The Future of Content Management:
Adobe Experience Manager with Edge Delivery

Groundfog's Excursion into Edge Delivery Services

As cloud natives, we at Groundfog are always eager to explore anything labeled as such. Adobe Experience Manager with Edge Delivery had been on our radar for some time. After closely tracking news and reviews, we couldn't resist diving in ourselves. Edge Delivery Services held the promise of several benefits that aligned perfectly with our mission of crafting cloud-native solutions that empower businesses. Our primary motivation was to assess the capabilities of Edge Delivery in the context of our website and understand its impact on user experience and performance. We were excited about the potential benefits it offered, particularly in addressing our customers' challenges. And while I’m writing this article natively in my Google Docs editor, I am just one click away from publishing this article. So, let’s dive into it, sharing our experiences and insights along the way.
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Rethinking Content Management

Implementing Edge Delivery for our website was eye-opening. Within just one week, we had this innovative solution up and running, seamlessly integrating it into our content creation and management processes. One of our core values at Groundfog is to rethink, and with Adobe Experience Manager’s Edge Delivery and this project, we did just that. We mentally detached ourselves from classic CMS approaches and abandoned creating complicated components from scratch. Instead, we embraced the semantic simplicity of documents and used elements like headings, images, and paragraphs to streamline content creation. This allowed us to structure our pages in a native context, which simplified the process overall and led to a great experience. This positive experience drove us to extend the benefits to our customers' projects as well. We've successfully implemented Edge Delivery, leveraging its power to optimize performance and streamline content workflows in our client ventures.

Streamlines the Workflow: AEM Sidekick Chrome Extension

An initial step for a smooth and productive journey with Edge Delivery is to install the Sidekick browser extension, specifically designed for previewing and publishing pages. When we started our new project, we set the source, a particular Google Drive folder to which our project is linked. This extension has proven to be an invaluable asset in the toolkit of Adobe Experience Manager with Edge Delivery, streamlining the process of making changes within the document sections that align with the website. With the Sidekick extension, we could easily preview and publish changes as needed directly from Google Docs.
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Authoring Feature: A New Stage of Simplicity

The standout feature that caught our attention was Edge Delivery's document-based authoring experience, which took place entirely within Google Drive or Microsoft SharePoint. This unique approach allowed us to author pages as documents and create blocks, a term used in Adobe Experience Manager with Edge Delivery for traditional CMS components, with striking ease. Whether it was hero sections, columns, or other content blocks, we could effortlessly add them to our pages. Edge Delivery's auto-blocking feature simplified the process, automatically recognizing relationships between content elements and constructing blocks accordingly.

The Adobe Experience Manager concept allows users to populate their website content directly from common word processors, like Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

Since a page on the site is represented as a document, authors can produce content in programs they are already familiar with. Traditionally, it was tedious to update content on a website by manually copy-pasting it to the content management system.

Edge Delivery transforms this process. Content can now be pushed live directly from templates, saving time and reducing errors.

Edge Delivery is a game-changer for our team at Groundfog. While our team members have expertise in handling complex content systems, we understand that our customers may not share the same technical expertise. With project Edge Delivery, we aim to bridge this gap and empower them by providing a refreshingly user-friendly platform. It enables easy website updates, enhancing content velocity without depending on others' availability. It's important to note that both traditional CMS and the innovative Edge Delivery approach have validity. The choice depends on the specific use case and what best suits the project. The beauty is that we are proficient in both and prepared to adapt to each use case that comes our way, ensuring optimal outcomes.

Performance Boost

Another advantage of the Edge Delivery Service in Adobe Experience Manager is its ability to achieve impressive Lighthouse page speed scores. This is achieved through powerful optimization techniques that ensure our sites load at lightning speed, providing an outstanding user experience. In the digital landscape, page speed is not just a statistic. It's a critical factor that can make or break your web presence. Slow websites can lead to lost clients, decreased user engagement, lower search engine rankings, and reduced conversion rates. This is where Edge Delivery truly shines. Not only does it optimize our site's speed, but it also conducts thorough performance audits with every deployment, ensuring your web presence consistently performs at its best.

With the Edge Delivery Services in Adobe Experience Manager, achieving remarkable Lighthouse scores of 99 or 100 has become the new norm for websites. This is a testament to its impressive optimization capabilities and offers tremendous benefits for any online presence. High Lighthouse scores attract more organic traffic, enhance user satisfaction and make Adobe Experience Manager with Edge Delivery a game-changer for businesses seeking to dominate the digital landscape. It prioritizes end-user satisfaction by guaranteeing a fast and seamless browsing experience and enhancing brands through better SEO ratings.