Latest news with #Storyblok
Business Insider
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
I landed a remote job for a European company, and now I'd find it hard to go back to a US-based company — I feel spoiled by the perks
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 34-year-old Meghan Gezo, from Michigan. The following has been edited for length and clarity. In 2022, I left my job working remotely in people operations for a US company. Juggling my job and raising my one-year-old wasn't working. I wanted to take a break while I looked for another opportunity that would allow me to have better work-life boundaries. After a few months of job hunting, I started as a people experience manager at Storyblok, a fully remote content management company based in Austria. I'd never worked for a company based in Europe before. Living in the US, most jobs that pop up are US-based. People have come to expect more work-life balance in Europe, as the employment laws differ from the US. For me, there have been perks related to my life as a parent, my working hours, and my professional growth. I was immediately drawn to the benefits of working for a European company I've been working in remote jobs for tech companies since 2016. I'd previously worked in an office, but thought a remote job meant I could focus on higher-impact work than the office administration that usually fell to HR, as well as branch out beyond the manufacturing and automotive industry jobs in my area. It was easier to find a remote job in 2022 than in 2016. I found the listing for Storyblok on a job board. The people I spoke with were genuine and direct. In the first interview, they talked about time off norms and said the standard workweek is 38.5 hours. They seemed to emphasize work-life balance and gave me concrete examples of how it worked at the company. I was optimistic I could be successful in the role while staying involved in my daughter's life. In the US, the norm on paper is a 40-hour workweek, but in practice, people often work until they finish their tasks, especially in tech. I used to work, feed my daughter, put her to bed, and then work some more. It felt normal. At my current company, you focus on work when you're at work and then log off until the next day. There have definitely been times when I've had to work extra hours, but overall, I'd say that my work-life balance is better. In the US, it can often feel that your work is your identity. My European colleagues take pride in their work and are extremely hard workers, but their job is one facet of their identity. Working for a European company has pushed me in new ways I've gained experience working with people from other cultures. Learning about Austrian law has also pushed me to expand my HR knowledge beyond US employment law. One thing I've noticed about the company culture is that when people are on vacation, they're on vacation. Meanwhile, it's more the norm in the US to answer messages on vacation. I've not completely broken this habit, but it has felt more attainable for me to delete work communication apps from my phone when I'm away. I've felt very supported in my role as a parent at my European company The Austrian norm of " care leave," which isn't a norm in the US, is a great part of working for a European company. Because I have kids under a certain age, I get to use two paid weeks off a year for days when my kids are sick and I need to take them to a doctor or take care of them. Having this bucket to pull from is a huge weight off my shoulders as a parent. My previous employers had generous parental leave policies. However, at Storyblok, I got slightly more time — 16 weeks. I went on maternity leave at a previous company with my firstborn and again at my current job in 2023. During my most recent maternity leave, people in the company treated it very seriously. I got a lot of support from my manager and team to help plan for my leave and assign my tasks to others. During my first maternity leave for a previous company, I didn't mind answering a few questions as needed to support my team, but at Storyblok, no one asked me work-related questions while I was away. There are some downsides While my working hours suit my season of life, there are days when I wish I could start later at 9 a.m. However, I don't think I'd be as effective without overlap with my European colleagues. Right now, I work 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET. Sometimes, if I have a question I want to ask colleagues in Europe during my afternoons, I'll know that I won't be getting an answer until the next day because of the time zone difference. I've learned to work these expectations into my regular workflow. It does make me sad that I don't live near my colleagues. I've built strong relationships with these people, but they're an ocean away. I'd find it hard to go back to a US-based company Working for a European company didn't occur to me as an option before I interviewed for this job. Having worked here for over two years, I feel spoiled by the benefits and perks of European working culture, and it would be hard for me to go back to working for a US-based company.
Finextra
14-05-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Dojo doubles speed to market with Storyblok
Dojo, one of the UK's leading payment providers, has transformed its digital operations by migrating from a legacy CMS to Storyblok. The switch has dramatically improved time to market, website performance, and scalability just in time for Dojo's expansion into Spain, Italy, and Ireland. 0 This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author. The results: • 2x faster content operations • <1 hour page QA & build time • 150% faster website loading speeds • 66% increase in YoY web sessions • 4.5-month migration of 600+ pages across 175 content types Dojo serves all customer-facing sites ( through Storyblok, allowing marketers and developers to collaborate seamlessly. The component-based architecture lets teams build new pages in minutes instead of hours without writing new code or relying on developers for every update. 'It's a game-changer that we're able to scale easily into new markets with Storyblok without having to build from scratch compared to our previous legacy system,' said Mira Kirilova, Product Manager at Dojo. By decoupling its frontend from the CMS, Dojo adopted a modern tech stack with React, NodeJS, and Astro, freeing devs from legacy constraints and cutting infrastructure overhead. Marketing teams gained autonomy, too. With visual editing, in-line commenting, and workflows, they no longer rely on engineers for everyday updates. 'Dojo's results show what happens when you give developers and marketers the freedom to move fast without stepping on each other's toes,' said Dominik Angerer, CEO and Co-Founder of Storyblok. 'They're not just building faster. They're scaling smarter.' Localization also got a boost. Direct integration with Lokalise means content can go live in new markets fast without extra engineering lift. 'Onboarding onto Storyblok is easy, and our editors can now build pages from start to finish in just 15 minutes with the Visual Editor,' added Kirilova.
Fibre2Fashion
07-05-2025
- Business
- Fibre2Fashion
E-commerce firms bet on AI despite modest gains: Storyblok
E-commerce companies are investing significant capital in AI to improve the customer experience, however, many businesses are yet to realise significant gains, as per the findings of a new survey of senior executives at 300 large and mid-sized e-commerce companies in the US and Europe by headless CMS Storyblok. E-commerce businesses have spent an average of $369,916 in the past year on developing or implementing AI solutions to enhance their digital customer experience, with 28 per cent spending more than $500,000. Yet almost a third (32 per cent) state that their AI investment has only made a slight improvement to their customers' digital experience. A Storyblok survey of 300 US and European e-commerce leaders found that while companies spent an average of $369,916 on AI to enhance digital experiences, 32 per cent saw only slight improvements. Despite this, 95 per cent reported a good ROI, suggesting a long-term investment view. Top AI uses include customer service, marketing analysis, and content creation. Surprisingly, nearly all of business leaders (95 per cent) say that their AI investment has delivered a good Return on Investment (ROI), of which 39 per cent perceive it as a very good ROI. This potentially indicates businesses are taking a longer-term view of AI investment to improve their digital offering. The research also explores the most popular use cases for AI amongst business leaders, which were cited as customer service (60 per cent), marketing analysis (48 per cent), website content creation (47 per cent), translation services (47 per cent), and automating admin tasks (43 per cent). 'The transformative potential of AI for the digital experience is enormous, but our research highlights a clear gap between expectation and reality. While e-commerce businesses are seeing some improvements, these remain incremental rather than truly transformative. What's particularly interesting is that despite this, most business leaders still consider the capital they have committed to AI a good investment. This could suggest that many companies do not expect big gains immediately, but are instead taking a longer-term view of AI to transform their digital offering,' Dominik Angerer, CEO and co-founder of Storyblok , said. 'To unlock AI's full potential, businesses must go beyond surface-level implementations and integrate AI in a way that drives meaningful transformation. Core to this is the flexibility to scale with ease, and that's where composable architecture comes in, enabling companies to seamlessly integrate AI-driven solutions across multiple channels without the restrictions of legacy systems. From hyper-personalisation to seamless localisation, nearly every possible AI use case could be implemented more effectively, and to a higher standard if businesses raised the digital bar and embraced modern marketing technology,' explained Angerer. Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RR)
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Online retailers in the US spent an average of $400k on AI last year
This story was originally published on Retail Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Retail Dive newsletter. U.S. businesses have spent $403,000 on average over the past year to develop or implement AI-powered customer experience tools, according to a survey of executives at 300 large and mid-sized e-commerce companies in the U.S. and Europe conducted by content management system provider Storyblok. Nearly a third (30%) of respondents said using AI has only made a slight improvement in their customers' digital experience. However, most (97%) of the respondents said their AI has delivered a good return on investment, the survey found. Among the common reasons why U.S. businesses adopted AI were customer service (61%), marketing analysis (60%), automating administrative tasks (42%), translation services (41%) and content creation (40%). As the AI race intensifies, U.S. businesses are pouring resources into the technology. Almost a third (30%) of the executives surveyed said their companies had spent more than $500,000 on their AI investments. But the report also illustrates the mixed results execs see after using AI despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. 'The transformative potential of AI for the digital experience is enormous, but our research highlights a clear gap between expectation and reality,' Dominik Angerer, CEO and co-founder of Storyblok, said in a press release. 'While U.S. businesses are seeing some improvements, these remain incremental rather than truly transformative.' Nevertheless, major brands and retailers have been using generative AI to create content and assist with administrative tasks. Last month, Walmart unveiled Wally, its generative AI tool that helps merchants enter and analyze data, identify product performance issues and answer operational questions. Earlier this month, L'Oréal Groupe announced its use of Google Imagen 3 and Gemini multimodal models to help its marketers build new concepts, create storyboards and redesign packaging. With more companies tapping into generative AI applications, retail execs at recent conferences have discussed both the potential and limitations of the technology. Retailers and technology companies at Shoptalk Spring discussed AI use cases ranging from localized ads to speeding along customer service work. Although retailers have been piloting the technology in areas like supply chains and personalization, companies remain largely in the exploratory phase. For the foreseeable future, the industry will rely heavily on a human touch, Target CEO Brian Cornell said during the National Retail Federation's Big Show conference.
Zawya
17-02-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Why Headless CMS Is the Future of E-Commerce?
For quite some time, retailers have leveraged Content Management Systems (CMS) to power their digital storefronts. But as companies expand into more marketplaces, relying on a single, large, enterprise-wide CMS can become cumbersome. Welcome to the Headless CMS for next-generation commerce. A Headless CMS decouples front end and back end; that is, a brand can provide a seamless shopping experience on its site and in its apps from voice to any IoT integration. It provides even greater flexibility, scalability, and performance capabilities. Keep reading this article to discover the wonders of Headless CMS and Unlock the power of joyful headless CMS with Storyblok H2: The Limitations of Traditional CMS in E-Commerce For over ten years, businesses have turned to traditional CMS like Magento, Shopify, and WooCommerce to deploy an enterprise solution for content and product management. While these systems function situationally better for small to mid-sized shops they complicate customization, scaling, and omnichannel initiatives. The greatest challenge of a traditional CMS is a non-responsive architecture that too heavily binds the frontend (customer-facing interface) and backend (CMS) functionality. When a retailer wants to plug in new technology to its arsenal, it struggles, site speed slows, and dreary access to new digital experiences occurs without better development access. In addition, these traditional CMS systems lack support for omnichannel distribution of content. Therefore, when brands intend to sell everywhere from ordinary websites and apps to smart devices and social media they have to develop the content independently on those platforms as it requires additional time and effort. This added effort creates increased costs, a disjointed brand image, and slower time to market. H2: Faster Page Load Speeds and Better Performance The challenge of loading speed. The whole point of e-commerce is conversion; sites are not going to keep customers who cannot access them properly. Studies show that sites lose 15% in conversion rates for each second it takes beyond anticipated loading time. Unfortunately, most CMS platforms contribute to loading issues. They feature heavyweight backend processing, ineffectively optimized databases, and themes/plugins that necessitate high-volume resources. A headless CMS does not encounter these loading problems from day one of the site. Since it can use any lightweight frontend technology React, or even the mere fact that it's decoupled means that from day one of building and deploying each, they can be optimized for loading speed. For instance, a clothing retailer using a Headless CMS can utilize SSR and SSG to deliver clothing pages in near real-time so that a visitor experiences no lag and loading speeds are essentially instantaneous. In addition, many Headless CMS solutions integrate easily with CDNs (Content Delivery Networks), which further enhance loading speeds by placing data in various, geographically diverse server farms and fetching and delivering from the closest one to the user's query. H2: Omnichannel Content Delivery for a Seamless Shopping Experience Content needs to be consolidated and customized across multiple channels and systems and purchasers now expect it. If someone is looking at a brand's website, they're buying on its application or searching for products through its social media; it should all be interlinked from one place to the next. A Headless CMS creates the opportunity for a true omnichannel experience, enabling companies to disseminate information across websites and applications, chatbots, digital kiosks/displays, and audio-assisted programs and even devices used for AR/VR from one centralized backend. For example, a cosmetics brand partnered with a Headless CMS can create one central product database that automatically syncs to the e-commerce site, the app, and the Instagram shop. If the price changes or a new product description is added, it uploads to all three sites in seconds without the team having to reinvent the wheel to ensure it's all the same meaning accurate and up to date across networks. This feature reduces the content development workload, avoids duplicate efforts that are not needed, and improves customer engagement in various digital realms. H2: Advanced Personalization and AI-Driven Shopping Experiences Where's the expected connection? When consumers not only want recommended products but also want personalized deals and discounts and content that adjusts based on their behavior and macro purchasing trend evaluation an all-in-one Headless CMS with recommendation tools, AI, and machine learning for forecasting and price adjustments brings it all to life, personally. Even customer experiences can shift. With AI and real-time analytics, a Headless CMS for an electronics retailer could work in tandem with AI personalization to suggest accessories to products already seen and bought. For example, if a customer is looking at gaming laptops, the content management experience would see fit to promote gaming keyboards, gaming mice, and gaming headsets because it caters to that customer's situation. H2: Improved Scalability for Growing E-Commerce Brands But when your e-commerce website begins to expand, you need a CMS that expands by itself without you having to do anything since increased traffic, increased product offerings, and customer interaction will be inevitable. Yet non-ecommerce CMS function on non-ecommerce levels and do not accommodate high-traffic opportunities as they require speed changes on a regular basis, caching solutions, and expensive plugins. A Headless CMS is inherently scalable. When brands increase their inventory, develop new technological features, or diversify across markets, extensive backend adjustments will not be necessary. Since content management operates on an API-first basis, incorporating a new sales opportunity, a new internationalization effort, or even a plug-in integration happens with little disruption to the main frame. For instance, an international apparel brand can use a Headless CMS to easily duplicate its site across languages and currencies with regionally focused sales endeavors creating a genuinely omnichannel approach. A Headless CMS is also scalable for the years to come in a future-proofed manner as it's cloud-based and accessible via API. H2: Seamless Integration with E-Commerce Platforms and Third-Party Tools Another advantage of a Headless CMS is its capability to connect with disparate sales, payment processing, and marketing tools. Businesses no longer need to rely upon one large, all-inclusive, comprehensive package; rather, thanks to APIs, businesses can decide which tools work best for them and implement the integration. For example, businesses can integrate with Shopify, BigCommerce, Stripe, PayPal, and AI-driven customer service chatbots for their ecommerce needs. Furthermore, brands can integrate their CMS with reporting applications, email outreach applications, and SaaS workflows for simple transfer of information and ease of use. A Headless CMS offers brands total freedom over their tech stack to develop and expand their eCommerce website however they'd like. H2: Future-Proofing E-Commerce with Headless CMS and Emerging Technologies The future will always have technology, especially where e-commerce development exists. Thus, for any e-commerce development projects, everything from present solutions to anything that would ease the customer experience is required. A Headless CMS is future-proof because it can connect with any technology that will be created in the future voice commerce, AR and VR, even AI. The possibilities for new technology integrations are already present. For example, a home goods retailer with a Headless CMS possesses the ability to develop AR shopping experiences, so customers can visualize what a specific piece of furniture will look like in their home before purchasing. An AI-driven shopping companion can pull from the CMS to provide customized purchasing recommendations via customers' in-home assistants Alexa, Google Home. In addition, the e-commerce sector is rife with possibilities for blockchain technology from secure payments and anti-fraud measures to inventory availability. A Headless CMS can easily interface with blockchain networks to ensure data integrity and secure online payments. To connect with such future technologies means that through a Headless CMS, e-commerce companies will always be one step ahead, enhancing customer interaction and providing an up-to-date shopping experience. Conclusion E-commerce is heading in the direction of flexibility and customization and omnichannel experiences and a Headless CMS will facilitate all of that. A Headless CMS is more scalable than a regular CMS, has faster performance and speed, boasts integrations, and affords a better customer experience on any channel or platform. With Headless CMS technology, eCommerce companies can stay ahead of the competition and ensure their web presence is future-ready while providing an online shopping experience that meets the expectations of today's consumers. From international expansion to AI-based customization to even faster loading times, Headless CMS is the answer to eCommerce. © Copyright The Zimbabwean. All rights reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. ( Martin
