Lessons Learned from Implementing Content Management Systems

So you want to implement or change your content management system (CMS)? Before you do, here are some quick things to consider that most media companies forget about:

• There is no silver bullet – There are some CMS companies who tell you their solution does everything … and to some degree they make a valiant effort at it. The problem, as one media executive recently told me, is that the one-size fits all solution is like a sofa bed. It’s a sofa and it’s a bed, but it doesn’t do either of them very well. When developing your emedia business system strategy, look for best-of-breed solutions for the specific issue you are trying to solve, not the silver bullet solution that will answer all of your emedia needs. It doesn’t exist despite what some vendors will try to sell you.
• Don’t forget the cost of content conversion – When factoring cost, we often look at just the cost of developing the solution … “building the engine.” But we often leave out the cost of “putting in the fuel” … converting the content from our old CMS or from static sources such as InDesign, Quark, or static HTML to the data format of the new CMS. This is no small or inexpensive task and can involve not only textual content conversion to a new format, but image size / format changes and meta data changes.
• Have an SEO transistion plan – When launching a new CMS it is common for the URL structure of the site to change … and thus the URLs of major sections and specific content pages change. This breaks inbound links from other web sites as well as search engines and can wreak havoc on your traffic. If possible, try to keep the URL of your content pages the same with your new CMS (as long as they are already search engine friendly), but if not, have plans for resubmitting your site to the search engines and for getting sites that link to yours to update their links. I have seen web sites lose up to 50% of their traffic after a relaunch because they did not have a good SEO transition plan in place.
• Don’t let integration slow your launch – We all like nice, neat, integrated systems where our content and users are managed from one place and we leverage our existing systems as much as possible. I am a big fan of consolidated content and user databases. However, this also can be an impediment to actually getting a product to market and generating revenue. I have seen media companies get bogged down and delay launch of an online product for over a year because they insist on it being fully integrated into all their systems. I have also seen media companies launch $500K products by using off-the-shelf solutions like WordPress and quickly getting the product to market. Look at what your business objectives are and figure out the best solution to quickly get a specific initiative to market and making money. Down the road you can better integrate with other core systems if you choose.
• Shoot for the 80% solution – You will never get 100% of your wish list from any CMS … whether open source, a purchased system, or something you build yourself. Before you begin, make sure to clearly identify your needs and wants and differentiate between the two: what is critical to the success of the product, and what is a nice-to-have. Be willing to adjust your expectations to better fit the capabilities of a CMS solution. Why? Because you can often do what you need and launch much more quickly and inexpensively if you are willing to be a bit flexible. If you insist on customizing a solution, you will add a lot of cost and time to the project and often not for anything that would be mission critical. In addition, customizing a solution makes upgrading your CMS extremely difficult and costly in the future.
• Control scope creep – The further along you are in a CMS deployment, the harder it is to make changes to your requirements. As a project progresses, we will all see things that we wish we would have done differently. You must make the decision as to whether the issue you see is absolutely critical to the success of the launch. If it is, then make the change, but expect that your cost and time to deliver will increase. You cannot change scope without impacting cost and time line. If the issue is not absolutely critical, then put it on a list for “Phase 2″ to be launched at a later date. BTW, controlling scope also works in reverse … if you find yourself needing to get to market more quickly, reduce the scope of what you are trying to accomplish and focus on just the core needs. Try it … it really does work!

Hope this helps as you launch a new product online or convert to a new CMS solution. Have any more tips? Post a comment and let me know!