CMS
How the Milestone CMS makes your life easier
The only CMS shortlisted for the US Search Awards
Milestone CMS makes it easy to drive traffic and conversions by ensuring your website and location pages are relevant and tagged for voice-search friendliness -- while delivering a beautifully engaging mobile-first experience.Deployed on over 6000 websites across multiple verticals, our CMS offers specific features for hospitality providers, restaurants, automotive, banks and retailers. Our clients report a 20-30% increase in revenue and leads after using our CMS. Here are the top ten features:
- Built-in SEO: Designed for high visibility on search engines, through high availability for search engine crawlers and site indexing, and automatic updates of sitemap.xml. Plus: the most effective voice search optimization on the market.
- Schemas, plus image readiness for visual search: Over 120 built-in schemas allow search engines to understand and index your content seamlessly. Tagged image optimization ensures your site's readiness for the growing availability of visual search.
- A higher share of mobile traffic because of our CMS' state-of-the-art mobile capabilities - mobile-first design, mobile speed optimization, native Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and the ability to create Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
- Eye-catching designs and memorable content to emphasize your message, through our top notch in-house design and content services.
- Event Calendar: An automated Event Feed populates your site calendar with up-to-date local events across multiple genres and generates hundreds of relevant, events-oriented pages - which search engines love.
- Easy-to-use site tools for managing content and images by non-technical managers, and for adding a wide variety of features, including photo galleries, forms for creating RFPs for vendors, e-coupons, email list signups, and Open Graph tags for site content shared on social media.
- Built-in compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 and privacy guidelines from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
- Business-focused insights, via our integrated site analytics.
- Fast site access with always-on availability and site security, through our managed site hosting, use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and high-end security infrastructure.
- Highest ROI, with lowest total cost of ownership. Immediate increases in traffic, leads and revenue, because our all-in-one CMS optimizes site configuration for you, while lowering additional costs because of so many built-in capabilities, such as technical SEO.
Vertical-Specific Features
Milestone CMS also enables features that are specific to certain industries:
Hotels and other hospitality venues:
Hotels and other hospitality venues:
- Gorgeous designs that emphasize the comfort and amenities
- Destination content about the locales that travelers might visit
- Support for translation of your site into multiple languages
- Features that support conversion to sales, including:
- Built-in response paths to complete a sale after a user has abandoned a shopping cart with an item left in it
- Chatbots to conduct automated conversations with users at any time of day
- Geo-personalization that targets offers and content by location
- An easy-to-manage blog for posting stories and content that showcase the value of your products and services
- Integration with most hospitality booking engines for real-time availability, rate and inventory checks, including SynXis and Windsurfer booking engines
- An Events Calendar with an up-to-date automated Events Feed on local events
- Promotional features, including creation and management of e-coupons and pop-up windows
- Integration with Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), so users can make rate comparisons and book directly.
Restaurants
- Creation of online menus that are indexable by search engines and searchable as menu items
- Integration with many reservations systems like OpenTable, Yelp, Eat2Eat, and more
- Integration with business directory Yelp for automated updating of listings and ability to respond to reviews from within the Milestone platform
- Feeds from leading social networks, allowing your social content to be easily posted on your site.
Auto Dealership
- Integration with car inventory systems for listing of used and new cars
- The car inventory is fully indexable by search engines
- Autodealer locator search, for finding the nearest dealership.
- Automated building of car and car product pages, from a content database
- Voice search-enabled FAQ pages, so answers to common questions can be spoken by voice agents like Amazon Alexa
- Online forms so users can request specific appointment times
Retailers
- Site integration with the Shopify platform, for ready implementation of ecommerce capabilities and online stores
- Real-time checking of integrated inventory, so customers can be informed if a product is in stock or not
- A site locator for finding the nearest store branch, within a geographical area or a given distance
- A Request-for-Proposal (RFP) online form, for the creation of RFPs for vendors
Financial Services
- Product-specific pages highlighting loans, mortgages and other lending, automatically built and maintained in our content database
- Locators to find branches and ATMs, by geography or distance from user
- Real-time display on the site of the bank's current stock price
- Forms so users can request specific appointment times
- Ability to easily create and manage a newsroom for publishing press releases and other updates
Corporate Websites
- Integration between the website and Salesforce's customer relationship management (CRM) to track customer contact and other relationship management
- Support for translation of real-time data into multiple languages
- Ability to easily create and manage a members-only section on the website, such as for stock holders, board members, VIP customers and so on
- Auto-responders for vendors who respond to your company's Request for Proposals (RFPs)
Built-in SEO
The Milestone CMS was built from the ground up with search engine optimization in mind, by making it easier for search engines to understand the site structure and meaning.
That's accomplished by:
That's accomplished by:
- Automatic updating of the XML sitemap
- Methods for helping search engine crawlers index the site
- Optimizing image and code compression
- The most effective voice search optimization on the market (without which voice searches of your content could be almost worthless)
- Milestone Local, a service that provides consistent local data like hours of operation to hundreds of listings - all linking back to your site
- And automatically deploying schemas
Schemas, plus image readiness for visual search
Schemas for new sites. A schema is a logical organization of website content, so a search engine can understand the meaning and hierarchy of the information, such as which content relates to "hotel" and which content refers to "room within that hotel."
The 120 built-in schemas in the Milestone CMS were created by Schema.org, an initiative started in 2011 to develop a common set of schemas for structured markup of website content. As the CMS author enters new text and images into the Milestone CMS, those fields are automatically tagged for schemas.
Many CMSs don't offer a full, built-in and automated schema mechanism for new sites like Milestone CMS does. Instead, they provide only manual tools, which are:
"Speakable Schemas." Milestone also offers "Speakable Schemas," which are specifically designed to organize text-to-speech content that can be delivered through intelligent voice agents like Amazon Alexa or Google's Assistant, often in response to a spoken query by a user.
Without voice schema markup, a query to Alexa for "the best Italian restaurant within five miles" might simply result in a name/address listing, instead of a spoken textual description like: "Giovanni's has been rated three stars for each of the last ten years, and is featured in the Michelin Guide to Great Restaurants."
Preparing images for visual search. Another future-proofing provided by the Milestone CMS is automatically preparing site images for visual search. Google, Pinterest and others are pioneering the ability of users to take a photo or reference an existing online photo, and then visually search for the same or similar images online. Milestone CMS automatically tags your site images so they're ready for that kind of search.
The 120 built-in schemas in the Milestone CMS were created by Schema.org, an initiative started in 2011 to develop a common set of schemas for structured markup of website content. As the CMS author enters new text and images into the Milestone CMS, those fields are automatically tagged for schemas.
Many CMSs don't offer a full, built-in and automated schema mechanism for new sites like Milestone CMS does. Instead, they provide only manual tools, which are:
- Much slower
- More prone to error
- Less able to be updated quickly with Schema.org's latest schema versions.
"Speakable Schemas." Milestone also offers "Speakable Schemas," which are specifically designed to organize text-to-speech content that can be delivered through intelligent voice agents like Amazon Alexa or Google's Assistant, often in response to a spoken query by a user.
Without voice schema markup, a query to Alexa for "the best Italian restaurant within five miles" might simply result in a name/address listing, instead of a spoken textual description like: "Giovanni's has been rated three stars for each of the last ten years, and is featured in the Michelin Guide to Great Restaurants."
Preparing images for visual search. Another future-proofing provided by the Milestone CMS is automatically preparing site images for visual search. Google, Pinterest and others are pioneering the ability of users to take a photo or reference an existing online photo, and then visually search for the same or similar images online. Milestone CMS automatically tags your site images so they're ready for that kind of search.
A higher share of mobile traffic
As every website owner knows, mobile traffic is growing by leaps and bounds, and that will only continue as 5G and higher wireless speeds come online. Currently, about 60% of Web site traffic is from mobile devices.
The Milestone CMS is built for creating robust mobile site presences, through mobile-specific adaptive-responsive designs, enhancement of fast mobile loading with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), and the ability to create Progressive Web Applications (PWAs).
Mobile sites created on the Milestone CMS can achieve very high speeds on Google's PageSpeed tests. This speed was a key reason why AMP pages created with the Milestone CMS for Millwood Inn and Suites generated an 83% increase in mobile transactions and a 68% boost in conversion rates.
While PWAs can also be utilized for desktop sites, they really shine in a mobile environment. They act and look much like mobile applications, but are browser-based, so there's no downloading, updating or management of yet another app, and they allow the business to send push notifications to visitors.
The Milestone CMS is built for creating robust mobile site presences, through mobile-specific adaptive-responsive designs, enhancement of fast mobile loading with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), and the ability to create Progressive Web Applications (PWAs).
Mobile sites created on the Milestone CMS can achieve very high speeds on Google's PageSpeed tests. This speed was a key reason why AMP pages created with the Milestone CMS for Millwood Inn and Suites generated an 83% increase in mobile transactions and a 68% boost in conversion rates.
While PWAs can also be utilized for desktop sites, they really shine in a mobile environment. They act and look much like mobile applications, but are browser-based, so there's no downloading, updating or management of yet another app, and they allow the business to send push notifications to visitors.
Eye-catching designs and memorable content
The visual design and quality of the textual content are key to users' experience with your website, which is why Milestone Internet employs in-house top-notch designers and content experts.
Milestone also utilizes up-to-date user experience practices to help visitors find their answers and buy your products in as few clicks as possible. A careful integration of visual, interactive and information design means that your pages will be easy to scan, fast to load, and contain messages that support your goals.
Milestone also utilizes up-to-date user experience practices to help visitors find their answers and buy your products in as few clicks as possible. A careful integration of visual, interactive and information design means that your pages will be easy to scan, fast to load, and contain messages that support your goals.
Events Calendar
Hotel, hospital, travel and other kinds of sites benefit from having calendars that are updated with relevant local events.
A hotel, for instance, might show dates and times of local theatrical shows, major sporting events or antique shows, while a hospital might have listings of local presentations in medical research or new clinical techniques.
To accommodate this need, Milestone Internet has created an automated Events Feed. It picks up data from various local data feeds, such as a theater league or a medical foundation, and automatically populates the site calendar.
Plus: each event in the calendar is linked to a page on your site that is automatically generated and populated with any additional details and relevant schema. Not only does this provide more info for users, but Google and other search engines give a higher value to a large population of pages of regularly updated local content.
A hotel, for instance, might show dates and times of local theatrical shows, major sporting events or antique shows, while a hospital might have listings of local presentations in medical research or new clinical techniques.
To accommodate this need, Milestone Internet has created an automated Events Feed. It picks up data from various local data feeds, such as a theater league or a medical foundation, and automatically populates the site calendar.
Plus: each event in the calendar is linked to a page on your site that is automatically generated and populated with any additional details and relevant schema. Not only does this provide more info for users, but Google and other search engines give a higher value to a large population of pages of regularly updated local content.
Easy-to-use site tools
The Milestone CMS is designed for daily text and image updating by non-technical business users working collaboratively, with easy-to-use tools and previews.
Users can also readily create and tailor a wide range of features, such as:
Users can also readily create and tailor a wide range of features, such as:
- Photo galleries
- Forms for creating RFPs for vendors
- E-coupons
- Signups to email lists
- Milestone Local, a service that provides consistent local data like hours of operation to hundreds of listings
- Open Graph tags for site content shared on social media
- Landing pages for pay-per-click search campaigns that can be automatically generated from ad copy
- A/B testing of alternate page elements for picking the most effective configuration
- Personalization technology for directing the right offers, relevant banners or customized content at targeted users
- Automated response detection, to present offers as visitors are about to leave your site
- Automatic reminders for users who leave a shopping cart with an item to be purchased
Built-in compliance
The Milestone CMS is designed to create websites that are compliant with:
And Milestone will add compliance features to accommodate upcoming privacy regulations, such as the finalized European Union's e-Privacy Regulation or a possible federal privacy act in the U.S.
- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
- The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
And Milestone will add compliance features to accommodate upcoming privacy regulations, such as the finalized European Union's e-Privacy Regulation or a possible federal privacy act in the U.S.
Business-focused insights
You can't manage what you can't measure, so Milestone CMS' built-in analytics measure effectiveness across your website.
Traffic and performance analytics from your website are integrated within Milestone Analytics, where all your brand's online KPIs reside - website and social media performance, online revenue, digital marketing campaigns, search engine PPC campaign results, analytics, email and phone tracking, and more.
Traffic and performance analytics from your website are integrated within Milestone Analytics, where all your brand's online KPIs reside - website and social media performance, online revenue, digital marketing campaigns, search engine PPC campaign results, analytics, email and phone tracking, and more.
Fast site access with always-on availability and site security
- Managed site hosting on a major cloud platform, with 24/7 monitoring
- A high-end security infrastructure that protects your site from attacks
- Utilization of Content Delivery Networks, for rapid delivery of content without regard to geography
Highest ROI, with lowest total cost of ownership
Immediate increases in traffic, leads and revenue because of:
- Built-in SEO for optimizing search results
- Strategic visual and informational designs to make it easy for users to find what they want
- A/B testing of which messaging or design works best, as well as such responsive measures as customized offers after cart abandonment
- Lowest total cost of ownership, because so many capabilities that would otherwise be outsourced (e.g., technical SEO) are built in.
