Adobe Business Catalyst is shutting down in March 2020 and I have less than 24 months to find alternatives for my clients websites.
Adobe is kicking us out their web house
Table of Contents
Over 70,000 Business Catalyst and 500,000 Adobe Muse websites possibly have to find a new home without a direct replacement; link to Business Catalyst press release.
This is going to cost you.
My clients paid Adobe Business Catalyst directly to host their website.
Yes I recommended Adobe Business Catalyst to all my website customers.
But Adobe broke all our trust.
Many other Adobe partners like myself were in shock.
How could a company drop a profitable business?
Well, put this in perspective, a company that made a $2 billion profit last quarter dropped a $30 million business.
People on Adobe forums are already threatening action; futile in my opinion.
People are asking why Business Catalyst could not be sold to an interested 3rd party.
My understanding is that others did try to purchase it but the Business Catalyst arm is impossible to disconnect from the main Adobe body.
And yes it will and has cost me money.
I have already migrated my own website to WordPress.
Website Audit and Review
Whilst this news will come as a shock to many or perhaps an inconvenience, it can also prove to be an opportunity.
I designed very few websites in the previous 16 months since I have evolved to SEO and content marketing services.
With one client exception, I can tell you the web world is a lot different from 24 months ago.
You can continue with your website as it is, the status quo, or you can use this as an opportunity to grow.
SWOT Analysis – get your business from A to B
During my 25 years in marketing, I have done many a SWOT analysis.
You look for the strengths and weaknesses inside your business and with your products and services.
Then you look at external opportunities and threats impacting you.
Or you can discover :
- What people are searching for.
- Is there demand I am are missing out on?
- What are my competitors doing?
- Where do my competitors rank and get traffic from ?
- What can I create to improve rankings, visibility, web traffic?
- How can I convert and generate more enquiries from your website?
- Follow up on these enquiries and turn them into clients or customers.
- Drive more website traffic.
- Convert more sales.
- Increase my average order value per sale.
- Increase my repeat sales.
- Sell other products or services to my existing customers.
3 types of Adobe Business Catalyst websites
For the sake of simplicity there are 3 types of websites.
- Less complex websites (Lead generation websites).
- E-commerce websites.
- Custom websites.
Lead generation websites
This is a website with pages of information and contact forms where people get in touch with your business.
My website is a lead generation website.
I can export the current website and use 2 other solutions for your new website.
The migration cost will be fairly low.
But will have to absorb new recurring costs:
- Monthly hosting costs.
- Hosting maintenance contract.
- Email marketing provider.
- Email accounts to send and receive emails.
- Annual purchase of SSL certificate.
Adobe Business Catalyst versus WordPress
Whilst there are plenty of alternatives, I shall recommend moving lead generation or less complex websites to WordPress.
Adobe Business Catalyst alternative features in WordPress
Here are the features available.
Whilst I can ensure the colours, fonts and branding are the same, the layouts may change.
This could be a positive benefit especially for older websites than don’t have work well in mobile devices or have a poor website structure.
The details of the enquiry will be stored in the admin area of WordPress and both you and the recipient will receive an acknowledgement of the enquiry.
But if you truly want a CRM, I would recommend using Drip for web forms, email marketing and marketing automation.
Although the design templates are limited.
- Elementor – for custom pages.
- Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress.
- Redirection – to redirect old BC pages to new WP pages.
- WP Smush – to optimise your images.
- WP Optimize – to optimise your database and clean up data.
- Yoast SEO – for on page SEO.
- Table of Content Plus – a table of content plugin for long form content.
This is a plugin that enables you to create and design custom pages.
There is a feature called Blocks that lets you drop and drop block elements onto a page to suit your brand and content.
This service will host your website and update the WordPress and plugins.
However, you won’t see massive changes in your page rankings and traffic with creating content that people are searching for or an increase in relevant links to your website.
There is an additional cost but some minor SEO benefits.
For example, I would not let some customers have access to installing plugins without knowing the impact on the rest of the website or the site speed.
E-commerce websites
The next type of websites are those that sell products online.
I have 2 options for migration and re-development.
I migrate the website to a comparable solution that is being developed for an ex-Business Catalyst partner.
Or, alternatively I move your website to Shopify.
I have worked with Shopify and there are some amazing benefits open to you that were out of scope with Business Catalyst.
- Sell on Facebook.
- Sell with Instagram clickable images.
- Better related product merchandising.
- Better basket and checkout process (so you convert more orders).
- Abandoned orders process.
- Refund orders directly inside admin area.
- Take card payments over the phone and add order into admin area.
- Add Facebook Messenger to website and handle customer enquiries.
- Use the Free Shopify App called Kit to help you run adverts, promotions, email campaigns, post social communication – seriously mind blowing app.
- A mobile app for your phone to manage elements of your shop.
- Brilliant integration with Google Shopping Advertising – so people can see and click on your products in the search results.
- Thousands of apps to do better marketing.
Adobe Business Catalyst versus Shopify
Adobe Business Catalyst alternative features in Shopify.
Bear in mind, if you go over 2000 subscribers, you will have to pay a monthly fee to MailChimp.
We would have to create a MailChimp list and import your customers from Business Catalyst.
MailChimp also have email personalisation.
You can choose to insert product recommendations where they insert product into email campaigns based on user information.
Although the design templates are limited.
In reality you will just use these pages for about us, contact us and terms and privacy pages.
That’s probably not an issue.
It’s more likely we have to rebuild your categories by hand.
There is a paid for service that exports your stock file from Adobe to Shopify.
This will help promote higher order values.
You can add PayPal and Apple Pay payment options to the basket.
You do not have alot of design control over the basket layout.
However, Shopify have 500,000 plus merchants on their platform and they know more about basket to checkout conversion that most.
- The user enters name and email.
- Then they enter this billing and delivery address.
- If they don’t finish the order, Shopify sends a please complete order email.
- Then Shopify calculate the shipping cost if any.
- Then the user enters card details or proceeds to PayPal.
This is a basic area that shows your details and order history.
You can disable this option if you don’t want users to register or login before purchase.
If you sell to retailers and the end user there is an app for that but requires more investigation.
If you are in the UK you can disable Apple Pay before it’s not being adopted by most banks.
You need to check the processing and card fees with Shopify Payments.
But you will find them comparable with Stripe and SagePay.
And if you have SagePay, you won’t need them anymore.
So the additional Shopify hosting costs will be offset with the SagePay savings.
- Google Shopping
- MailChimp for Shopify
- No Index and Sitemap Manager
- Kit
- Order Printer
- Shopify Product Reviews
But access to a good Shopify developer is paramount.
Also, if you do choose to change a url, Shopify will immediately create a 301 redirect.
As the site owner, you will want to give you web developer full access.
If you have a content editor you don’t want to give her access to installing paid for plugins.
You can look at their Treepl admin panel they are currently developing to retain some of the features and functionality that Business Catalyst used to have.
Custom built websites
The last category of websites we built were custom built websites.
We built some bespoke business solutions such as job vacancy systems, payment systems, travel portals and digital payment systems.
These types of websites will be more complex to migrate.
I need to explore in more depth the migration impact, costs and issues.
Bear in mind we still have 23 months before Adobe shut down Business Catalyst.
Two former Business Catalyst partners are working on migration and alternative solutions.
Migrating custom built Business Catalyst website
Beta testing is underway to migrate BC websites to a new solution.
- Clients should be able to use BC web apps as they did on Business Catalyst
- Websites will be hosted on Amazon Web Services.
- Hosting costs will be similar to BC hosting costs
I shall update this section of the page in due course as I discover and learn more.
What will this cost me ?
This will cost you one way or the other.
By the March 2020, the youngest website I will have created for clients will be 3 years old and some websites will be up to 9 years old.
Platonik have no ongoing contracts with clients as we work on an ad hoc project basis with clients paying Adobe directly for hosting.
View this an opportunity to increase traffic, enquiries and sales or to re-invent your online business.
What Next ?
You don’t need to do anything for the next 3 months.
But I recommend you start saving up and putting money aside for migration or re-development costs.
What if I don’t want you to migrate or re-develop my website with you ?
I can export all your web pages and customer data and hand that information over to you at any time between now and March 2020.
You can either take that information and give it to another web professional or you can continue with me.
Ongoing communication
I shall be sending more regular communication with any migration developments about Treepl and other solutions.
And of course, opportunities.
There’s a form at the foot of your browser; enter your name and email address to be updated regularly about Business Catalyst migration and alternatives.