September 2019 Summaries

If you’re a marketer, or you build things for marketers, you know that experimentation is everything. When creating a website or another digital product, you could debate for hours over the right tagline or where to put an image, or test a few variations of that content and measure the results to iterate. Optimizely is designed to run experiments around content performance and personalization, and now it can be integrated with Contentful, allowing users to run experiments on structured content across all digital platforms. This integration works by replacing entries in your references with a new content type, a variation container, which manages both the original version of the content and any variations that are being tested. With this integration, editors and marketers can control content variations from within the web app, and developers get flexibility to build experiments that are complex or simple as needed, with experiment decisions made server-side without additional requests.

When focusing on a single task, productivity increases as the absence of context switching reduces distractions and allows for intense concentration. This approach is contrary to the myth of multitasking, which can lead to a disjointed workflow due to the need to switch between different tools and tasks. Contentful has introduced new extensibility enhancements, including sidebar extensions, to create a context-sensitive workspace that streamlines workflows and delivers familiar services without leaving the platform. By customizing the default sidebar with extensions or removing unnecessary widgets, users can eliminate distractions and focus on their work directly from within Contentful. For editors, Gatsby preview provides real-time monitoring of changes, allowing for confident publishing and minimizing errors, while developers can utilize the feature for side-by-side previews of static sites.

With the release of UI Extensions, Contentful has aimed to address the long-standing challenge of balancing content management's flexibility and development scalability, by introducing entry extensions that allow for customizable editorial experiences, enabling users to display relevant fields or third-party integrations on a per-entry basis, thereby making it easier to create tailored interfaces for different user types, such as designers, writers, and marketers.

Deploying structured content depends on a customized array of specialized tools, such as content management systems and digital asset management solutions. Finding the right stack of tools is key to success. But working between interfaces and tracking integrations can slow everyone down — especially if you’re already swimming in a sea of open tabs. At Contentful, we’re minimizing the pain with a series of new UI extension features that empower users to use third-party integrations more easily and increase the customization of the editorial experience. Dialog extensions are one such feature, allowing users to access third-party integrations without leaving the Contentful web app in modal windows that float over the interface. These dialog windows can be customized for specific needs, accessed through various fields or sidebar extensions, and set up using a simple CLI process. With dialogs, editors can see what they need to see in one customizable place, reducing interface switching and confusion, and gaining more time to focus on their work.