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Consistent navigation in Business Catalyst

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 16:22:29 GMT

Starting with the January release we're adding some usability improvements in BC. One of them is related to the main navigation (ribbon) that currently enables a user to move around you from "Site Manager" to "File Manager - alpha - ", "Site Editor" and "Partner Portal".

Since we discovered that this type of navigation is confusing (mainly for fresh partners) we've slightly changed it and added a new browsing mode.

Basically the new browsing modes are:

Preview - which will open the front end of your website (with the navigation sticky, enabled in front-end)
Content - which will open the current "Site Editor"
Develop - which opens the current "File Manager"
Manage - which is takes you to the Admin Console

We're looking to make this navigation consistent (same behavior for all browsing modes), although for now it will not be present in the "Content" mode. For the Partner Portal, it will be ready starting with the February release (together with other usability improvements in the Partner Portal).

Here's a preview with the Navigation activated on the front-end (Preview mode) of the website (click on the image to enlarge).

Here's how you'll se the navigation on the Back-end (Manage Mode) of the website(click on the image to enlarge):

Note: if the new navigation in front-end doesn’t fit your needs (your template layout) or you don’t want your customer to see this type of navigation, you can disable it from your Partner Portal > Settings tab (the last setting on the page).

This navigation will be available starting the January release. We’ll add some more improvements to this navigation in the next releases.

UPDATE: the navigation ribbon will be disabled in front-end at release; you can enable it from the Partner Portal switch.

Dragos M., Product Manager Business Catalyst

How to protect your website from SPAM submissions

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:38:35 GMT

What is SPAM and why does a website owner encounter SPAM?

Spam is no longer limited to email marketing, but it comes in various forms through websites and blogs that support commenting or forms.

There are several reasons for which a human or an automatic spammer might submit comments and forms with irrelevant information:

Comments
- To bring visitors to the site that the comment or the user is referring
- To link-back (for free) an other website for search engine ranking benefits
Submitted web forms
- Different commercial or scam purposes – I am sending you an offer via the contact form; works just like in the case of email spam

What type of SPAM can you find on your website on your customers’ websites?

SPAM in comments or web forms can be submitted automatically by Spam bots or by humans. Both human spammers and Spam bots get cleverer and cleverer all the time to achieve their goals.

Human spammers improve their text and comments all the time so that they seem as natural as possible; whereas bots improve their ways of bypassing anti Spam mechanisms .

Both types of spammers are equally dangerous, although the content submitted by Spam bots can be more annoying due to the large number of comments or submitted forms.

How can you protect your sites from SPAM

Before listing a series of best practices, I must say that there is no single solution for this, that the process is a continuous one and that the site owner/partner must commit to it on e medium-long time frame.

Human SPAM has to be treated differently from automatic SPAM and vice-versa.

Human Spammers

1. Use Akismet. Make sure that you enable Akismet from the Admin Console > Module Modules>Comments.

Make sure that you train Akismet everyday for at least 2-3 weeks, until Akismet learns what type of content and what users to consider SPAM. BC is sending right to Akismet all the information related to a comment: user IP, username, website, email address, comment text. Based on these details Akismet will learn which user is dangerous and start marking all the comments from that user as SPAM. And if the user changes the IP, username, email address or website, Akismet learns the structure of the comment used by that specific user and mark it as SPAM.

2. Moderate each comment: if Akismet fails at some point, be sure that the company behind the service is doing the best to improve the SPAM detection algorithms. Hence, until they release a new version or until they improve the current one, you need to start moderating comments. This is a shared responsibility, between the technology providers and the website owners.

Observation: Sometimes, Akismet may mark valid comments as SPAM (in this case, they are called false positives). In order to teach Akismet that this specific comment is a valid one, you need to mark it as valid.

So your responsibility as a partner or your customer’s responsibility is to check regularly the Comments tab and mark them as SPAM or to approve them as genuine comments.

Automatic Spammers

The most effective solution for spam bots is a strong CAPTCHA. But most of the times a strong CAPTCHA can annoy blog or forum users. Any commenter wants a very easy way to submit his content and make it accessible to others. And you or your customers must make sure to provide this easiness.

However, n order to avoid irritating automatic spam submitted through forms and blogs, follow the next steps:

For Blogs or forums:

1. Start with Akismet (see the above observations).

2. If you are not satisfied with the level of SPAM that you encounter, you can enable CAPTCHA on your comments. Go to Site Settings > Captcha and choose the type of Image verification that you want to enable. In the case of comments we only offer native Image Verification solutions. For web forms we’ve also enabled reCaptcha.

3. Make sure that you enforce CAPTCHA on “Comments”.

4. As you can see, there are 2 versions for the native CAPTCHA solution. If the level of SPAM is very high, we recommend that you use the second one (“Harder to read, but more secure”).

Observation: If your business has a strong social presence or if you want to build a strong social presence and Facebook is an important channel, you can also use Facebook comments for your blog.

For WebForms (and checkout forms):

1. CAPTCHA – when you create the form make sure that you enable ”Image Verification” in Misc. The version of CAPTCHA (“Easier to read vs. Harder to read, but more secure”) will be the one that you chose from Site Settings>Captcha.

2. reCaptcha If this solution is not what you are looking for, you can try inserting reCaptcha, the Google native image verification system. You can find it also in the Misc section.

3. Anti-bot Fraud Protection module: All new forms come, by default, with “Web form protection module” enabled. You can see it in the form or if you check out the Code View, you’ll be able to see the generated code for this module. Make sure that you don’t delete it. The usage of this type of modules is something that we recommend that you always do. It is in fact a hidden “Input Field” with a random name. Spam bots usually fill this field, and once we detect that this field is being filled, we realize that the corresponding form submission is through a bot. Humans don’t see this field and aren’t able to submit it. For older forms, you will have to add this module to a form if it is not activated yet.

Observation: our research shows that visitors (humans) are not as annoyed by filling in image verification fields (CAPTCHA, reCaptcha) in case of web forms (contact submission, payment forms etc) compared to comments. So, when dealing with web forms, try to enable an image verification form (whether the new Captcha Image Verification version or reCapctcha).

What’s missing and known issues

In case of blog comments, when using Akismet, the associated workflow notification is being sent just before Akismet succeeds to mark a comment as SPAM. This is because Akismet checks for SPAM asynchronous (independent) from the comment engine. We are working on fixing this issue
Our current analytics system displays visits from spam bots as real visits and we make no distinction between human visitors and spam bots yet.

Let us know how your process of stopping SPAM from your sites and blogs works.

Kind Regards,

Dragos Manescu, Product Manager Adobe Business Catalyst

Email Lists Filtering with Business Catalyst (beta)

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 10:31:41 GMT

What is email filtering?

A while ago while talking to various online marketers and BC partners, we realized that the current email marketing solution inside Business Catalyst lacks a simple functionality that can empower everybody to better use email marketing. We call this feature "Filtering" and it will enable partners or business owners to better target subscribers of their mailing lists based on concrete business criteria.

This way you can make sure that you send relevant content, discounts, offers to your recipients. Today we are launching the beta version of this feature.

On a broader level, you can generally filter mailing lists based on categories such:

demographics
geography
activity on the website
economics - product purchases
subscriber validity in the mailing list

And when it comes to filtering, the possibilities are endless, as you can always get more and more granular with your filtering criteria. Research shows that filtering lists prior sending increases email deliverability, open rates, click rates inside a newsletter and even campaign purchases.

Example - business case

You or your customer may want to send a 50% discount for a romantic trip in Caribbean Islands this Christmas only to young couples with high spending behavior.

This way you will make sure that you don't send this offer to low spenders, who never travel anywhere during Christmas. Therefore you will have more accurate conversion rates and the messaging can

be more appealing for your target audience.

So, how can you do this with Business Catalyst? See the video below -

For a higher quality of the video, access this link. You will need to have the Windows Media Player plugin for the browser enabled.

Which are the current released filters?

In order to enable this feature, go to Site Settings>Beta Features and check the "Enable" box.

This feature is in Beta because it doesn't have all the filters that we planned for it. Right now you can apply the following criteria to your mailing lists:

Demographics: City, Country or Zip Code
Date of birth
Purchased value (with period of time) based on the currency of the site
Age of the subscriber (when the subscriber was added to the list)
The relationship between the filters can be OR ('Any') or AND ('All'). this relationship is applied to all filters; you can't have different relationships between different filters - (e.g. - between Filter 1 and Filter 2 you will have "AND" and between Filter 2 and Filter 3 you will have "OR".

What next?

We plan to add the following filters:

Added to cart but did not purchase (with period of time)
Sex of the subscriber (female, male)
Received a certain campaign in the past - usually used for follow-up campaigns
Opened a certain campaign in the past- usually used for follow-up campaigns
Clicked a link inside a previous campaign - usually used for follow-up campaigns

Other improvements

Refresh for the calculation of the number of subscribers after applying the filter will be automatic (right now you need to press the "refresh" button).
You will be able to launch a follow-up campaign after a current campaign is sent.

Known issues

Filtering can't be applied to loyalty campaigns yet.
You can't save a filtered list.
You can't save a set of filters to apply it to a different campaign.
For the filter "Purchased more than", the amount is considered automatically in the default currency of the domain. We will make it more obvious and add the possibility for the user to choose different currencies at next release of this feature.

So, in order to successfully improve this feature and launch it officially, I would like to invite you to test it, play with it, apply it to new campaigns and give us feedback here, in this thread.

UPDATE: we're taking this feature out of "Beta". Hence it will be available for all sites without activation. We've fixed some of the visual glitches and added product specific filters ("Purchased product", "Did not purchase product", "Added to cart but did not buy"). Further we'll be implementing some more filters.

Thanks,

Dragos MANESCU