We’ve recently updated how we evaluate the nuts and bolts of the forty-one Web CMS vendors we cover in our Web Content Management research. Specifically, we’ve expanded and re-organized our ratings categories. See the sample, right. To be sure, this is a supplement to our assessment of vendors’ "fit" against different business scenarios. When developing a short-list, look to scenarios first, and then these ratings.
At a high level, we keep the same four main categories:
- Technology & Management Services
- Content Production Services (contributor-facing)
- Content Delivery and Interaction Services (visitor facing)
- Vendor Intangibles
Then we break down services into subcategories that attempt to match up to particular team members’ concerns. For example, your system administrator might be more interested in performance than templating and integration. It’d be easy to think that all our customers read an entire 10- to 20-page chapter about a particular vendor, but you’ve told us that you wanted better segmentation of topics, especially between businesspeople keen to assess criteria like usability or e-marketing, and IT team members, who may bring different interests.
We’ve also added or modified several service descriptions
- Content Reuse gets addressed more directly. All vendors say they can do it; few support it as well as you might like (though you need to be careful what you wish for, since granular content re-use in particular can present serious management challenges).
- UI Accessibility became an official consideration, partly at the request of our public-sector subscribers. This refers to the accessibility of the content management interface itself, as opposed to the generated website. We had always covered this topic, but not as deeply as now, especially since vendors tend not to pay attention to it. You’ll find a lot of check-minus scores there.
- Multi-site Management refers to a spectrum of services you may want to exploit to help you manage multiple properties from the same system instance.
- Friendly Output is also new as a first-class service, although we had covered some of the key issues previously. This segment covers criteria like friendly URLs, standards-based output, and the related issue of website accessibility. Much of the responsibility here will lie with your specific implementation, but it turns out that some Web CMS offerings natively support friendlier output than others.
"Vendor Intangibles" might look like a bit of an appendage, but we actually seem to spend more and more time on this with each update. I’ll never tire of repeating: the vendor (or open source project) "fit" is at least as important as tool fit. Key factors of late include the growing importance of community-based support to help satisfy your broader support needs, as well as the breadth of any consulting partner channel for those Web CMS offerings that are more platform-like.
I hope you find this list useful as you consider your own needs and opportunities. As always, our generic ratings must be weighed against more contextual requirements. For explanations of how we arrive at those ratings, consult the narrative for each vendor evaluation.
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