Take control of your web site

Managing and updating a web site are considerable challenges for any organization, both large and small. These activities necessitate a number of specific company skills and resources that are very diverse and difficult to integrate, such as communication and programming.

In recent years, this situation has created the need for solutions that provide web content writers with tools to help them overcome technological obstacles so that they may focus their skills on their own tasks. Content management systems, or CMS, are in many ways the solution to this situation.

Hundreds of solutions designed for that purpose exist in a variety of forms. Let’s take a closer look at the selection criteria and steps that will help your organization choose the CMS best suited to meet your objectives.

Identify your needs first

It is important to remember that this process is above all a business decision: what are the business objectives targeted by your organization’s web site? It is essential that you identify both the site’s general objectives (e.g. increase the organization’s notoriety and facilitate delivery of customer service) and specific objectives (e.g. attract 100 targeted clients/day to the site and get 10 new clients/day to carry out a transaction). Next, these objectives can be allocated to functions and then to functionalities that have been pinpointed and prioritized to attain the e-business objectives of your organization. Although these steps seem natural and obvious, they are unfortunately not the standard procedure in organizations where the selection of solutions is often influenced by external factors, either by the emergence of the latest “trendy” technology or by proposals from technology providers.

Proprietary code

CMS, like most software programs, come in two main formats.

Proprietary CMS belong to the chosen technology provider and are rented to your organization either in ASP (Application Service Provider) mode or installed on your server. However, if proprietary CMS is chosen then the question of data reusability must be considered: what happens to your site and data if your organization wishes to terminate its contract with the service provider? Frequently, the site will simply cease to exist when the CMS is “unplugged.” The cost of switching providers can therefore be exorbitant. That said, certain proprietary systems may be the ideal solution for your company, if the chosen tool meets the majority of your needs. Moreover, the owner is accountable for the quality of the tool it develops and must therefore guarantee a certain level of service and support, which will facilitate usage of the tool.

The other format, open source CMS, permits greater reusability and offers your organization more control over the system. On the other hand, it requires greater internal specialized expertise or a willingness to enter into another type of business relation with technology providers. In the latter case, rather than selling or renting a system, technology providers will offer their support and development services for an open source software program (which is often free). In this case, the fixed price is low or minimal (purchase of the licence), but the variable costs tend to be higher and difficult to foresee. Ownership and reusability of the site and its data are, however, guaranteed.

Making sense of the selection criteria

It is important to follow the above-mentioned steps, particularly because of the vast range of criteria, requirements and functionalities to consider when selecting the CMS that will best meet your organization’s needs.

These criteria concern two main aspects: technological and managerial. The primary technological criteria are stability, performance, security, search engine compatibility ( see the article written by my colleague, Simon Lamarche ) and interoperability with other tools/sites/platforms. Another important criterion is the system’s scalability, which is the degree to which the CMS can be expanded and to which you can add relevant functionalities. All these criteria will have both short and long-term impact on your organization’s CMS activities.

The managerial aspects will have definite short-term impact, although long-term repercussions will be felt as well. A few examples of managerial criteria include the ability to manage e-mail lists and visitor profiles, or to consult your site’s traffic statistics. All too often, these factors are considered only after a CMS has been selected. Once a content management system has been implemented, it can be extremely costly to modify it to meet the objectives that were overlooked during the selection process. The other aspects to consider relate to the system’s process for updating content: delegation and revision of online content, usability of CMS-generated pages and protection of design standards on your company’s web site. Each CMS offers different levels of support for every one of these points. Lastly, in consideration of the growth of your site, it is important to verify the orientation of the provider or group offering the tool in question. It is preferable to choose a provider whose growth objectives are tied to the industry in which you operate, to ensure that you will benefit not only from their long-term support, but also from a technology that is, and will continue to be, relevant to your business field.

Clearly, choosing the right CMS is no small task. Making a decision in a logical manner will ensure that your organization adopts a technological tool that will make a positive contribution to your business objectives. The opposite result could surprise you and generate many problems or even set back your organization’s e-business activities. Call upon specialists or develop the resources necessary for this process within your organization. The success of your e-business venture depends on it!

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