How to add a placeholder attribute in Sitecore module WebForms for Marketers
When I started creating forms in Sitecore module Webforms for Marketers (WFFM), the first thing that popped up was how do I add placeholder attribute in the textbox. I am sure many of you might get stuck on this issue, so here I explain how can one add the placeholder attribute in Sitecore Web Forms for Marketers. To begin, you need to create a class that inherits from SingleLineText with an additional property “Placeholder”. public class SingleLineText : Sitecore.Form.Web.UI.Controls.SingleLineText { [VisualCategory(“Appearance”)] [VisualFieldType(typeof(TextAreaField)), Localize] [VisualProperty(“PlaceholderText:”, 100)] public string PlaceholderText { get; set; } protected override void DoRender(HtmlTextWriter writer) { this.textbox.Attributes.Add(“placeholder”, this.PlaceholderText); base.DoRender(writer); } } Further you can create a new custom field type item under /sitecore/System/Modules/Settings/Field Types/Custom. Set Assembly and the Class. Oh yes! You also need to add Count Chars and Regex Pattern validation. Finally set “Textbox with placeholder” custom field type in Form Designer and Placeholder Text. And you are done. Webforms for Marketers field type with a placeholder attribute is ready for use!
Sitecore CMS installation: A step by step guide to set-up Sitecore 8.0
To start working with Sitecore, first of all you need to install Sitecore on your system and setup a development environment. Here in the blog I describe the easy steps to setup the environment for you. You can download the latest version of Sitecore from SDN. Sitecore CMS is distributed in two ways- It can be downloaded as an .exe file or one can get a ZIP file i.e. “an archived copy of a Sitecore CMS solution”. Downloading ZIP file gives more control on the installation and it’s easy to use.
On extracting the ZIP file, you will find three logical components/folders:
– WebSite : IIS document root
– Data: Store for logs and data.
– Database: Relational database files used by Sitecore solution
To install Sitecore 8.0, the basic hosting environment requirements are:
- Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
- Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1
- IIS 7.0
- Sitecore License File
Sitecore installation uses three databases, mainly:
– Master: It contains every version of all the content and data items
– Web: It contains most recent version of all the content and data items. Data on published site is rendered using this database.
– Core: It contains Sitecore settings and.Net membership provider tables for User/Role management
Steps to Install Sitecore using ZIP file:
1. Choose a parent directory path for the project, for example – C:inetpub
2. Create a Folder with project name, for example – Sitecoredemo, and extract the ZIP folder inside that at the location C:inetpubSitecoredemo. The extraction will create folders as below:
– C:InetPub Sitecoredemo Website
– C:InetPub Sitecoredemo Data
– C:InetPub Sitecoredemo Databases
3. Place the license.xml file to the /Data folder
4. Change the location of /Data folder in the web.config file placed inside Website folder to use the absolute path as below:
<sc.variable name=”dataFolder” value=” C:InetPub Sitecoredemo Data” />
5. Open SQL server Management Studio and attach all these three databases (Core, Master & Web) using .mdf files placed in Databases folder.
6. Create new SQL server login and select User Mappings tab
7. Select Sitecore databases one by one and select the following check boxes In the Database role membership for field.
For Master and Web databases
db_datareader
db_datawriter
public
For Core database
aspnet_Membership_BasicAccess
aspnet_Membership_FullAccess
aspnet_Membership_ReportingAcces
aspnet_Profile_BasicAccess
aspnet_Profile_FullAccess
aspnet_Profile_ReportingAccess
aspnet_Roles_BasicAccess
aspnet_Roles_FullAccess
aspnet_Roles_ReportingAccess
db_datareader
db_datawriter
public
8. Modify the ConnectionStrings.config file placed inside /Website/App_Config/ folder by providing values in a line for each database, for example:
<add name=”core” connectionString=”user id=sqlserveruser ;password=userpassword; Data Source=sqlserver; Database=core_database_name_” />
9. Open IIS, create new Application Pool by inserting Projectname, appropriate .Net framework version and set managed pipeline mode as Integrated.
10. Now create new website in IIS by providing sitename as Sitecoredemo, Application Pool name as the newly created App Pool name, set physical path to the Website folder located at:
C:InetPub Sitecoredemo Website
11. Limit anonymous users access to following folders inside /website
/App_Config
/Sitecore/admin
/Sitecore/debug
/Sitecore/shell/WebService
Go to the Authentication panel and disable Anonymous Authentication for these folders.
12. Add following entry in your hosts file located at:
C:WindowsSystem32driversetc:
127.0.0.1 Sitecoredemo
13. Now access your website by browsing the below address:
You can access the Admin section using the below address:
http://Sitecoredemo/sitecore
With this, you complete your local development environment set up and now you can start with your development work.
I will be discussing the set up of website solution in Visual Studio in my next blog.
Advaiya has the Sitecore experience and expertise to integrate Sitecore solution with your business critical systems like ERP and CRM. You can contact us anytime to help you get the most out of this powerful content management system.
Easy navigation AB tests for content marketers
Websites have 2 core assets: content and navigation. While content marketers obsess over their content, they rarely think about their website navigation. This is madness. Since website navigation is the single-most-clicked asset for any website, failing to provide in the right website navigation is like flushing money down the toilet.
Let’s Stop the Madness and Test Our Website Navigation
Website navigation optimization – Getting website navigation right can be complicated. Looking only at historical data does not help, because website visitors typically go where the navigation takes them – so if your current “anchor position” navigation (the top left element of your website navigation) accounts for a high number of conversions, that is simply because you are driving the most visitors to that page. What we need to do is AB test what happens when we send 50% of the website traffic to one page and 50% to another, measuring both which links get clicked more and also which visited pages drive more conversions. This process of driving traffic to different experiences and measuring the performance differences is called AB Testing.
3 Website Navigation Tests You Start Today
AB Test with Boosters
Boosters, or floating “next page” recommendations, are the easiest way to get started. Just create an account at www.payboard.com, drop the script in the footer of your site, customize the design of your booster, and BAM! you are ready to start learning what pages are most effective at driving clicks and conversions. Payboard will run these experiments for you, and provide updates every week about your AB Tests: which tests are winning, and which tests to retire. Once you see a significant trend, you can decide to update your static navigation with some fresh, high-performing pages that your visitors need to convert.
AB Test a Widget
If you do not want a floating booster on your page, you can also use an “inline booster” that is anchored in the sidebar of your WordPress site. This is a two-step process (assuming that you already have the Payboard script added to the footer of your site): 1) add a “Text” widget to your sidebar (Appearance > Widgets > drag Text to Sidebar); and 2) paste the HTML below into the input box labeled “Content” and hit Save.
<a href=”/”>Visit Our Home Page</a>
Other than including the payboardInlineBooster class, this is just standard HTML, so you can add whatever formatting you want, point to whatever default destination you want, etc. Whenever the page is pulled up, Payboard will replace the destination and the anchor text with one of your other pages, and then measure which of your pages, when recommended, performs best from a clicks and clicked conversions perspective.
AB Test Top Navigation
The most important element on your website is your “anchor position” navigation – the top-left navigation element on your website. Let’s start there. Sure, you can do tests on any navigation element (e.g., the middle bottom, clicked .001% of the time), but your goal here is to learn what works at getting your visitors to click and convert, so let’s be bold!
In WordPress, go to Appearance > Menus, and expand the top left navigation item so that you can add “payboardInlineBooster” in the CSS Classes (optional) box. Hit “Save Menu” and you should see your navigation update immediately.
If you apply each of these elements, you can expect that 10% of your visitors will end up clicking on one of your tests, and you will learn faster about which of your content assets perform than if you only use one technique.
Above, the top navigation encourages visitors to start a 30-day free trial, and below the top navigation encourages visitors to read about success stories.
Start AB Testing Today. More Customers Will Thank You Tomorrow!
AB Testing does take time to deliver value, but if you stick with it you will learn what your website needs to do to help visitors convert. If do not have the time or the available talent to implement your own AB Testing strategy, you can hire a content marketing firm like Advaiya to help you map out your testing strategy and get you moving in the right direction. Advaiya’s xBOM is a set of neatly packaged content offerings built to help you succeed. These offerings cover common scenarios – product and service launches, sales force training, partner enablement, and much, much more.
The overall beauty of Website Navigation Optimization AB Testing is that the insights you gain will not only bump your conversion rates in the short-term, but help you understand more about your customers’ needs – and these insights are what will take your business to the next level over time.
Magento event module development
There are a number of e-commerce frameworks available in market, but Magento is one of the most popular choices for medium-to-large-scale portals. Its feature set and its architecture help set it apart from many of the other options available today. Along with the third party extensions, you can also develop your own module in Magento.
In one of the websites, it was required to add an event module to enable the client to add events with photos, videos and other details. But even after spending a couple of hours, I couldn’t find any solution to fit with my requirements. Finally, I decided to develop a custom event module that would enable users to do the following:
- Add/edit event.
- Manage event to add photos and YouTube videos.
- View the event on Google map with marker that differentiates between upcoming, current and past event.
Below is the screen shown, where you can add/edit event information:
Screen to mark location on map
You need to enter event venue in address field and it will then automatically locate location on map with marker. You can
drag and drop the marker to adjust the location and save the event. 
Below is the screen showing the front end view of the event created:
Past event detail For the past event, you can add photos and YouTube videos. It will be shown on the event details page as below: 
To change the default map to other country, open the following file: “App/design/frontend/base/default/template/advaiya/event” Open list.phtml file and update the latitude and longitude as country specific (default is US lat , long) geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder(); var latlng = new google.maps.LatLng(39, -95); Upload files to Magneto main folder and login/relogin into admin panel to install the module. Once the module is installed, it will show up in the top navigation named ‘event’. The sample code for the same can be downloaded here.
Have anything to add? Please don’t hesitate to leave your comments or questions below!
Seven tips to a great content marketing strategy
Why has content marketing become the most important digital marketing trend? In the past some years, internet has transformed buying behavior. Customers are curious to know about your company, your services or products, your unique selling point and much more. Creating and sharing engaging and relevant content that respond to their curiosity is the most direct line to sales and loyalty.
48% of B2B marketers have a content marketing strategy, and 70% of B2B marketers are creating more content than they did one year ago. (Content Marketing Institute, 2015)
Content marketing across website, social media, blogs and more can fuel traffic and leads, but a major percentage of marketers struggle to align content with conversions.
How can you create engaging content and disseminate it specifically to the target audience? What can you do to put content in line with the conversions to encourage readers take action on your site? Let’s take a look.
- Know what your audience wants
Before investing in content creation, make sure you’re thinking from the perspective of your audience, instead of serving what you want them to see. Whether you specialize in web design, sales or marketing, establish yourself as an influencer in that field by creating valuable content that people are looking for and can learn from.
- Search engine friendly content
More search engine visibility leads to more credibility.
Researching the relevant keywords for high search volume and naturally implementing them within your writing is critical in creating SEO friendly content. Whether you’re writing a blog or posting a tweet, keywords can help you optimize your content for a larger reach.
- Develop quality content
While keywords play important part for promoting SEO, their impact banks on having a quality content. Panda (Google’s search algorithm), loves ‘High quality Pages’ and sweeps off low quality ones. Visitors want to find informative content they are looking for on your site, and if your site is keywords-stuffed, they will get discouraged and move on to one of your competitors. So, quality is the key.
- Headlines that can’t be overlooked
Your headline can make or break your landing page, social post, blog or any piece of content. It either grabs the reader’s attention to explore more or repulse their minds to abandon the page.
To capture their time and attention:
- Use your client’s voice
- Understand your client’s pain points
- Communicate value by clearly defining why they should read
- Identify what sounds best for your marketing goals
- Maintain the right balance of content that educates & content that sells
Audience tend to build a natural inertia to sales speak. For sustainable selling, start from the content that educates them on the solutions they are looking for, and build their interest deeper. When they reach a level of engagement, then is the time to place a short message driving them towards the purchasing decision.
- Create a separate approach for each social network
Content comes in all forms, and not every form is suited for every platform. Social media marketing differs for various platforms – Whitepapers might not serve the purpose on Facebook as it might do so on LinkedIn. Similarly, #hashtags might not be as valuable on Google+ as on Twitter. Build a customized approach and uplift your overall content marketing strategy.
- Publish a variety of content types in distinct forms
Popular types of content that you can publish to accomplish your online marketing objectives and boost conversions:
- Blogs
- Infographics
- Whitepapers
- Press releases
- Case studies
- Presentations
- Videos
Finally… Track your strategy via regular content reviews
You should be reviewing everything from what queries led visitors to your website to the average time spent on a particular page, frequently visited pages, leads and conversions. Based on these insights, evolve your strategy and improve your content marketing model as per your needs.
Advaiya helps businesses grow and succeed by combining technology and marketing in a systematic and intelligent way. Our teams align themselves around your success and offer the best for you through content marketing strategy , digital experiences, enterprise solutions, and custom development.
To learn about how our services and offerings can help you in addressing your needs, write to us at connect@advaiya.com
How to amplify your social media content strategy?
Content strategy is about planning, creation, delivery and governance of content.
Social media is similar to traditional mouth-publicity. It increases the reliability and credibility of a brand. It is not just a medium to publish your content, but, it is also a way to attract the potential buyers. The ‘Likes’ of Facebook posts can be treated as sales leads.
But, how do you know that your content is reaching the potential customers?
It is when you start generating leads through social campaigns, and they get converted into potential sales, then, you can be sure that you have applied an effective strategy to your social media plan.
An effective social media content strategy is the one, which ensures that the customers get the required information and the right time. Therefore, it is important to deliver relevant, fresh, and consistent content across various channels, to target consumers.
Businesses create content such as blogs, articles, whitepapers, case studies, videos, infographics, and invest in SEO, PPC, email marketing and advertising, to drive traffic and generate leads.
An effective social media content strategy has some key considerations like:
- Whom are we making the content available to or who is our audience?
- What do they want to know/learn?
- What structure do they want their data in?
- What platform do they want their data on?
- What should be the data publishing frequency?
- What value does your content add to the already existing data?
Moreover, to publish this content, there should be a process to follow which promises a good return out of it.
- Creating a series of effective content such as blogs, articles, eBooks, whitepapers and infographics
- Publishing the content on various social media channels
- Ensuring the popularity with the audience by the likes, retweets, shares it gets
- Tracking the followers or visitors and leads that have been charmed by your content
Creating effective content and publishing it correctly (right content on the right platform at the right time and to the right audience) is just one part of the process. Measuring the impact of this is the critical part in content amplification process. Analytics enables marketers to gain insights of any social media content strategy. Thus, it allows businesses to redefine their strategy. Therefore, it is imperative to have an objective, a process and the right analytic tools which can interpret the effect of your social media plan and do the necessary course correction to strengthen your social media content strategy and make the social campaigns more powerful.
The article was originally published in The Financial Express.
How can SMEs gain from Social Media – Part II
In the previous blog of this series, we looked at how customers are increasingly changing the way (searching online) they look for information about a product, service, or business – both in locality or in distant geography. Small and mid-sized businesses are realizing the importance of having an online presence for their brand to reach, attract, convert, and retain more customers. We also saw some easy and effective first steps to quickly build your presence on social media. In this part let us look at a couple of ways in which you can use social media to effectively build a better brand, and connect with your real customers. Connect with customers and reach out to global audience with social media Use social media tools to connect with your existing and prospective customers. You can showcase your offerings, interact with customers, build communities to network with customers, and keep the conversations alive by following up on those conversations. Social media platforms (that have large user base) such as Google+, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter allow you to position your products and services to different audience in different ways based upon the specific audience’s needs. Branding and marketing You can use social media to build your brand by delivering consistent message and content across all the social media channels. Publish how-to videos, pictures, etc, about your products and services on your website and link your website to your social media channels. These efforts then clubbed with SEO tactics and improve your web presence and generate more traffic to your website. You can develop content such as manuals, whitepapers, videos, blogs, etc. that relates to customer’s needs/problems, explaining concepts, innovation in your domain, etc. For example, if you manufacture women accessories that complement their ethnic attire, you can provide videos for how to wear different types of ethnic attire like, how to wear a saree; or content for what to wear on what occasion, etc. If you provide accessories for a specific brand of mobiles or tablets, then you can provide videos related to using different features of this brand’s mobile phone or tablets. Analytics and Listening Use social analytics tools that can analyze the interactions that customers have about your brand on the social channels. These tools analyze whether people are talking positive or negative about your business or products and services i.e. sentiment analysis. By keeping your senses open to such social/sentiment information can give you relevant insights to improve your products, better segment and target customers, and uncover new business opportunities. Tools are also available that can help you to proctor what do people mention about your brand or products and services, and take necessary steps to better manage your brand’s reputation. Increase sales with quick offers You can quickly rollout new limited-period or seasonal / daily / hourly offers quickly to attract customers and generate more sales. You can also tie-up with companies like Groupon to provide best-buy deals on your products and services. Improving employee productivity Today’s new-generation workforce is technology savvy and always stays connected to their preferred social channels. Thus, if you provide them access to the social tools (for work) which they are familiar and prefer working with, it can help improve collaboration among employees, make them more productive, and help them better connect with customers.
Social media marketing tools and techniques – Part 1 | Advaiya
In a Building Presence Voicing Thoughts session at Advaiya, a few days back, I talked about social media marketing (SMM), covering its importance and a few take care areas. In a series of blog posts, based on the talk I gave, I will provide an overview of some of the key social media marketing concepts, tools, techniques, certain take care areas to consider while building your brand on social media, and some social media success and failure stories. So, what exactly is social media doing to us, or has already done to our lives? Of course, social media has changed our lives drastically. It has given us the power to create multiple (virtual) identities. With each of these identities, you can attach your choices and preferences. Social Media Marketing One great aspect of social media marketing is that it has capability to address to all the multiple identities of any individual as needed and, when needed. Social media marketing provides many advantages to both the customers and the marketers: Engagement: Across social networks, customers can engage with the messages they can like, share and explore easily. Quick Results: The results of social media marketing can be felt very quickly, may be even within minutes or hours of posting the content. Dynamic control: Not just the results can be seen quickly on social networks, marketing efforts, messages and modes can also be tweaked quickly and dynamically. Better Target Audience: Social networking sites often provide marketers with ability to define the target audience by age, locality, and many other parameters. Social media marketing involves the use of tools to successfully advertise and engage with audience online. Some of the commonly used techniques are: Targeting: Social networks like Facebook and Twitter provide advertisers with some additional information about the consumers, like their likes, dislikes and preferences. This provides the marketers with the capabilities to choose the right target audience to promote and market their offerings. Consumer’s online brand related activities (COBRAs) is another method used by advertisers to promote their products across social networks. It includes simple activities like uploading a picture of products they recently purchased and used is an example of a COBRA. Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) is equivalent to traditional word-of-mouth, except for that it is done digitally across social networks. Reviews and recommendations are a convenient manner to have a product promoted via consumer-to-consumer interactions. In the next blog I will talk about some methods/tools related to social media marketing, social analytics, social media measurement, etc, and also few examples of successful and unsuccessful social media marketing campaigns. In the meantime, I would like to hear about your experiences related to doing effective social media marketing.
Social Media and Information Technology in Enterprises
Social media’s horizon has far crossed the notion of it simply being an alternative for interacting with end customers or just being another tool that lets consumers to share, engage and interact with others. It has started influencing businesses in areas including, but not limited to, innovation, collaboration, marketing, analytics and branding. In industry today, with almost four out of five companies already using or planning to use social media it is evident that social media has become mainstream in the enterprise IT sector.
This article briefly highlights, in addition to the benefits and challenges that this extended horizon has to offer the enterprise IT sector, strategies to embrace and manage social media in an enterprise.
Benefits
Business and social processes have started to merge – deriving new business capabilities and defining innovative paradigms. One of such paradigms is IT consumerization, which boasts usage of social media by enterprises to change the way businesses operate and the nature by which they interact. Below is a cursory glance at some of the benefits that such paradigms offer.
Connected 24×7
Keeping mobile workers connected, keeping the enterprise in touch with consumers through social networking, Social networking websites reduce the amount of time it takes for a job to be completed because they cut down the amount of time it takes for employees and management to contact each other.
Innovation and collaboration
Corporate social networks having varied intellectual information heaps fosters knowledge sharing, hassle free information acquisition, grouping like-minded individuals and companies in search for industry specific wisdom, advice and expertise.
Marketing, Branding and Analytics
Social media networks span cities, nations and continents thereby providing a huge customer base. Leveraging the advanced analytic capabilities of social media tools, enterprises can gain precise insights on customer’s unique requirements, geographies and other information significant to a product’s branding and marketing.
Challenges
Undoubtedly, enterprises and masses, today, has benefited with the rapid adoption of social media networks and applications. However, none can deny the threats that come along.
Threats typically appear as challenges related to, decreased productivity, bandwidth and storage consumption, potential legal liability, exposure to malware, disclosure of personal information and the risk of leaking corporate secrets. Let’s examine these challenges in more detail.
Consumer authenticity
Speaking of Trust in the internet world is to consider what has been said or displayed on a web portal as valid, reliable and correct in all respects. But how can one, be it enterprise or an individual, build trust on social media networks where so much has been written by so many? For instance, how does an enterprise know that these customers are the genuine customers?
Affecting employee’s productivity
Employees’ frequent visits to social websites for long duration results in distraction from work and hinders efficiency. Therefore, visiting social media websites during work hours deteriorates productivity.
Security, Confidentiality and Inappropriate usage
Accessing social networking websites, alongside email and other enterprise proprietary software, slows down the servers and increases security risks through duplex data transmission with external entities. Moreover, employees discussing their work freely in open environment may risk confidential data leakage and competitor advantage. An example of which is Twitter traffic being analyzed or mined to build competitor insights.
Legal liabilities, Reputation and Privacy
Enterprises, being aware of local laws and culture that prevails in the locality, are subjected to adhere to concerned laws and regulations while publishing or announcing statements in public. Employees, however, may or may not be aware of such legalities and may post something not acceptable on their own personal/social blogs or forums. Say, if an employee were to be angry, or have had a bad day, they might be inclined to take their anger out online. Such behavior could affect a company’s reputation or may include bullying, commenting to harass or defame a particular individual thus affecting their privacy.
Strategies to embrace and manage social media in an Enterprise
The above challenges and benefits of social media can be grouped into two main groups: Enterprise external and internal. Strategies, as discussed below, can be developed by IT to embrace social media in both the groups creatively.
Enterprise External or Public social networks
Awareness: Enterprises must increase awareness among its employees about the implications of using social media with the help of proper guidelines detailing what to leverage and refrain from!
Monitoring: Employees learning about social traffic across the firewall being monitored may instill a sense of responsibility for one’s own activities on social websites.
Blocking: Blocking social websites often seems to be the easiest way that should work but results in sacrificing the benefits as well.
Enterprise Internal social networks
Training and Awareness: Management should train employees about the best practices regarding activities that can be performed on social networks to obtain highest level of benefits concerning innovation, collaboration, communication etc.
Enterprise social enablement – Leveraging power of social media: Extracting all benefits of social media and avoiding associated risks at the same time, the best possible way, for enterprises is to build custom software’s which entails necessary social media features.
Another, a proven cost and resource effective, alternative could be to use existing enterprise social networks such as Yammer, SharePoint 2013, Oracle WebCenter Social, IBM Lotus Notes etc. well known for their social enterprise capabilities.
In conclusion, IT Enterprises with honed strategies to embrace challenges coming along social media can dramatically exaggerate the benefits pouring through the merger of social and IT.