Selecting a
Web Content
Management
System
Contents
03
Intro
05
Why You Need a CMS
09
A Few Words About Workflows
11
Strategic Capabilities
16
A Slice of the Marketplace
20
About the Author
Intro
To say there are a lot of web content management
systems (CMS or WCM) to choose from would be a bit of
an understatement. Companies looking for more effective
ways to digitally engage their customers have
several
hundred choices
available to them across a variety of
At the basic level, every CMS allows the ability to create, edit, and publish content and upload images, videos, and documents. But not all systems are created equal. There are solutions that make more sense for startups, some for SMBs, and some that are ideal for the Fortune 500 and global organizations. If you’re reading this guide, we’re assuming that you are a marketing or a business professional that has been entrusted with gathering more information on various CMS offerings. Perhaps you have an existing solution that isn’t cutting it, or you’re about to embark on the path toward a new website and would like to evaluate your options.
We know the drill: your leadership says, “We need this.” You need to figure out
how to accommodate “this” in your existing system or find a new one that will do “this”.
Our hope is that this guide will give you some key differentiators when evaluating a CMS solution—especially if you’re in need of one at the enterprise level—as well as some talking points for your ongoing discussions. As you hunt for insight, keep this in mind: it’s ok if all of your questions are not answered right away. Every business has different criteria, business objectives, requirements, and technical capabilities. This guide will be one of the arrows in your quiver as you focus in on your ideal target.
We hope you enjoy this guide as much as we did putting it together.
Some advice for all companies looking to improve
their website: never forget about your customer’s
experience. A CMS can either enhance or hurt it.
Why You
Need a CMS
Let’s assume two things: your company has a website,
and with that website, you want to attract more visitors and
generate more interest like leads or social media follows.
To do that, you need the currency of the Internet:
content.
Comprising everything from the written word (product pages, blogs, product guides, catalogs) to the spoken word (podcasts, videos), content is what drives people to your website to learn more and buy more. With that comes the risk of those visitors bouncing off your site to another source if they don’t see the value of the content you’re providing.
So when you have all this content, you need to manage it, hence the need for a content management system. A CMS will give you the power to do just that without the need to engage web developers every time you need an edit, or have a new asset to publish.
The CMS solutions of today, especially the more robust ones, offer marketing teams
and business users the ability to manage their content from a single web-hosted interface. The more complex the needs, the more capable your CMS has to be to meet those needs.
In addition to content management, here are a few benefits that a CMS can provide.
Coordination of Marketing and
Communications Resources
Without a CMS, coordinating your various marketing departments (e.g., product marketing, public relations, corporate communications, digital marketing) can be problematic. A CMS serves as a focal point for all marketing and communications functions, helping align multiple business initiatives through one platform.
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Consistent Brand and
Messaging
As a business, you have experienced the challenge of managing and protecting your brand identity and brand voice. A CMS provides formatted templates, consistent CSS application, validation rules, and workflows that are defined by your company’s brand framework such as revision tracking, author permissions, approval processes, and other measures that help you govern content. Think of a CMS as a “living” brand environment that guides the everyday work of your teams. A CMS can also augment your company’s brand guidelines in areas such as
structured content, word/character counts, capitalization, ALT text, metadata (page titles and descriptions), and other non-visual components that are often overlooked in traditional branding efforts.
International and Localized
Content
The need to deliver content tailored to international audiences that speaks to customers in their native languages is a must for companies that operate on a national, regional, or international basis. This is especially important if you are supporting digital marketing campaigns or want to expand your presence on search engines through a global SEO strategy. A CMS can facilitate translation of a single website into multiple languages or be configured to deliver consistent global messaging, while supporting regional sales and marketing efforts as well as local news, events, and job postings at the same time.
Think of a CMS as a “living” brand environment
that guides the everyday work of your teams.
Regulatory Compliance
Depending on your industry, business model or structure, regulatory compliance can be a critical factor in building trust and mitigating risk. Doing business with government agencies may require compliance with Section 508 and WCAG accessibility guidelines, while healthcare and insurance companies are subject to HIPAA patient confidentiality requirements. And—in the event of an emergency—you may need to create and publish timely, consistent communication to minimize exposure and liability.
A CMS can provide the structure and processes necessary to ensure that the information and documents you publish keep your business in compliance and out of court. For these reasons, the
governance capabilities of a CMS should be of special interest to publicly traded companies.
Monetizing or Repurposing
Intellectual Property
Every day, content marketers are creating value-driven assets like whitepapers, ebooks, and blog posts. A CMS can help you organize, author, format,
manage, and deliver consistent, targeted content at every stage of customer
engagement—from awareness campaigns to customer loyalty programs. A CMS is essential for companies whose business model is based on paid-for content or subscriptions, and today’s CMS solutions are embracing personalized content delivery based on defined personas and evolving consumption patterns.
Today’s CMS solutions embrace and enable
personalized content delivery based on defined
personas and consumption patterns.
A Few Words
About Workflows
Like a lot of procedures within marketing groups, using the
word ‘workflow’ can elicit the same reaction one gets when
eating a lemon. Workflows can be stringent or loose, simple
or complex, beloved or reviled. Regardless, workflows
should be considered a key benefit to implementing a CMS
solution.
Consider an organization where a single marketer is responsible for managing content on the company website, but has 10 contributors from different departments with varying levels of experience. Without workflow or
governance, what goes live on the Internet may not be consistent with the brand-friendly message you’re trying to convey from a visual or editorial perspective. When you’re evaluating content management solutions and designing your ideal content flow, think of a CMS
as a platform to organize content stages (drafting, reviewing, revising, approving, publishing, archiving), user roles (authors, editors, publishers, subject matter experts), and administrative
responsibilities.
With any CMS, you should be able to configure a workflow that works best with your team and your business. An effective workflow balances the need for productivity with the need for accuracy, achieving the goal of getting the right message out as quickly as possible.
Strategic
Capabilities
As we said at the beginning, web content management
solutions are not created equal, but many have similar
features and benefits. Here are a few that you’ll want to
explore, even if you don’t have plans to use them right
away. Remember that when reviewing a CMS, you should
fully understand its ability to scale with new modules and
capabilities. If your company has big aspirations for your
website, think big with
your CMS capabilities.
Customization:
Where you start is rarely where you finish when it comes to the life of a website. Business needs change and your CMS should be able to respond to the changes your development team will need to
manage. Lower-cost open source systems are typically more widget-based “out-of-the-box” solutions, whereas higher-cost systems usually offer more built-in capabilities and scalability, and offer more flexibility to develop the features you want.
Content Personalization and Conversion Optimization:
A/B testing and personalizing pages based on user behavior are powerful capabilities for a content marketer to have. Being able to respond to user patterns will soon be an expectation for web content management systems and not just a ‘nice to have’. It’s important to understand the digital marketing capabilities you’ll
have from the start so you can plan your personalization strategy and turn on new features as the need arises.
Ecommerce:
If you are selling online or intending to sell online, investigating third-party ecommerce integration capabilities or built-in options are a must and can be a big differentiator when comparing CMS solutions.
There are a lot of similarities between an ecommerce platform and a CMS, and they share some strands of content DNA. However, it’s important to note that they are two different functions of a completely different magnitude. One is designed as a production, management, and delivery platform for content, while the other is designed to manage and facilitate the ongoing sale of products attached to an inventory database.
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Identifying whether you’re selling memberships or products is important, as is how your CMS and ecommerce platform will integrate with one another to present a seamless website/shopping experience.
Globalization, Regionalization,
Localization
As Internet users continue to desire a more customized experience and as your business needs demand it, your CMS
should make the process of globalization,
regionalization, and localization easier. If you’re a global marketer, concern yourself with how your CMS will give you the ability to manage country-specific content, country-specific domains, and search engine optimization. When it comes to managing this effort, it can be complex so take time to evaluate what you need and what your business might realistically need in the years ahead.
Marketing Automation & CRMs
Assuming you have salespeople that use a CRM and lead generating content that will drive new contacts into that CRM, ensuring your CMS will sync up is paramount. If you have a marketing
automation platform like Marketo or Eloqua, determine whether these are easy integrations (through plug-ins or extensions) or if they will require significant development time to implement.
Some providers offer their own built-in automation tools in addition to integrating with marketing automation leaders. If you use the built-in options, be sure to ask about email deliverability metrics and whether they send email through their servers or through a partner.
Partners
It’s always good to know what options are available to your brand if you need an assist. Not everyone has an agency of record and having access to creative groups with specific experience in your CMS is nice to have. This is especially pertinent with more specialized systems like Sitecore and Kentico as opposed to a community-driven solution like Wordpress. This can be a big differentiator between a lower-cost open source CMS where you have to rely upon the community for support and new innovations, and a higher-cost proprietary option that can refer you to partners with specific expertise in complex areas like ecommerce, translation, or digital marketing.
ever, so a thorough review of the security features and functions of potential CMS solutions is a must. Industries with stringent security requirements, like
finance and government, will require more diligence in this area. Public companies should always look to proprietary options where security issues can be solved with a patch as opposed to open source where you’re at the mercy of the community to solve the problem. Regardless of the industry, always be sure any solution you go with will protect your brand and not expose it to hijacking.
Third Party Integrations
Through reading this section, it should be obvious that how your CMS will integrate with other applications should be one of your key criteria. Look for integrations with
Note that some upmarket offerings pitch themselves as full experience platforms as opposed to being just a CMS. However, some companies like to diversify instead of putting all of their eggs in one basket in case they leave a provider.
If you have an email marketing program, ask about how that can integrate. Many of the larger email marketing services can be synced using an API. If your CMS offers its own email platform, do a full capabilities check that includes deliverability questions to ensure you’re getting a comparable service.
Finally, web analytics is something every company should have and review. Understand how various CMS offerings integrate with products like Google Analytics and Omniture and to what
Online security is more important than ever,
so a review of security features and functions
of CMS solutions is a must.
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depth. An example: some providers have light integration with Google while others allow you to dig deeper, a big differentiator depending on the complexity of your needs.
Translation
If you have the desire to be a presence in multiple languages, the CMS you choose should be able to handle translated
content and give users the ability to select a language. The decision of how deep you want to go varies. Some major brands like Apple choose to simply translate content into different languages with the same user experience, while D-Link goes further with a globalization/regionalization/ localization approach.
Verticals
Like a lot of businesses, some CMS
options are used by specific verticals (e.g., some education providers use Drupal,
financial institutions tend to use Sitecore). Finding one that aligns with your industry could provide some innovative add-ons and capabilities that others might not. Leverage those in similar companies within your network for what they recommend.
User Generated Content and
User Engagement
Several of the more well-known providers (Wordpress, Drupal, Sitecore) offer
modules and plug-ins that enable you to create online communities and user groups. Having a user-generated content strategy can increase your overall
engagement and create a stickiness factor to keep bringing users back. If growing a user community is part of your plans, make the capabilities for doing so part of your research. However, if you’re trying to become the next Facebook, a custom build might be better than going with a CMS due to functionality.
Talking Point: Do your research on the social channels and blogs for CMS providers. Are they releasing updates frequently? Do they seem passionate about what they do? Having a good feeling about the CMS provider you go with is important. If their last release was a year ago and they seem to be lagging, that’s a red flag. Feel confident with your choice.
Earlier in this guide, we referenced the sheer number of
web content management solutions that a company could
choose from. (Since you read that line, there’s probably
been a few more created!) In two decades of developing
websites and applications for a variety of companies, we’ve
acquired valuable experience from working with/in a variety
of CMS solutions.
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Without endorsing any one option, here’s a shortlist with some key facts you should be aware of. As features frequently
change, we’d always recommend going to a solution’s webpage for the latest information.
Platform Type: Open Source LAMP
Initially Released: 2003
Quantcast Top 10k Usage: 47.17%
Ideal For: Small Business
Acquisition Cost: None
Development Cost: $$ - $$$
Wordpress is the most widely used CMS because of its accessibility. Someone could set up a web presence within a few minutes using Wordpress, and build upon it using the developer’s version if they chose. However, there is a low level of customization available if you don’t have dedicated web personnel there to do that. When it comes to globalization, Wordpress likely won’t be a good fit due to some of the reasons we’ve talked about in this guide like security, globalization capabilities, and support.
Platform Type: Open Source LAMP
Initially Released: 2001
Quantcast Top 10k Usage: 4.1%
Ideal For: SMB, Some Enterprise
Acquisition Cost: Free
Development Cost: $$$ - $$$$ Popular in the education space, Drupal has seen increased usage among both the Quantcast 10k and 100k. Out of the box, Drupal won’t offer you the “instant gratification” experience like Wordpress, so your implementation costs are going to be higher (e.g., you’ll have to define a taxonomy, how your content will be modeled, and other fundamental structural elements).
However, since there is a huge community of developers that are contributing to Drupal, the capabilities are higher. On the flip side, if there’s a major issue, there’s not a single provider to take responsibility. That can be a big concern when it comes to security, especially with large companies.
Platform Type: .NET Proprietary
Initially Released: 1994
Quantcast Top 10k Usage: < 1%
Ideal For: Mid-size to enterprise
Acquisition Cost: $$ - $$$
Development Cost: $$$ - $$$$
Despite low usage among the Quantcast 10k, EPiServer found itself in the Visionary category in the 2014 Gartner Magic Quadrant report for the fifth straight year, edging toward Leader. Gartner cited their ‘set of rich functional capabilities’ as some of the best available of those they reviewed.
Platform Type: .NET Proprietary
Initially Released: 2004
Quantcast Top 10k Usage: 0.2%
Ideal For: SMB to Mid-Market
Acquisition Cost: $ - $$
Development Cost: $$ - $$$ The company recently celebrated its 10th anniversary and sports 18,000 total websites using its platform. An “out of the box” solution with more than 40 modules, Kentico covers content management, ecommerce, social networking, intranet, and online marketing. For those that want more simplicity with the ability to add features and functionality from day one, Kentico is an option to consider. However, the ability to customize a solution is limited.
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Platform Type: .NET Proprietary
Initially Released: 2001
Quantcast Top 10k Usage: 0.3%
Ideal For: Mid-size to enterprise
Acquisition Cost: $$$ - $$$$
Development Cost: $$$ - $$$$$ Another “out of the box” option, Sitecore has continued to grow in North America. Featuring a slew of various modules and templates, a company can hitch their wagon to Sitecore’s CMS with the knowledge they’ll be able to keep developing on it. They were cited by Gartner as a Leader, and has progressed with multiple components, including an extensive digital marketing suite. For those that use solutions like Sharepoint for document sharing, Sitecore makes a lot of sense to integrate with.
Platform Type: .NET Open Source
Initially Released: 2000
Quantcast Top 10k Usage: N/A
Ideal For: Mid-size businesses
Acquisition Cost: None
Development Cost: $$ - $$$ As recently as 2010, Umbraco was in the top five most popular downloads via the Microsoft Web Platform Installer. According to BuiltWith, Umbraco accounts for just .67% of the Quantcast 10k that uses open source tech.
