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Business Catalyst is more than a site-building tool; it's a complete platform that enables you to build robust online businesses to suit your clients, with powerful content publishing, marketing, customer relationship management, and analytics in one comprehensive package whose entire functionality is accessible from any standard browser. This article will help you understand the major benefits of Business Catalyst, explain the Business Catalyst workflow and the roles played by developers, designers, and clients, and show you how the Business Catalyst Platform provides a complete set of tools for building and managing online businesses.

This article is divided into the following sections:

• Discovering the Business Catalyst Platform
• Understanding the Business Catalyst workflow
• Working with the Admin Console
• Understanding the different roles
• Building online businesses with Business Catalyst

Discovering the Business Catalyst Platform

The Business Catalyst Platform provides you with everything you need to set up online businesses, including content management, an integrated back end database and an intuitive browser-based interface. No other software is required—just a browser and an Internet connection. The Business Catalyst Platform is independent of any operating system, so the instructions are identical for both Windows and Mac users.

The Business Catalyst Platform is designed to build sites that provide a two-way communication between visitors and your clients. It offers a unique way of tracking every interaction and storing the visitor's data so that it can be easily retrieved and leveraged to increase sales. It also provides a complementary marketing solution that enables your clients to reach their visitors and potential customers more effectively. For these reasons, the sites you build in Business Catalyst are more than just standard static sites: they are online businesses.

As a developer, you have a whole toolbox full of modules (prebuilt features that require no programming to set up) that can be completely customized to suit a site and your client's business needs. With these integrated modules, you can quickly build out complex functionality, such as online stores, event calendars with reservations, secure password-protected areas and web forms with custom workflows to gather customer data and efficiently route messages to teams or individual team members.

And as a designer, you have complete freedom over the look and feel—the web content is separated from the appearance of the site. Use your own HTML, CSS and Javascript to define your site's appearance. Business Catalyst makes it easy to replicate an existing design that you've previously created, or use your client's current design as the basis of a new site. You can use templates from a third-party site. Or, if you are a Dreamweaver user, you can use the familiar workspace and follow the same workflow you are accustomed to using. You can repurpose existing DWT files to leverage the power and easy maintenance of templates. And you can create new files with the provided CSS layouts in Dreamweaver. How the site looks and how you choose to design it are completely up to you.

Web hosting is included as part of the Business Catalyst solution, making it incredibly efficient for creating prototypes for potential clients. You can replicate the client's site, add the features you know they need to improve their business, and present it at your first meeting. Nothing compares to a demo of a live, functioning site with all the bells and whistles, incorporating a company's existing branding and web content to help you seal the deal.

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Understanding the Business Catalyst workflow

The workflow for developing Business Catalyst sites is completely adaptable to your preferences—you can edit your sites using any browser with an Internet connection (no other software needed) or you can use a free extension and build your sites with Dreamweaver.

Building an online business with Business Catalyst follows this workflow:

1. Register your online business with Business Catalyst.
2. Log in to the Admin Console to manage the site.
3. Upload files and site assets using the Admin Console, Dreamweaver, a third-party FTP client or all three methods.
4. Create new templates and pages using the Admin Console, Dreamweaver or any HTML editor.
5. Apply templates and link to external style sheets.
6. Update CSS rules using the Admin Console, Dreamweaver or any text editor.
7. Create site navigation and add it to a template.
8. Insert modules to integrate features, such as site-wide search and a site map.
9. Customize the functionality and appearance of modules with tag attributes and standard HTML and CSS.

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Working with the Admin Console

Both you and your web clients will log into the Admin Console; it is the easy access point to the data stored in each site's back end database. Your clients will use the browser-based system to run their online business. They'll focus on updating site content, maintaining inventory, sending email campaigns, managing customer inquiries and running reports to track the performance of their site, revenue and marketing strategies.

You'll use the Admin Console as a one-stop content management system that enables you to build, customize, configure and upgrade each site into a robust online business. Features like the File Manager allow you to quickly upload any file from your local machine. The Module Manager makes it easy to insert new features. Rather than tying several disparate systems together (such as a blog from one service, a shopping cart from another and a newsletter publishing system from a third) you can insert these types of complex functionality with a few mouse clicks—knowing that they are proven to work together—and access the data from all activity in a single database using pre-built and custom reports.

The online business tracks each team member and site visitor by their email address. This is the unique identifier that allows you to see each user's activity on the site at a granular level. The reports allow you and your clients to follow trends, take action on potential sales leads, and get a clear view of which products are selling, how site updates improve sales, which newsletters result in the most page views and other useful information that static sites simply cannot offer. Use these details to facilitate better communication with your site visitors and make your online business more competitive.

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Understanding the different roles

Business Catalyst offers a full solution for an online experience. Because the system covers the hosting, site design, development, site maintenance, eCommerce, marketing and analytics for a site, a wide range of users will participate with it in various ways. The list of potential roles are listed below:

Partners: This is a community of web professionals who create and build online businesses with the Business Catalyst Platform. They have some prior experience using the framework and have decided that Business Catalyst is a tool that helps grow their own web business. Partners may be designers, developers, content providers, web consultants, resellers or a combination of these roles. They pay a one-time fee to become a Standard or Premium Business Catalyst Partner and receive a host of benefits such as online training sessions, opportunity for Business Catalyst certification, exclusive access to the Partner Portal, special promotions, an internal billing system for invoicing web clients, a free Partner site to conduct web business and (depending on the level of partnership) the ability to rebrand their free Partner site using a custom brand other than Business Catalyst.

Web Developer: This person, perhaps with a close resemblance to yourself, builds the site and administers it. Web developers have total control over every aspect of the site, with a full set of permissions to access every record, update every page, and deploy the desired functionality. A Business Catalyst online business is created by web developers who set up the online stores, build out the feature set, architect the information and define the flow that visitors will follow to achieve a business's primary and secondary goals to achieve financial success.

Web Designer: This person, who may also resemble you, is responsible for the look and feel of the site. The creation of templates, the coding of CSS rules, the selection of colors and imagery are in the web designer's domain. Designers may choose any layout to use, and could choose to use the provided CSS layouts in Dreamweaver as the basis for the page structure. They may also choose to repurpose templates from other projects; or purchase templates from a third-party vendor. Designers can incorporate Flash content, digital videos and other rich media. They'll work closely with the client to ensure that the appearance of the site meets their approval and sets the right tone for the business's needs.

Web Client: This person may be a small business owner that has hired you—but may also be yourself—needs an interactive online presence to support their business needs. Beyond a static storefront, they need a compelling site that engages customers, encouraging them to participate with the site that gathers their contact data and tracks their activities. A small business owner runs their online business by logging in after the site is built. Depending on their preference, they may be given access to perform minor site updates, such as editing the text and image content on pages. They may also write and publish their own newsletters. Small business owners receive customer inquiries and respond to them, using their inbox or cell phone. And they can access and drill down into the site stats whenever desired, to get the big picture of the entire site's performance or find specific details of an individual customer.

Content Manager: This person, who may be an employee of a small business owner, is the person responsible for maintaining the site content. They may be selected to update the text and images on pre-designed pages. They may also be the person who manages the recipient lists and drafts email campaigns. They may choose to take a more active role in the creation and publishing process for original graphics and video content. They may also perform tasks such as moderating forums, comment approvals and uploading new banner ads that appear in the Ad Rotator module to keep the site looking fresh.

Customers: These folks are the site visitors that interact with the site on the front end. They register to the online business, submit forms, purchase items from the store and reserve space at events. They use the secure payment gateways to perform online transactions with PayPal and credit cards. Customers may gain access (free or paid) to password-protected areas to obtain secure content. They may review their order history or upload media files to share on a site. They post comments and use features like Favorites and Tell-a-Friend. Every time they log in, each form they submit, every product they buy, is all captured in the back end database. Customers and site visitors never see the Admin Console, although it is hosted on the same domain as the site, because they don't have permission to view it with their login credentials.

Site Visitors: This group includes the business's potential customers. They check out the content of the site, and they may choose to register if they are intrigued by the benefits, although not every visitor will register. They may be looking for more information and use a contact form to learn more about a business's services. Site visitors may sign up to receive email campaigns, take advantage of promotional offers, read the blog posts, enjoy the image galleries, and download files, such as PDFs. These folks are sales opportunities that a small business can leverage to grow their business.

A listing in a public directory of businesses is one small step towards success, but many sites don't go beyond that first step. Static sites fall into a category of a one-way, push only billboard style site that points customers to an email address or a phone number. The site itself offers no way for a customer to become immersed in the brand, to participate online or to communicate their requests. Additionally, there are no metrics to gather—other than standard traffic reports and site analytics—to help small business owners make future decisions that support their business model.

In contrast, dynamic sites provide two-way conversations between customers and business owners. They also allow customers to talk amongst themselves. Dynamic sites encourage customers to become engaged in the order process, to read reviews, to post their opinions, and to foster a sense of community around the business. Workflows can be set to automatically send text messages from form submissions, so that employees can respond to customer requests immediately. Attendees can share their photos of a recent event in a gallery. Visitors can personalize the site with their own preferences and create lists of their favorite content. By offering a range of interactive features, you can attract more traffic and ensure visitors spend more time on a site—leading to future sales.

Business owners of a Business Catalyst online business can reduce their overhead while increasing sales by using the integrated email marketing publishing system. They also save money by not paying for other third-party services, such as shopping cart systems and web hosting. And if they have the time and inclination, they can also save money by making their own site updates with a WYSIWYG interface in a browser—a frequent client request.

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Building online businesses with Business Catalyst

You can develop sophisticated, complex functionality with minimal coding by leveraging the modules included with the Business Catalyst Platform. Think of these modules as chunks of code that are designed to be inserted and configured with a few mouse clicks. They provide the building blocks that you can use to create a robust online business.

Business Catalyst was built on the idea that small businesses need to provide specific functionality on their sites to help them drive their business models. A static website falls short of these needs, but a fully integrated system—one that works seamlessly together and captures all the data into a single database—makes all the difference for business owners.

With that goal in mind, the Business Catalyst Platform has combined all of these features in a single system:

• Web hosting
• Content management
• E-Commerce
• Collaborative, community-based interactivity
• E-Mail marketing
• Customer management (CRM)
• Integrated reporting and analytics

Studying these areas more closely will show you how they relate to Business Catalyst and how you can leverage them for online business.

Web hosting

When you set up a trial site with Business Catalyst, it is already live. You have the flexibility to make the changes you need to add features and populate the site before you or your clients pay for hosting. Once you are ready to upgrade the site (which includes the ability to update the DNS to point to the desired domain name, set up live payment gateways, and create e-mail addresses that use the domain), there's a monthly fee for hosting. This ability to begin developing the site in a live sandbox is a huge advantage for you and your clients, because you can test and tweak the site until you are sure it is ready for prime time. And since the site is hosted, you never have to worry about upgrading the system, recovering data, rolling back to previous versions or testing modules for compatibility. Everything on the server is all maintained for you.

Content management

The Business Catalyst Platform offers a variety of methods for managing web content and updating web pages. If you prefer to use Dreamweaver, the Business Catalyst extension brings the site right into the Dreamweaver environment. If you are on the go, you and your clients can log into the Admin Console and use the Online Editor to see both the Design view and the HTML view as you build and edit pages.

Additionally, the Admin Console includes InContext Editing, a very easy-to-use, browser-based WYSIWYG editor. Your clients can use this method to make changes to their home pages, to update news announcements, or edit images. InContext Editing includes its own system for uploading and image files and provides simple image manipulation controls, so your clients can easily populate their own sites without using any other software. Your clients can also use InContext Editing to make changes to the modules inserted on their pages, such as dynamic menus and news announcements.

You can use the File Manager in the Admin Console to upload site files, or you can use the Files panel in Dreamweaver to put them to the remote site. You can also use any other FTP software to connect to the remote server and upload site files.

Because Business Catalyst is so flexible, you and your clients have complete freedom over how to edit the site, and you or your design team have total control over the site's appearance. The Admin Console exposes the raw HTML code and you can use standard CSS and JavaScript to design the pages exactly as you prefer.

Ecommerce

Many web developers turn to third-party solutions, like hosted shopping carts, when a client requests an online store. Development is complex, costly, and time-consuming. In many cases, the store inventory and sales revenue data ends up on a third-party server, making it difficult for owners to run reports or see how their business is performing.

Business Catalyst is designed to offer e-commerce functionality right out of the box. Generally speaking, a Business Catalyst developer can deploy a live online store that includes many different catalogs, with a variety of categorized and grouped products (each with a list view and detail view) in a single day. And with a little more configuration, you can expand on the store functionality in many ways, such as setting up specific payment gateways, adding member-only discounts, and other special features that drive sales for an online business.

And selling products isn't the only way to generate revenue. In addition to selling electronic, downloadable products, you can also sell tickets to events and sell access to restricted areas of a site that contains secure content. Business Catalyst even includes loyalty programs and the ability to set up recurring billing to sell ongoing subscriptions. And this is all included in the hosting package, so there are no extra hidden fees.

Collaborative, community-based interactivity

One of the ways brick and mortar stores drive revenue is by having sidewalk sales. When potential customers walk by and see a crowd outside a store, they become curious. New visitors are more likely to stop and take a look—and perhaps purchase something.

In an online business, the way to achieve this type of viral marketing is to gather enthusiastic customers and provide ways for them to interact on a site. These word-of-mouth online conversations and reviews often help convert other visitors into becoming paying customers.

Business Catalyst offers a variety of modules that serve this specific purpose. By enabling and configuring modules, you can quickly add the following features to a site:

• online forums
• blogs
• comments
• media downloads
• web forms

You can also create and configure custom content types, like movie reviews or recipies, to allow visitors to participate and post their own contributions.

Using these collaborative features, the visitors of a site help populate it and build a sense of community. At the same time, visitors also get an account area where they can set preferences, change their password, and personalize the site. The combination of personalization and collaboration help drive traffic to an online business, especially when provided in tandem with the next item on this list: e-mail campaigns.

E-Mail marketing

Many businesses use a third-party service to design newsletters, publish them, maintain recipient lists, and run reports to see the success rates of email messaging. This creates yet another database that is not tied to any of the other site statistics and incurs yet another cost for small business owners.

The Admin Console in Business Catalyst includes all of the features you need, and the cost is all included in the hosting fee. You can import existing contact information, manually enter subscribers, or create subscription forms and post them on your Business Catalyst site (and other, non–Business Catalyst sites) to gather recipients. The interface includes pre-built templates for newsletters, but you are free to design your own, using standard HTML and CSS styles. The system follows best practices for email marketing, including doubleopt-in e-mail messages, unsubscribe functionality, and the ability to target recipients on their birthday or other specific dates, such as the last time they had their car serviced. You can set up series of newsletters to publish at specific intervals, using a set-it-and-forget-it approach. And you can run reports based on statistics such as the biggest spenders or the most active event participants, and send e-mail campaigns to this subset of subscribers.

The integrated marketing reporting includes a complete set of metrics to analyze, including opens, click-throughs and forwarding. At a glance, small business owners can see the statistics related to each e-mail newsletter as it appears on the Dashboard. Even better, they can follow up on a specific visitor, to see what actions that person took after opening an e-mail campaign and returning to the site. Everything is tracked and all the data is stored in one centralized location, making it easy to track trends, see what worked, and adjust strategies accordingly. Reports combined with these built-in marketing features help your clients reach their customers in order to run their business successfully.

Customer management (CM)

Gathering specific contact data for potential customers is a main goal for all businesses. Having this contact information is essential to upselling products and services to potential customers. One method involves publishing free newsletters. Another involves web forms and customer inquiries. And a third method is to offer compelling content that encourages visitors to sign up to access secure zones.

But gathering customer data is not useful if small business owners cannot follow up on leads. This is one of the areas where the Business Catalyst Platform is exceptionally helpful for leveraging new opportunities.

Every time visitors submit a web form, every time they open a newsletter and click on a link, every time they contribute donations, every time they post content to a community-related area, every action they take is tracked. When a visitor submits an inquiry, the system automatically generates a case number for that communication and displays the activity on the Live Feed in the Dashboard. When small business owners log into the Admin Console, they get up-to-the-minute details about who subscribed and the feedback they've submitted, so that they can take the appropriate action. Clicking one linktakes the owner immediately to the contact summary for that visitor, where the owner can send e-mail messages and track the threads of correspondence. This ensures no one slips through the cracks.

If desired, you can create secure zones for existing customers. They can log into these password-protected areas and look up their own customer cases, view the status of their requests, see their recent order history, and more. This level of data management enables small business owners to offer unparallelled customer service.

And unlike a static website, an online business offers immediate solutions that allow small business owners to expand their customer base.

Integrated reporting and analytics

Since all of this functionality is tied to a single database, it is a simple process to run a wide variety of reports to see how the site is working and how the business is meeting its goals. Many common reports are included, for gathering metrics on sales revenues, customer data, customer inquiries, marketing campaigns, site activity, community-contributed content, administrative (and content management) activity, and gather other relevant details, such as the geographic location of visitors and referral information.

In addition to the preconfigured reports, you and your clients have complete access to every field of information that is gathered through site activity. You can create your own custom reports, choose the specific data you want to include, and filter it with a variety of factors, such as date ranges, web forms submitted, amount purchased, visitor locations, or any other information useful to the business.

The data you generate by running reports is displayed for easy access right in the Admin Console. However, you can also export it in PDF, Excel or CSV formats if you want to share the data or slice and dice the statistics using another program. You can choose to run broad reports or see the business at a granular level. If desired, you can combine a variety of different metrics to generate very specific reports, and then use the results to send targeted e-mail messages, special promotions and loyalty-related discounts.

Conclusion

As you can see, the Business Catalyst Platform has all the bases covered, and provides all the features required by most small businesses. Rather than attempting to tie together separate systems and keep them in sync, you can develop sites in an scalable, hosted environment that is specifically designed to meet the business challenges in today's competitive environment. And best of all, you can help your clients budget their expenses and save them money when they realize they don't need to pay for all these third-party services.

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Where to go from here

To get started with and learn more about Business Catalyst, check out the following resources:

• Register a trial Partner account.
• Watch Introducing Business Catalyst on Adobe TV.
• Visit the Business Catalyst Support Central Knowledgebase.
• Check out Adam Broadway's new Business Catalyst Evangelist site.

To get more information about working with the Business Catalyst Platform, refer to the following resources:

• Business Catalyst Developer Center
• Building your first site with the Business Catalyst Platform
• Customizing the pre-built templates that are included with a Business Catalyst trial site

To build Business Catalyst online businesses with Dreamweaver, download and install the following software:

• Dreamweaver CS5
• Business Catalyst extension for Dreamweaver