Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . 1
Defining Web Content Management . . . . 2
Web Content Management Success Measures . . . . 3
Achieving Online Business Targets . . . . 3
Cost-effective Control and Performance . . . . 4
Business User Empowerment . . . . 4
Supporting Web Development Requirements . . . . 5
Essential Web Content Management Components . . . . 6
Content Management . . . . 6
Editorial Empowerment . . . . 8
Mobile Experience . . . . 10
Social Interaction . . . . 11
Contextual Engagement . . . . 12
Taking Advantage of Continuous WCM Delivery . . . .13
Maximizing Web Content Management Value . . . .14
More Resources . . . .14
Introduction
For companies looking to deliver compelling customer experiences online, the stakes keep getting higher and higher. What might have seemed like the right online strategy just 18 months ago is unlikely to be as relevant today.
The pace of change — particularly in key technology areas such as mobile, social, context, cloud and Big Data — is unprecedented and presents businesses with real challenges in terms of competitiveness and ongoing risk management. It’s not uncommon, for example, for successful sites to now find the bulk of their user access coming from mobile devices.
This is only likely to increase, particularly when innovations in areas such as Internet-enabled devices, initiatives to extend Web access to new environments such as cars, as well as emerging devices such as Google Glass are factored in. It’s clear that how people access and consume online information will continue to evolve.
So for the business and IT teams challenged with delivering this next level of content-driven solutions there are real pressures. And given current economic realities, they’re tasked with designing and deploying ever more complex and more effective digital customer experiences, while often still limited to the same or fewer resources than before.
To meet this challenge and ensure differentiation, companies need to focus their efforts on online strategies that will help them become far more agile and innovative. Enabling such agility will require customer engagement solutions that are fast, efficient, and most importantly, flexible. Unfortunately, many operations find that they’re being held back by their current content management systems.
That’s why we’ve produced this guide, which is aimed at providing guidance for businesses thinking about how a next generation WCM solution can help support their customer engagement strategy. It’s designed to show how the next generation of Web Content Management capabilities can make it easier for both business and technical users to realize their online goals — faster, efficiently and more effectively.
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Defining Web Content Management
Go back just a few years and Web Content Management really was only concerned with managing online content — initially largely static Web pages, and adjusting over time to handle more dynamic content as Web requirements became more complex.
All that still applies. However the role of Web Content Management has since expanded dramatically, with people now interacting with organizations across a wide range of channels and using an expanding variety of access devices. From social media to mobile apps to a range of Web properties, today’s customers increasingly demand contextualized, personalized content to support their engagement with businesses. Conversely, they have very limited tolerance for generalist marketing initiatives and online experiences ruined by irrelevant content.
Unfortunately, most traditional Web Content Management solutions now struggle when faced with the complexities of today’s increasingly mobile, social and contextualized engagement needs — and that’s hardly surprising given the increased demands placed on WCM systems. To address these demands, today’s WCM solutions need to incorporate information from a broad range of internal and external and data sources — both structured and unstructured.
Having access to information — such as what drives customers, why they’re buying, their preferred channels, what stops them from completing a transaction, and what kind of things they recommend to others — combines to create powerful insights, and allows businesses to build a better picture of their customers. However they also need to provide marketers with the capability to apply this insight to offer more meaningful content to consumers as they interact with a business, enabling the creation of compelling customer experiences.
When configured as an integrated hub for contextual multi-channel publishing, today’s best practice WCM solutions effectively sit at the heart of a business’ comprehensive Customer Experience Management strategy. The best WCM applications also provide a powerful framework to support marketing operations in leveraging the power of technology innovations such as cloud support, seamlessly scalable mobile publishing, two-way social media interactions, and Big Data information sources.
That’s why analyst firm Forrester Research recently described Web Content Management as the “linchpin that organizations and brands rally around to create and execute digital strategies,” and sees its ability to manage and deliver dynamic, targeted and consistent content, offers, products and interactions as one of the reasons why the focus on successful WCM strategies is so intense.
Today’s WCM solutions extend far beyond what was available just two to three years ago. According to Forrester: “WCM makes the vision of digital experience come to life,” particularly with its ability to manage and deliver dynamic, targeted and consistent content, offers, products and service interactions across an increasing variety of digitally-enabled consumer touchpoints.
79% of online shoppers spend
at least 50% of their shopping
time researching products.
Web Content Management Success Measures
The pace of change on the Web is faster than ever, and the online customer experience offered by businesses needs to keep up. Having an inflexible Web Content Management system — one that stifles the creativity needed to create compelling customer experiences and deliver them to any touchpoint — definitely won’t help. In selecting a WCM solution businesses really have to find one that’s built from the ground up for today’s post-PC world. Starting the selection process requires a collaborative effort — with a close examination of the real world pressures faced by your marketing and IT team, and a forward-looking understanding of their specific business objectives.
Online marketing teams, for example, will be looking for an information-based Web Content Management approach — one that frees them from the limitations of outdated page-based systems. Their goals are to be able to reuse content, gain increased visibility of customer requirements, and be able to adapt multi-channel experiences in order to meet those customer demands — all without having to wait on IT.
Technical teams, however, will inevitably be looking for greater deployment flexibility, cost effectiveness and operational control — not to mention empowering the business team to become self-sufficient at delivering contextual and interactive cross-channel experiences.
Achieving Online Business Targets
Meeting escalating audience expectations is the key to achieving increased online revenues, developing brand equity and creating new business models and opportunities. Doing this depends on an ability to create multi-channel customer experiences that deliver targeted content to match each customer’s context.
This kind of responsiveness is the new table stakes, particularly given that customers are increasingly in the driving seat. When shifting expectations demand the launch of a new campaign, time is of the essence. Nobody benefits if a new microsite is tied up in the IT queue for manual coding and development. Similarly, being “social” is no longer a nice-to-have — it’s a critical assist to purchase decisions that works best when deeply integrated into the fabric of the end-to-end customer experience. From collaboration through to social content curation and analytics, the faster customer questions get answered, the more likely they are to take the next step to purchase.
Achieving e-Commerce business objectives is made possible with an optimized editorial hub for contextual multi-channel publishing — eliminating many of the barriers to creativity, while enhancing the productivity of the online marketing team. WCM solutions need to have the functionality and flexibility to make this feasible.
Cost-effective Control and Performance
As customer demands for personalized online experiences grow, there’s a real need to align your marketing and IT interests. With more sales moving online, the need for technology solutions that support business user requirements will continue to escalate — indeed business executives will increasingly play a key role in selecting technology such as WCM solutions.
Perhaps five years ago having a website that looked great but was built on static Web pages was fine. Now it’s an inhibitor in the provision of satisfying digital customer experiences, and it’s quite likely that these static sites are eating away at Web developers’ time as they struggle with manual coding and limited integration capabilities. Changing WCM platforms is now more than an IT decision; it can make a real difference to maintaining online competitive advantage.
Of course the security and stability of key IT systems is paramount — along with consistent performance and fine-grained operational control. Striking the right balance is often difficult, but a WCM solution engineered to be flexible enough for innovative customization — and that includes out-of-the-box components to speed deployment — can get an online team right back on track.
Deploying a WCM solution that lets a company develop new Web capabilities quickly and with a lower risk of business disruption is a great star. However, WCM flexibility can be further enhanced if it’s fully optimized for a wide range of cloud, hybrid and virtualized deployment options — including automated cloud deployment and full integration with leading content delivery networks (CDNs).
Business User Empowerment
In selecting a new Web Content Management system, online teams are looking for an approach that will allow them to become more self-sufficient and deliver faster without always having to rely on specialist Web development colleagues. To achieve this, online users need to play a major role in specifying WCM solutions if they are to be empowered by a new system. Whether it’s tracking down content, version control or launching new campaigns and microsites, businesses need a solution that’s flexible enough to enable online teams to be self-sufficient while still unleashing their creativity.
For customers this means more relevant online experiences, not just generic websites. When online teams have the ability to easily manage rich media social content, and can gain faster time-to-Web with new content, microsites and features that create compelling experiences, they can achieve so much more.
Dynamic Web experiences are within reach when online teams are armed with a user– friendly rules engine that enables them to tailor content for different audiences on the fly. And when the Web Content Management system has access to an information-oriented interface, the online team is no longer confined by page-based limitations. Add in integration with the corporate CRM or e-Commerce system, and the team can really start to benefit with no more duplication and time-intensive manual intervention.
Supporting Web Development Requirements
From the Web development team perspective, creating all the microsites, features and campaigns that Marketing demands can often seem like performing acrobatics without a net when they’re having to deal with legacy WCM systems. For developers, features such as built-in flexibility and APIs and SDKs that make it easy to customize and extend are essential.
Creating Web experiences that engage and motivate customers is becoming more challenging for developers every day. It doesn’t help when page templates constrict design, or when duplicated content in repositories challenges referential integrity — particularly as volumes escalate. Web developers also get frustrated when delays in responsiveness or a lack of stability starts jeopardizing performance, especially when their legacy WCM systems aren’t giving them any support.
So developers are looking for a WCM solution that helps IT departments balance speed and scale through tools like CDN cache connectors, developer toolkits and dynamic templating. Having this kind of fine-grained control over the performance of social, contextual and multi-channel applications, gives developers the chance to get on with what they’re best at — keeping them out of the spotlight.
Essential Web Content Management Components
Content Management
Because Web Content Management systems now sit at the heart of strategic customer engagement activities, they have become increasingly business critical. Consequently WCM platforms need to deliver rock-solid performance and stability, helping businesses to innovate with less risk, master complex content environments and ensure the optimum return on their online investment.
Enterprise Ready
Achieving such a resilient platform requires the right blend of architectural strength, proven performance, deployment flexibility and smart development tools. Adopting a secure, modular architecture and open interface lets businesses innovate with greater speed and increased confidence, while having a high performance platform in place — one that’s capable of scaling to meet virtually any online demand without operational disruption — gives companies the capacity to deliver reliable and consistent experiences.
To achieve this requires features such as a clean technology stack, intelligent multi-tier caching, advanced CDN integration and scalable architectures. Other considerations include support for a wide range of on-premise or distributed operating environments — including CDN, cloud and hybrid — to effectively manage security and traffic challenges, while available development tools need to be in place to ensure rapid development and an application design that can be easily maintained.
Centralized Control
Companies need to be able to maintain a high quality brand experience across all their Web properties, securely delivering content to any number of online touchpoints — including mobile devices, mobile apps, RSS feeds and content portals. To do this effectively, businesses need to rely on their WCM platforms being able to support multi-channel delivery, multi-site management and multi-language publishing. The key here is to ensure that content is stored separately from design, layout and navigational structures, enabling publishing to websites, feeds and other external applications, as well as to any device — including mobile Web and native apps. The same flexibility is important for multi-site management, with the ability to publish content to multiple, separately-branded Web properties from a single system, comprehensive site creation wizards and multi-site templates and workflows all playing a role.
Lifecycle Management
With today’s websites evolving continually, and publishers needing to support an increasingly broad array of content types, businesses need to find ways to tame the complexity involved in managing all these assets and tracking them throughout their entire lifecycle — from creation and editing through to previewing, publishing and reuse. This requires versioning support, with content versioning, the ability to create new content versions based on any previous version, as well as restoration of content to any previous saved state. Lifecycle Management also needs to support pre-defined and customizable workflows, and provide comprehensive Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities.
Flexible Integration
Web properties can’t exist in isolation from the rest of a company’s business systems. Having an extensible, open architecture, “importless” integration capabilities and a commitment to open APIs are all key to achieving more flexible integration. Basing the architecture on open standards such as XML, UML, Unicode, Java, Java Beans, WebDAV, Rest, http and Spring is important, while well-documented open APIs and WCM control via open Java-based interfaces make integrating with external software systems much easier. Integration with third party systems without having to physically import content into the WCM repository is also critical, while the ability to support bulk imports from XML sources, automated and continuous import scenarios and importing streams across all a network can all simplify content management and save valuable time.
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Editorial Empowerment
Invariably it’s a company’s business users that have the best understanding of their customers’ real needs, and it’s these same business users who are frequently frustrated by being unable to deliver to their customers’ expectations.
For WCM solutions to prove successful they need to provide both casual and power users with an effective UI that supports them in building and maintaining increasingly complex Web properties. This means ensuring that solutions are business-ready, enable intuitive design and offer comprehensive multimedia support along with tools that optimize the publishing process.
Business Ready
Empowering editorial staff and other business users is all about removing barriers and providing people with the right tools for any editorial job. Start by looking for an interface that really is information-based — one that lets users independently edit pages, templates and other content, and makes it easy to reuse content as well as preview their pages across different contexts. Customizable interfaces need to be available to manipulate, augment and publish content from third-party systems, while WCM solutions that are available as Web applications make them fast, reliable and instantly accessible for users across a business.
Intuitive Design
Too many Content Management platforms require significant development effort and technical know-how, making it difficult for normal business users to contribute to
upgrading their company Web properties. Adopting a more intuitive design approach can help reduce business users’ dependency on the IT department, allowing them to manage their own content ecosystem, design the best online customer experiences and deliver relevant, contextual content on demand. Key features to look out for here include the use of Flexible Web page grids and templates; modular page assembly to help support content reuse — as well as automated publishing and removal; comprehensive real-time content preview options, as well as fully configurable time-based publishing enabling content items to be published or retired at any point in time.
Business users are able to easily reposition content and modify the layout for different components — all without involving IT support.
Multimedia Support
Given the pace of the online world, Web Content Management systems need to be able to look ahead to provide comprehensive support for today’s — and tomorrow’s — evolving digital assets. WCM systems will need to be able to incorporate a wide range of digital formats, including videos, audios and documents, and that requires tools such as multi-variant image editing, digital asset management and video management to give business users the control they need. Features here should include the ability to edit images and resize them on the fly, as well as the option to select and place multimedia assets via drag and drop.
Optimized Publishing
Business users also need a wide range of tools to improve the reach and effectiveness of their Web properties, including features such as customized metadata, dynamic publishing, automated content targeting, social integration support as well as
personalized content. Today’s dynamic Web requires increased support for tagging and taxonomies — particularly to encourage the creation of topical microsites based on content tags, taxonomy and keywords. Other key requirements include state-of-the-art search capabilities, as well as powerful integrated analytics tools that allow business users to see the impact of their edits in real time. Business users will also benefit from pre-integrated editorial tools for managing social users, user-generated content and personalized Web experiences.
Mobile Experience
With consumers increasingly turning to their mobile devices to conduct their online interactions, businesses need to find ways to create content-rich and context-aware experiences for those using these devices. The content creation and augmentation process will need to support multiple channels seamlessly, accommodate a broad range of content contributors and sources, while also adapting to an ever-increasing range of devices, platforms and form factors.
It’s not just about mobile devices, but also about having a consistent management process across every channel, from mobile to tablet to PC. So it’s even more important that businesses deploy tactics that help them find the consumer at exactly the right point in their customer journey. This demands a next-generation approach to Web Content Management — one that moves beyond the traditional one-size-fits-all interface. From a WCM perspective, this requires businesses to support the mobile experience with the right balance of Responsive Design and Native Applications.
Responsive Design
Adopting a Responsive Design approach enables a more fluid Web design model that adapts to the screen width and browser of any device, from smartphones and tablets through to desktop PCs. Key requirements here should include support for flexible images and fluid page grids, prefabricated templates that support CCS3 and Media Queries; preconfigured support for HTML5-based mobile support templates; and instant responsive and external previews that provide business users with immediate previews of all their content in all variants for every channel.
Native Applications
In most situations, native mobile apps still offer a superior user experience and Web publishers are looking for a way to deliver content and contextual experience to these users without creating an entirely separate and siloed delivery channel. To address this challenge, smart Web content management vendors must be able to provide a pre-integrated REST interface that allows editors to output XML or JSON data from the CoreMedia repository to a variety of native app development platforms. This content is then immediately available for publishing to native apps to any mobile ecosystem including iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android (phones and tablets). Businesses should also look for the ability to extend their existing mobile apps into their WCM, as well as the facility to integrate new apps as they come online.
Responsive Design enables a superior experience across multi-touchpoints.
Social Interaction
If businesses are to succeed in maintaining social connection and interaction with their audience, they need to make sure that they have a high-performance Web Content Management platform in place to deliver consistent social engagement. To ensure this they should support their WCM initiatives with a comprehensive suite of social engagement, moderation and deployment tools to guarantee optimal performance.
Engagement
To support effective social engagement WCM solutions need to draw on a suite of standard social media use-cases so that they can more quickly reap the benefits that result from increased customer loyalty and the opening up of new revenue streams. Examples here include profile management capabilities, integration with social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, OpenID and Google+, as well as the ability to deal with both anonymous and registered users. Businesses also need access to social media “likes” and ratings functionality, the ability to enable commenting on editorial content as well as support for threaded discussions, and the facility to support social community members with sharing and rich media uploads.
Moderation
While social interaction can add real value to a Web property, it’s also necessary to ensure a constructive social environment by providing tools for business users to approve user-contributed content, manage the behavior of community members and protect the community from spammers and abusive activity. Content moderation helps set community standards, with pre- and post-moderation of user-generated content, collaborative tools for parallel approval of large volumes of content, and blacklists for prohibiting banned language. Social user management tools can help enforce appropriate behavior, while spam prevention and abuse management allows community members to police themselves and keep out spambots. Additional rich media curation capabilities support the editorial review and moderation of contributed visitor content, integrating it seamlessly into an existing content repository.
Deployment
As social user activity grows, maintaining optimal site performance can prove a major challenge, especially when content is being published in real time. That’s where a social media architecture based on a scalable NoSQL storage architecture and cloud
technology can pay dividends in terms of both high performance and virtually unlimited
User comments can be approved or rejected through the moderation functionality in CoreMedia Studio. The moderation interface has been specifically designed for the parallel approval of large quantities of social content.
Contextual Engagement
Today’s consumers are increasingly comfortable with multi-channel engagement. They might first become interested in a product or solution after being targeted by an e-mail campaign, then check the offer in more detail online, and perhaps go over the specifics with their friends and peers on Facebook. Before finally making a buying decision they might also check online reviews and feedback, then make the purchase on their mobile device before collecting their order from a local store.
With this level of multi-channel and contextual complexity, it’s imperative that Web visitors get the content that’s most appropriate to their changing situation. From a WCM perspective that means having the ability to manage Visitor Profiles, deploy sophisticated Audience Segmentation and fine tune the Experience Design through the use of intelligent contextual publishing tools.
Visitor Profiles
Visitor Profiles allow business users to create engaging, personalized customer experiences for each visitor — leading directly to higher levels of satisfaction and improved conversion rates. By matching visitor profiles with pre-defined segment rules, site visitors benefit from more closely correlated content, while business users can also test personalized Web pages by viewing them with different user contexts. However, to achieve this, the WCM solution needs to have on-demand content processing built into its delivery environment.
Audience Segmentation
Today’s Web isn’t meant to be a one-size-fits-all experience, and different types of visitor will quite rightly expect different kinds of content. Applying Audience Segmentation techniques and grouping visitors into customized market segments enables more accurate content targeting and enhanced engagement. Adding the ability to define business rules allows Web teams to create personalization rules that select content based on pre-defined rules and conditions. These rules can now be customized to reflect any industry, business model or workflow requirement. Effective segmentation should also be supported by intelligent predictive behavioral targeting. By comparing visitor behavior to aggregated survey data, and by predicting both interests and demographic segmentation, business users are able to deliver more targeted content faster. Combining these techniques enables businesses to dynamically tailor an online experience to meet a Web user’s predicted interest without the need for lengthy registration procedures.
On-demand content processing that matches visitor profiles with pre-defined segmentation rules helps business users to create personalized customer experiences.
Taking Advantage of Continuous WCM Delivery
Until recently, applications development innovation was focused on optimizing internal productivity within the software production team. Now, however, the drivers have shifted and the emphasis has moved to ensuring that the business value inherent in new software releases is delivered to customers more quickly.For many, the key challenge facing IT departments is now how to optimize their resources in order to help business users provide a positive customer experience. This is where a Web Content Management development strategy based on a Continuous Delivery approach can help.
The concept of Continuous Delivery is all about addressing business demands for faster access to the kind of WCM application enhancements that can produce clear business value for customers. As it becomes possible for development teams to make more frequent small changes, rather than riskier large ones, businesses can benefit from dramatically faster and more focused feedback.
Continuous Delivery refers specifically to an automated process that accelerates the release of software and digital services into production. Instead of infrequent major software releases than could be up to 18 months apart, continuous delivery focuses on smaller and more self-contained updates that unlock immediate business benefits. Examples of target applications enabled by Continuous Delivery could include a business launching a new service, developers working to improve existing online properties, distributing bug fixes or introducing special offers quickly — all with a minimum of manual intervention.
All too often companies are faced with one of two scenarios when selecting the right Web Content Management technology: either an inflexible, out-of-the-box approach with limited APIs and only a few customization extension points, or a much more open development platform that requires significant development effort to produce a functional online solution.
That no longer has to be the case. With Continuous Delivery processes spanning the full delivery cycle from development and production to code testing, and including such features as release automation, automating infrastructure and managing code when it’s in production, best practice WCM vendors are now ideally placed to meet the growing demand for Continuous Delivery solutions. This is particularly important given accelerating factors such as the ubiquity of mobile, increased use of social channels, and the continued shift towards cloud services.
Maximizing Web Content Management Value
Selecting the right Web Content Management platform is clearly critical for supporting customer engagement activities, however it’s also important to work with a supplier and an implementation partner that can support your business throughout the entire process, from initial strategic planning to system optimization once deployed.
In looking for such a solution partner it’s important to engage with an organization that not only understands your own sector and business requirements but also can share best practice Web Content Management expertise from across a range of markets. Key characteristics should include an established track record of success, proven ability to connect WCM technology with business objectives and vision, as well as the in-depth implementation experience that comes from successfully deploying hundreds of projects for many of the world’s largest organizations. Flexibility is also critical, as it’s inevitable that your online engagement will need to evolve alongside both market, technology and business shifts. Your organization will need to adapt to change, and you need a Web Content Management partner that can grow with you over time.
More Resources
Follow these links to more resources related to this subject.
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J Learn from the Experts: Customer Experience Management
Video series featuring Tim Walters, Prinicipal Analyst, Digital Clarity Group
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J Empowering Business Uses with an Information-based User Interface - White Paper J
J Enabling Highly Scalable Conversation Around Content with NoSQL Technology - White Paper
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J Mobile Changes Everything - White Paper J
J Optimizing Continuous Delivery - White Paper J
J Content Reuse - Business Solutions Guides J
J Responsive Web Design - Business Solutions Guide J
J The Challenges and Benefits of WCM in the Cloud - Business Solutions Guide J
About CoreMedia
CoreMedia is a leading provider of Web Content Management software to organizations demanding engaging, context-driven online experiences for their customers regardless of channel or touchpoint.
The company’s WCM suite offers unique business value by seamlessly integrating digital and social media assets, increasing editorial productivity and accelerating time to market in complex environments. As a result, businesses can more effectively execute their online strategies to engage users, build customer loyalty and ultimately drive greater revenue and profitability.
Established in 1996, CoreMedia is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, with offices in San Francisco, Washington, London, and Singapore. CoreMedia’s clients include global brands, such as the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Bertelsmann, BILD, CLAAS, Continental, EPCOS, Deutsche Telekom, Internet Broadcasting, JD Group, Tchibo, Telefónica Germany and ZDF.
The Americas CoreMedia Corporation 118 Second Street, 5th Floor San Francisco CA 94105 USA Tel + 1 .415 .371 .0400 CoreMedia Corporation 1001 N. 19th Street, Suite 1200 Arlington VA 22209 USA Tel + 1 .703 .945 .1079 Europe, Middle East and Africa CoreMedia Ltd. 90 Long Acre Covent Garden London WC2E 9RZ United Kingdom Tel + 44 .207 .849 .3317 Asia Pacific
CoreMedia Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. 25 International Business Park #0–106 German Centre Singapore 609916 Tel + 65 .6562 .8866
