DTM to Adobe Launch Migration
Adobe announced that DTM is being sunset (effective from January 2021) to pave their way for the next-gen tag management system, Adobe Launch. While Launch offers great features, upgrading from DTM requires some planning and execution.
We helped many clients, big and small, to migrate to Launch. During these migrations, we have come up with and compiled good practices on top of Adobe’s recommendations. Before we get into those details, let us look at the reasons to switch to Adobe Launch and what benefits the platform will offer to its users.
Why Migrate to Adobe Launch?
One of the major reasons to migrate to Adobe Launch is – The Adobe DTM is being sunset. Here’s a breakdown of DTM deadlines:
- July 9, 2019 (Already Passed): Options to create new DTM properties no longer available
- October 14, 2020 (6 Months to Go): All DTM properties become read-only
- April 13, 2021 (1 Year to Go): DTM Servers go to sleep
No need to be panic, planning is key.
Benefits of Migrating to Adobe Launch
While the eventual retirement of DTM has forced organizations not to evaluate whether they wish to migrate to Adobe Launch, but rather come up with a detailed roadmap that can help them with the migration process. Instead of waiting until the end of 2020, it’s better to leverage the benefits of the following benefits now.
- Single Page Application (SPA) Support
- Multiple Event Type Support
- 3rd Party Extension Marketplace
- Centralized Rights Management
- Automated Tag Deployment
- Robust approval workflows and many more
The Migration: 4-Step Simple Process
Now that when you know the benefits, you must be wondering what does it take to migrate to Adobe Launch?
Well, some of the implementations are straightforward and can be implemented with the automated tools that Adobe provides. However, not all migrations are that simple and a few of them need proper planning and execution. For such migrations, based on our experience with other clients, we have put together below a 4-step process that you can follow for a smooth and flawless migration.
At NextRow Digital, we, taking into consideration the diverse needs of organizations, have helped several businesses to migrate to Adobe Launch using the same tips and had great success with other clients.
Step 1: Establish a Baseline
To achieve the successful migration of tags from one system to another, it is important to keep an eye on the analytics tracking status. And for that, you will need to create a baseline or a catalog for your reference and decide on the time you need to complete the process.
Make sure to follow a comprehensive approach to scan your website and take the backup of the highly valuable and sensitive data of all present technologies.
Step 2: Design a Strategy
The second phase includes analyzing your system’s requirements and designing a strategy that helps you evaluate the tags you need to change during the migration process. Although there can be innumerable ways to deploy the tags, you should proceed ahead with a roadmap that would be beneficial for you even in the future as well.
Include a testing strategy at the starting of the implementation phase to ensure that things are being deployed corrected at every step. Your QA testing can begin with manual testing, however, always remember that manual testing is time-consuming and prone to human errors. On the other hand, automation testing can deliver accurate results in less time. The choice is yours!
Step 3: Begin the Migration
After establishing the baseline and designing the foolproof strategy, you can start with the migration process. Let’s have a look at the two following approaches you can consider following for migration:
Lift and Shift
If you don’t have anything to change, you can adopt a Lift and Shift approach for a relatively simple implementation. In this approach, you just need to click the Upgrade to Launch button in DTM and that’s it! (Sometimes it may not be that simple, we can audit your instance and suggest you the best options).
Start Fresh
If you wish to start the implementation from scratch, you can go ahead with a Start Fresh approach. Ideal for large and complex implementation, this approach gives you full control over the functions.
Though it may take your several months, but if you work with full dedication, the end results will be much better.
Step 4: Test Everything!
Last but not the least, test everything!
Be careful about this step, and don’t hesitate of going the extra mile to get everything tested in detail. If you’re unsure about this process, take help from QA experts and ask them to assist you to ensure that the tags are successfully migrated from DTM to Adobe Launch.
Once the testing process is completed, you can have a sigh of relief and bask in the success of completing a great job.
The Bottom Line
These are the high-level steps, which should help you to put detailed processes around these steps. We understand you may not have enough bandwidth to migrate or enough expertise to complete the migration. No worries at all. We are here to help.
NextRow Digital is the new-age digital agency that delivers the “best of both worlds” of a digital agency and a system integrator to clients looking to boost their business growth and drive higher ROI through digital transformation. We are a born-in-digital company that uniquely combines the power of technology, analytics (Adobe Analytics), creative and content for digital transformation.
If you need any help with Adobe Launch migration or maintenance project, you can email to: adobe@nextrow.com or call +1-847-592-2920.
5 Benefits of Outsourcing Your AEM Managed Services
You made the right choice by choosing Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as your Web Content Management System. As a true enterprise-grade CMS platform built on open architecture, AEM supports your websites (public-facing or internal), and centralize Assets in one place with Digital Asset Management (DAM). AEM also supports headless CMS to grant more power to the UI team.
When you sign the deal with Adobe, you typically end up with these application hosting scenarios:
- Adobe Managed Services: Adobe hosts the application for you. They provide SLA from 99.5% to 99.9% depending on the type of contract you have.
- Internally Hosted: Typically, AWS/Azure/GCP. You have your DevOps team in place to manage the AEM application as part of the big infra team.
- Hosted by third parties: You might have hired a third-party company to host your AEM application.
Fast forward a few months, you dig deep into the application development migrating your websites to AEM, you go live on your websites built on AEM. All high fives to your team for the great work done, it’s not an easy task, your developers can vouch for this. The new enhancements, new projects come. Your development team(s) gets busy with enhancements, building new sites to support marketing/business, and working on the next great thing.
Now the fun part comes. Your site is live and kicking. This is the digital face of your organization. As Marketing and Sales teams rely on digital channels heavily for lead conversions, they need a stable website, that’s loading in a fraction of second. How do you ensure your marketing SLAs are met and you are supporting marketing/sales teams?
Whether you are hosted with Adobe Managed Services (AMS) or internally hosted or with a third party, they take the responsibility of the uptime of your AEM application, but the application fine-tuning, performance upkeep, and application fixes fall on your team or to some other team. It is extremely important that you are supported by a team that is experienced in AEM applications and has certifications on the “AEM Admin” skill set to properly manage your AEM applications and to look after the upkeep of your AEM applications.
In this era of digitization with a fast-changing MarTech landscape, many organizations lag behind in specialized skillsets like AEM administration, AEM application integrations, and AEM application maintenance.
For several companies, their digital presence is everything for them and they would do anything to ensure that their AEM environment is optimally running 24/7/365. Hiring an internal team of technical staff for AEM Managed Services can be quite expansive and extremely difficult when you have to dedicate them to your AEM environment.
NextRow Digital’s state-of-the-art NMS++ for AEM (NextRow Managed Services for Adobe Experience Manager) offering will support clients with the upkeep of AEM applications, finetune, and proactive monitoring among other things. As a trusted AEM Managed Services partner for many companies, we understand every client’s needs are different, so we offer flexible contract models to support your current and future needs.
Some of the Key Services Included in NMS++ for AEM:
Optimize AEM Applications
Optimization comes in a variety of flavors, ranging from page performance optimization to query builder cache clearing to many nitty-gritty tasks. A recent study showed the sites load in 2 seconds have 15% more conversions. With our deep expertise in Adobe Experience Manager platform and specialization we hold in AEM Managed Services, we help you optimize your AEM applications for optimal performance, helping you convert more leads and realize more sales.
Proactive Application Maintenance
It is extremely important that you maintain your AEM application up to date with available patches, service packs, and available upgrade options. Whether you are hosted on AMS (Adobe Managed Services), or internally, we help you keep your AEM instance up to date with our proactive application maintenance program.
Proactive Application Monitoring
If you are an IT leader, you must be thinking that setting up Nagios or NewRelic or some other tools will do the trick. Well, these are reactive measures that might alert you when something goes bad. We raise a step above to offer proactive application monitoring, so you catch the problems before your customers face them.
Bug Fixes
Bugs/issues and minor enhancements are common in any application development. While your team is busy focusing on more important tasks, you can rely on NextRow Digital expertise to work on these side tasks, freeing up your core team while being in safe hands at NextRow.
Compliance and Auditing
Your company’s infrastructure is continuously changing. New technologies are being rolled out. Others are phased out. People come and go. Complexity exponentially increases. At such times, addressing the Adobe Experience Manager security threats at the forefront becomes mandatory for most of the organizations, be it small or large.
NextRow Digital provides recurring AEM system administration and compliance services you need to perform the regular system checks, audit the infrastructure, and identify vulnerabilities to eliminate the gaps. We help you maintain adherence to a stringent set of industry compliance standards and implement the best security practices to keep your enterprise stay in control.
The Bottom Line
Pinterest derived 15% more signups by optimizing their website. An optimized, well-maintained site(s) means more business, more conversions. Outsourcing AEM Managed Services to NextRow Digital will also free up your core dev team to focus on building the next great thing, while we take care of your site upkeep. As a leading Adobe Business Solution Partner, NextRow Digital can help you scale up the performance of your AEM application with confidence. With our global support centers, we offer 24*7 support services as well.
If you’d like to know more about our NMS++ for AEM Managed Services, you can reach our sales team at+1-847-592-2920 or email us to sales@nextrow.com. The AEM experts at NextRow Digital would be happy to answer all your queries.
Adobe Summit 2021 – An Influential Event to Learn and Grow for Marketers and Technologists
After last year’s greatly successful Adobe Summit event
Insights from Adobe Summit 2023: Driving Experience-Led Growth
If you couldn’t make it to the Adobe Summit this year – or even if you did but couldn’t cover all the action – here are the NextRow Digital Adobe Summit team’s highlights from the event!
We just got back from the eventful Adobe Summit 2023 and can’t wait to put all that gained knowledge to work with. For the first time since 2019, Adobe Summit returned to Las Vegas in a hybrid in-person and virtual format – and what a standout event it was! Marketing representatives from major enterprises all over the world converged in Las Vegas to learn, be inspired, network with industry peers and have a full Adobe experience. NextRow Digital had the privilege of being a gold sponsor at the Digital Conference of the year.
With various insightful sessions and a line-up of luminary speakers, we were able to garner some useful insights that will help us accelerate creative development, streamline engagement channels and elevate digital experiences for our clients.
Let us do a quick recap of our Adobe Summit experiences and throw some light on the key takeaways from the event.
A Brief Summary of the Sponsored Session by NextRow
Healthcare Experiences with Approaches to First-Party Data
As a gold sponsor at the summit, we had the privilege to host an informative session on the new approaches in marketing, like first-party data, identities, and direct-to-consumer strategies in the healthcare industry. The speakers Joe George, Director Marketing Technology, Abbvie, Angela Tang, Sr Manager, Digital Analytics and Personalization Technologies, Abbvie, and Pradeep Subramanian, Architect, NextRow Inc, delved into the digital transformation (with focus on first party data) of Abbvie, an undisputed leader in the healthcare industry. They also assessed various first party data implementation strategies and the best practices and opportunities leveraging Martech stack.
The session also showcased some futuristic use cases and brought forth the possibilities these advanced marketing approaches can unlock and how they can help in crafting exceptional experiences for patients and healthcare professionals.
In case you missed the session, or if you want to revisit it, here’s the link to the recording.
NextRow’s New Solutions – IntegratedPDF and RADAR
Elevate your personalization efforts with IntegratedPDF solution
NextRow’s IntegratedPDF demystifies a major pain point for marketers that was not been addressed before – PDF documents on websites. The customer interactions and engagements on a PDF document remained a mystery and in effect, hampered the efficacy of the content within it. Marketers were unable to view the data of interaction and act upon it.
However, with NextRow’s IntegratedPDF solution, marketers can now capture analytics for interactions inside the PDF in real-time, such as the pages scrolled, keyword searched, or any annotations. The PDF will open along or within the website with powerful rendering capabilities including highlighting, comments, annotation, etc.
Learn more about the capabilities of NextRow’s IntegratedPDF, understand how it works, and explore the potential benefits it offers to marketers for lead scoring and personalization with marketing documents.
Monitor the health of your digital properties with AI-powered RADAR
NextRow’s project RADAR is a one-stop solution that keeps track of digital properties’ health by acting as a digital command center. RADAR will reduce the data quality loss and improve data quality across digital properties and empower marketers to make data-driven decisions. RADAR is built on powerful microservices and integrations with products like ObservePoint to provide 360-degree data and the health scores for digital properties. RADAR is powered by AI models and can be integrated with popular MarTech stacks.
To find out how RADAR can maximize your MarTech performance by keeping track of your digital properties, get in touch with our RADAR experts!
NextRow Digital at Adobe Summit 2023: An Inspiring Experience
The NextRow team had an action-packed time in Las Vegas at the Adobe Summit – with innovative discussions and conversations, and a very exciting session on Healthcare Experiences with Approaches to First-Party Data. For us, what happens in Vegas should not stay in Vegas and that is why, here is a snippet of our experience at the summit.
- Meeting and interacting with our customers, other industry experts, and marketing enthusiasts in our booth. Interesting conversations were initiated, and great insights were shared – thank you to every one of them.
- Connecting with partners and learning about their technologies and solutions; and finding out exciting new ways to collaborate and work together.
- Hosting an insightful session on advanced marketing techniques for professionals from the healthcare industry.
- Introducing our new tools and solutions built on Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Experience Platforms, that are aimed at streamlining and elevating digital marketing efforts.
- Adding an extra dose of excitement to our summit experience with a rewarding lucky dip for our visitors and registered attendees.
- Learning from a long list of amazing speakers at the event – Adobe Chairman and CEO Shantanu Narayen, AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su, Eli Lilly Chair and CEO Dave Ricks, T-Mobile EVP and CDO Marcus East, Prudential Financial CMO Susan Somersille Johnson, screenwriter and director Aaron Sorkin, comedian and actress Tig Notaro, and NFL stars Peyton Manning and Damar Hamlin.
Major Announcements & Key Takeaways from the Summit
- At the Summit, Adobe debuted new Adobe Sensei GenAI services, including Firefly, a new family of creative generative AI models, first focused on the generation of images and text effects. “Generative AI is the next evolution of AI-driven creativity and productivity, transforming the conversation between creator and computer into something more natural, intuitive and powerful,” said David Wadhwani, president, digital media business, Adobe.
- Generative AI capabilities into Adobe’s clouds will provide businesses with unprecedented speed and productivity to power end-to-end marketing workflows. In Adobe Experience Cloud, customers will be able to move seamlessly between Sensei GenAI services and existing features, right within their workflows.
- The company also announced New Adobe Product Analytics and a reimagined content management solution enabling marketers to self-serve website and mobile app edits.
- To accelerate and democratize creative development at enterprise scale, Adobe unveiled Adobe Express for Enterprise, empowering organizations to rapidly create and iterate content, regardless of their creative skill level.
- Adobe also announced the world’s first comprehensive Content Supply Chain solution, made possible through Creative Cloud and Experience Cloud innovations that connect popular tools for planning, creating, reviewing and distributing creative collateral so teams can come together to meet growing content demands in less time.
- Adobe’s Next-Gen Composability (previously known as AEM franklin, or Project Franklin) was announced as an advanced feature available in AEM with cloud-native technology. Designed to accelerate content velocity, deliver high-impact experiences at a high performance, and greatly reduce time-to-market, Next-Gen Composability streamlines the process of publishing content to the web, removing burdensome CMS interfaces.
Wrapping Up
Adobe Summit 2023 went by in a flash and as always, Adobe brought amazing innovations to the forefront. As businesses across the world realize the potential of content in driving next-generation digital experiences, the new Adobe innovations are rightly aimed at optimizing content creation, delivery, and measurement. If you were at the summit, we hope that you had an amazing time and gathered some meaningful insights. However, if you were unable to attend in person, fret not. Adobe has made most sessions available on demand
For the NextRow team, the innovations we witnessed and the new learnings we gathered from the summit have paved a way to enhance the digital marketing services we cater to our clients and elevate their customer experiences. We will continue to learn and hone our offerings, continuing our commitment to offer state-of-the-art solutions to our customers. If you wish to know more about our latest offerings or just want an expert consultation regarding your digital transformation, reach out to us.
Looking forward to connecting with you all again at the summit next year!
The Role of eCommerce During COVID-19 and Beyond
Recessions come and go. Depressions come and go. So do pandemics. Nothing is permanent on this planet earth. Most of us did not anticipate the fierceness of COVID-19 and it’s potential impact on our lives. People are forced to stay home, businesses are forced to close the doors for customers for the fear of virus spread. The virus forced the entire world to come to a standstill.
We, the humans, are resilient. We find ways to bounce back. While the research for a cure / vaccine has picked up the pace, we have the needs to be fulfilled, from daily necessities to luxuries. While the restaurants closed, retail shops scaled down, consumers preferring to turn to online shopping more than ever. The impact of Coronavirus is going to last for a while and aftereffects are still unknown. The biggest impact the virus is going to leave is on the commerce, how we do business going forward.
Impact of COVID-19 on eCommerce Industry
In 2019, eCommerce sales are about $600B in US compared to total retail sales of $3800B. eCommerce is still relatively smaller compared to the retail sales. The COVID-19 situation changed the face of retail sales completely. The shuttering of retail store doors due to virus fears accelerated the online sales. eCommerce giant, Amazon sales rose 26% year-over-year during the first quarter 2020 (during early stages of virus spread). With all social distancing measures and consumers being very cautious and the lack of availability of vaccine in the near future will drive more opportunities for eCommerce businesses.
Connect With Customers: Track the Customer’s Changing Behavior
Consumers have many choices. Many websites to shop from, many retail stores to visit for shopping. Though the current situation is temporary, understanding consumer behavior and presenting right experience (offer or content) to the right person at the right time is key for eCommerce success.
Your success as an eCommerce business profoundly rely on persuading your customer by delivering the best unified experiences across web, email, other online and offline mediums.
How eCommerce Platform and Responsible Marketing Are Related?
Current times are tough for everyone, for consumers, marketers and businesses alike. People rely on commerce more than ever to stay safe amid the social distancing guidelines. Obviously stress is taking a toll on everyone.
In such difficult times, it becomes important for brands to establish an emotional connection with their audience and choose the right tone of message to communicate with them. Create engaging, informative, and useful content that your customers can relate to. Show empathy towards others in your marketing message. Put yourself into their shoes and see if the message would resonate with you.
Bring your online brand in front of your audience. With all the traditional marketing methods are going out of the picture and millions of people spending time on the internet more than ever, businesses need to understand that its important to make their presence felt globally with the right marketing message.
People always make decisions based on emotions. Emotions and empathy always help businesses connect to the customers. Marketers showing empathy in their outreach to the customers will always end up on the winning side. This is why a tighter integration between marketing platforms and commerce platforms is so important as empathy can be added in your marketing messages.
Nextrow’s Role in the eCommerce Landscape:
NextRow Magento Services:
- Quickstart Packages: We have put together some Magento Quickstart packages to help clients to build stores quickly. This will help you to get up and running quickly, while letting you to customize the store however you like.
- Custom Extensions: Whether you are adding custom functionality or enhancing an extension, we will guide you and help you plan the right approach and build extensions.
- Replatform to Magento: When your current commerce platform not meeting your expectations, NextRow helps you replatform your commerce application to Magento. Whether it’s a simple replatform or a complex one, you are in safe hands with NextRow.
- Magento Development: Whether you are looking for full implementation, or some customizations, or performance enhancements, our certified Magento 2 will be up for the challenge.
- Magento Custom Themes: Responsive and customized themes are a great way to attract and retain a visitor on your site. Our templates are thoroughly tested for mobile responsiveness and all major browsers to reduce your testing time.
- Magento Integrations: Integrating to 3rd party systems is a must for all Magento clients. We will not leave you high and dry. We ensure you have all your integrations built for your eCommerce site to be successful.
- Magento Upgrades & Security: Upgrades are a standard process for any application and Magento is no different. Depending on the versions you are behind and the security concerns, we will devise a plan to ensure interruption free upgrades and patches.
Given the current market landscape, NextRow has rolled out some packages to help the clients to optimize their Magento maintenance budgets.
For any Magento services, please reach out to sales@nextrow.com or call +1-(888)-578-6558
Leverage Live Stream Videos on Your Magento Website (How and Why)
Brands are highly focused on marketing strategy and improving businesses using communication tools for promotions and sales. More importantly, it has become inevitable to be a part of new trends in the marketing landscape to stay ahead in the business economy. Approaching your customers and convincing your visitors about your products and services with live streaming is one of the trending marketing tactics.
Live streaming is highly effective in the e-commerce marketing domain. With the audio-visuals gaining popularity and proving their effectiveness, Magento 2 has provided live streaming options for product demos either on social media platforms or on the website itself. The pandemic has largely been the cause of this shift because it pushed brands and marketers to follow this trend to communicate with their users.
According to Livestream and New York Magazine, almost 80% of people prefer live videos over blogs. Marketers can now connect with audiences, encourage them to interact with their brand, increase brand and product awareness among consumers, and encourage them to proceed with the checkout process. Being one of the most important marketing tools, you should know its few details such as what exactly it is, how you can use it for the best results, why you should use it, and Magento extensions for live streaming.
Build new or upgrade existing eCommerce store with NextRow Digital.
What Is Live Streaming?
Nowadays, you can easily go live on streaming sites such as YouTube and Facebook using a device (Smartphones, laptops, etc.) connected to the internet. Audiences can now view products and demonstrations in real-time, ask questions about the products, and can place orders through a live chat window while watching the live videos.
Live streaming becomes a precious
resource for marketing, especially for
the eCommerce industry, to stay
connected with audiences and drive
online sales.
On the other hand, marketers can get basic real-time information too such as the number of viewers, reactions, and comments using Magento extensions for live streaming. All in all, you can improve customer conversion, engagement, sales, and revenue in a shorter period of time.
Benefits of Live Streaming
- Build Brand Trust Among Your Audiences
- Brand Awareness
- Increases Customer Engagements
- Improve Conversion Rate
- Improved Customer Experience
1. Build Brand Trust Among Your Audiences
Live streaming by an influencer will help you gain the trust of your audiences. An influencer, who is followed by a large number of audiences can make your audience believe in your products and your brand. Plus, a live video allows viewers to experience your products in real time, not through a recorded video or edited photos. It will bring authenticity to your product’s quality and trust in your brand.
2. Brand Awareness
Live streams can give precise information on products and allow them to communicate with other viewers having the same interest. This will build a stronger and bigger community of your audiences and improve awareness of your brand among them.
3. Increases Customer Engagements
A live stream can hold viewers’ attention almost 20 times longer than a recorded video. That’s why Live streaming is getting popularity over time in the marketing economy to engage audiences.
4. Improve Conversion Rate
Live videos encourage trust in products and inspire people to buy more in real time. Consumers can see how a product looks in real life, how to use it, and what are the benefits. Perfectly created live videos can invoke urgency and inspire customers to purchase products in real time.
5. Improved Customer Experience
Marketers can invite any number of influencers in live streaming videos. New and existing customers can watch this and can even message during the stream. You can add products to display in the live stream. Customers can access the previous streams, live streams, and upcoming streams.
How Others Are Getting Benefits From Live Streaming
Many popular brands are already reaping the benefits of Live videos. Tommy Hilfiger attracted almost 14 million people and sold 1300 hoodies in two minutes only in a live stream program. On the other hand, in December 2022, Walmart launched the live streaming in Tiktok and ended up with 7 times more number of viewers than expected and its followers increased by 25 percent. In another live video by famous model Kim Kardashian and Viya (one of the famous streamers on Taobao) sold 15000 bottles of KKW Fragrance within minutes.
No doubt Live streaming is getting popularity for product marketing among marketers, especially in the eCommerce industry.
Magento 2 Extensions for Live Streaming
Magento extensions can be used to propel live streaming videos. With Magento 2 extensions, you can design experience-driven live videos by allowing marketers to design live videos and viewers to get additional information on products. Marketers can assign influencers, and add descriptions, thumbnails, titles, merchandise, and scheduled date. Here are a few of the Magento2 extensions for live streaming:
- Activity Stream
- Facebook Livestream for Magento 2
- Magento Live Feed Extension
1. Activity Stream
Go live with the activities happening at your store such as any new customers that registered, new products added, products sold, and more. Your consumers can see which products have been sold to whom in real-time and how many people are viewing a product and other such activities. With these kinds of live information, your consumers can feel that they are not alone in your store. Also, this information can help them to make decisions with more confidence.
2. Facebook Livestream for Magento 2
Stream live videos from Facebook on your Magento 2 website in real-time to interact with your customers directly and encourage them to purchase products during the live stream.
3. Magento Live Feed Extension
Give updates on all the social activities of your store in a single live stream. Your customers can track what other site users are sharing socially, showing their interest, or actually buying.
Integrate the extension meeting your requirement perfectly for your Magento store. Set up a one-to-one session with the NextRow’s Magento expert
Best Practices for Live Streaming
-Know your audience and then plan accordingly
-What are your goals?
Creating a live stream heavily depends upon your approach and strategy. If you are wondering what is the best practice for Magento 2 live streaming then the answer will always be there is no magic. All you need is a thoughtful strategy.
-Know your audience and then plan accordingly
Knowing your audience should be a major part of your strategy. It means you need to identify who and what influences your audience most. For instance, adults are quite influenced by celebrities in comparison to millennials who require different strategies.
Build the personas of your potential customers and work upon what can influence them most.
-What are your goals?
Live streaming should align with your goals. Whether you want to create awareness about your products or generate instant feedback; you can always create live videos around your goals.
Bonus Tips for Live Streaming
- Promotion before live show
- Check internet connectivity
- Test before live show
- Find the best environment to record
- Add a call-to-action
- Engage with your viewers
The Future With Magento Live Streaming
Magento 2 Live Streaming is transforming the way of e-commerce marketing. It helps brands to sell a larger number of products instantly, shortens the sales cycle, and increases revenue. This is just a step into live stream marketing but we will definitely see a lot more in the future. For instance, nowadays, it is most popular in the eCommerce industry but we can expect to see its importance in other sectors as well. Likewise, advancements in technology such as AR, VR, and AI can add innovation to live streaming too. As of now, you can reap the benefits of live streaming at your Magento store to encourage more purchases and engagement.
If you need any help with the Magento store and live streaming on the Magento site, contact our Magento experts at sales@nextrow.com.
How Is Digital Asset Management (DAM) Different from Content Management System (CMS)?
The amount of digital content generated every day is overwhelming for the enterprises. With the CMS platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, and enterprise platforms such as Sitecore, Adobe Experience Manager, it became easier to manage the content.
As the word “content” is used interchangeably to talk about text, images, videos, documents alike, people do get confused between CMS platforms and Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms. Let’s look into these platforms and see what they are used for the most.
Content Management System (CMS) Platforms:
The Content management systems (CMS) were initially created as a means to simplify website content delivery processes. It provides the user a core hub to edit and publish content, with the user-friendly interface. CMS comes in various forms based on the content it manages and is designed for non-technical users to stop worrying about the behind-the-page aspects of website management. Content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal, Magnolia are most popular and are used widely in SMB market. CMS platforms such as Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, Acquia are used mostly in enterprise space for their reliability, extensibility, integration capabilities to enterprise marketing platforms such as Eloqua, Adobe Campaign, ExactTarget.
The Benefits of CMS:
I covered only a few important features of CMS platform here. This is not the entire features list and each platform has it’s own unique features, which are covered in other blogs, such as “Adobe Experience Manager Overview“.
1) Decoupling the content creation process from web development
Content is key for every site. New content refreshes the site, increases the search ranking and makes visitors spend more time on the site. Before CMS, developers used to update the content combined with their weekly or nightly builds. This became painful for business teams who need the fresh content right then on demand. CMS platforms decouple the content creation process from web development, which helps business update the content on the site as and when they need.
2) Ability to create pages on demand
CMS platforms empower the business teams to add/update/delete pages as needed without relying on IT. This saves a lot of time and money for the business as the business can create the pages using existing templates without relying much on IT.
3) Site management is made easy
With CMS, the dependency on IT to manage the site is gone. Business can manage the site on their own without overly relying on IT.
4) Centralized backend admin interface
The admin interface lets you manage everything easily. However, this gets complicated in enterprise-grade CMS platforms.
WordPress is the most used CMS out there. However, it’s mainly used by individuals and many small businesses. Enterprise web CMS space is dominated by Adobe with the popular Adobe Experience Manager product for it’s open architecture, easy to integrate and Adobe marketing cloud native integration.
Digital Asset Management:
With the enormous growth of digital footprint, comes the pain of managing all the digital assets, tag them properly, find them when needed to re-use or alter to the current needs. Digital Asset Management platforms help organize documents, images, videos, presentations, InDesign files, Photoshop files, PDFs etc. It acts as a centralized digital library for organizing, searching and converting files to provide clients and employees an access to all digital assets with ease and simplicity. We all know that companies invest a lot of time and money in the production of digital. But many companies do little or have inefficient ways to manage these digital assets and end up creating new when other teams need them. DAM platforms will not only centralize the assets, but also help find when needed with proper setup. To allow these digital assets for re-use, the digital assets must maintain relevant metadata in a DAM, which includes information about the asset. This helps users accessing these files can instantly know all technical details such as image size, resolution and color depth as well as contextual information like author, license rights, approval status, etc. Today, DAM is used by almost every large corporations and successful brands to streamline the workflow among their internal teams and clients. Key aspects of DAM are setting up right taxonomy and enforcing the taxonomy to yield better results over long term.
Benefits of DAM:
Business evolved from storing the digital assets on network folders to online drives and eventually to a more robust Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms. Irrespective of the client’s industry, DAM became a central point for all digital assets. Enterprise DAM platforms such as AEM DAM help clients not only to store, but also with robust finding/retrieval capabilities, combined with Artificial Intelligence (Adobe Sensei) and out-of-box as well customizable workflows, marketing platform integrations, and robust tagging capabilities. DAM improves overall team efficiency and helps in cutting down on admin, design, and production costs, by streamlining approval processes and improving asset reuse. Today, Digital Asset Management Implementation has become a critical part of all major companies willing to keep a synchronize workflow among their marketing, creative, or IT teams.
DAM vs CMS? What’s the right fit for me?
Start with your needs. Are you looking to build a site to manage the content on your own without the need for developer? You have lot of text that’s available on your site for your visitors to present in HTML format? Then, CMS would be your choice.
If your need is to manage your digital assets such as PDF, documents, images, videos, then you should be opting for DAM.
NextRow does help clients to evaluate the needs and suggest the right platforms. Reach out to sales@nextrow.com to help you with your needs.
Know All About New Digital Asset Management Capabilities Included in AEM 6.4
In today’s world, Data is the bread and butter of all the digital businesses, and Content Management System (CMS) is considered as the powerhouse to execute all the web-based functionaries. To ease the online business doing, there are many Content Management Systems available, but, the one that has garnered most of the attention from Enterprises, is Adobe Experience Manager CMS. Over the years, the AEM has gone through various changes to accommodate more features to assist businesses in the best possible ways and in a much easier and efficient manner.
Continuing the previous trends, this year also Adobe has launched the latest Adobe Experience Manager 6.4, that comes with many changes and alluring features. Out of all, the various advanced and new capabilities included in the AEM assets is at the center of all talks. Adobe has gone beyond DAM’s traditional focus on storage and has included exciting new technologies for workflows, dynamic imaging, search, and distribution. The latest AEM 6.4 also comes with the improved performance and enhanced search and metadata features to help marketing teams work on, find and use assets faster. Let us look at some of the top-notch DAM features that have been rolled out with the latest Adobe Experience Manager 6.4.
1.
Asset Search Improvements:
Prior to AEM 6.4, one could not search by folder name in Omni Search option, however, now one can either search by file name or folder name or both. It also allows you to filter the assets by their MIME type (.png, .jpg, .tiff, .svg, .psd etc) to refine the search results.
It has also implemented the changes on the search results page and has added New Search back button with an ability to navigate to a search item and come back to the same position in search results without running the search query again. Next and Previous buttons are also added to navigate to assets in a folder instead of clicking each one by one.
2.
Browsing Improvements:
AEM 6.4 presents users with a Content Tree rail in combination with list view to easily navigate assets hierarchy. It also has an improved lazy loading experience in the card and list view when it comes to browsing a huge number of assets.
3.
Keyboard shortcuts:
AEM 6.4 comes with some keyboard shortcuts in assets such as (m) for Move operation, (p) for navigation to properties page, (ctrl+c) for copy operation and backspace for delete and many more. With this feature, now you don’t have to always use the mouse and can also use the keyboard shortcuts as well.
4.
Meta Data Schemas:
AEM 6.4 now has a ‘3rd tab’ called ‘Rules’ (as shown in the image below), from here you can control and determine whether a value for a field is required or not. Also, you can change the visibility of the field depending on custom rules.
5.
Metadata Management Capabilities:
AEM 6.4 includes multiple advanced metadata management capabilities to manage metadata at scale and enforce metadata integrity through rules and validations. New Bulk Metadata Export capability enables you to export (all or selective) metadata for the large number of assets in CSV format for editing, sharing, and third-party integration. In similar fashion, the New Bulk Metadata Import capability has been included for importing CSV file for adding new metadata, updating existing metadata for multiple assets in one go. This feature is useful in case you need to do any bulk updates for metadata.
6.
Asset Reports:
AEM 6.4 has major asset reporting enhancements:
- A new reporting UI where users can generate reports on their own by specifying different folder paths, date range etc.
- A feature to generate report instantly or at a future date & time.
- It includes few new reports such as Disk Usage report and Files report.
- It allows adding custom columns/fields to reports such as Asset Upload report, Asset Download report.
- A report purge functionality used to delete reports which are no longer required.
7.
Insights View Option:
If you have configured AEM with insights then you can get the insights view as well along with the list, column, and card view options.
Apart from the above, AEM 6.4 Assets also comes with Smart translation search and Smart tags using Adobe Sensei – an Artificial Intelligence tool developed indigenously by Adobe.
1.
Adobe Sensei Powered Smart Translation Search:
AEM 6.4 has introduced Smart Translation Search capability to support multilingual search, which enables globally distributed teams across multiple locales to access and search in different languages without having to go through costly and time-consuming translation workflows. Multi-lingual search supports more than 50 global languages and is based on open source library Apache Joshua.
2.
Enhanced Smart Tags Powered by Adobe Sensei:
With AEM 6.4 the Adobe has enhanced the SmartTags launched with AEM 6.3. The latest Smart Tags will instantly help the marketers in discovering the relevant images by the use of a self-learning algorithm powered by Adobe Sensei. This algorithm helps in fetching images and populates tags based on the unique business classification and also plays a vital role when new assets are introduced into the DAM, by identifying and creating unique tags. Along with the Smart Tags, some new tools have also been added to help the DAM admins by empowering them to automatically import, export, curate, extract, manage, administer, and govern metadata for large repositories of digital assets.
In the above article, we have discussed some latest DAM capabilities in AEM Assets, if you have any queries regarding the AEM 6.4 or AEM Assets and the ways in which it can transform your digital experience for your business, then do ask us. Email sales@nextrow.com today to discuss your current or next Adobe project at +1-847-592-2920.
Five Best Digital Asset Management Vendors for Your DAM Needs
In the digitally fast-paced world, the need for managing digital assets like – images, videos, PDF, word documents, spreadsheet, in an efficient and secure way is mandatory for any organization. Especially for the large enterprises, as they often have terabytes of assets to handle. Enterprises have specific needs for robust digital asset management processes and tools that offer advanced feature sets for storing assets, securing intellectual property, enabling discovery through the keyword search, and more. For this very reason, from past few years, a central repository system like DAM (Digital Asset Management) has gained a lot of popularity. It’s a very handy tool to keep in sync all data with marketing, IT and creative teams, within the organization and letting them access all these very efficiently.
Basically, Digital asset management tool has taken the place of physical storage spaces and even traditional internal servers by offering a more organized and retrievable solution by streamlining the process of storing, archiving, searching, retrieving and circulating files. The selection of right Digital Asset Management Software depends on products features, functionality, integration capabilities, product architecture, future roadmap, implementation costs, vendors availability to support and more.
Many customers reach us asking us to do vendor-neutral assessment of DAM platforms. After helping many clients with these analysis, I have put together a few contenders (note this is not a complete list, many are omitted here for ease of reading. The DAM vendors we evaluate vary based on the client needs. I have mentioned a few common names only).
1.
Cumulus DAM By Canto:
Cumulus is a flagship enterprise DAM technology by Canto that allows clients to efficiently secure, repurpose and distribute brand assets. The latest version of it is Cumulus 11 that comes with image recognition powered by two artificial intelligence providers – EyeEm Vision and Clarifai. Cumulus uses sophisticated metadata information of digital assets to store, search, sort, track changes and also enables you to publish your brand assets on multiple platforms and channels. It has been powered by Amazon Web Services to deliver images efficiently across the globe and also eliminates duplicate and variant media files across enterprise systems.
2.
WebDAM:
WebDAM is a cloud-based tool and is among leading Digital Asset Management Vendor that delivers top DAM solutions for all types of business. Its DAM tool has capabilities to automate and streamline common tasks, clearing the way for creative and marketing teams to work faster and deliver more impact. WebDAM is capable of uniting various teams on a common, cloud-based platform and keeps them in sync throughout the creative asset lifecycle. Also, it provides one-click access to publish assets across marketing channels to keep you connected with your customers.
3.
A DAM Software:
A DAM Software, also known as Aprimo Digital Asset Management, is an enterprise DAM solution which delivers engaging customer experiences across different stages of content lifecycles. ADAM also has a combination of marketing operations technology and digital asset management software, giving marketers the advantage to govern and grow their brand. It’ an innovative suite available in both cloud or on-premise, for enterprises of all sizes. In 2017, ADAM released an integration with Adobe Creative Cloud, which is critical for many creative and marketing teams.
4.
OpenText MediaBin:
OpenText MediaBin is a digital asset management solution available with both on-premise and the cloud. It delivers a superior customer experience by effectively managing, reusing, distributing, and publishing thousands of customer-facing digital assets. It has support for all business users including enterprises and provides tailored role and permission-based, self-service access. With permission-based workflows, it empowers your team to clearly and effectively communicate your brand to your customers. It Understands and analyzes abundant media assets by automatically tagging, categorizing, and cross-referencing them.
5.
Adobe Experience Manager DAM:
The AEM DAM tool is designed to fit into a team’s existing processes and workflows while acting as a centralized repository for an enterprise’s digital assets. Adobe’s most unique feature among other enterprise DAMs is its native integration capability with the Creative Cloud tools. This integration brings the added value to the teams, as they can stay involved with their respective work and don’t always have to break workflow to find the right assets they need. Other noting features included in the AEM DAM are search and metadata management, dynamic media support, and the ability to provide personalized media experiences to global audiences of clients.
The list doesn’t end here, and the features listed here are only a few important features clients typically look for. NextRow, a leading DAM implementation partner for many Fortune 500 clients, helps with vendor-neutral analysis for the clients to select the best DAM based on their needs, not based on industry bests. For a detailed analysis of your DAM needs, please call us today @ +1-847-592-2920 or E-mail us at sales@nextrow.com
Disclaimer:
The above comparison is not a complete list, and is my personal view only. Any omittance of features is not intentional and tried my best to give as much information as possible. Feel free to reach me directly at akumar@nextrow.com for any suggestions/corrections. I will be glad to incorporate.
Strategies and Challenges in Mobile App Testing
In this contemporary world, mobiles have become an integral part of our life, and it’s unimaginable to think of a life without it. Mobiles have gained an invincible space in the lives of humans and have evolved considerably faster than expected. According to an estimate, there will be about 5.5 Billion mobile users by 2020, which accounts for about 70 percent of the total world population. The mobile apps have portrayed an absolutely remarkable role in its monumental popularity. Today, we possess all kinds of mobile apps to perform almost every chore of our daily routine. In addition, businesses are increasingly finding it necessary to have an application to remain relevant and connected with their users. The usability and necessity of mobile apps have made it very essential to keep these flawless. The increase in app usage, followed by rapid mobile app development, has given birth to a critical need for a proper app testing process.
In the current scenario, it’s mandatory to implement the appropriate strategies during application development by recognizing the challenges an app can face in the real world. In this article, we are going to discuss some highly considerable challenges and strategies in mobile app testing process. Let’s first start with the challenges and then we will move towards strategies to overcome them.
Challenges In Mobile App Testing Services:
1.
App Performance And User Experience Issues:
The success of any mobile app is directly connected with the kind of user experience it provides to the users. An innovative, contextually appropriate and pre-defined user interface along with faster and uninterrupted performance impacts the preference of users. Bug-free apps with top-notch performance can easily convince your target consumers to download your application. Most users grades and rates the app on the basis of performance and experience delivered by it. This produces a direct effect on your app business because many new users choose applications based on previous reviews and ratings. Hence, an error or bug-free app along with the right user experience remain compelling factors to make that app sustainable in the market. Moreover, one must keep upgrading and improving the app to ensure users never consider leaving.
2.
Device Fragmentation:
Today, there are more than 24000 different types of Android devices (let alone iOS devices) available in the market, having different sizes, shapes, hardware, and software, posing a completely new set of challenges for the testers. The number includes all kinds of Mobile Phones, Pads, Tablets, Wearable tech and many more. This vast array of the devices has made it tougher for any quality team of testers to assure singular user experience and performance of the app, across different platforms, devices, and operating systems.
3.
Security:
Many personal and critical data are stored on the apps, so it’s highly crucial to provide the data privacy features in the apps. Testing the apps on the secure and the private cloud reduces the chance of data breaches and it also helps in recognizing security issues faster. Fixing problems before the production or the release of the app saves you a lot of money. According to an estimate, one can save 20 times the cost by fixing a bug before release than after the release.
4.
Too many Testing Tools:
Currently, there are excessive numbers of testing tools in the market, making it very hard to choose from. Most of the time we try searching for a tool that can handle all the mobile automation testing processes. But the fact is, there is no single tool that can satisfy all your testing needs. Each and every tool, either paid or open source, have their own limitations. Hence, it becomes imperative to have a sound strategy to prioritize your needs, totally based upon your understanding.
5.
Different Types Of Mobile Apps:
There are three currently available – Native, Web-based or Hybrid. As the implementation of these three apps is different from each other, their test case scenarios equally vary from one another. The differences are more evident while executing performance, stress, compatibility, and conformance testing. Native applications have lesser scope for testing, whereas, hybrid and web apps require both on and off platform testing. Web Apps primarily needs to be tested on the choice of browser versions, while Native and Hybrid apps require testing for execution, download, compatibility, platform interaction, and updates.
Here, I am wrapping up the challenges associated with the App Testing, and now, let’s jump to the strategies, which are must to overcome the challenges experienced in the mobile app testing.
Strategies For Mobile App Testing Services
1.
Device Matrix:
This is a significant factor because the selection of the testing device is made on the basis of the behavior of the target audience. By analyzing the market research, it becomes easier to determine the set of devices and Operating Systems that will have the highest occurrence. For Example — if the App supports both Android and iOS, but most of the users in your target market are using Android Devices like — Samsung, Google Nexus and Moto G devices and very few iPhones, then you can prioritize testing on the Google Nexus and Moto G above the iPhone device. In this scenario, the test plan will consist of testing on devices which are prioritized by your market analysis.
2.
Selection Of Emulators Or Physical Device:
One of the critical factors related to mobile app testing is the platform in which the testing will be performed. Whether the platform should be a physical device or an emulator depends upon nature of the test which needs to be carried out. Emulators can be utilized for user interface testing, and physical devices are most suitable for performance testing. Emulators can also be used to improve the cost-effectiveness of mobile app testing. There is no generalized opinion on which one is best for mobile app testing. Hence, it’s better to introspect the complete project and analyze the nature of testing required for it.
3.
Selection Of Cloud Or In-House Testing:
There must be a strategy to choose among Cloud or In-House Testing based on the testing requirements. Most of the time, we think that cloud testing is the best option, but we must understand that in-house solutions are handy for special requirements. The cloud is a useful tool to meet the need for mobility and teams located all over the world. Also, testing in the cloud can overcome obstacles like acquiring and maintaining many devices, as well as accessing the device pool from different locations. On the other hand, an in-house solution is more adaptable to individual needs – making it a perfect solution for companies that need an extra security layer and doesn’t want data to leave the office. It must be noted that due to the storage space limitation, the device choice will be limited.
4.
Prioritize The Security Of The App:
Security is one of the crucial factors which decides the success of any mobile app. The security breaches through mobile apps have cost Billions to users from all over the world. Due to this, modern-day users refrain from using apps having weaker security. Thus, the testing regime for a mobile app should also include security testing and methods such as static and dynamic analyzing test must be conducted to identify loopholes in the existing security architecture of the mobile app. To ensure a robust security mechanism, testing should also try to locate various vulnerabilities present in the app.
To summarize, an effective mobile testing strategy is the backbone to deliver reliable and high-performing apps. The challenges of mobile testing are often unique to each business, and hence the strategies to achieve the right solution will also vary. At the end of the day, nothing helps tackle challenges faster than partnering with the right associates. NextRow Digital can be a helping hand to you that has experienced QA teams to analyze, strategize and plan the test cases to carry out error-free testing of mobile apps. High performing app with top-notch and flawless features are our sole goal to deliver to our clients. To learn more about our mobile app testing services, visit us.
