activity. From online store orders to blog comments, forum posts to contact forms, member activity to email marketing - it's all tracked and listed to give you a complete view of customer behavior. Centrally manage cases, orders and more Manage customer contact details, past web form submissions, ecommerce orders, secure zone subscriptions, email subscriptions and more all from your centralized Admin Console - simplifying workflows and saving time. Automate everything with workflows Automate business processes and get back to customers faster. Build multi-step workflows and get notified of new web form submissions or orders, then verify steps as they are completed, or remind and escalate to management if need be. Report and measure Use our flexible report generator to create detailed customer reports on defined criteria, such as case submitted or the amount theyʼve spent in your online store. Easily export data in a variety of formats for analysis offline. Target Email Marketing Let your clients build targeted recipient lists and send personalized email marketing campaigns with just a few clicks. Set up pre-configured email newsletter templates for clients to select and customize on the fly. Send 10,000 email newsletters a month Create an unlimited number of campaigns and send as many newsletter as you like. The first 10,000 emails each month are on us, with extra emails costing less than 1c per newsletter. Automate sales responses with loyalty campaigns Youʼre probably used to sending once-off campaigns, but with Business Catalyst you can do much more. Automate series of newsletters to send over a matter of days or months, based on the customers subscription date, or custom date such as their birthday. Built highly targeted lists Tap into Business Catalystʼs built-in CRM database to extract targeted marketing lists. Lists can be based on past orders, web form responses, forum membership and more. Create lists manually by individually adding customers, or importing lists from other applications via a simple spreadsheet format. More than just click-throughs
In addition to open rates and click-through rates, Business Catalyst tracks the actions your customers take after they click through to your site, so you can effectively measure the real effectiveness of your email campaigns. A range of newsletter templates or customer your own Choose from a range of hundreds of professional email templates, and simply add content. Our simple wizard then takes you through the process of selecting a list and sending the campaign to your customer base. Powerful Reporting & Analytics Business Catalyst includes powerful reporting tools, integrated into every aspect of your client's online business. From web pages to online shops, email marketing to lead management - BC records every customer interaction and gives you the tools to track them. No extra tracking code required Many analytics packages require you to manually add complex tracking codes to each individual page of your site or online shop, at the sacrifice of page load times. Business Catalyst comes with all the powerful reporting functionality you need, built-in and ready to go. A birdʼs eye view of performance Every time you login, youʼll be presented with a bird's eye view of how your siteʼs performing. With key metrics, charts, and a live feed of customer activity, keeping your finger on the pulse of your business has never been easier. Analyze your performance Quickly track your top performing pages, most popular online products, sales and order volumes, newsletter subscription losses or gains and more. Everything you need to monitor, measure and improve their business. Generate ecommerce and customer reports Easily set up custom ecommerce and customer reports for access at any time. Slice and dice the data however youʼd like to drill down into your business performance, or take it offline with our handy export tool - supporting Excel, PDF and CSV formats. A Complete, Hosted Solution Business Catalyst includes secure Adobe hosting for your site and email accounts. Because weʼre fully hosted and managed, that also means you can forget about installing server patches or updates, with your sites receiving all new features automatically.
Web hosting not required Business Catalyst is a completely hosted and managed platform, including hosting for your site and file assets. Your custom domain name You can add your own custom domain name to your Business Catalyst site, and we include a free DNS management service for managing your records with us. Email hosting and webmail Most Business Catalyst plans come with a number of email accounts which you can set up and manage from within the Admin Console. Our email service supports both IMAP and POP3 protocols, and we also offer a webmail interface for accessing your mail on-the-go. Social Media Integration Social media is becoming a powerful tool in a business ownerʼs online toolkit Business Catalyst enables you to easily add social elements to your sites, without having to copy and paste lines of code. Social sharing made easy Integrated social media sharing with just a few clicks add Facebook Like, Facebook Send, and Twitter Tweet buttons to your pages, blog posts, products and more. Live feedback with Facebook comments Bring social media features to any site with built-in Facebook comments. Enable product reviews, add dynamic comment streams to blog posts and more. Keep visitors up-to-date with Facebook activity feeds Stay fresh and keep visitors in the loop with the latest news by quickly inserting a dynamic activity feed on any page just point and click. Allows visitors to login using Facebook Keep sign in convenient for your registered customers by offering them the ability to login with Facebook credentials to any Members only secure zone. Conclusion
As designers and services providers, we are excited that their platform is directly tied into our Adobe development applications, allowing us to employ the most unique and custom designs with ease. One of the most powerful reasons to use this type of platform over others, like WordPress for example, is that their admin, storefront, modules and means to deliver your content to your customers is constantly being updated, upgraded, and implemented with new technologies without our attention required. Whereas with WordPress, Joomla and even our retired Communicator platforms require that you constantly keep track of all your plugins, modules and updates for respective application itself, just to ensure that everything works all the time. To learn more about Business Catalyst, please visit http://www.businesscatalyst.com and browse their site for all that they have to offer. We look forward to being of service and continue finding the right solutions for all your graphic, web and marketing needs. Sincerely, Thomas Teejay Joel, CEO, Senior Designer Joel Media Group, Incorporated