Choosing a Web Content Management System

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nonlinear digital is the full-service digital agency division of nonlinear creations, with extensive knowledge and technical expertise in various CMS and marketing/analytics solutions, particularly the Sitecore platform. Our teams, working with you, use an agile methodology to create unique website and digital experiences that drive business results in a measurable way.

For more information on our services or to get in touch, please visit:

www.nonlinearcreations.com

016 Choosing a Web Content

Management System

nonlinear’s expert guide to making the right choice for your organization

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nonlinear digital is the full-service digital agency division of nonlinear creations, with extensive knowledge and technical expertise in various CMS and marketing/analytics solutions, particularly the Sitecore platform. Our teams, working with you, use an agile methodology to create unique website and digital experiences that drive business results in a measurable way.

For more information on our services or to get in touch, please visit:

www.nonlinearcreations.com

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Introduction

Choosing a web content management system (CMS) for an organization can be a daunting task — the veritable

smorgasbord of vendors, products and implementation partners often leads to justified confusion. We offer this nonlinear whitepaper as a guide to this well-charted, but untamed environment.

Let’s start with what we believe to be a few fundamental truths:

1. you need to understand your online goals and content management goals before attempting to select a CMS. to understand these goals, you need to involve stakeholders from across your organization.

2. the detailed feature lists commonly seen in Requests for Proposals can be (and very often are) misleading. Instead of relying on these, use various true-to-life content management scenarios to evaluate the nuances of how various products deliver. the scenarios should represent activities, goals and needs from across the entire business. 3. Selecting an implementation team is as important as selecting the product itself. evaluate closely and carefully

how the vendor or reputable partner can assist in the actual implementation. What is their industry experience and specialization?

4. Almost everyone underestimates the level of effort required to redeploy a website, let alone a new CMS. having a realistic appreciation of the required effort and the ultimate goals will allow you to craft the most effective project plan. While this paper focuses on the selection process, it is helpful to consider the progressive steps involved in a CMS project, and what they might look like:

1. First you select a product.

2. you then proceed with detailed planning that outlines how you will implement the CMS. 3. you then implement the CMS according to your plan.

4. When implementation is (nearly) complete, you train your users.

5. Migrating content into the new CMS is the last major hurdle before the launch. 6. then, it’s time to throw the switch and go live with the new site and its CMS.

In the sections that follow, we discuss the three keys to successful CMS selection: understanding your goals, building realistic scenarios and choosing an appropriate implementation team.

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ChOOSInG A Web COntent MAnAGeMent SySteM | 5

before you can even begin to select a CMS, you must understand your own requirements and goals. to help our clients gain a fuller picture of what they need to do, we represent the requirements landscape in the following diagram:

each of these four foundational areas contributes to the requirements of the CMS —sometimes in contradictory ways. The key is to find the balanced intersection of these needs as a basis for delving into detailed evaluations.

Online goals

Understanding your goals

the discussion of online goals is often lengthy and complex — but at the center of this conversation is how you:

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Map corporate objectives and translate them into online goals

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Define success metrics for these online business goals

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examine the audience needs in parallel with your online business goals, and

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Create structured, outbound marketing reviews

More information on this topic can be found in the nonlinear Performance Framework, which provides a structure for this type of discovery and translation of corporate goals into measurable performance indicators for the online sphere. the performance framework whitepaper is available for download at: http://www.nonlinearcreations.com/whitepaper/

Content management

Understanding how the content management software itself is going to deliver value for your organization is probably one of the most overlooked parts of any CMS deployment. yes, all CMS products allow content authors to update web pages, but do you have a clear picture of what this means for your organization?

to get started, ask yourself the following questions:

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how quickly can a change be made, approved and made live on the website with the CMS in question?

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What level of It involvement is required on a day-to-day basis to update a page of content—both now and after the launch of the new CMS?

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Does the CMS really allow you to keep content fresher (and, thus, more relevant to users)? Is this truly important for your organization? If yes, how does the CMS concretely aid in this content management process?

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Can the CMS reduce the number of errors in your published content?

Something that should be noticeable in the above questions — they all have measurable answers and can be tracked. Many, but not all, CMS products have built-in features that can track these kinds of metrics.

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Operations and IT

Like any other piece of software, It should be an active part of the CMS selection process, including deep involvement in defining what will be required of the CMS. Throughout this process, IT stakeholders should consider the following:

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What underlying technology platform is acceptable?

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What support level is required from It in the operation of the product? this includes key areas, such as backup and maintenance, end-user support and the creation/integration of new features.

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Will the solution be on the premises or vendor-hosted?

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If the solution is on the premises, are there any limitations in hardware or network resources?

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What capability is there to integrate the CMS with your existing internal systems, or to customize behaviors of the CMS? If you perform any customizations, what is the level of knowledge required to run and maintain the custom features, and what impact will they have on the upgrade path?

When all is said and done, the selected CMS needs to play well with the rest of the It systems; however, the primary motivating factors for a CMS selection should focus around how the software will ultimately empower the business.

Contractual structure

Understanding your own legal and contractual structure is important to ensuring a smooth technology acquisition. One of the issues that often arises is the need for several distinct acquisition processes for the different components of the overall solution. It is therefore key to ensure that you understand the complete picture for each of the component acquisitions and communicate these requirements to the potential vendors. this will allow you to easily eliminate products/vendors with business models that are incompatible with your requirements. After all, the last thing you want after finally selecting a product and vendor is to have the deal come apart in the contract negotiation stages.

ACQUISItIOn thInGS tO COnSIDeR

Software / License One-time or recurring?

If a hosted solution is desired, how does this relate to your service-level agreements? Professional / Implementation Services Is this a mixed team? (corporate resources and an external implementation partner)

Where are personnel located? Training Where will the training be provided?

Do you want to set a flat price per day or a rate that is based on the number of attendees?

Be sure to draw a distinction between vendor-provided training that demonstrates proper use of the product, and training that is provided by the implementation team to orient users to the specific solution.

Support Service-level agreements from the vendor.

When is support available and what is the guaranteed response time?

What is the escalation path if a problem is not resolved within a given timeframe?

If the vendor is providing a hosted solution, you will also need to consider the hosting infrastructure itself. Is it capable of fulfilling your needs?

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Scenarios

If you have arrived at a set of goals for your upcoming CMS deployment, the next step is to create a tangible vision of the day-to-day operations of the site and its CMS, based on these goals. the resulting scenarios will help you to carefully evaluate how each product can deliver on your needs. A word of warning here: Do not rush this process! the ability to make an informed product choice is based on an understanding of the nuances of your day-to-day needs, across the organization. to illustrate what’s required, we offer the following example scenario:

background

Joe is the Director of Marketing at Acme. His staff of five trained web-marketers create, on average, 100 micro-sites each year to support and market various events, contests and promotions.

Scenario

Joe has decided a new micro-site is required to support an upcoming promotion. Consulting with Susan, who has

expertise in search engine marketing, Joe has decided that this new micro-site will reside at http://www.acme.com/promo and http://www.acme-promo.com/.

Joe then tasks brian, the marketing team rep who is running this promotion, with creating the new micro-site. Joe has given brian free rein to either select a site style from existing design templates or to have creative services create a new design for the site, provided that the micro-site is ready to go prior to the launch of the print campaign on September 15. this is in nine days’ time.

brian then meets with Amanda, a member of the Creative Services team. together, they decide that an existing template will work quite well for the new micro-site. In this case, Creative Services will simply be required to provide some product imagery for the promotion. Amanda agrees to create the required imagery in a web-ready format and provide it to brian within the next four days. brian proceeds to write the required copy for the micro-site, using Microsoft Word. three days later, brian has completed his writing and has also received the required imagery from Amanda via email.

brian now logs into the CMS via a web browser, using the same credentials as his main network logon. Selecting the agreed-upon template, brian creates the new landing page and proceeds to enter the content he has written by copying the text from Word into the browser window. When he is satisfied with the state of the copy, he uploads the images provided by Amanda into the CMS and places them at the appropriate location in the content tree. happy with his progress, brian saves his work and sends an email to Joe asking him to review the new micro-site.

Later in the day, Joe opens brian’s email and goes to the preview site: http://preview.acme.com/promo. he likes what he sees, but notices one small mistake—brian has used the incorrect product code. he sends brian an email asking him to update the site with the correct product code and then get the site ready for launch. brian receives the email from Joe. he logs into the CMS and corrects the product code. he then schedules the micro-site to go live on September 15, which is 4 days from now.

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A major benefit of developing scenarios is that your team will be able to craft a solid understanding of what you want / need the CMS to do for you on a day-to-day basis. this process lets you hone in on what is really important and, when it comes time to choose a CMS product, to understand what compromises you might have to make in terms of process and functionality.

Overall, a good scenario:

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Provides enough detail so that the reader understands what is happening, but does not prescribe how it happens.

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Specifies the people who are taking part in the scenario—this can be done either by using titles, or by describing each person’s role in the organization.

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Provides an outcome that is testable.

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Sets out evaluation criteria, such as:

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the relative importance of the scenario to the stated goals of the content management system

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Who in the organization is best-positioned to evaluate each scenario

Using these scenarios, you (or a vendor) should be able to derive a list of features that are:

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mandatory,

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nice to have and

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unimportant

the following is some key information to consider when developing your scenarios.

Content delivery

There are two basic flavours of CMS products: those that dynamically construct and serve content to site visitors and those that statically export the content. Understanding this fundamental separation has importance both for the business users and the It team.

In a dynamic system, the CMS normally stores content in a database or extensible mark-up language (XML). this includes content and configuration information, such as meta-data or code that tells the system how to generate the navigation and display pages. When a visitor views a page, the CMS interprets the request then loads the content and all the associated information to render the final page.

In a static export system, the CMS still stores the content and configuration information in a repository, but the publication process will generate the resulting pages (rather than the CMS rendering engine) and store them as files. These files then need to be placed on your web server. Most CMS products that publish content in this way use an organization’s FtP site to send the files automatically.

With dynamic systems, it’s easier to develop functionality for the site; however, there is some additional processing overhead in the dynamic creation of pages. both the business stakeholder and the It group will want to closely evaluate the nuances of how each product will deliver your content.

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Content structure

each CMS product has a different view of how to treat web content. In order to store content and make it easy to edit, a CMS must impose a structure or model on the content—and the nature of the model does dictate, to some extent, how pages are constructed by a content author. In most systems, that means there are implications in terms of how content can be shared.

When evaluating a CMS, you will want to have a good understanding of where individual pieces of content actually reside in the system and if it is able to share and repurpose content in the manner you need. At the most basic, you should have a strong grasp on how the CMS will construct an actual web page, step by step. Is it from a single piece of content or from many separate pieces of content?

Workflows

Workflows are perhaps one of the most referenced features or requirements in CMS Requests for Proposals. They are also one of the most misunderstood and misused components of a CMS.

When it comes to workflows, less is more. The workflow capabilities of most CMS products are not designed to streamline or manage the collaborative processes that most organizations employ to develop content. they exist simply to provide a regimented approval process for content changes and updates. When the workflows become overly complex, the time it takes to publish content is actually longer than with no CMS at all.

Implementation team

As we already mentioned, selecting a CMS product is only a small part of the overall implementation. Getting that piece of software installed, running and configured to deliver on your content management needs is a much larger piece of the puzzle. because of this, having the right implementation team in place is key to the overall success of the project.

When looking to a vendor or partner to help you with the implementation, there are a few things that you should be looking for:

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Do they have real, hands-on experience implementing CMS products? Specifically, do they have experience with the product you have selected?

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Can they provide you with a detailed project timeline based on their current understanding of your needs?

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Does their team include a mix of the right skills? Information architecture, design, development, It infrastructure, quality assurance, training and content migration experts will all be required to successfully complete your project.

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Can they clearly articulate how communication will flow between all of the parties involved?

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the exact number of CMS products is hard to keep track of—some claim that the number has now topped 2,500. At the most fundamental level, successful selection and implementation of a CMS is dependent on your ability to define, understand and clearly articulate your needs and goals for the content management technology as well as your online presence. When your needs are clearly distilled into key scenarios, a wealth of information can be shared with potential vendors. When done well, scenarios provide a testable method for you to evaluate products and are generally less onerous for a vendor to respond to than a large checklist of mandatory and nice-to-have features.

the smoother this process will go. but this does not negate the need for further planning. Consider the following timeline, which outlines the average time required at each stage of a typical CMS build:

StAGe DeSCRIPtIOn DURAtIOn (WeeKS)

Select Defining your requirements and selecting a CMS 1 – 10 Plan Implementation level planning for templates, workflows, integration with external

systems

4 – 8

Implement Writing the code, testing and assuring performance of the website(s) 4 – 24 Train Training your users and content migrators 1 – 2

Migrate Moving all the existing content into the new CMS No set rule. This depends on the volume of the content and resource availability.

Go Live Replacing the old site / system with the new one 1

What is not made clear from the planning chart we just presented is that the cost of implementation is much higher than the cost of the CMS license. As a general rule, you should assume that implementation costs range from 2 to 4 times the cost of the software license.

If you are looking for further guidance with implementation best practices, you will find a wealth of information in our previous nonlinear whitepapers at: http://www.nonlinearcreations.com/whitepapers.htm

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About nonlinear

Who is nonlinear digital?

nonlinear digital is the full-service digital agency division of non-linear creations. With offices in Canada, the USA and brazil, nonlinear has a track record of successfully planning, executing and measuring the effectiveness of digital marketing and outreach solutions for a range of clients.

What does nonlinear digital do?

We write digital strategy. We build eye-catching websites and we do it with a technical proficiency that is second to none. We help organize your digital team and educate your stakeholders. We help you extract meaning from data so you know if you’re really driving business value from your investment.

We are a full-service digital agency with extensive knowledge and technical expertise in various CMS and marketing/ analytics solutions. Our teams, working with you, use an agile methodology to create unique website and digital experiences that drive business results in a measurable way.

What makes nonlinear different?

We put business first. After almost 20 years in the game, we have seen technologies and trends come and go. What has remained constant, however, is the need to drive tangible business outcomes from your digital spend. today our focus is on creating an engaging online presence that:

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serves your customers’ needs by being memorable, relevant and increasingly personalized and accessible on any device

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serves your business’ needs by generating meaningful data from which you can extract real insights and metrics tied to your business goals

Choosing a Web Content Management System

www.nonlinearcreations.com

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