Tools for digital magazines
What tools to use in digital magazines and how to integrate different services.
7 mins read
Tools to manage and publish content
Content managers
The main tool is the content management system, or CMS, as this is where we will centralize publication and it will serve as a source of truth for any other distribution platforms we use. Depending on the size of the company, sometimes completely custom solutions or standardized solutions are used.
In recent years, following the specialization of distribution platforms, the use of headless systems has become popular, as opposed to the All in One or monolithic systems from over a decade ago.
The advantage of headless systems is that they decouple the content from the visual part, and also centralize it in one place. This way, we don't have to copy and paste the same content in many different places to distribute it.
The most popular Headless CMS today are:
- Contentful
- Umbraco
- Prismic
- Sanity
- Strapi
My recommendation, after trying them all, is Sanity, but it's something I leave up to your choice.
Furthermore, we could also add Drupal to this list, as it allows for the quick creation of API endpoints (in other words, to function as a headless CMS).
You are probably wondering about Wordpress, the most popular CMS on the market.
The reason why Wordpress is not a recommended solution is simple: The content and the visual layer are not separated, especially since the incorporation of Gutenberg. This forces us to process and clean the content before distributing it to other platforms.
Moreover, it is closer to the monolithic architecture model, all in one that I mentioned earlier. I don't mean to say that it's not a good option for small projects, but the reality is that for mediums that handle a large volume of information, it is not an efficient solution. On the other hand, there are also performance and security issues, which require more maintenance and increase infrastructure costs.
Tools to manage advertising
Internal control
Although most platforms allow for extensive customization and rule creation, there are times when it is necessary to go beyond the default options. Including an intermediate layer between the website and the advertising server, to be able to activate or deactivate advertising, or to enforce certain themes based on parameters we define, can save us a lot of work and headaches.
Ad Servers - Platforms
After trying several, if there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that the global leader in advertising is Google. Its platform Google Ad Manager stands out as the best solution for the following reasons:
- It's standardized: If the advertising on your website comes through an agency like Publicis, it will be easier to audit metrics and give them access to view performance, if necessary.
- Protection against fraud, bots, and attacks.
- Allows the display of advertisements across different platforms. In addition to the web, it also supports the insertion of ads in mobile apps, TV, broadcast, and in videos.
Tools to manage the audience
Subscriptions
Recently, solutions like Chargify, Recurly, Zuora, Pabbly, or ChargeOver have become popular. The truth is that all of them can be valid options when it comes to quickly implementing a subscription payment system, but they can cause problems when the business scales.
My favorite option is the integration of any of the following payment platforms:
- Lemon Squeeze
- Adyen
- Stripe
- Braintree
All of them offer the possibility to create recurring payments, which we can easily integrate into our subscription system.
All these platforms feature an API and webhooks that we can use to synchronize data with the rest of our technological stack.
Authentication
Nowadays, nobody wastes time filling out data in a form, which is why it's important to integrate a registration system that speeds up the process.
As part of a suite that offers many other things (storage, edge functions, etc), we can use the authentication services of Firebase and Supabase. Both offer SSO (Single Sign On) and 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication).
On the other hand, we have Clerk, which is specifically focused on authentication services and works very well. It's easy to integrate with developments in React, Next.js, Remix, or Gatsby, among others. Highly recommended.
Tools to manage communications
Sending emails
Klaviyo es sin lugar a dudas la herramienta más potente de marketing automation, permitiendo envío de emails, SMS y notificaciones push.
Klaviyo's potential lies in its integration with external platforms, coupled with the ability to create automated rules for sending campaigns.
For instance, we can automatically send campaigns to subscribers who have turned off auto-renewal within the first 24 hours, to convince them of the value of their subscription and to reactivate it, or we can automate the sending of promotions if they deactivated it in the days leading up to the renewal.
It also allows sending in the sender's local time zone and tracking their preferences, based on the content they have visited on the web.
If for some reason you are not interested in marketing automation functionality, Campaign Monitor is also a very good option. Its main advantages are ease of use, more competitive pricing than Klaviyo, simplicity of API integration, and finally, as it does not require incorporating so much information into the HTML structure of the generated emails, it tends to cause fewer email clipping issues in Gmail.
There are options such as direct integration of SendGrid or Mailgun, which would be cheaper but would require more development and do not offer as many advantages.
Lastly, we have Mailchimp, which works quite well with small volumes of subscribers, but can cause issues with larger lists. I've also heard of some cases where it caused a lot of spam problems, although I haven't experienced it in any of my projects.
Analytics Tools
As we have said, analytics is the most important part when it comes to defining our strategy, therefore we are going to need a good number of tools:
- Google Analytics 4: If you're not familiar with GA4, you probably shouldn't be reading this article. There might be better options or it might be insufficient for measuring certain things, but it's the current standard for estimating traffic volume, some behaviors, or segmenting your audience.
- Google Search Console: This tool will provide us with a summary of our website's URLs, the searches that are generating the most organic traffic for us, detect errors, correct sitemaps, or even have Google index a specific page (or at least request it).
- Google Page Speed Insights: Si bien no es una herramienta de analítica per se, sí que nos va a dar datos relevantes sobre el funcionamiento de nuestra web: Cuánto tiempo tarda en cargar, cuánto tiempo tardan los usuarios en interactuar con la página, problemas de usabilidad, etc. Es imprescindible (aunque no suficiente) cumplir con los mínimos indicados para poder mejorar el SEO de tu web.
- Hotjar: Collects information about visitor behavior on the website and presents it in a heatmap so you can visualize which parts are performing better or worse in your design. It also creates recordings of user sessions, and offers survey systems to monitor visitor satisfaction. Highly recommended.
- Matomo: It is the paid alternative to Google Analytics. It is marketed as "privacy friendly", although the recent efforts of GA4 towards user privacy have made that selling point lose much of its value.
- Amplitude: Es una de las mejor valoradas en la actualidad. Además de una interfaz sencilla para la analítica, ofrece funcionalidad de experimentación con AB testing (similar a Google Optimize antes de desaparecer), reproducción de sesiones y data insights muy interesantes.
Extra:
Although they are not analytics tools but complete suites for working on SEO, you should also be aware of these two:
- Ahrefs: It allows you to generate keyword research, analyze your competition, check SERP rankings based on location and keyword, detect duplicate content, backlinks, and a long etcetera of functionalities.
- SE Ranking: Similar to the previous one, it allows you to improve local SEO, work on content marketing, create reports on your competition, and generate keyword reports. Again, a tool that is worth trying.