Global Web Content Management

Web Engagement Management: Converting Prospects into Lifetime Customers

Tuesday, June 1, 2010 by JanJaap Kolleman

For the last year, the Web Content Management (WCM) category has faced the perceived threat of becoming a commodity. Social Media and the proliferation of mobile devices have fundamentally changed the way we all engage with our customers. Organizations can no longer simply create and manage content in a vacuum and then publish it blindly to a global audience.

Today, companies must build strong, mutually beneficial and high-value relationships with their customers. First, unknown visitors must understand the value of becoming your customer and taking the time to engage with you. Second, customers must genuinely become evangelists for your brand, based on a relationship of trust, value and genuine enthusiasm.

As it’s now defined, can WCM expand to encompass this broader promise? I don’t know. And in truth, it doesn’t really matter. Success is based on actions not words. Web Engagement Management (WEM) now seems to be the new acronym or buzzword used to define the crucial concepts I outlined above.

But I like to think of it in simpler and more pragmatic terms. Remember the old saying that there are three kinds of people?: Those that make things happen; those that watch things happen; and those that ask “what happened?”

What kind of person do you want to be? Be honest. Ask yourself these hard questions:

What are you doing right now to increase the value of customer engagements (as measured in loyalty, customer satisfaction, revenue, brand equity, etc.)?

•        Do you have a strategy in place that includes content optimization, social media monitoring, sentiment analysis, Web and social media analytics, personalization, targeting to specific segments, and effective eCommerce engines?
•        How successful have those efforts been?
•        Can you measure them?
•        Do you even realize that you are managing customer engagements?

Engaging with existing and potential customers is like any two-way relationship—online or off. Sometimes you need to talk. Most times you need to listen. But if no one in your organization is truly engaging with customers through the Social Web, you’re creating huge liabilities to your reputation, your brand and your bottom line.

SDL has been in the business of engagement management for a long time. In fact, I’m proud to say (with all humility) that we helped pioneer it. It’s fundamental to our vision of how we enable our customers, ensure their success, and define the solutions we create.

Our clients are uniquely capitalizing on the rise of Web Engagement Management. They’re actively leveraging multiple-channels, devices, analytics, profiling and personalization tools to create engagements that match their customers’ interests and goals—not their own.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll blog in more detail about these necessary components of an effective Web Engagement strategy. In the meantime, I’d welcome your comments and ideas.

How to Justify the Purchase of a New Web Content Management System

Thursday, February 18, 2010 by JanJaap Kolleman

In today's economic environment business and marketing professionals are having a difficult time justifying technology spending- and that includes the purchase of a brand new web content management system.

The justification for this major investment might seem hard to make, but delaying the purchase or piecing together an in-house solution can cost you more in the long run and severely impact your brand. Here are four rock solid points to help you make the business case for an investment in an enterprise web content management system (WCMS).

1. Demonstrate Increased Revenue

By streamlining and centralizing content creation, a new or revamped WCMS boosts your revenue by allowing content reuse and re-purposing across multiple websites, channels, and, if you're a global enterprise, in multiple languages. Additionally, a WCMS simplifies workflow and provides robust analytic measurement capabilities to keep you focused on the timely updates of content that makes you money rather than wasting it.

A best-in-class enterprise web content management system will also have an integrated suite of online marketing tools that will help you achieve business objectives, like increasing conversion rates and building brand loyalty. Here are a few examples:

Brand management tools

Email campaign tools

Target audience marketing

Website personalization

Another revenue generating benefit of a top-rated WCMS is faster time to market. Imagine launching a multichannel marketing campaign or a new product in just a few days, rather than a few weeks or even months. What would this mean to your business in terms of increased sales or leads/

2. Demonstrate Decreased Operational Costs

With the right WCMS, you will spend less money on updating your website and avoid the inefficient practice of copying and pasting content across various pages. Centralized design elements and templates can be created once and then instantaneously integrated across your website. WCM helps you save money on labor, protect your brand and get it right the first time. Most enterprise web content management systems are easy to use. One of the major reasons organizations invest in web content management is because it empowers content creators (marketing teams, for example) to create, manage, modify, and publish content themselves- without IT involvement. Consider the savings of hundreds of IT hours on an annual basis, not to mention the increased efficiency

3. Calculate Probable ROI

Due to the economic environment, the concept of ROI is on the tip of everyone’s tongue when discussing technology investment. Don’t worry: an best-in-class enterprise web content management system almost always provides a sizable ROI. In addition to saving costs and boosting your revenue, a good WCMS interface comes with a high degree of usability. This means you can accelerate and simplify projects such as site development, implementation and content creation.

4. Think Beyond ROI

In addition, a WCMS can provide benefits that supersede ROI. Next generation web content management systems can really help to protect brand equity online and across multiple channels. For large companies, branding remains one of your most important assets and good customer perception is integral for continued success. A next generation WCM system allows you to build and maintain your brand with minimal hiccups. Even if you come up with initial ROI figures that are lower than you want, maintaining your brand equity and providing the ideal user experience across multiple channels is enough to make the business case for updating your WCM strategy today.  

Seven Sins of Website Translation

Friday, December 18, 2009 by Sonja Keerl

Today, I had to do some research on the web. As I surfed in this sea of information, I put on my consumer glasses and had a closer look at the translation features of these sites. Working for a global Web Content Management vendor, I was surprised by what I saw. And because I did not get far with my intended research, I decided to at least share with you what to me are the Seven Sins of website translation:

Sin One: Don’t translate at all
If you want to go global, you must translate your website, especially if your native language is not English. If you want to reach minorities in your country, you have to translate at least the relevant parts of your content. Looking at latest research, there is no doubt about it: Visitors prefer being addressed in their mother tongue. And not only that – it makes them see that you care and will most definately lead to increasing conversion rates. In addition to that, you will also do a lot for your Search Engine Optimization, because people tend to search for their native language terms. Managing online content is not difficult anymore, even when it is multilingual.

Sin Two: Machine translation
Although I must admit that I am impressed with the latest automated translations, they are still nowhere near human translations. Especially when you have language rich content, such as articles, you want to make sure that you do not end up with literal translations, but with contextually correct ones. Or do you know what “Morning hour has gold in its mouth” is trying to tell you?

Even more important than idioms and context however is the tone of voice and the message you want to bring across. No machine translation can do that for you, because there is no “conservative” vs. “cheeky” translation alternative. So, make sure every piece of content you care about is really translated by a human translator. Ideally one, who is aware of cultural differences and keeps a consistent brand image. Machine translation by itself is

Sin Three: Translating half of the story
The other day I tried to figure out a train connection in the Netherlands and found myself faced with a websites that had literally half Dutch half English content. Unfortunately, in case of the FAQs, the questions were in English but the answers in Dutch. The contact form had Dutch labels and English tool tips… it was just plain annoying. If you want to do it, do it right.

Sin Four: Auto routing based on location
There are a couple of ways to find out a preferred language for a visitor. The simplest way is to ask them directly upon their first visit and store the information, for instance in a cookie. If you want to go a bit more sophisticated, you can read out the system language automatically.

And then there is the option to check based on location. Oh, how I hate that! I am an expat living in the Netherlands and by now one in three websites decides I must be Dutch. What do I do? I go to the competition and hope they try to be less smart.

This gets even worse when you are travelling though. Earlier this year I was in Japan on business and I tell you, trying to find your way around a Japanese website IS a challenge… which leads me directly to the next sin…

Sin Five: Translating the language options
So, I am on this Japanese website, I detect the usual language switch dropdown (at least I assumed, cause it was in the upper right corner… not that it actually indicated so)… and then… well, a lot of kanji that leave me puzzled. Who would do such a thing? Unfortunately, most of the websites! You want to give your audience the opportunity to find their own language, because they might not understand yours… and the you do not translate the option itself? That does not work :)
There are two valid options online today:

Leave everything in English. Even if your visitor does not speak English, the words “language” and their local language most people have learned by now.
Even better: use the local language. So, English is English and German is Deutsch and French is Française, no matter which version you are on.

Both options make sense, help your audience and save you translation cost too. Don’t forget: Localizing and translation are two very different things.

Sin Six: Inconsistent translation
A very confusing phenomenon is when you browse through a translated website and same terms are translated differently where ever you go. The German word “Untersuchung” has for instance over 20 different translations in English – and it does make a difference if you translate it into “inquisition” or “exploration” when meaning “research”. (“Our latest inquisition has shown that…” might just not put your organization in the right light.)

There are a number of solutions out there today to prevent such inconsistencies by utilizing a Translation Memory System. Briefly what it does is that any translation you have approved will be stored in a Memory System. Whenever the same or a similar translation is requested afterwards, the previous approved translation will be given to the translator as a suggestion. This means, you can keep your choice of terms consistent. Also, it will allow you to work with different translators without getting different tones of voice or messages into your content, because the style of your translation will become clear from the suggestions already. Of course, translation memories can be used organization wide, so that you can make use of the cost and time savings for all your channels, not only online.

Sin Seven: Forgetting other channels
So, you took care of all the above and give me the option to read your content in my native language. I am happy and engaged and decide to register on your website. Eagerly I await the confirmation link email and find it in... English. Just as the following newsletter and reminder to get my 20% off coupon. My initial joy is met by an equally high disappointment. Reusing content across multiple channels and reusing the translations for all channels is no rocket science with a proper multichannel marketing system.

(P.S. “Morning hour has gold in its mouth” is the German equivalent of "The early bird catches the worm")

Web Content Management - 10 years on has anything changed?

Friday, December 18, 2009 by Maria McCann

Approaching the beginning of another decade gives me the chance to indulge my nostalgic tendencies and look back over this one.

I’m fortunate to have a dual perspective on online marketing solutions. I’ve been marketing (and consulting on) website content management systems for the past 10 years and have also experienced using more than a dozen in anger throughout this period as a marketing user.

I’m often asked “what’s changed and has marketing online got any better or easier?”.

The answer is lots and a resounding yes.

Then –

IT ruled the roost. They owned the technology and their word was law. It didn’t matter about the business user’s (my) experience in terms of ease of use, time to market. The multiple week/month lead times for creating a new landing page or rolling out a new country site was hampering my ability to respond to changing market conditions. But that didn’t matter.
Re-using content meant copying and pasting web pages in the admin view. The result was a maintenance nightmare – change one word on 16 different instances of the same page, and inevitably, miss some completely.
We spent weeks learning new tools and understanding HTML instead of actually doing marketing and adding value.
We changed our processes to fit in with how the software thought we should be doing things. Or, waited for the IT and development teams to code something for us and then had to stick with that for the next few years.
Personalizing online content was talked about a lot but wasn’t something mere marketing mortals could achieve.
Every channel (and the content) was created separately - web, mobile, email, print etc
Rolling campaigns out in more than one region at the same time required lots of resource and time, not to mention epic project management skills.

Now –

Marketing own the web and online marketing channels. We chose solutions that are easy for non-technical users to master and enable us to publish content, pages and even whole sites on demand.
Re-using content means we can have one instance of copy, change it once and it will change through-out the website. No more out-of-sync messaging!
Changing content is easy – we can all browse web pages. Horray for in-page editing. Adding new content is easy too - we all know how to write a word document.
At last, we can work in the way that suits us and our business.
Website personalization has never been easier. Marketers can control exactly what content can be seen for each audience profile.
Thanks to next generation web content management incorporating multichannel marketing systems, the same content can be used everywhere. Truly create once, publish many.
Global campaigns are as fast and easy to manage and implement as single region campaigns.

Here's to the next decade and further evolution and innovation!

Collective Intelligence: Wisdom of crowds, ignorance of masses?

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 by Remco van Rij

Collective intelligence is a form of intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and is closely related to crowdsourcing (Wikipedia)

Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call. (Wikipedia)

It all begins with the principle that ‘WE’ is smarter than ‘ME’. The first digital natives now joining the workforce (them who grew up with Internet and an always on lifestyle) understand this much better than their previous generation, which are the current decision makers. Collective Intelligence is a disruptive trend as it deeply impacts an organisation’s traditional way of doing business.

Companies are busy with streamlining and improving their team collaboration via web conferencing and and instant messaging. On the other hand they are investigating things like Wiki’s, blogs and feeds to stimulate interpersonal productivity and interaction.

Consumer social software (web 2.0 stuff) becomes part of our mainstream workplace. We want to have access to all information, but of course only the relevant content. Internet will have to focus more and more on personalizing online content.

Collective Intelligence deals with these four topics:Internet Centric Computing, because systems must be accessible over the internet; this also implies specific architectures (like SOA) to gain access to business applications.

Internet Centric Computing, because systems must be accessible over the internet; this also implies specific architectures (like SOA) to gain access to business applications.
Portal technology is necessary to provide a uniform interface with data from different sources.

Collaboration technology is obvious.
Business Process Management to streamline the various processes, as these processes go beyond the company walls they must the chaos-tolerant.

Companies have to design a strategy to find and involve their target groups and offer them persuasive, profiled and personalized content. With SDL Tridion’s Global Web Content Management System many of these topics can be addressed. It is your product, your service and the world is waiting for it. Start increasing conversion rates!

Five steps to make it personal

Thursday, December 10, 2009 by Maria McCann

All visitors, even anonymous ones, want information that relates to their interests. If they don’t find it on your website, they will look elsewhere. If they do, they'll keep coming back.

According to Gartner (source: a Framework for Creating the Future Customer-Centric Web, Feb 2009) by 2012, organizations that lack customer-centric web strategies will soon trail competitors that have them.

I'm often asked how you should you go about implementing website personalization. So here are my top 5 tips.

Know your audience
It is vital to address specific customer needs, but content needs to be manageable as well. Segmenting customers into groups with matching characteristics will address both of these requirements. You can match these segments or target audiences with products and services that meet their needs.
Target audience marketing can be tricky. It is important to identify the unique requirements of each target audience. If you want to reach a global audience, for example, the best conversion will be found if content is presented in the right language and relevant local information is served (e.g. customer case studies from the region).
A next generation web content management solution will help with mapping target audiences to a global business model. It will provide a method of organizing content and managing multilingual variations intelligently and easily.
Profile your visitors
Marketers recognize that the success of their marketing campaigns depends upon delivering the right messages to the right people at the right time. Relevancy is king. The marketing team must profile audiences according to meaningful criteria and tailor communications to the attributes of each audience.

The most successful profiling is based on rich, detailed demographics of targets, so that recipients feel you are addressing them directly. To serve your target audience with specific content that relates to their interests, you need to identify what these interests are. Building visitor profiles is the basis for personalization.
Match your content to the visitor
Profile information should be used to provide your website visitors with tailored content that is appealing and persuasive, whether they are registered users or anonymous. Cookies can be used to store information about an anonymous user’s interests for future visits. Previous searches can be used to route relevant information to the visitor.
If a visitor signs in, you can take advantage of explicit profile information that they have given you directly, such as their contact details, areas of interest, location or demographic information, to present relevant information.
Closing the loop
Closed loop marketing is a form of interactive marketing where customer responses and behavior are used to direct and refine marketing strategy and tactics. There is a ‘closed loop’ when collected customer data (from surveys, promotional entries, coupon redemptions etc.) and browsing behavior or a purchase are used to build a customer profile. These profiles provide the basis for further marketing initiatives. The recipient profile is enriched and adjusted, based on responses to the campaign and the campaign is consecutively adjusted to the recipient profile – there is a feedback loop.
Implementation checklist
Before you rush into implementing a personalization solution for your online marketing communication, it is wise to consider some related factors:
- Privacy policy – do you clearly state that you are collecting implicit and/or explicit information about visitors and how you will use this information? Have you complied with the legal requirements for all the geographies in which you operate?
- Security – do you have security measures in place to protect personal information?
- Integration – does your website communicate with your CRM and other customer information sources? Do you have a central place that holds a single view of your customers, their interests and their behavior?
- Analytics – do you have an overall view of all your offline and online marketing activities in one place? Can you drill down to uncover what works and what doesn’t, which content is read and which isn’t? Our survey found that only 53 percent of companies always measure ROI.
- Infrastructure – a website must be reliable to evolve as the preferred channel for any type of customer centric interaction. Is your platform stable, responsive, convenient, easy to navigate, consistent and proactive?

Turning unstructured content into a corporate asset

Monday, November 23, 2009 by Remco van Rij

Unstructured content (e.g. Documents, Web pages, XML components, audio, video, medical images, scanned images, engineering drawings, enterprise reports, records, presentations) is growing overall by over 200% per year - 35 billion emails per day, Word content doubles every two months. Structured content is growing at only 4%.

Most business executives consider unstructured content to be an asset, yet few believe that it is properly managed like an asset. The majority of corporate unstructured content is not really managed as an asset at all, but instead is just needles of value in a haystack of shared drives, mailboxes and more systems than organizations know what to do with.

Unstructured information assets that are uncontrolled and unexploited do not support the implementation of corporate strategy and communication; in fact, they hinder it. Instead of reducing risk, they increase it.

And much of this content is brought to the outside world via the internet. If you want to maximize the value of your content (instead of treating it as a cost), trust it to a platform that manages your content in a way you can use it for all your channels.

SDL Tridion is market leader in Global Web Content Management, and by offering integrations with digital asset management systems and collaboration software, it supports the full life cycle of one of your most valuable corporate assets: persuasive content! Your content becomes fuel for target audience marketing, brand management and email campaigns. Only imagine...

WCM Allows Company To Provide Ideal User Experience On Global Scale

Friday, November 13, 2009 by Brad Davis

As a general practice, we don't post press releases to the SDL Tridion Blogosphere. The IHS story is an exception becuse it is a perfect example of a company moving beyond basic online content management and selecting a next generation web content management system as the foundation for their online marketing strategy.

IHS To Implement World-Class Web Sites With SDL Tridion

IHS, a leading global source of critical information and insight, has selected the SDL Tridion enterprise Web Content Management system (WCMS) to manage its global network of websites. With full implementation planned for the second quarter of 2010, IHS is undergoing a massive online overhaul that will merge 45 business unit-specific sites and domains into a single enterprise-level Web experience.

"We've had several substantial acquisitions at IHS in recent years," says Kevin Spiller, director of Web development and strategy at IHS. "This created a difficult situation for getting people to the right information or demonstrate the full value of IHS. We knew that it was integral to reorganize our Web content in a system that helps to maintain a robust global presence. Starting with 14 different WCM systems, we whittled the selection down to three. SDL Tridion was the best fit for a company like ours with a wide range of customers."

The IHS Web site reaches users and customers across a diverse array of business units. From engineering, geology and oil prospecting to supply chains, military, security and financial analysis, its goal is to provide potential users from many industries with an ideal experience across the site. IHS plans to accomplish this by using SDL Tridion's workflow, translation management and website personalization features. As Spiller explains it, IHS wants to implicitly understand where users are coming from and what they are seeking.

"We're planning on using SDL Tridion to ensure that our Web experience flows seamlessly across all channels," says Spiller. "Whether we are providing data or taking more of an advisory role, it becomes important that users and customers understand the breadth and diversity of our business solutions. SDL Tridion provides a personalized user experience that will accomplish that goal while protecting our brand and localizing updates. This allows more flexibility on a bigger Web site that meets all of our governance needs."

"SDL Tridion is very pleased to welcome IHS as a customer," says Jan Jaap Kolleman, CEO of SDL Tridion. "In many ways, the IHS site is an exemplary case that demonstrates the scalability of our enterprise web content management system. Our software will help them streamline their Web presence by transforming marketing sites into a large, global Web presence that reinforces the IHS brand. Now, a subject matter expert in Europe can update content directly for local users in a specific industry while sharing design, layout and branding elements with the rest of the Web site. For a company that's rapidly expanding such as IHS, this capability becomes an invaluable tool for growth over multiple years."

About IHS (www.ihs.com)
IHS is a leading global source of critical information and insight dedicated to providing the most complete and trusted information and expertise. IHS product and service solutions span four areas of information that encompass the most important concerns facing global business today: Energy, Product Lifecycle, Security, and Environment, all supported by Macroeconomics.

Evolution of Websites and Online Content

Friday, November 13, 2009 by Gavino Gonzalez

In the beginning…

Pay careful attention as this question as may allow you to win a bet some day, When was the Internet founded? The answer is 1958. I am not going to go that far back as the Internet was kept under government use only for many years, but I will start sometime in the last 15 years.

Sometime over the last 15 year we were all introduced to the Internet. The Internet then was mostly filled with pages of text only content. There was very little online content, only a few websites had images. Preliminary Internet chat was made by typing text on a page and clicking ‘refresh’ to ‘post’ your remarks. There was no music or videos to listen to or watch. There were no fancy online tools, no ecommerce, no Google or social media.

As time went on…

For general users, the Internet evolved and presented new opportunities with the proliferation of online content. Music, videos, live camera feeds, webinars and of course almost real time status updates. For businesses, this presented a double edged sword.

Pro:

•    Businesses are ‘always’ open
•    Brand management
•    Website globalization
•    Reduced time to market
•    Reduced operational costs

Con:

•    Brand management (See Web Content Management (WCM) and Social Media post)
•    Satisfying demand of relevant content

What lies ahead…?

As the Internet continues to evolve into the future we must ask ourselves the following questions:

•    Who will be the audience?
•    What will websites look like?
•    What kind of online content will be demanded?
•    How quickly can you adjust to change?
•    How will you manage online content?
•    How will you support your website?
•    What is your online strategy?

Looking forward I think we can safely assume the following:

•    Online content will continue to grow at an expediential rate
•    Demand for personalized content will continue to expand
•    Social Media channel will continue to increase
•    Growth in demand of mobile content
•    Globalization of websites will become the standard

Are you ready?

A best-in-class enterprise web content management system can help you ‘future proof’ your website(s). SDL Tridion solution is fully scalable and will allow you to adapt to whatever the future may hold.

About SDL Tridion

SDL Tridion is provider of best-in-class enterprise web content management systems. Positioned as a "Leader" by both Forrester and Gartner, SDL Tridion ushers in next generation web content management by integrating a suite of ROI focused online marketing tools.

Web content management and old school marketing (2)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 by Annelore vanderLint

Like confessed before, although I work for a global web content management software vendor, I'm still an old school marketer. I believe it’s the business benefits and not the technical specifics that are making a web content management system - or any interactive marketing tool for that matter - sexy. But even with all the interactive tools we have at our disposal, taking the benefits of these techniques to the next level is not easy.

I feel that the most important achievement of today’s interactive marketing solutions is that they enable us to measure the result of everything we do. The old credo “I know I’m wasting half of my marketing budget, but I do not know which half” does not fly on the online stage.

A content management system with integrated analytic solutions enables us to close the loop in our marketing activities. We can capture customer responses and behavior and we should use this data to direct and refine our interactive marketing strategy and tactics.

Easier said than done. That’s why we have drafted a whitepaper and a webinar (recorded version) that shows for each step in the AIDAS cycle how ‘closed loop marketing” concepts for the online channel are relevant and what you can do to support them.

We show how customer acquisition on the web starts with being noticed and how you can make people aware of your offering by using activities ranging from online advertising, branding and email marketing to search optimization and social tagging. We illustrate how the web over the years has developed from the mass communication platform it was, to becoming an engagement channel and the consequences this has for online marketing organizations that need to shift focus from traditional shotgun strategy to a rifle approach. To generate desire and action, marketers should actively seek direct dialog and need to offer a relevant and persuasive online experience. Only by establishing a strong emotional bond that creates loyalty to a brand, long-term growth and success can be guaranteed. The key is to make intelligent investments that allow you to measure result, improve and create long lasting relationships with your customers.

The Business Case for Web Content Management

Saturday, October 24, 2009 by Brad Davis

Justifying Web Content Management (WCM)

It’s certainly no secret that in the current harsh economic environment marketing professionals are having a difficult time justifying technology spending -- and enterprise web content management systems are no exception.

The justification for this major investment might seem hard to make, but delaying the purchase or piecing together an in-house solution can cost you more in the long run and severely impact your brand. Here are four concrete tips and explanations to help you make the business case for an investment in an enterprise web content management system (WCMS).

1. A Web Content Management System Increases Revenue.

By streamlining and centralizing content creation, a new or revamped WCMS boosts your revenue by allowing content reuse and re-purposing across multiple websites, channels, and, if you're a global enterprise, in multiple languages. Additionally, a WCMS simplifies workflow and provides robust analytic measurement capabilities to keep you focused on the timely updates of content that makes you money rather than wasting it.

A best-in-class enterprise web content management system will also have an integrated suite of online marketing tools that will help you achieve important business objectives, like increasing conversion rates. Here are a few examples:

2. A Web Content Management System Decreases Operational Costs.

With the right WCMS, you will spend less money on updating your website and avoid the inefficient practice of copying and pasting content across various pages. Centralized design elements and templates can be created once and then instantaneously integrated across your website. WCM helps you save money on labor, protect your brand and get it right the first time.

Most enterprise web content management systems are easy to use. One of the major reasons organizations invest in web content management is because it empowers content creators (marketing teams, for example) to create, manage, modify, and publish content themselves- without IT involvement. Consider the savings of hundreds of IT hours on an annual basis, not to mention the increased efficiency.

3. Create an honest ROI calculator.

Due to the economic environment, the concept of ROI is on the tip of everyone’s tongue when discussing technology investment. Don’t worry: an best-in-class enterprise web content management system almost always provides a sizable ROI. In addition to saving costs and boosting your revenue, a good WCMS interface comes with a high degree of usability. This means you can accelerate and simplify projects such as site development, implementation and content creation.

4. Save 70% - 80% by Purchasing an Enterprise Web Content Management Solution

Gilbane found that site development based around a content management system saves a company 70-80 percent on cost when compared to in-house development.

Content creation in a WCM system looks and feels like standard applications such as Microsoft Word™ and blogging platforms. Gilbane found that this ease-of-use cuts training times by up to 90 percent. With an out-of-the-box commercially available enterprise web content management system, updates don’t get bogged down in IT departments. Marketers and other communicators can create and re-purpose content as easily as making or editing a Word document.

Beyond ROI

In addition, a WCMS can provide benefits that supersede ROI. Next generation web content management systems can really help to protect brand equity online and across multiple channels. For large companies, branding remains one of your most important assets and good customer perception is integral for continued success. A next generation WCM system allows you to build and maintain your brand with minimal hiccups. Even if you come up with initial ROI figures that are lower than you want, maintaining your brand equity and providing the ideal user experience across multiple channels is enough to make the business case for updating your WCM strategy today.

For more information about justifying web content management and building a case to purchase a new enterprise web content management system, SDL Tridion produced an excellent whitepaper titled ROI for the online channel. Please feel free to download free of charge by clicking on the link.

Forrester Reviews Top Web Content Management Vendors and Systems

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 by Brad Davis

Searching for an Enterprise Web Content Management System? Start Here.

In an earlier blog post, I suggested that you begin the web content management vendor selection process by doing some research and developing a "short list" of vendors to evaluate. If you're like most organizations, you will probably begin with a Google search using phrases like:

Web Content Management Reviews
Web Content Management Vendors
Enterprise Web Content Management System
Global Web Content Management
Best Web Content Management

Search on a WCM related phrase and you'll get a mind blowing number of results-over 184,000,000. And most of these will be from WCM companies who want to sell you their wares. Of course that includes your friends at SDL Tridion :)

Want Factual, Unbiased WCM Research? Go Straight to Forrester.

Forrester Research, a renowned web content management industry analyst, publishes a report that evaluates leading enterprise-class web content management vendors and their solutions. Their latest report is "The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management for External Sites, Q-2 2009". The detailed report is used by many organizations to develop their "short list".

About the Forrester Report

Forrester evaluates 10 web content management vendors across approximately 115 criteria, which they grouped into three primary categories:

Current offering
Strategy
Market presence

Results are summarized in a clear concise manner with easy to read charts, diagrams and tables. If you are looking for a best-in-class enterprise web content management system from a leading web content management vendor, this report is definitely a "Must Read".

Download the Forrester Report for Free

Click here to download the web content management reviewed report by Forrester, compliments of SDL Tridion, a leader in enterprise web content management and online marketing solutions.

Selecting the Best Web Content Management System

There are hundreds of web content management products, systems, and solutions on the market today from hundreds of different vendors. Hopefully, you will find the Forrester report helpful in narrowing the playing field and developing a short list of enterprise web content management vendors to evaluate.

Which enterprise web content management system is right for you and which vendor should you select? This depends upon the specific needs of your organization. In any case, be sure to select a financially strong company with the ability to provide excellent web content management support and service.

Beyond Web Content Management

In addition to looking at the features and benefits of different web content management systems, I would also suggest that you take a look at how they will help you achieve your online marketing objectives, such as increasing conversion rates. Look for web content management software tools that will assist with online brand management, target audience marketing, email campaigns, and website personalization.

The bottom line: Top web content management vendors will help you do much more than basic online content management. They will help you realize the many benefits of web content management, the most important of which is ROI.

Five Ways To Persuade Your Target Audiences

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 by Gavino Gonzalez

The Communications Challenge

Global and Enterprise Organizations need to communicate with an increasing number of target audiences in different regions and across different channels. The challenge is to balance the need for localization and personalization with the need to maintain constancy of brand and message.

The Communications Solution

The best solution is an integrated technology that will enable organizations to manage brands, globalize websites, deliver targeted messages across multiple channels and to create mirco-sites for specific campaigns or projects. One solution is BluePrinting technology, a proprietary solution provided by SDL Tridion, a leader enterprise web content management and Online marketing solutions.

Communicating With a Connected World

In today's connected world, a well-managed, persuasive web presence is essential for any organization to achieve success. The Internet provides unprecedented opportunities for border-free communication and is by far the number one medium to reach a diverse group of target audiences. One of the keys to maximizing results is to localize and personalize Online content.

Personalizing Online Content Across Multiple Channels

Personalizing Online content echoes customer and prospect needs and interests, builds relationships, and creates brand loyalty. Ideally, organizations should provide personalized messages that reflect market conditions and the needs of their individual target audiences. Of course, this must be accomplished within the framework of an enterprise wide Online brand management and communications strategy.

To effectively address and persuade a collection of diverse target audiences, an enterprise requires a strategic solution that will help them address five main communication requirements.

•    Web site globalization
•    Online brand management
•    Target audience marketing
•    Multi-channel marketing
•    Micro site rollout and management

A Resource To get Started: Free White paper from SDL Tridion

SDL Tridion has produced an informative White paper "Five ways to persuade your target audiences" that discusses communications issues and presents BluePrinting technology as an cost effective solution that can be deployed enterprise wide. Download free of charge:

Five Ways To Persuade Your Target Audiences

WCM + SEO= More Traffic and More Conversions

Thursday, October 15, 2009 by Brad Davis

Increasing Conversion Rates and Numbers

SEO is one of the hottest topics circulating in the online marketing and online content management communities- and rightly so. Most organizations have online business objectives that include increasing conversion rates, but if you have low traffic you will still have low conversions. So, obviously, a key requirement of increasing conversions is to increase traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the most effective way to increase website traffic.

Avoid the #1 Traffic Killing SEO Mistake

A common misperception, even in enterprise level organizations, is that once a website is optimized, it's optimized and will stay that way. Wrong. As content is added and modified over time a lot of things can happen including:

Misspelled words
HTML errors
Meta data problems
Broken links
Improper key word usage

These issues spell SEO trouble and will significantly decrease your search engine visibility. And decreased search engine visibility means decreased traffic and conversions. When this happens, ROI flies right out the window. Not good.

If your an enterprise or global organization with multiple websites with thousands of pages...which may be translated in multiple languages... Wow! You have a lot to watch out for. To MANUALLY keep your uber network of websites fully optimized, converting visitors, and generating maximum revenue...sounds like Mission Impossible.

Automated Testing of Search Engine Visibility & Performance

It is, in fact, Mission Impossible to manually check and keep a network of enterprise websites fully optimized. The good news is there are tools that can automate the process. One solution is Safeguard, a powerful tool that is integrated with the SDL Tridion Enterprise Web Content Management System.

Safeguard monitors your entire network of websites, regardless of country or language. User-friendly dashboards provide detailed feedback of your online performance, reporting SEO issues in real time. Safeguard also automatically checks title tags, meta data, key word use, and links to keep you at the top of search engine rankings.

Click here for more information about Safeguard and SDL Tridion's Enterprise Web Content System

Quality & Compliance Management For Your Online Presence

Thursday, October 15, 2009 by Brad Davis

Online Brand Management

Enterprise and global organizations want to present their brand, image and vision clearly and consistently. But with thousands of pages, in dozens of languages, for many different brands and products, this may seem like an impossible task. The good news is it doesn’t have to be.

Safeguard is a web content management software tool for SDL Tridion’s Enterprise Web Content Management System. It’s a powerful solution that provides website quality and compliance management- with just a few clicks of a mouse. This means you can deliver consistent, high-quality websites that comply with your own internal standards, industry best practice standards, and regulations.

To learn more about Safeguard and how it can simplify online brand management and improve the quality of your online presence visit: www.sdltridion.com/products/web_content_management/safeguard/

The Challenge of Website Management

Effective online communication requires the orchestration of many different factors. Ask yourself these questions:

Is all published content accurate, up-to-date and search engine optimized?
Do all of your sites have consistent branding and messaging?
Do your websites meet accessibility and legal requirements?
Are local websites presented in the right language?
Are digital assets managed according to company rules?
Do your websites comply with global and regional standards
Are you tracking and bench marking site-wide performance?

Safeguard monitors your entire web presence, in any country or language. Easy-to-use dashboards provide detailed information on your online performance, reporting any quality and compliance breaches so you can fix them and maximize your online business results.

About SDL Tridion

SDL Tridion is a recognized leader in web content management and has received top rankings by leading industry analysts. In addition to enterprise web content management systems, SDL Tridion is also an online marketing solutions company that provides:

Brand management tools
Interactive marketing solutions
Email marketing software
Website quality and compliance software
Global web content management tools
And much more

SDL Tridion provides enterprise web content management systems. Visit us at www.sdltridion.com

Managing Global Websites

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Brad Davis

Global Web Content Management

Organizations face many challenges when creating a network of global websites. They need to maintain brand consistency while allowing for variations that reflect local cultures. Creating truly localized websites can be a daunting process in which corporate and local marketing teams need to collaborate to provide relevant information to different target audiences.

BluePrinting™: A Unique Web Content Management Feature

BluePrinting is a unique technology from SDL Tridion that allows organizations to manage their networks of websites. The separation of content, layout and other website elements enables organizations to adapt these elements separately to match the needs of local audiences.

Organizations can manage localization by cost effectively using an inheritance model that allows multiple Web sites to use consistent structure, branding and content while allowing for localization of content, as needed.

Free Website Globalization Resource

SDL Tridion has produced an excellent whitepaper to assist companies who are seeking to improve their global online content management. It provides examples of how organizations can use BluePrinting technology to achieve a smooth, global Web operation- and how they can combine enterprise web content management with translation technology for even greater efficiency. Click this link to download free of charge:

http://www.sdltridion.com/downloads/white_papers/managing_global_websites.asp

Beyond Web Content Management

Successful global target audience marketing requires more than web content management and localization of content. It requires a global marketing solution with tools for interactive marketing, multichannel marketing, email campaigns, and online brand management.

Global Web Content Management Vendor Selection

If your in the market to globalize your websites and purchase a new global web content management system, carefully review each vendor's offering and look beyond basic features and technology. Your best bet is to select a vendor that best meets your needs by offering a fully integrated global marketing solution.