Web Content Management

To manage the wide variety of content to be shared on a website, firms typically need a web content management system. A content management system (commonly referred to as CMS) is an application or a product which supports content acquisition, creation, collaboration, editing, and publishing to multiple platforms. Systems which help develop and manage such workflows for website content are known as Web Content Management Systems (WCMS).

Historically, WCMS were developed to help non-technical teams create content for specific pages on their own with the help of an intuitive, easy-to-manage system. Earlier, technical resources used to fill-in web pages which were neither effective nor compelling as they did not have the requisite skills. The development of WCMS also provided a structure to the documents being created, thus, supporting a way in which content creators and editors can simply populate content on to a specified template and be worried only about updating content rather than its structure or code.

The key goal of a WCMS is to provide an easy-to-use platform to develop and update content at specific page levels for the website. Typical advantages of a WCMS include:

• Supports real-time creation and publishing of new content reliably and consistently
• Provides robust workflows with in-built rules and permissions for each stakeholder
• Contains standard templates which help render any new content to target site pages
• Supports re-use of content across web pages for multiple platforms and devices
• Provides customization and cost-efficiencies if open-source platforms are used
• Helps integrate and edit content collaboratively across multiple global locations

The most popular content management systems include WordPress, Magnolia, Alfresco, Joomla, Drupal, Liferay, etc. The following considerations should be kept in mind while choosing a WCMS for a firm’s specific objective and budget:

• Reputation in terms of robustness, feature updates, ease-of-use, and platform support
• Mapping of business objectives to specific features of product being compared
• Usage pattern and daily requirements of administrators, content developers, and users
• Long-term RoI across investment and ease of implementation

Typically, firms have to assess the WCMS options available, depending on the size of their site, its features, interactivity needs, presence of microsites, and support needed for complex enterprise features like multiple revenue streams, e-commerce features, multichannel publishing, global service portal, etc. In the next section, we will see how companies are managing user experience and service elements for the websites they develop.