Implementing Content Management for Rapid Return on Investment

Implementing Content Management for Rapid Return on Investment Chad Robinson President, Media Lantern, Inc. August 1, 2008 Streamlining the Web Site Design Process Marketing firms, advertising agencies, and other firms who regularly work with customers' Web sites are familiar with the challenges of addressing new customer requirements and updating site information. The typical life cycle of a customer Web site passes through developers multiple times: There are two problems with this scenario: 1. Support personnel require development assistance to edit site content. This creates a bottleneck of work passing from support back to development. 2. Development personnel are often the most expensive resource in the company. A bottleneck in this area reduces profit margins both by increasing the need for costly personnel and by reducing the workload the entire company can handle. This situation also makes customers unhappy. New sites take longer to deploy, and many customers do not understand why basic site updates cannot be made in minutes. In an ideal world, this bottleneck would be removed, and customer support staff would be directly responsible for site updates: Support personnel are better suited to managing updates (provided they have the ability to do so) because they can work directly with customers to effect those changes. The increased speed for site deployment and update tasks makes customers happy, and profit margins are higher because appropriate resources are used at each stage of the workflow. Support personnel typically do not know HTML, CSS, Javascript, or the other technologies and languages required to update and maintain a modern Web site. This means even simple changes to site text are often passed back to development staff to perform. Enter content management. 236 State St, New London, CT 06320 -1Copyright © 2008, Media Lantern, Inc. (800) 705-1213 or (860) 367-8701 http://www.medialantern.com/ Introducing Content Management “Content Management” is a term that has been used to mean many things. For corporate Web sites, we define it as a mechanism of separating site design from page content. In the past, primitive solutions to do this have provided template management and some automation for generating page menus and other elements. The problem with these products is they are either too complex for support staff or customers to (safely) use, or they lack the power to produce sophisticated sites with extensive database-driven functionality. A true content management system (CMS) allows developers to implement a site design while leaving placeholders for others to supply page content. This simple change – separating design from content – is a crucial shift in the life cycle of a Web site, and allows the use of time-saving techniques that include: 1. Auto-generation of menus, footers, news summaries, and other content as pages are created, moved, or deleted on the site. 2. Repetition of content in multiple locations of a site, such as home page summaries of recent news items. 3. Managing publication / removal dates of items for future announcements, or pages yet to be reviewed. 4. Auditing page changes and authors, and allowing the rollback of undesirable modifications. 5. Reusing code modules for site search, user login, menu generation, and other features to reduce development costs. Initial benefits from CMS deployment can be realized in as little as 4-6 weeks, depending on usage. With only basic training, support staff may begin to maintain site content almost immediately after deployment, a big win for firms that charge maintenance fees for this work. Then, as additional sites are implemented, developers can begin to reuse code blocks and other features in new site designs. CMS products can even help the sales cycle. Many customers are unwilling to relinquish total control of their sites to third parties. They want to feel in control; a part of the process. A CMS can allow you to delegate control over maintaining certain content elements on a site, without exposing the customer to elements that would disrupt the site's functionality if they were changed. Selecting a Content Management System Because there are so many popular products, selecting a CMS can be tricky. This step represents a non-trivial investment in employee training to use the new product effectively, and choosing the wrong solution can thus be costly in terms of training dollars spent, lost productivity, and reduced customer satisfaction. When evaluating a product, decision makers should include the following criteria: • • • • • • Licensing fees and terms, especially for commercial products Ease of use by end users Speed and complexity of the development life-cycle Hosting requirements Security Third-party support 236 State St, New London, CT 06320 -2Copyright © 2008, Media Lantern, Inc. (800) 705-1213 or (860) 367-8701 http://www.medialantern.com/ Commercial products offer extensive support options, and are usually very sophisticated. Many offer development interfaces that allow programmers to integrate them with a variety of third-party systems. This is especially true of systems produced by the major software OEMs, such as Oracle and Microsoft. These applications may be good choices if cost is not critical, and tight integration with accounting, customer relationship management, human resources, or other systems are high priorities. On the other hand, these systems can be expensive, with licensing fees that are prohibitive for small and medium clients. Open Source products offer alternatives without per-site licensing fees, and thus may be better suited for companies on tight budgets, or developing sites for customers where average project pricing is less than $20,000. Otherwise, a commercial product can represent a substantial percentage of a project's budget. Balancing product features is also non-trivial. Some products are extremely easy to use for support staff or customers, but are difficult for developers to customize. Others are extremely powerful and open for developer modification, but have complicated or unclear user interfaces. Media Lantern recommends conducting a side-byside test of demonstration versions of each product to identify the most suitable choice for a particular company. Why Media Lantern Prefers MODx (An Ideal Middle Ground) Media Lantern supports any product chosen by its customers, and does not endorse a specific solution or vendor. However, when asked, we will typically recommend MODx. We present here our reasons for doing so in the hope they will be instructive to others choosing content management products for their own environments. For our business model, our major selection criteria boiled down into three key areas: Balance of Power Ease of use and power are often compromises – intuitive, easy-touse systems are often difficult for developers to customize, while more powerful, developer-friendly products are usually more complicated to learn and use. Media Lantern wanted a balanced application, and MODx offers that balance between an intuitive user interface and easy customization by back-end developers. This compromise between power and ease of use makes both our customers and our developers happy. Code Reuse Code reuse is critical to boosting profit margins, because it can dramatically reduce development overhead for Web site creation. However, it is also difficult to achieve in many cases. MODx has a very modular approach to code and data objects. This makes it easy for us to reuse blocks that enable Google Analytics, user login, site search, drop-down menus, etc. Media Lantern typically reuses more than 20% of its code base in new customer sites – a very high number by industry standards, and one that has a direct impact on our bottom line. Page-Oriented Hierarchy Some CMS products take design and data separation to its logical limit, breaking pages up into separate objects that are stored and edited in different locations. This sounds good, but it slows down both developers and end users, making a site harder to manage. MODx does store content blocks separately, but the product is still designed around an intuitive folder- and page-based hierarchy, and its ability to edit all content blocks on a page in one spot makes the system intuitive and easy to use for both our end users and our developers. 236 State St, New London, CT 06320 -3Copyright © 2008, Media Lantern, Inc. (800) 705-1213 or (860) 367-8701 http://www.medialantern.com/ MODx also has some additional advantages that we have come to appreciate: • • • It is very fast, so it does not require the front-end caching techniques needed by some other products, It is written in PHP, one of the most popular languages in use today. Python, Ruby, and other languages are all admirable, but skilled developers are more expensive and harder to find. The product is Open Source, and its license, the GPL, encourages distribution and customization. MODx currently enjoys active support by a community of core and third-party developers and users. Media Lantern has even participated in the community by contributing back add-on modules it has developed for its own use. While we were not required to do so, this has been a benefit to our own development efforts as other users have identified and helped fix bugs in those add-ons. This type of active community involvement is one of the key benefits of Open Source products. Getting the Most from a CMS Regardless of the CMS product chosen, getting full value from it requires some care, especially when a client is involved in the process. A CMS can impact the entire life-cycle of a customer's Web site, so product selection should be a joint effort that includes input from sales, support, development, and design staff. Below are some tips on how to get the most from a new CMS, and some pitfalls to avoid in the process: CMS Deployment Tips 1. Design for content. Elements intended to be updated should be CSS-styled text, not images or other types of objects. 2. Focus on creating XHTML/CSS compliant designs, as these are the easiest to implement in most CMS products. 3. Good organization is crucial. Break down pages into headers, content blocks, and other elements, and identify repeated vs. unique content on each page. 4. Define the support process ahead of time. How often will each page be updated, who will perform the updates, and how will updates be reviewed and published? Define roles and workflow steps for long-term support, too. 5. Be prepared to revise your sales and support cycle to take full advantage of what a CMS can do. Sell CMS benefits, design to take advantage of them, and experiment with new features wherever possible. Potential Pitfalls to Avoid 1. Avoid the use of Flash, hard-coded Javascript menus, and other compiled or hard-to-edit content. Splash screens, banners, and promotion blocks are fine, but Flash should never be used to render primary site content, as this makes it difficult to use the CMS automatically generate them. 2. Remember, the site is the product, not the CMS. Don’t get lost in the details of what a CMS can do in an ideal case – incremental improvements are still improvements. 3. Don't expect instant, enormous savings. The biggest impact will be found in long-term savings and efficiency gains. 4. Don't forget about search engines! Many products offer SEO-friendly features; make sure the one you select does, too, and use them. Educate users to fill in TITLE and ALT tags, and use appropriate markup. 5. Determine training requirements ahead of time – don’t expect a CMS to be self-explanatory, especially to end users. 236 State St, New London, CT 06320 -4Copyright © 2008, Media Lantern, Inc. (800) 705-1213 or (860) 367-8701 http://www.medialantern.com/