Keeping today's website visitors satisfied is a tough
job. Right now, few corporate websites succeed, with static,
lifeless pages that lack interactivity.
By contrast, pioneering sites in the consumer world such as
Amazon,
Google and eBay have set users' expectations high with their
compelling, dynamic content.
Because of the efforts of successful websites, the average
visitor now expects more targeted, even personalised, interactions
with each and every company they do business with online, says
Forrester Research analyst Kyle McNabb.
Suppliers of
web-content management software, such as Interwoven,
Vignette and Mediasurface, all say that they can help companies
rise to the challenge of heightened user expectation.
Since the late 1990s, their tools have been used by companies to
create, manage, store and publish content to the web, including
text, graphics, photos, video, audio and applications.
But in recent years, "the web-content management franchise has
expanded significantly", according to Lou Latham, an analyst at
Gartner. Today, web-content management leadership requires the
capability to take full advantage of the web as an
interactive platform, rather than just treating it as another
publishing medium, says Latham.
"A web-content management product may be perfectly good for
creating and deploying static HTML pages, but unsuitable for a very
interactive site that requires personalisation and other dynamic
functions," he points out. And these days, he adds, most sites
require exactly those qualities.
As a result, web-content management tools are changing. Users
need to be very sure that the product they select today will
continue to support their corporate website as it evolves to meet
the expectations of an increasingly demanding breed of website
visitor.
In general, says Latham, suppliers are focusing less on the
content-production aspects of their web-content management suites -
authoring tools, repository management and library services, for
example - in favour of a greater emphasis on enhancing
content-delivery functions, such as personalisation tools and
analytics, which enable companies to deliver web content to
visitors in a far more targeted way.
However, while most web-content management packages offer some
kind of personalisation, Tony Byrne, an analyst with research firm
CMS Watch believes this area is "highly specialised and quite
complex".
"You should not assume that your content-management supplier's
personalisation capabilities will meet your needs without
thoroughly testing it first," he says.
For a start, Byrne says, there are many different approaches to
personalisation. The simplest approach, he says, is "roles-based"
personalisation, where site owners and editors predetermine groups
of users - such as "customers", "investors" and "job candidates" -
and create custom pages or content sets for those users.
Alternatively, companies might opt for rules-based
personalisation, in which business rules are established that
affect the display of content on pages within a site. "For example,
an online gourmet store is overstocked in French roast coffee, so
the site software recognises this in the inventory database and
automatically places promotions to users who have bought coffee
before," says Byrne.
A third approach is preferences-based personalisation. "In this
model, users indicate their preferences, usually during an initial
session, so that dynamic pages can be delivered on subsequent
visits so the site better matches their interests," says Byrne.
Users are typically assigned a user name and password for
authentication. Cookies may also be used so that users are not
required to log-in on subsequent visits.
In order to boost content-targeting efforts, meanwhile, many
web-content management suppliers are now turning to analytics.
These detail content navigation and usage, enabling website
managers to analyse customer behaviours and transactions, and tweak
their content accordingly.
Interwoven, for example, recently announced a partnership with
web-analytics specialist Websidestory that will enable it to
deliver a new segmentation and analysis product. Vignette is
currently working with Omniture on similar capabilities.
Other web-content management packages have their own analytics
products built in, but Byrne warns that their capabilities may not
be as sophisticated as those from third-party specialists.
A compelling web experience, however, does not just mean that
content pushed at the visitor is targeted to their needs. It may
also involve enabling them to contribute their own comments.
To that end, most web-content management software now
incorporates support for blogs, wikis and RSS feeds. "Web-content
management technology is becoming interesting again as the
Web 2.0 buzz drives site owners to interact more with site
visitors, which requires more control over content," says
Latham.
Uptake of these interactive tools has so far been limited, but
that may be about to change. A
survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) found that,
despite early scepticism, "serious businesses" are starting to see
that social networking technologies are not just for consumer sites
such as YouTube and Facebook, but might also provide a major way
for other brands to attract new customers and boost revenue.
In an EIU survey, for example, nearly 60% of large companies
questioned said that they are inviting customers to contribute
content to their website that explains, supports, promotes or
enhances their products, or that they plan to do so within the next
two years.
And it is that kind of forward thinking that is taxing the minds
of many website managers right now. Take, for example, Rob Tyler,
group web manager at investment house New Star Asset Management,
who was involved in selecting a new web-content management product
for the company in early 2006.
After assessing a number of different web-content management
packages, Tyler ultimately chose Mediasurface over rivals RedDot,
Percussion and Immediacy, because he felt that Mediasurface's
Morello package could help New Star meet its long-term ambitions
for the website, as well as its immediate goals.
The initial aim of the project was quite conventional: to
consolidate multiple websites aimed at retail, corporate,
institutional and hedge-fund customers into a single corporate
website. That, it was hoped, would enable the company to centralise
management and re-use content, leading to lower operational costs
and increased editorial productivity.
But Tyler's vision for the website sought to deliver more than
that. Already, the company offers on-demand video webcasts to keep
its clients up to speed with market developments and fund-manager
insights.
Behind the scenes, New Star's web team is experimenting with
social bookmarking techniques, exploring how the company might use
RSS feeds to drive traffic to the site, and is building a business
case for incorporating blogs into its web operations.
"We need to do as much as we can to keep website visitors
engaged, and new web developments are emerging all the time with
the potential to help us do that, so it is vital that our
web-content management system can grow with us," he says.
Case study: Channel 4
Few UK companies will ever experience a content-management
challenge quite as daunting as that faced by Channel 4.
For one thing, a truly robust publishing infrastructure was an
absolute must. With more than 60 million page views per day, the
sheer volume of traffic Channel 4's website attracts is staggering,
and visitors expect the very latest information on each and every
visit. When popular reality shows are on the air, the number of
visitors can swell enormously.
But there is no room for cutting corners in the race to get
information online. Channel 4 strives to be an innovative,
forward-thinking media company, and its 32 million-strong weekly
television audience expects the company to provide an online
experience that is just as creative, thoughtful and compelling as
its TV programmes aim to be.
"It is no longer simply about publishing information about
Channel 4, its programmes, its presenters and so on," says Sam
McGregor, manager of new media technology at Channel 4.
"Meeting user expectation is vital and, in keeping with that,
our site is rapidly becoming not only a video-centric portal that
builds on TV programmes, but also a platform for user interaction,
where our audience can rate programmes and provide their own
commentary," he says.
Producing and editing content and keeping it up to date is
therefore a huge task, and one that needs to be handled by the
editors and business users responsible for content rather than busy
IT staff. For that reason, Channel 4 extended its relationship with
web content management software company Interwoven in 2006.
The company had already been using Interwoven's Teamsite
web-content management system since 2002, but has now supplemented
that with
Interwoven Livesite, a content-publishing server that reduces
the content editor's dependency on the IT team.
That enables editors to update news feeds themselves as soon as
stories break, and adapt to new situations unfolding on reality
shows such as Big Brother by posting updates and video clips within
minutes of the broadcast itself.
"Interwoven has really helped us to ensure our site is current
with news and editorial content that our viewers are really
interested in," says McGregor.
Not only that, he adds, but interactive areas on the site that
encourage contributions from website visitors have become a vital
part of enabling editors to understand the audience and appreciate
their needs.
"Of course, that relies heavily on strong moderation
capabilities in order that inappropriate content does not appear.
But again, that is something that Teamsite helps us control,"
McGregor says.