Content Management in the age of Customer Experience Management
Content has become one of the most crucial factors impacting the customer experience. Brands are investing a lot of efforts to improve the content and build stories that sell. The emphasis on content production has never been stronger as it is today. Given the multitude of digital channels that the millennials are using for content consumption, organisations are faced with the challenge of figuring out how to match content production with the consumption channels for maximum impact. This builds the case for developing custom CMS according to business requirements.
Tackling Consumer Disconnect
In this age of information overload, a heap of data or random content production is just leading to content chaos. Customer disconnect in the age of millennials is a real issue that needs to be addressed. Organizations that are not able to keep up with real-time, contextual, personalized and multi-channel content consumption by millennial customers have been disadvantaged with respect to their competitors. The piling up of multiple applications for handling disparate functionalities, that have minimal integration capability with core systems has created missing links in the content marketing strategy. Organizations, therefore, need to build a content strategy, mend the broken links in customer communication and on-board a technology player that has expertise in implementing multiple content management systems.
Why do you need a Content Management System?
3 seconds is all it takes!
Yes, you read it right. You have a 3 second window to make an impact in your potential customer’s mind to convert him to a loyal customer. And your arsenal? Your content strategy of course. A robust and a holistic content strategy acts as a guide for the production, distribution and control of content with the aim of adding an objective, unique and consumer-centric content to owned media, including website and other web properties on a regular basis. This is where developing a custom CMS could be extremely helpful. A CMS and a content strategy work in tandem to execute your content plan.
Benefits of implementing CMS
Here’s some of the top benefits of on-boarding a CMS
o Efficiency all the way– CMSes make content collaboration easy and there is a minimal dependency on technical resources. Stakeholders across organization can create, edit, upload, update content anytime without the need for any technical or design knowledge as CMSes come with in-built templates
o SEO applied– SEO optimization is a must-have for website content today as organizations compete to be ranked higher in Google organic search results. Good CMSes have inbuilt fields for making content SEO friendly
o Quality content– Users can define workflow and user control for content approvals. This ensures that content is published the post it is approved by the right authority. If you are developing a custom CMS, you can also ensure that it provides archival capabilities so that it is easy to track and manage different versions of content by different team members
o Increase content searchability– Content indexing is one of the most powerful features of content management systems. It allows easy discoverability of content through its auto-indexing feature that allows users to sort content as per their individual searches
o Consistent look and feel of the website- Maintaining consistent branding across website is a must for ensuring consistent communication with customers. Web Content Management systems have in-built design templates that you can apply across the website to maintain a consistent look and feel and also simplify navigation of the website
o Responsive content guaranteed- Customers today parse content across mobile devices. Therefore if your website is not built to dynamically fit into the screen of your user, you have some major issue to tackle. Most WCM systems today deliver responsive content that scales automatically to fit the screen size of the user which can improve your UX considerably
Deep-dive web CMS ecosystem
If you are looking to on-board a custom web content management system, there are a number of choices available in the market today. While some companies prefer Drupal, some others resort to WordPress or Joomla. There are multiple companies that are also looking forward to catch up the latest trend of Headless CMS.
Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla have some common grounds. They are all
- Open source software
- Built on PHP
- Utilizes MySQL database
- Have in-built themes and templates
- Comes with plugins/modules for extending functionalities to website
- Enjoy massive community support
However, these CMSes also have some major differences based on a variety of parameters. You should on-board a WCM vendor keeping your business goals in mind.
Checklist for on-boarding Web CMS Vendor
o Product Roadmap: Errors and issues are bound to crop up when you are dealing with software. Therefore before you onboard a CMS, it comes handy to know the kind of support you can get. Open source software has a thriving developer community that provides patches for errors, suggests possible fixes and almost any type of support that you may require. For proprietary software, you have to wait for the vendor to implement fixes as per their product roadmap
o Integration capability– Organizations looking to deliver a connected UX, CMSes with a good integration capability with an assorted number of applications is a must-have. CMSes cannot thrive in isolation, therefore they must be able to integrate with their systems to create a rich ecosystem for delivering a great CX.
o Mobile responsiveness- Mobiles today play a critical part in a customer journey. Therefore it is essential that you onboard a CMS that can deliver mobile responsive content. Out of the three WCM systems Joomla, Drupal and WordPress, companies that have opted for Drupal 8 development have an added advantage here. Drupal 8 provides responsive image module in Drupal code. It maps breakpoints and offers an image formatter.
o Cloud capability– Onboard a CMS that can easily integrate with a cloud platform to enable easy scaling in the future
o Development time/ Learning curve– If you are looking to go-to-market faster, ensure that the CMS has a short learning curve. CMSes that have a longer learning curve, may require some technical knowledge. However, if you do not have the technical resources, you can partner with a CMS consulting firm to do the implementation for you
o SEO capability– These capabilities are a must-have in CMSes. Before onboarding a CMS, enquire if it has advanced SEO capabilities or if advanced capabilities can be added later on
o Maintenance/Vendor dependency– maintaining proprietary CMSes depends the vendor, whereas open source CMSes are vendor agnostic
o Cost– Open source CMSes are economical compared to proprietary ones
Conclusion:
Millennials make up the largest chunk of customers today and they want seamless, personalized experience across touchpoints. Content is primary in delivering a contextual customer experience. A robust web content management system can help organizations manage their content assets end-to-end. A good CMS does not only focus on content publication but also accommodates future requirements, delivers a seamless experience across channels, makes website stable and also delivers faster ROI.
If you are still evaluating a good fit WCM system, download this whitepaper for a detailed understanding of the differences between Drupal, WordPress and Joomla.
