What Makes A Good Content Management System?

Once you decide that your business definitely needs a web content management system, there are a couple of questions which , once answered, will greatly simplify the buying decision. As you consider the answers to these questions, keep in mind that an effective content management system will be easy to use, feature rich, fast to deploy, and affordable:

1. What exactly are your web content management needs? Who will use the product and for what purpose?
2. How much of a learning curve can the business handle? Look for something that your non-technical employees who will now be asked to create and publish their own web sites, will find easy to use.
3. How quickly can the new system be installed and available for use across the enterprise?
4. Can the return on investment on the content management product be easily put into numbers?

If you purchase a product that requires a semester at college, just to figure out how to use, your adoption rate will be so low that the money you spent on the product would have been better spent on a trip to Aruba for your worst salespeople.

Look for a system with editors which allow an employee with no HTML knowledge to easily create a web page that includes video, audio, and images. You will also want a system that has page templates which provide the ability to design once and use often. This can go a long way towards implementing web standards across your company.

Remember that the litmus test for ease of use has to be that Joe Average  can create a content rich web page in less than half a day given the new content management system and a few instructions.

You will know a feature rich web content management system when you see it. Look for:

1. Page templates which can be created from scratch or cloned from an existing page
2. The ability to recreate an entire site with the push of a button. Imagine creating multiple intranet sites in minutes, instead of days, weeks or months.
3. Portal components which are scalable, reusable, and configurable. You could use a component to, for example, create a Frequently Asked Questions page where customers can ask a question or simply search for answers to previously asked and answered questions.
4. WYSWIWYG editors for HTML and XML content that the content manager does not have to know HTML and XML in order to utilize the editor quickly and efficiently
5. Workflows that can be used as is or customized based on a specific department's needs
6. Integrated document management with check in and check out, versioning, and role based security
   

A good and effective content management system should be easy to install,and should not require a lot of bandwidth or multiple servers, it should also be available for use quickly.

The  ROI on a web content management system can definitely be quantified just based on dollars saved by moving the management of content from a web developer to the business, the development of new sites to the content manager, and having a product which saves money on the development of specialized components such as surveys, blogs, and message boards.

These savings can  virtually disappear if the wrong system is purchased. For example licensing can run as much as 100K to 500K, and maintenance and support fees can be as much as 20% of that. When consulting fees are added to these numbers a medium sized business may find that the ROI has disappeared.

PointDynamics CMS is easy to use, feature rich, fast to deploy,  and affordable.  Visit www.PointDynamics.com to learn more and request a demo or trial.