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8/13/2019 Igx Web CMS Buyers Guide
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/igx-web-cms-buyers-guide 1/20
Web Experience Management
WHITE PAPER
Ingeniux Corporaon
Web CMS Buyer’s Guide
IntroduconThe amount of digital content and media managed by private
and public organizaons has grown exponenally in the last
few years. Websites have also become complex. For many
organizaons, 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-eecvelymanage the web while maximizing results from online programs
and communicaons.
Web CMS soware is as business crical 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 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 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.
What is a Web CMS?
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
C O N T E N T S
Introducon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
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 of Web CMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Key Web CMS Capabilies . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Understanding Deployment . . . . . . . . . 16
Web CMS Implementaon . . . . . . . . . . 17
Web CMS Template Approaches . . . . . 17
Buying a Web CMS (Again) . . . . . . . . . . 18
Our Best Advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
A B O U T I N G E N I U X
A leading provider of web content
management soware, Ingeniux
empowers organizaons to manage
world-class websites and vibrant
online communies across web,
mobile, and tablet plaorms.
Discover what Ingeniux can do for you.
Call (877) 445-8228
Email info@ingeniux.com
Visit www.ingeniux.com
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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 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 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
to buyers’ requirements. It is therefore important that
buyers thoroughly understand what their requirements
are, based on every user conngency within the company.
That understanding should then be mapped to an equally
well-dened understanding of currently available webCMS plaorms. This is more easily said than done since
companies oen have diculty understanding exactly what their users need, as well as what the
dierent web CMS plaorms actually 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 whatpurchase resources are available. It makes no sense to test a $200,000 web CMS license if only $75,000
is available. 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 amount buyers will pay to purchase the applicaon for its
parcular conguraon (number of servers, content editors, bandwidth, etc). Typically understood as the
“price” of a web CMS, the license cost over several years typically 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 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,
“First and foremost, buyers should
understand that there is no best web
CMS. There is only a best web CMS
relave to buyers’ requirements.”
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$15,000 annually will be spent on support and maintenance.
Administraon and support. IT resources will be required to administer the system over me. Buyers
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
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. 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. In the case of web CMS, this is normally the
online interacon. Improved branding, customer loyalty, content 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 ofsuccess. 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.
Excellent customer support is essenal to the mely resoluon of crical issues, which can dramacally
impact company protability. To take but one example, system downme at the wrong me can
“The total cost of ownership (TCO) of
SaaS oerings tends to be 50 to 60percent less than on-premise. ”
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dramacally 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 crical 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
fundamentally stable. Buyers should ask themselves how vendor strategies and market presence will
contribute to the vendor’s connued success in the market – or even existence – over the next few
years. However, it is important to note that tradionally the independent web CMS vendors have been
the most stable in the market, while larger porolio soware companies have waxed and waned on theirsupport 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, it is true that many of the features and
funcons within web CMS’ are common in oerings throughout the industry. Such standard features
include WYSIWYG authoring, visual 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 thevalue-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, 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. 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 feature 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, 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.
From an operaonal perspecve, scalability is important both as a web CMS is integrated 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. And
nally, a web CMS’ 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.
Web experience management. Recently, the goals of web CMS implementaons have focused on
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 online behavioral paerns. Oen these user proles are managed in a separatesystem, such as a markeng automaon system, and then leveraged by the web CMS in delivering
targeted content. In this 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” 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, pricing, manufacturer informaon, warranty informaon, related products, shipping
informaon, 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 service level agreements. Members may have
access to one part of the site but not others. 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 bebased 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. At the simple end of the range are a limited number of goods or services,
available 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 described above, with
each department of the university or organizaon running one or more of the 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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, a mobile website will deliver a
task-based 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 advantage
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 is right for your business, ve key comparisons to keep in mind
are publishing systems vs. development frameworks, database vs. le-based systems, soware-as-a-
service (SaaS) vs. on-premise plaorms, and open source vs. commercial systems.
Publishing systems vs. development 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 are characterized by the ease with which they allow for the creaon,
management, and deployment of content. 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 as we describe them here is handled by the web
CMS itself. 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, heavy involvement of
development resources for system 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. Each piece of
content is essenally stored in a matrix, where each cell contains a “content 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 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. Non-technical authors need never know
that their PowerPoint presentaon is being managed by a web CMS.
Soware-as-a-service (SaaS) vs. on-premise plaorms. The next key consideraon in choosing a web
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, 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, 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 systemadministraon, as in a SaaS plaorm. These are generalies, and they will not exactly describe every
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, hosted applicaons have used a mul-
tenancy 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, not all SaaS companies
have the resources of Salesforce.com and not all 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 managedin 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 with the rise of cloud compung,
the costs between a dedicated virtualized 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.
Organizaons 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 organizaon is faced with the challenge of supporng the system and
customizaons. While an open source license does provide some peace of mind in terms of ownership
of the soware source code, and in most cases the 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
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, 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 that all prospecve web CMS 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.
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, 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 content in-context
of the page preview as well as in a forms-based
view that supports addional structure and
metadata.
Browser-based clients. Browser-based clients refers to an applicaon running inside a 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-based clients ensure that everyone can use the web CMS.
The content authoring environment within a webCMS should be easy for everyone to use, technicaland non-technical.
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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, 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, 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, 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 content indexes and navigaons, the ability to support mul-channel content
deployment to desktop web, mobile, print, and kiosk “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
is authored by the appropriate individual, the
arcle is sent back to the supervisor for approval.
Workows may include any number of approval
stages and, once complete, content is published to
the appropriate desnaon. Workows may also
include individuals outside of a company, such as business partners or content translators. Non-technical
users should be able to set up workows without the 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 shouldmaintain 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, and also allows for accountability.
Many web CMS soluons also provide red-lining or version comparison capabilies that highlight the
changes to each version of the page.
A web CMS should provide for the assignmentof content authoring by individual or role. Non-technical users should be able to set up workows.
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Version history is crical in industries such as nancial services, health care, and life science that have
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. For example, if a user searches for “lawsuit”
when the original author used “ligaon,” the taxonomy would establish relevance between the
two terms that would return content for “ligaon” based on a search for “lawsuit.” 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, and beer search
experiences.
Asset management. A web CMS should provide ameans 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 third-
party applicaon. This is only one example of
asset management, but it provides an analogy to
many other use cases.
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. While this may be a good soluon for many organizaons, oen large les like
video would be beer served on a media 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 supportedby 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 learn more about templates, refer to the “Web CMS Template Approaches” secon.
A web CMS should provide a means of not simplystoring and retrieving content assets, but also a wayof eding or modifying them.
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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. 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.
In our opinion, the beer approach to suppornganalycs is the provider model. With this approach, customers connect their exisng analycs systems
with web CMS dashboards that provide context to the content. Providers for analycs may include
Google Analycs (usually free to use), 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, 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 third-
party search applicaon, such as Apache Lucene,
Microso Enterprise Search Server, Google Search
Appliance, or the like.
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, 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.
A web CMS should provide a means of trackinghow website users interact with content. Analycsmodules are the means of doing this.
A web CMS should provide search tools for thecontent repository.
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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, 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 frameworkssuch 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 protocols, as well as connectors to external databases, may be crical in integrang an
organizaons’ 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, extensibility 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,” 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.
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).
Mullingual. The ability to publish web content
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, the source
page and each translated version of that page are
bound together, so it becomes dicult to organize
a dierent set of navigaons and site structure for
each language version of the site.
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 apage 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 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, 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
A web CMS should streamline the mullingual publishing process, making it easy to dene a locale for dierent sets of content.
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published to the public website using one look and feel and to the company intranet using another.
Similarly, a web CMS should support managing content in dierent environments, such as test, staging,
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. 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 ulizingnave 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. 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 some combinaon of internal and external experse.
Some companies opt to perform the bulk of implementaon themselves, taking a DIY approach, and
only enlisng the help of external experts for parcularly problemac areas. Other customers hire third-
party system integraon rms to perform implementaon. This is oen a company with close es to
the selected soware 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:
DIY. Not knowing what they don’t know, web CMS buyers oen embark upon an implementaon
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 typicallyconclude 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 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’s and don’ts goes a long way.
Third-party systems integrators. Third-party integrators oen represent a good choice for combining
specic web CMS product experse with industry-wide best pracces. While the vendor’s professional
services will certainly oer guaranteed product knowledge, they may not be as compeve as third-
party 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 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.
Vendor professional services. As menoned above, vendor professional services are a guaranteed way
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).
Applicaon server technologies. This opon tends to be
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,
PHP, Cold Fusion, and Java.
XSLT. This approach is based on transforming content within
XML documents based on denions in a stylesheet. Thisapproach 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. Tiles is based on the Struts framework, and,
very 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.
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 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
S P O T L I G H T O N M I C R O S O F T. N E T
Microso.NET is one of the most popular
development frameworks for web CMS
applicaons and sites. Today there are two
forms of .NET development: the tradional
forms-based development model, and the
new MVC (model view control) framework.
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 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.
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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, and deployment model.
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 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
the CMS supports each feature and use case. Even experienced web CMS buyers can fall into “check-
box” 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.
Our Best Advice
We encourage web CMS buyers to remember that choosing a web CMS is a praccal maer. While it maysomemes be useful to discuss the academic nicees of various content 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-technology, content-people, and
content-process issues.
• Dene issues that are likely to arise in the next year.
• Dene 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 content management systems and vendors.
“The savvy buyer knows it’s not what
the CMS can do, but how the CMS
supports each feature and use case.”
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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 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!
TAKE THE NEXT STEP
About Ingeniux
A leading provider of web content management soware,
Ingeniux empowers organizaons to manage world-class
websites and vibrant online communies across web,
mobile, and tablet plaorms. Ingeniux soware is available
as a hosted service (SaaS) or on-premise applicaon.
Ingeniux delivers unparalleled service and support to
customers worldwide.
Discover what Ingeniux can do for you.
• Call (877) 445-8228 to speak with a soluons expert
• Email info@ingeniux.com to request more informaon
• Visit www.ingeniux.com to learn about Ingeniux soluons
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