Igx Web CMS Buyers Guide
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CONTENTS
Introducon
Introducon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The amount of digital content and media managed by private What is a Web CMS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 How to Buy a Web CMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Success Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Web CMS Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Web CMS Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Types o off We Web CM CMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Key Web CMS CMS C Cap apab abil ili ies es. . . . . . . . . . . 10 Un Unde ders rsta tand ndin ing g Depl Deploy oyme ment nt . . . . . . . . . 16 Web CMS CMS Im Impl plem emen enta tao on n . . . . . . . . . . 17 Web Web CM CMSS Temp Templat late e Appro Approach aches es . . . . . 17 Buyi Buying ng a Web Web CMS CMS ((Ag Agai ain) n) . . . . . . . . . . 18 Our Best Advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
ABOUT INGENIUX A leading provider of web content management soware, Ingeniux empowers organizaons to manage world-class websites and vibrant online communies across web,
and public organizaons has grown exponenally in the last few years. Websites have also become complex. For many organizaons, organizaon s, managing the web requires opmizing online markeng, delivering localized versions of content for country sites, creang online communies, supporng a myriad of mobile devices, and meeng key compliance requirements. Enter the web content management system (web CMS). Web CMS soware empowers organizaons to cost-eecvely manage the web while maximizing results from online programs and communicaons. Web CMS soware is as business crical c rical for most organizaons as a customer relaonship management system (CRM), enterprise resource planning system (ERP), or any other key business applicaon. Yet most organizaons do not have an eecve way to evaluate a web CMS. This is complicated by the sheer number of web CMS soluons on the market, the industry markeng hype, and the wide range of use cases web CMS soware supports. This buyer’s guide is aimed at helping organizaons organizaons understand how to evaluate and buy a web CMS. It outlines the key use cases, features, types of systems, and success factors in selecng a web CMS. While not an end-all guide to the t he web CMS market, it does provide a starng point in understanding web CMS soware and a framework for evaluang the merits of dierent types of systems.
mobile, and tablet plaorms. Discover what Ingeniux can do for you.
What is a Web CMS?
Call (877) 445-8228 Email [email protected] Visit www.ing www.ingeniux.com eniux.com
A denion of web CMS may be summarized as, “Soware that allows non-technical business users to manage content throughout its enre life cycle.” This denion is about the only thing that many web CMS
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soluons hold in common. As this buyer’s guide illustrates, there are a wide range of web CMS soluons and use cases. There is also a wide range of terms and acronyms ac ronyms used to describe a web CMS – from customer experience management (CXM), to web experience management (WEM), to content management system (CMS). This buyer’s guide uses the term web CMS to encompass e ncompass all of the soluons named above.
How to Buy a Web CMS First and foremost, buyers should understand that there is no best web CMS. There is only a best web CMS relave First and foremost, buyers should to buyers’ requirements. It is therefore important that understand that there is no best web buyers thoroughly understand what their requirements CMS. There is only a best web CMS are, based on every user conngency within the company. relave to buyers’ requirements. That understanding should then be mapped to an equally well-dened understanding of currently available web CMS plaorms. This is more easily said than t han done since companies oen have diculty understanding exactly what their users need, as well as what the
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dierent web CMS plaorms actually oer. oer. But the guiding principle in the purchase decision should be as close as possible to a 1:1 match between what a buyer needs and what a product oers. Use cases. A praccal approach to tesng the match between requirements and soluons is to dene
use cases. That is, how do those involved in the content life cycle interact with the web CMS. How do they use it? What are their goals? Dening your key use cases is an essenal rst step in evaluang a web CMS. Budget. Before making a decision on what web CMS soluons are feasible, buyers must know what
purchase resources are available. available. It makes no sense to test a $200,000 web CMS license if only $75,000 is available. Similarly, Similarly, even when funds are available, it makes no sense to overspend. Once the web CMS budget is known, buyers should build the business case both to jusfy the expense and to ensure that money is not being wasted. In this acvity, it will be important to get an idea of what the total cost of ownership (TCO) of any potenal web CMS will be over a three to ve year period. Total cost of ownership (TCO). Included in the TCO are several components. The rst important
component is license cost. This is the t he amount buyers will pay to purchase the applicaon for its parcular conguraon (number of servers, content editors, bandwidth, etc). Typically Typically understood as the “price” of a web CMS, the license cost over several years typically represents represents one quarter to one third the TCO. The cost of implementaon is oen equal to or slightly greater than the cost of the license. For a base license of $75,000, implementaon costs typically typically range from $60,000 to $90,000 – or roughly 80 percent to 120 percent of the license cost. Buyers should be aware that implementaon costs vary widely between web CMS products. Annual support and maintenance. For technical support and maintenance, which includes product
upgrades, buyers should expect to pay 20 percent of license costs annually. For a $75,000 license,
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$15,000 annually will be spent on support and maintenance. Buyers uyers Administraon and support. IT resources will be required to administer the system over me. B should aempt to esmate how many full-me employees will be required to do this, and they should calculate the burdened cost of such resources as part of the TCO of the web CMS. Product usability. While not commonly considered a factor in TCO, product usability correlates directly
to user adopon rates. When products are not easily learned and used by content contributors, a common result is implementaon abandonment. This can result in a complete loss of all resources invested in the project. A less dramac impact of poor usability is the increased me – and therefore expense – required to create, manage, and re-use content. Alternate pricing models. In addion to on-premise
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The total cost of ownership (TCO) of SaaS oerings tends to be 50 to 60 percent less than on-premise.
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soware licenses, some web CMS’ are available as a service (SaaS). SaaS pricing is generally a recurring subscripon fee, either monthly or annually, that includes soware licensing, support and maintenance, and soware hosng. Because SaaS includes all of the applicaon management and hosng services, the TCO of SaaS oerings tends to be 50 to 60 percent less than on-premise costs.
Success Factors Crical to the success of any web CMS purchase decision is buy-in throughout the organizaon. Especially important is top-down support, where the crical nature of managing content eecvely is understood throughout the company. company. Yet it is equally important for content contributors to make their requirements known. In short, every level of the organizaon needs to buy into the crical nature of the business case for a web CMS. As an integral part of the business case, web CMS buyers should strive to arculate as clearly as possible how the web CMS will allow them to engage customers online. The boom line always comes down to how relaonships with customers can be improved. improved. In the case of web CMS, this is normally the online interacon. Improved branding, customer loyalty, loyalty, content personalizaon, personalizaon, and mul-channel management all contribute to a richer experience, and therefore to improved revenues – either directly or indirectly. The importance of web CMS usability cannot be overstated. With it, implementaons have a chance of success. Without it, they do not. Employees who depend on a web CMS to do their jobs simply will not put up with applicaons that impede their eciency. If the web CMS slows them down or impedes their progress, they will simply work around the system. This inevitably leads to implementaon failure. failure. Excellent customer support is essenal to the mely resoluon of crical issues, which can dramacally impact company protability. protability. To take but one example, system downme at the wrong me can
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dramacally compromise compromise the web presence as a whole – think of the markeng campaign that can’t be viewed for the rst several hours aer a press release, for example. If the web CMS vendor does not oer 24/7 customer support, or if technical issues cannot be resolved quickly (within several hours), markeng, sales, and corporate communicaons overall can be impacted. Competors will be happy to take customers. The me-to-market, or speed of execung sales and markeng campaigns, is also cr crical ical to success. Gone are the days when one week was a sasfactory me-to-market for an online campaign, for example. Now it’s more like 24 hours. For that to be a reality, the web CMS must perform well in a number of categories, usability and web engagement foremost among them. Finally, all of the consideraons above become moot points if the web CMS vendor you choose isn’t Finally, fundamentally stable. Buyers Buyers should ask themselves how vendor strategies and market presence will contribute to the vendor’s connued success in the t he market – or even existence – over the next few years. However, However, it is important to note that tradionally the independent web CMS C MS vendors have been the most stable in the market, while larger porolio soware companies have waxed and waned on their support of web CMS applicaons. A small company solely focused on web CMS may have much more stability compared to a larger company that oers a web CMS as a subset of a larger soluon line.
Web CMS Features Web CMS applicaons have been around for nearly 15 years. As such, the technology is relavely mature. While web CMS has not yet become a commodity, commodity, it is true that many of the features and funcons within web CMS’ are common in oerings throughout the industry. Such standard features features include WYSIWYG authoring, visual workow, workow, and template creaon. So, what should buyers of a new web CMS look for? In our opinion, the disnguishing features of current web CMS systems are in the value-added layers that some soluons provide, such as: Product usability. The primary purpose of a web CMS is to empower non-technical users to manage
the web, removing IT resources from common usage scenarios to reduce costs, maximize resources, and improve web content management operaons. The user-friendliness of the web CMS is therefore essenal in the decision-making process. Consider the ease with which a marketer can create an online promoonal campaign or a casual content contributor can create new, new, template-based web pages. Technical foundaon. The languages and technologies with which a web CMS is developed is another
important consideraon in the evaluaon process. This will dene the toolset that can be used to customize a web CMS to specic customer needs. It will also dene the capabilies you will need to support the applicaon, the type of sta you need to hire and manage, and, to some extent, the roadmap for your website and applicaons. If your web team has background in Java development, a .NET soluon may not be a good t. If you do not have in-house technical capabilies you may be best serve by a SaaS-based soluon that includes applicaon management. Flexibility. Web CMS applicaons in the market vary widely in their architectural exibility exibility.. Most were
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developed incrementally over the course of many years, and their development standards were not consistent over me. Generally speaking, it is dicult to integrate a web CMS that evolved in this manner with other enterprise applicaons, or even to extend their out-of-the-box out-of-the-box feature funconality funconality.. The most exible web CMS systems are those that were conceived as a whole, developed purely within one language based on a well-arculated set of industry standards, and built in accordance with the principles of services-oriented architecture (SOA), meaning the components of the plaorm are designed to operate as self-contained units that can be added and removed from the system at will. Addional value-added features. Beyond these widely-relevant consideraons is a set of user-specic
criteria that will be determined by the customers’ actual use case scenarios. For organizaons with mission-crical web markeng iniaves, the quality and applicability of the markeng tools bundled with the web CMS will be very important. Similarly, Similarly, for online retail enterprises, the ability to analyze user behavior and deliver personalized online experiences in support of overall online sales goals will be crical. For those conducng business across mulple geographies, the ability to manage mulples sites, in mulple languages, delivered via mulple channels will be a key success factor. factor. From an operaonal perspecve, scalability is important both as a web CMS is integrated throughout throughout the business and as seasonal spikes in user acvity put bandwidth/hardware strains on the system (during holiday seasons, for example). From a technical perspecve, the robustness and quality of development tools (oen an SDK) dramacally impact how easily and quickly IT can augment system funconality. funconality. And nally,, a web CMS’ ease-of-administraon nally ease-of-administraon – the resource intensity required to maintain the soware over me – will dramacally aect the total cost of ownership. As an example, the ability to avoid adding even one addional IT person can amount to well over $500,000 in savings over three to ve years. Far more helpful than a feature-funconal checklist comparison, serious reecon on these evaluaon criteria, as applied to specic use cases, will help buyers disnguish between the various web CMS oerings on the market. Recently,, the goals of web CMS implementaons have focused on Web experience management. Recently managing a customer’s enre web experience. These goals commonly involve marshalling all channels of customer communicaon – parcularly web and mobile – for the purpose of craing a stream of engaging, interacve, user-specic, carefully coordinated customer communicaons. Web engagement management (WEM), as we have begun to describe this capability, measures a web CMS’ ability to deliver these opmized online experiences based on the interests of parcular website visitors. This is done by assembling the right content and delivering it at the right me, in the right context, based on the match between permutaons of available content items and the website visitor’s interests. Over me, a good web CMS will help build detailed proles of users, based on pre-exisng explicit data and dynamically-captured dynamically-c aptured online behavioral paerns. Oen these user proles are managed in a separate system, such as a markeng automaon system, and then leveraged by the web CMS in delivering targeted content. In this way, way, a web CMS can become quite good at managing not only the content and the user, but the interacon between these two and, consequently, the experience itself.
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Web CMS Use Cases To delve more deeply into use cases for web CMS we will look at ve of the most common use case scenarios: public websites, corporate intranets, extranets, community-based sites, and mobile sites. Public websites, which commonly encompass: Digital markeng and lead generaon. This feature of public websites is common to most
companies oering online goods, services, and informaon. How does an airline get web visitors to purchase ckets from them versus a competor? Web CMS’ will commonly have digital markeng and lead-generaon tools built in that allow marketers to increase the speed of creang markeng campaigns, incorporang search engine opmizaon, lead-generaon capabilies, analycs capabilies to monitor user acvity and determine what visitors are interested in, and so on. Product-based sites. Crical to product-based sites is the ability to structure and categorize
content so that inventory can be eecvely merchandised and displayed in dierent secons of the website (for example, an air-condioner sold in “Appliances” “Appliances” and “Heang and Cooling”), and across channels. Also important on this type of site is the ability to combine elements of product descripons. Here, informaon such as product SKUs, bar codes, descripons, user rangs, images, availability availabil ity,, pricing, manufacturer informaon, warranty informaon, related products, shipping informaon, availability availability in nearby stores, etc. become the crical funconal building blocks. Member services-based sites. This contains a fairly broad range of use cases, but generally requires
users to log in for access to services based on ered e red service level agreements. Members may have access to one part of the site but not others. Alternavely Alternavely,, they may be entled to certain benets based on their status level or er level, and may not have access to certain informaon beyond that level. The key for this funconal area of public websites is that services and access to content be based on users’ membership levels. E-commerce sites. This is a common use case scenario for public websites, but the complexity of
use cases varies greatly. greatly. At the simple end of the range are a limited number of goods or services, available electronically, electronically, and delivered immediately at the me of purchase. The most complex e-commerce sites maintain extraordinarily diverse inventories, user proles, content types, and content analycs. Federated websites. Large organizaons such as universies, government agencies, non-prots, and
corporaons oen manage a signicant number of loosely connected websites. These “federated” sites are most easily understood as mulple instances of the four use cases descr described ibed above, with each department of the university or organizaon running one or more of the t he aforemenoned scenarios. Corporate intranets is the next use case for web CMS implementaons. While not necessarily dierent
from public-facing websites in terms of features or funcons, intranets do tend to share a common set of unique features and funcons, which include:
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Human resources service portals. The most common use case for the corporate intranet, the HR
service portal disseminates any and all relevant corporate informaon to internal constuents. This includes corporate policies, benets, pay informaon, access to employee rerement accounts, stock opons, payroll and tax informaon, medical benets, etc. Employee enablement tools. Another typical use for the corporate intranet is the provision of
employee enablement tools, as demonstrated by an intranet sub-site for the sales force that includes training materials, markeng collateral, collateral, price lists, compeve analysis, SLA direcves, etc. Generally speaking, the goal of the corporate intranet is to expose all corporate informaon in order to enable employees and disseminate that informaon. Extranets are analogues to the corporate intranet that extend their funconality to partners and
customers. In this scenario, people outside of the company have log-ins that gain them access to certain informaon within the content repository. repository. Content access control is applied either at the repository or database level. Extranets also allow individuals outside the rewall to join internal workows. Taken together, together, public-facing sites, intranets, and extranets, are enabled by the core features of the web CMS. They are simply dierent permutaons of the features exposed to dierent audiences. Community websites encompass a wide range of features and requirements, including: Social communies. Social community websites are designed to engage customers with social
features such as user-generated content, media, commenng and moderaon, forums, and social networking capabilies. Social communies may be used to support brand engagement as well as many business collaboraon scenarios. Informaon Informao n portals. Primarily serve to disseminate informaon to constuents. Common examples
include state and local governments, nonprots, user groups and forums. Among the more complex instances of such websites are state government services portals in which transaconal services are provisioned to cizens. Managing a community website oen requires soluons beyond a web CMS, although some web CMS soluons do provide community management and moderaon capabilies, including member management, acvity streaming and nocaons, forums and blogs, and business collaboraon for documents and shared workspaces. If supporng communies is crical for your organizaon it will be important to evaluate evaluate whether the web CMS can support the needs of the community or whether you are beer served integrang a standalone community soware package. Mobile websites, including mobile and other compung formats, such as tablets and kiosks, are a
disnct use case for many considering a web CMS implementaon. Mobile websites can support all of the use cases listed above, as well as mobile applicaons. Generally, Generally, a mobile website will deliver a task-based task-bas ed user experience, support opmal layout on a wide range of devices, and feature mul-touch interacons for tapping and swiping elements of the websites. Mobile websites may also take advantag advantage e of device capabilies, such as local storage, cameras, GPS, and other features.
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Types of Web CMS In considering the type of web CMS that t hat is right for your business, ve key comparisons to keep keep in mind are publishing systems vs. development frameworks, database vs. le-based systems, soware-as-aservice (SaaS) vs. on-premise plaorms, and open source vs. commercial systems. Publishing systems vs. development frameworks. frameworks. In making a decision for a parcular web CMS,
perhaps the most important decision is whether you need a publishing system or a development framework. Publishing systems systems are characterized by the ease with which they allow for the creaon, management, and deployment of content. Ideally, Ideally, publishing systems are ready to use out-of-the-box, have short implementaon mes, and make managing the content life cycle simple at each stage. Much of the heavy technical liing in publishing systems systems as we describe them here is handled by the web CMS itself. Publishing Publishing systems are also characterized by the scope of requirements they address, which typically begin with content authorship and connue through workow approvals, publishing, re-use, deployment, and archiving. Development frameworks, on the other hand, provide a toolbox with which companies can cra their own soluons. These frameworks place the emphasis on the ability to create highly specic customized soluons, which typically include a complex content staging topology topology,, heavy involvement of development resources for system extensions, extensions, and the associated need to manage the logic surrounding content at each stage of system extension or integraon. Simply put, publishing systems handle an organizaons’ need to create, develop and deploy websites, whereas development plaorms provide an environment in which any number of soluons can be created, publishing among them. We nd that most buyers seeking a web CMS are seeking a publishing system rather than a development environment. Database vs. le-based systems. The next consideraon in choosing a web CMS is whether a system is
database or le-based driven. Database-driven web CMS’ require that content be stored in a highly structured way. way. Each piece of content is essenally stored in a matrix, where each cell contains a “content chunk, chunk,”” and may also have related metadata. The content chunk becomes the most granular level at which content can be processed. And the feature-funconality of the matrix itself represents the limit of what can be done, not only with content within the matrix, but also with integraon in the overall technology infrastructure. In le-based systems, content managed by the web CMS can be stored at the le level within the operang system, and can therefore be accessed freely by other modules and applicaons that run within an operang system, rather than depending on a database. Content managed by le-based systems can be both structured and unstructured, making it much easier to incorporate a wider variety of content throughout the enterprise into the web CMS – whereas in database-driven applicaons, the database becomes the funconal limit. For a le-based web CMS, the operang system itself represents the limit, which really isn’t much of a limit at all.
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We nd that le-based web CMS’ more accurately represent the way enterprises typically think about their content – that is, Word documents, PowerPoint PowerPoint presentaons, Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, and the like. Enterprises don’t typically think of their press releases and events in terms of columns and rows, as such content would be stored within a database-driven applicaon. In a le-based web CMS, content is stored in the applicaons with which they are the most familiar familiar.. Non-technical authors need never know that their PowerPoint presentaon is being managed by a web CMS. consideraon in choosing a web Soware-as-a-service (SaaS) vs. on-premise plaorms. The next key consideraon CMS is whether it is installed on your premises or whether the applicaon is oered as a service, in which actual installaon is remote. Tradionally Tradionally,, buyers have thought of on-premise soware as oering a richer set of features and funcons than soware oered as a service. Over the past few years, however, however, the feature-funconality between these two types of web CMS’ has converged. So the purchase decision now focuses more on the extent to which companies wish to customize their soware, which would favor on-premise soluons, or the extent to which they value automac version upgrades and seamless system administraon,, as in a SaaS plaorm. These are generalies, and they will not exactly describe every administraon prospecve buyer’s decision criteria, but as the need to control all of the minuae within a web CMS soluon increases, the probability of favoring on-premise soware also increases. The types of SaaS approaches have also changed. Tradionally, Tradionally, hosted applicaons have used a multenancy model where mulple customers are hosted on the same servers and applicaons. This model, pioneered by companies like Salesforce.com, is a cost eecve way for soware vendors to add new customers and provide a robust plaorm at a lower cost of ownership. However, However, not all SaaS companies have the resources of Salesforce.com and not all applicaons applicaons t the same model as a web CMS. With the advent of virtualizaon, web CMS buyers now have an opon of using a web CMS managed in the cloud with the same extensibility as an on-premise web CMS applicaon. Virtualizaon provides a complete standalone network that can run a web CMS and integrate securely with other systems and applicaons. As the cost of virtualizaon has fallen dramacally dramacally with the rise of cloud compung, the costs between a dedicated virtualized environment environment and a tradional mul-tenancy web CMS have become about equal. Virtualizaon also provides more exibility. With a web CMS applicaon and website you can move to other hosng locaons or bring hosng in-house, have le-level access to servers, open secure ports for other applicaons, perform upgrades when you want to rather than when the vendor requires downme, and scale the service to oer beer performance. Open source vs. commercial systems. The dierence between most commercial and open source web
CMS soluons goes beyond the license. While open source soware has come a long way in the last few years, there are typically issues and costs associated with managing an open source web CMS, such the necessity for the customer to develop and customize a plaorm, the lack of product support, and the complex user experience and features that may be added to the soware without the same quality assurance and product management oversight of a commercial soware vendor. vendor. Organizaons Organiza ons using open source are oen dependent on a sta that is well versed in that plaorm.
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When the sta leaves, the organiza organizaon on is faced with tthe he challenge of supporng the system and customizaons. customizaon s. While an open source license does provide some peace of mind in terms of ownership of the soware source code, and in most cases tthe he licensing cost for open source is “free,” the total cost of ownership of an open source web CMS is oen much higher than its commercial counterparts. Moreover,, most commercial soware vendors provide some form of soware escrow service that covers Moreover access to source code in the case of natural disaster or end of business operaons. If you are deciding between and an open source or a commercial web CMS there are several key quesons you need to ask: Do you have the capabilies to manage and extend the applicaon? How crical is customer support to your success? What is the cost of downme and internal support costs? Is open source soware development or management part of your core competency as a company? How crical is source code ownership to your success? Likewise, with a commercial system you need to consider the vendor longevity and viability, viability, the depth of their support services, and the availability of vendor resources to support your applicaon and projects.
Key Web CMS Features and Capabilies While the features and capabilies vary widely between web CMS plaorms, there is a core set of feature-funconality feature-fun conality that all prospecve web CMS C MS buyers should include in their requirements. This secon is not intended to be a complete list of web CMS capabilies, but rather highlights many of the essenal features of web CMS applicaons, the absence of which would be a deal-breaker. deal-breaker. Content authoring. Web CMS systems should provide a content authoring environment
that is easy for everyone to use, technical and non-technical. The web CMS should provide a WYSIWYG content editor, editor, which is essenally a word processing-like applicaon that runs inside a standard browser. The user interface of WYSIWYG editors is very similar to word processing applicaons in which users can select spacing, alignment, text aributes, hypertext links, colors, images, spell checking, etc. The web CMS should also provide the ability to edit e dit content in-context of the page preview as well as in a forms-based view that supports addional structure and metadata.
The content authoring environment within a web CMS should be easy for everyone to use, technical and non-technical.
Browser-based Browser-b ased clients. Browser-based clients refers to an applicaon running inside a browser, browser, as
opposed to an applicaon that needs to be installed. Using a web CMS with support for browser-based clients is important in order to maximize the number of potenal content contributors. Assuming that everyone has browser access, browser-b browser-based ased clients ensure that everyone can use the web CMS.
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Whether a client is browser-based or not, it is important to understand which web browsers the soware can run in (Microso Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.) as well as the supported operang systems, such as Microso Windows or the current Apple OS. Content re-use. Content re-use is oen considered the number one factor for return on investment of a
web CMS. Good web CMS’ ensure that source material is available centrally, centrally, and when changes are made to the source, updates are disseminated to every instance where source material is used. For example, if a company changes the locaon of its headquarters, updang the corporate address inside the web CMS would ensure that every me the address is published on the website – or in printed materials, or anywhere else – the updated address is used. Some web CMS’ are based on XML, or similar technology technology,, and developed to meet a wide range of content re-use scenarios. This may include exports for elements such as tles, abstracts, and thumbnail images in order to create c reate content indexes and navigaons, navigaons, the ability to support mul-channel content deployment to desktop web, mobile, print, and kiosk “channels, “channels,””, and the ability to re-use content across mulple websites. Workow. All web CMS’ should provide for the
assignment of content authoring by individual or role. That is, a supervisor may decide that Joe Smith should author an arcle, in which case a task is sent to Joe Smith’s email inbox. Alternavely, the same supervisor may decide that anyone with the tle of markeng manager should author the arcle, in which case the workow would send the assignment to anyone with the tle markeng manager.. Once the task is accepted and content manager is authored by the appropriate individual, individual, the arcle is sent back to the supervisor for approval. Workows may include any number of approval
A web CMS should provide for for the assignment of content authoring by individual or role. Nontechnical users should be able to set up workows.
stages and, once complete, content is published to the appropriate desnaon. Workows may also include individuals outside of a company company,, such as business partners or content translators. translators. Non-technical users should be able to set up workows without the involvement involvement of IT. This means that workow tools should be visually-based and should not require coding. Versioning. As documents, web pages, and other les are updated over me, the web CMS should
maintain all previous versions, and allow for version restoraon, or “rollback,” at any me. In addion to the simple maintenance of previous versions, the web CMS should indicate who was responsible for every change. This ensures that previous versions are always available, available, and also allows for accountability. accountability. Many web CMS soluons also provide red-lining or version comparison capabilies that highlight the changes to each version of the page.
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Version history is crical in industries such as nancial services, health care, and life science that have Version compliance and reporng requirements. These organizaons generally need more sophiscated audit trail capabilies that show who made content changes and track which versions of the content have been published. Taxonomy. A web CMS should maintain a standardized taxonomy, which is essenally a lexicon that
denes what terms mean and their degree of relevance to other terms. Taxonomies allow you to organize and deliver content by category and make it possible for users to search for specic content without knowing the exact term used by the content author. author. For example, if a user searches for “lawsuit” when the original author used “ligaon,” “ligaon,” the taxonomy taxonomy would establish relevance between the two terms that would return content for “ligaon” based on a search for “lawsuit.” “lawsuit.” Taxonomies Taxonomies are especially helpful in conjuncon with metadata and can be crical in managing customer experience though segmentaon and targeng of key audiences, guided or faceted navigaon, navigaon, and beer search se arch experiences. Asset management. A web CMS should provide a
means of not simply storing and retrieving content assets, but also a way of eding or modifying them. For example, an image source le may be quite large (greater than two megabytes). When such images are used as thumbnails on a web page, the web CMS should automacally re-size them to a predetermined size. For images that are not used as thumbnails with a predetermined size, the web CMS should provide an image editor to re-size an image without having to use a thirdparty applicaon. This is only one example of asset management, but it provides an analogy to many other use cases.
A web CMS should provide a means means of not simply storing and retrieving content assets, but also a way of eding or modifying them.
The web CMS should also manage all types of digital content, including images, video, and documents. An important queson is not only the type of assets managed, but where they are managed. Many web CMS soluons require that assets be stored in the CMS repository. repository. While this may be a good soluon for many organizaons, oen large les like video would be beer served ser ved on a media server. server. Documents may already originate out of a central repository like Microso Sharepoint and it may not make sense to duplicate this content. Federated asset management is the ability to store dierent types of assets in dierent locaons and is supported by some web CMS soluons. Templates. Since pages within a website typically follow similar structures, web CMS’ should provide the
ability for users to create a new page based on an exisng design. These designs are frequently called “templates” or “page types” and they should be readily accessible by non-technical content authors and editors. To To learn more about templates, refer to the “Web CMS Template Template Approaches” secon.
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Analycs. A web CMS should provide a means of
tracking how website users interact with content – how many mes they’ve accessed a page, the clickstreams used to navigate content, the ads that were most eecve, etc. Analycs modules are the means of doing this. Web CMS soware generally supports analycs one of two ways: a built-in analycs module or support for a third-party analycs provider. provider. While the integrated analycs of a built-in module is a nice feature, analycs is a soware category of its own and has a much broader features set than can typically be supported by a web CMS.
A web CMS should provide a means of tracking how website users interact with content. Analycs modules are the means of doing this.
In our opinion, the beer approach to supporng analycs is the provider model. With this approach, customers connect their exisng analycs systems with web CMS dashboards that provide context to the t he content. Providers for analycs may include Google Analycs (usually free to use), WebTrends, WebTrends, Omniture, and other systems. Search. A web CMS should provide search tools
for the content repository. Search tools should oer opons for content retrieval, relevance, and any number of other criteria appropriate for
faceted search (“facets” referring to criteria such as le type, le size, color color,, date, region, price, brand, etc.). A web CMS generally uses dierent soluons for an internal content or repository search and an external public web search. A public web search is oen served by a thirdparty search applicaon, such as Apache Lucene, Microso Enterprise Search Server, Google Search Appliance, or the like.
A web CMS should provide search tools for the content repository.
Reporng. A web CMS should provide reporng
tools that make understanding content consumpon quick and easy. These are typically dashboards that display content usage summaries. Beyond a set of standard reports, such as audit trails, pages in workow, workow, etc. the web CMS should provide the ability to create custom reports. The ability to export a report as a Microso Excel or CSV le is also important. Mobile device opmizaon. Mobile may be the most important feature or set of capabilies in
evaluang a web CMS today. Mobile is outpacing desktop Internet growth by a wide margin.
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Since content will be delivered to a wide range of mobile devices, the web CMS should opmize content for delivery to those devices. In order to do this, the web CMS must be able to detect which device is making a request and deliver the right amount of content in the right screen format, checking for possible content incompabilies, such as Adobe Flash content delivered to an iPad. When planning for mobile it is also important to consider whether you need to develop a separate website or app from your desktop website, or add another layer of presentaon to your exisng website to support mobile users. While about 90 percent of mobile websites are deployed on a dierent domain or sub-domain today, today, there is a cost associated with branching mobile because the inbound trac to your website from outbound email campaigns, adversing, search, and social media is directed at your desktop website URL. The web CMS should be able to forward users to the appropriate view of the content based on the device user agent or to provide a mobile view of the web page using the same URL. Another consideraon is how the web CMS can support mul-touch user inacon to enhance the customer experience on smartphones and tablets. Web CMS soluons with strong mobile capabilies support app-like mobile experiences and deliver touch-based interacons using HTML5 and frameworks such as jQuery Mobile. Applicaons. Since websites typically include a number of common elements such as calendars,
newsleers, blogs, mulmedia, user forums, etc. a web CMS should provide each of these applicaon types as a part of the basic product. Beyond the set of modules, web CMS soware should provide a public API that supports integraon with external applicaons. Web services support, using SOAP or REST-based REST -based protocols, as well as connectors to external databases, may be crical in integrang an organizaons’ organiza ons’ line of business applicaons and legacy systems. Generally a web CMS’ ability to easily integrate with applicaons and data is referred to as the “extensibility” of the CMS plaorm. While extensibility is oen one of the most dicult aspects of a web CMS to evaluate, extensibi extensibility lity may be a crical consideraon is gaining the business eciencies and capabilies required in a website or project. SEO is a mix of various features in the web CMS that support best pracces to help elevate search engine
rankings for websites. Support for SEO should include: Search engine friendly URLs. Web addresses for each page that describe the topic of the page, show
where the page is organized in the website, and do not use any special characters, such as queson marks, to denote dynamic content. SEO metadata. The web CMS should make it easy to add descripve metadata for tles and page
descripons. It should also provide the ability to auto-populate metadata by default. Addional “bot” instrucons, such as “no index” and “no crawl,” crawl,” should also be available. XML site maps. Site maps are connected directly to leading search engines, such as Google and
Microso Bing, and nofy search engine crawlers of new or updated content and its priority in terms of indexing frequency. frequency. Automac redirecng and forwarding. When pages are renamed, moved, or deleted, the web
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CMS should automacally issue a permanent redirect so people using the old links can nd the new content or be directed into other pages. Canonical URLs. Every web page should only have one authoritave address. Canonical URLs
redirects users from every variaon of a web address to a single address. This may include adding (or removing) the www. before the domain and redirecng for various extensions (such as .htm, .aspx, or .html). publish web content content Mullingual. The ability to publish in dierent languages and for dierent geographic regions is crical for many organizaons. A web CMS should streamline the mullingual publishing process, making it easy to dene a locale – a combinaon of language and region, for example French (Canadian) – for dierent sets of content. Typically, a web CMS can support mullingual in two dierent ways: as a version of each page, or as a clone of each page. Versions make it easy to track each translaon for a page; however, however, the source page and each translated version of that page are bound together, together, so it becomes dicult to organize a dierent set of navigaons and site structure for each language version of the site.
A web CMS should streamline streamline the mullingual publishing process, making making it easy to dene a locale locale for dierent sets of content.
In the cloning approach, content is branched from the source page, but also remains linked to that source page. The cloned page may be organized into a dierent site structure. When one version of a page is updated, the owners of each of the other clones are noed of the changes. We nd that for most organizaons cloning is a beer approach, as companies oen oer dierent products and services in dierent countries. The ability to support variaon is essenal. A web CMS should support translaon, either side-by-side in the CMS, or through an external translaon service bureau using an import/export system. Web Web CMS clients ulizing mullingual features need to support foreign character sets, such as double-byte characters and Unicode, as well as bidireconal (BIDI) text for Arabic and other languages. Lastly Lastly,, it is oen essenal for web CMS soware to provide localized versions of the soware so users in dierent countries can work in their own language. Mul-site publishing. A web CMS should provide the ability to manage and deliver content for mulple
sites. Again, like SEO and mullingual, mul-site publishing is not as much a feature as a collecon of features in support of best pracces. Publishing targets provide the ability to choose which sets of content are deployed to which locaon and site, as well as determining the format the content is delivered in. For instance, a news story may be
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published to the public website using one look and feel and to the company intranet using another another.. Similarly, a web CMS should support managing content in dierent environments, such as test, staging, Similarly, and producon. Content may be promoted between these environments to ensure that it is properly tested and approved before it goes live.
Understanding Deployment For the purpose of explaining deployment opons, let’s assume that the opmal set of content for a website exists within the content repository. repository. There are a number of ways that content can be delivered. The rst consideraon is that of binding. That is, when does the content on a web page actually bind with the page? When a web page always consists of the same content – such as a press release, for example – that page is said to be stac. The content on the page never changes. When a website visitor views the web page, the press release will always be the same. In this case, the content of the page has “bound” with the page at a very early stage. In other instances, website content does not bind with the page unl the website visitor requests the page. Suppose that a visitor clicks on current events. Within the repository are events that happened last year, year, this week, and event that will happen next month. Therefore, the current events page will have content that changes on a daily basis; in this case, the page and the content bind only when a user requests the page. This is called “late binding” content, and such pages are made possible by the dynamic capabilies of the web CMS. Instances where late binding capabilies are important include those where companies will want to oer content based on user preferences. Retail Retail enterprises may want to present a parcular color or size of clothing when a shopper clicks on the current specials secon. This may be dependent on product availability, availability, which the web CMS may also wish to check just prior to delivering the content. When considering the purchase of a web CMS plaorm, buyers will want to understand in detail what the capabilies for the early and late binding of content and pages are. In most cases, there will need to be some ability to combine early and late binding content, such as a press release as part of a page that contains several other content objects. The collecon of objects obje cts on this page would be late binding. Another website deployment consideraon is whether to use a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN provides mirroring and caching of web content across mulple servers se rvers placed in data centers worldwide. CDNs provide very fast content delivery and are ideal for delivering images as well as streaming media les. With a CDN, you can easily scale content delivery without adding addional hardware by ulizing nave cloud services. Because content is redundant, a CDN helps ensure maximum upme for websites. The challenge of working with a CDN is that it is dicult to support dynamic content. Some CDNs support a short list of server technologies, but deploying dynamic or data-driven content on a CDN adds addional complexity and can be expensive. CDN deployment oen requires using a stac, decoupled deployment of HTML, or the “pull” approach, where the content is pulled in by the applicaon pages from stac content.
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Web CMS Implementaon The implementaon of web CMS systems commonly presents as many challenges as the selecon of the web CMS itself. itself. While various web CMS’ require dierent levels of proprietary product experse, all products will require specialized knowledge of best pracces for implemenng that parcular system. Therefore, implementaon almost always involves involves some combinaon of internal and external experse. Some companies opt to perform per form the bulk of implementaon themselves, taking a DIY approach, and only enlisng the help of external experts for parcularly problemac areas. Other customers hire thirdparty system integraon rms to perform implementaon. This is oen a company with close es to the selected soware vendor, vendor, such as a cered partner within the vendors’ services network. In other cases, buyers opt to let the vendors own professional services team perform the implementaon. In each scenario, there are do’s and don’ts, such as the following: know, web CMS buyers oen embark upon an implementaon DIY. Not knowing what they don’t know, with no reliable idea of how many IT resources or how much me will be required to implement their project. They typically commence such projects with esmates of three to six months, and they typically conclude projects within three to eighteen months. Somemes their esmates are accurate, and somemes they aren’t. And because the devil really does live in the details in web CMS land, it is not uncommon for a DIY implementaon to take take two to three mes as long as planned. It is advisable in such projects for web CMS buyers to enlist the aid of an external implementaon expert, at least for the inial planning phase. A lile insight into the implementaon do’ do’ss and don’ts goes a long way. Third-party systems integrators. integrators. Third-party integrators integrators oen represent a good choice for combining
specic web CMS product experse with industry-wide best pracces. While the vendor’s professional professional services will certainly oer guaranteed product knowledge, they may not be as compeve as thirdparty integrators at oering bleeding-edge implementaon pracces relevant to specic business use cases or objecves. However, buyers must be thorough in their assessment of a third-party integrators’ product knowledge of the web CMS they have chosen. Buyers must also be cauous when allowing a systems integrator to make the web CMS purchase decision. Because integrators typically integrate integrate a limited number of web CMS’ (typically two to four), they will advise clients to buy one of these systems even if another product would be a beer t. Vendorr professional services. As menoned above, vendor professional services are a guaranteed way Vendo
of geng up-to-date product experse. But in specic industries, third-party integrators may have more up-to-date implementaon experse than vendors.
Web CMS Template Approaches To make clear just one technology decision, we will discuss briey several approaches to site templang. Four common opons are HTML, applicaon server technologies (.NET, PHP...), XSLT, and Apache-based approaches.
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HTML. The language used to create and dene templang
standards. While this approach has its pros and cons, it usually works well for primarily stac sites (“early binding” sites).
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S P O T L I G H T O N M I C R O S O F T. T. N E T Microso.NET is one of the most popular development frameworks for web CMS applicaons and sites. Today there are two
Applicaon server technologies. This opon tends to be
forms of .NET development: the tradional
the best templang approach for sites on the “late binding” side. This approach is oen complex, but it oers the highest level of personalizaon. The details of this approach will vary depending on which applicaon servers are used and can range from industry standards to completely proprietary. Applicaon server technologies may include Microso .NET, .NET, PHP, Cold Fusion, and Java.
forms-based development model, and the new MVC (model view control) framework.
XSLT. This approach is based on transforming transforming content within
XML documents based on denions in a stylesheet. This approach is widely used, and is among the most extensible and exible of all templang methods. Apache-specic opons. This includes two examples: Tiles
and Velocity. Velocity. Tiles is based on the Struts framework, and, very generally, generally, allows for the denion of page fragments that can be dynamically assembled into a page at the me it is requested. Velocity is a Java-based open source templang framework, based on the MVC model, which emphasizes the best pracces-focused, independent development of applicaon code and page design.
With forms-based .NET development, the web CMS and its integrators develop a set of server controls that output HTML and other formang. With MVC the developer applies formang to content that uses standardized standardiz ed design paerns that support open standards like XHTML and CSS. While many .NET web CMS applicaons are built around Web Forms technology, and there are more developers skilled in Web Forms, Microso itself has advanced the MVC model. MVC also provides beer support for deploying web content to support dierent browser standards, support mobile devices, and ensure beer brand and design standards across websites.
Buying a Web CMS (Again) Today many organizaons buying a new web CMS are upgrading from a legacy system. Organizaons change CMS soluons for a wide range of reasons: the user experience may be too complex, the soware may have been implemented incorrectly and requires addional investment, the old CMS may not oer the current c urrent features required to deliver a compelling web experience, the cost of upgrading to a new version warrants an evaluaon of other soluons, or the system has become too expensive to support. For buyers upgrading from legacy systems the outlook is good. Web CMS soware has improved dramacally over the last few years, while costs have fallen. You can get more from your web CMS investment than ever before. While upgrading does not fundamentally change the process of buying a web CMS, it does introduce addional criteria. Foremost is how the exisng content and applicaons may be migrated into the new
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web CMS. While many vendors provide migraon or site import ulies, the fact is that migraon always requires some investment and level of eort. A content inventory is generally a best pracce in migrang to a new web CMS. In a content inventory the content owners should dene which pages need to be created, refreshed, maintained, or rered and priorize those updates. Integraon of exisng and planned applicaons required understanding the web CMS technology plaorm, extensibility, extensibility, and deployment model.
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“
The savvy buyer knows it’s not what the CMS can do, but how the CMS supports each feature and use case.
”
Second-me web CMS buyers are oen guided by the pain of their exisng system, rather than the opportunies of the new system. If the legacy web CMS was slow to publish, or made it dicult to support mulple environments like staging and producon servers, evaluators evaluators tend to focus on these issues above all other criteria. While we would not recommend purchasing a web CMS that does not meet key requirements, it is also important to not miss the forest for the trees. The focus should be on the features and support that can help you execute your business strategy. Lastly,, every web CMS is dierent. The savvy buyer knows it ’s not what the CMS can do, but how Lastly the CMS supports each eac h feature and use case. Even experienced web CMS buyers can fall into “checkbox” evaluaons where the emphasis is on the breadth of features, rather than the overall value of the soluon based on the quality and depth of the features, the usability, and key criteria such as performance and scalability. scalability.
Our Best Advice We encourage web CMS buyers to remember that t hat choosing a web CMS is a praccal maer maer.. While it may somemes be useful to discuss the academic nicees of various content management-related management-related topics, the business use cases that mandate a soluon cannot be postponed. Prospecve web CMS buyers are generally very good at arculang their web CMS problems, and we encourage them to make use of these dilemmas as a starng point toward choosing a content management soluon. As anyone who has ever tried to tackle the web CMS problem can tell you, eecve content management is an ongoing project. To help approach a web CMS purchase, we advise prospecve buyers to: •
Assemble a list of current challenges that stem from content-techno content-technology logy,, content-people, content-people, and content-process content -process issues.
•
Dene issues that are are likely likely to arise in the next next year year..
•
Dene overall overall web strategy and taccs, as well as the metrics that will be used to measure success.
•
Use this criteria as the basis for evaluang evaluang content management systems and vendors. vendors.
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If a web CMS can successfully address these scenarios, within budget – and you as the buyer believe in (a) the vendor’s vendor ’s viability, viability, (b) the potenal for posive long-term return on investment, and (c) the likely sasfacon of your users with the web CMS plaorm – we believe you have found the right soluon for your business. Get the party started!
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About Ingeniux
A leading provider of web content management soware,
•
Call (877) 445-8228 to 445-8228 to speak with a soluons expert
•
[email protected] to to request more informaon Email [email protected]
websites and vibrant online communies across web,
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Visit www.ingeniux.com www.ingeniux.com to to learn about Ingeniux soluons
as a hosted service (SaaS) or on-premise applicaon.
Ingeniux empowers organizaons to manage world-class mobile, and tablet plaorms. Ingeniux soware is available Ingeniux delivers unparalleled service and support to customers worldwide.
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