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Choosing a Content Management System |
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Written by Leonard Porcano, Chief Technologist, Novisi
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If you have a website with more than 5 pages, or you have a website that changes more frequently than monthly, chances are you either have or need a content management system or CMS. A content management system, at it's heart, provides a way to manage and publish text, pictures, and multimedia to your website without the need for extensive technical knowledge.
One of the most common questions I get asked is “What is the best CMS?”. The truth is there is no single best CMS out there, however, there is a best CMS for your needs. This article will aim to give you the basic knowledge you need to identify which CMS is right for you.
The first step in choosing a CMS is to identify your needs. There are three broad categories or people that will drive your needs here:
- Customers, clients and readers. - These are people reading and viewing content on your site
- Staff – These are people managing and publishing content to your site using the CMS
- Technical staff – These are the people who support the systems that run the CMS
The needs of the first group are the most critical to get right. Without these folks, there is little reason to have a site, right? So here you really want to understand who this person is, and what they are looking for. It is often helpful to create several fictitious users who you believe contain the characteristics of your audience. Give these fictitious characters as much depth and personality as you can, complete with full real names and addresses. This will help later. Use these composite characters to act out a visit to your site. To complete this process you should assemble a product group to help you. This should include people from different aspects of your business, such as sales, operations, and accounting. If you are a solopreneur, consider enlisting the help of friends, family, and even vendors.
For instance you might create a character named Susan Wiggenham, age 44, who lives in Bethlehem. You will want to add some personality features and behaviors to give “Susan” more depth as well. You will have to trust me when I say this will help in the process. The next step is to act out a visit to your website. The simplest way to do this is to grab a bunch of markers, post it notes, and poster board. Starting with the first page “Susan” visits, create a paper version of this page on poster board. Note this paper version can be very ugly, but it should contain all the elements of the page she is visiting. Once you are done with the first pass at creating this page, the product group should ask itself what really bothers “Susan” about this page. What is on this page that she wishes wasn't here. What is hard for her to find. What would make her read more, and what makes her want to leave? For instance, if your site has a user login, where is it on the page? Did Susan find it easily, or did she need to look for it? If you don't have a login, should you? Let's say you allow readers to comment on articles, does Susan read these comments from other users? Does she comment herself? Does seeing the comments simply annoy her? Once you are done with the first page, move on to the next and go through the same steps. You may find that you discover things on the second and third pages which cause you to revise your paper version of the first page. You should go through this entire process for between 3 and 5 characters. Each time you go through, revise the paper versions of your site.
Once you are through this step, you have completed the hardest part. Most sites that fail, or don't meet expectations, never go through this process. So you have already put yourself and your company at a big advantage. Next you will want to take the same basic approach for the next group, your staff who will be entering and managing content. Since this is often a small group of people you can skip the composite, and work directly with the real people who will be using the system. Step through each of tasks this person would be doing on an average day with the system. Note where they spend lots of time, and what things frustrate them. Keep tweaking your paper versions until their workflow is as comfortable and efficient as possible.
The last group is your technical staff. For many small businesses and entrepreneurs, this is a vendor, a brother-in-law, a nephew, or worst of all nobody. Whatever your staff is, be honest with yourself about it. How would this staff like to be able to maintain the system? How many hours a week or month do they have to dedicate to this? What kind of skills will this person have? This is one of the easiest steps to get right, but one of the most damaging to skip. A system which costs you more, in both dollars and hours, to maintain than you can either afford or have budgeted for can be a real killer. Likewise a system which becomes unreliable or which goes underutilized due to a lack of technical resources can be a sinkhole for resources, money, and most importantly good will. You may end up with more bullet points than updates to your paper versions of the site with this step. That is fine. The important thing is that you capture the information.
This next step is to take the paper versions, and create from them a bullet list of features with descriptions that the site must have. You will probably be surprised to see how much more you understand about your needs and site requirements at this stage. With a clear goal set, you are now well positioned to begin evaluating your options. The CMS Matrix site (http://www.cmsmatrix.org/) offers a wealth of data on features and requirements for most CMSs. Note that some of the terminology you have in your bullet list may be different than terminology used within the world of content management. If you feel like you are struggling to connect your bullet list with the feature lists you see listed for a CMS, consider pulling in an expert. Since you already have a well defined set of requirements, you can pull in a consultant to help you comparison shop for a few hours without breaking the bank.
My experience is that if you have gone through the steps outlined here, the actual selection becomes very easy. Most times there are only a handful of systems that meet your needs, at which point you can look at things like price and popularity. A lower price is its own benefit which needs no explaining. A more popular CMS will likely have better ongoing development and support, which means a reduced chance of finding that the CMS no longer meets your needs in 3 – 5 years. One last thing is that through this process try and do two things: keep an open mind and remember you are in control. If you can do both of those things throughout the process, you will meet with great success.
Leonard Porcano is the founder and Chief Technologist at Novisi (http://novisi.com), a web consultancy offering powerful online publishing options and compelling online communities. He can be reached by email at
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
, or by phone at 610-297-4217.
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