Content Management Questions and Issues
Web site content includes everything on the site that is delivered to the customer's browser, as well as all the software processes that directly or indirectly support that delivery.
As the size and popularity of an e-commerce Web site grows, it requires an ever-expanding number of people and processes to support it and keep its content fresh and appealing. The processes themselves also become more complex. As a result, common issues arise repeatedly and with increasing frequency across these e-commerce sites.
The challenges of managing content are becoming greater all the time. Generally speaking, this is due to the tremendous and growing popularity of the Web. Some industry researchers estimate that the number of Web pages on larger sites is doubling every year.
With regard to content management, the following questions point out issues that are common to most e-commerce sites:
- Are there documented processes for managing all types of Web content?
- Precisely, how does a product manager initiate and successfully launch a promotional campaign for a new product?
- How are product pricing decisions made and how are the price changes applied?
- At what point is the legal staff brought in to approve new content?
- Who reviews and approves graphics and multimedia files that support promotional campaigns?
- How are daily deployments of new content scheduled, and who is responsible for this task?
- How is new creative content integrated with new or existing application content? Where is it tested, and when do you know if it is successful?
- Who is responsible for testing the content before it is deployed, and what type of compliance tests do they normally run?
- Is application content (programs, components) completely separate from creative content?
- What guidelines exist for Web developers, text authors, testers, and graphics specialists?
- Can we track changes to various types of content, and is it possible to roll back to an earlier version?
- Is there a Content Management System that will simply manage everything?
- Are there old, out of date, or unpopular pages on the site?
- Does the site maintain a uniform look and feel?
- Where is the content stored?
- How do you determine the status of a particular Web content project?
Why Content Management Is Important
It is clear that content management deals with a wide variety of significant issues and extends into other areas such as change control, testing, and site maintenance. The following lists the reasons why content management is important to the success of the entire e-commerce enterprise.
- One of the keys to the success of any e-commerce Web site is to present fresh, consistent, high quality content to customers. Therefore, effective content management processes can establish better customer retention and can lead to increased revenue.
- Inefficient, broken, or inconsistent content management processes drive production costs up. This cost increase is due to poorly coordinated efforts, lack of repeatable processes, and use of incompatible tools. Online retailers need to find every way possible to contain these costs.
- Online retailers must move quickly to develop and deploy new promotional campaigns to take advantage of current market/product conditions. Not being able to respond promptly to these variations can cost the company time, money, and market share.
- Posting incorrect information, such as errors in product pricing, can lead to tremendous customer dissatisfaction, which is then compounded by poor public relations experiences.
- Publishing inaccurate, misleading or untimely information may also result in legal ramifications.
- Poor testing processes can lead to lower site availability, slow performance, and ultimately to fewer site visitors.
- Lack of strong content management processes contributes considerably to the already chaotic environments of many young online retailing enterprises. Firms that are unable to tame these essential processes are at risk of losing talented developers and other valuable contributors due to "dot-com fatigue."
What Is Content Management?
Various online references, research articles, and product sheets yield a variety of definitions. For the purposes of this article, an attempt will be made to contain the definition of content management to one interpretation.What Is Content?
As mentioned above, the precise meaning of content management as it applies to e-commerce Web sites is not easy to pin down. The primary reason for this ambiguity is that the definition of the word "content," is dependent on its context. Content is made up of stuff, items, elements, and things that have no meaning without a well understood context. If our setting is the world of e-commerce Web sites, then the context itself is in a constant state of expansion, flux, and accelerating motion. No wonder it is so hard to encapsulate and express the meaning of content management!
However, to move forward and to provide the proper focus boundaries need to be established that will justify the subject matter.
Most people think of Web content as page elements such as text, graphics, controls, multimedia, banner ads, and scripts. In other words, if it is on a Web page, then it qualifies as Web content and therefore needs to be managed. This narrow definition works in many cases and is sometimes referred to as the creative content of the Web site. Some content management system vendors prefer this limited definition of content because it allows them to more easily offer "end-to-end" do-all content management solutions.
However, the limited scope of content as mentioned above does not take into account many other items that need to be created, gathered, and maintained on an e-commerce Web site. For instance, applications and other software components are of fundamental importance to e-commerce sites. Without the programming logic contained in these applications, it is not possible to take orders, track customers, personalize the visitor's experience or communicate with fulfillment partners.
Applications work integrally with Web pages and require regular maintenance and updates. With the industry moving to application architectures that increasingly rely on middle-tier components to provide business logic, effective management of these elements will become an even more important task within the e-commerce enterprise. It is equally critical to coordinate and fully test the interactions between creative content, such as text, images, and page elements and application content.
Another type of content on B2C Web sites is sometimes referred to as transactional content. This information is usually maintained within databases that Web pages or middle-tier applications access on a regular basis. Examples of transactional content include information about products, orders, accounts, shipments, and promotions. Often this transactional content is used to generate dynamic Web pages, thereby being transformed into HTML text elements, images, tables, or graphs and then delivered to the customer
If we expand the definition of e-commerce Web site content to include transactional data, then we must consider other applications, batch processes, and ancillary corporate Web sites that support the e-commerce operation. For instance, many sites create their own customer relationship management systems (CRM) so that their representatives can manage customer issues promptly and in a satisfactory manner. These "support Web sites" access the same customer and order information that the public site uses—or accesses at least a replicated version of that data. Supplementary sites such as customer support sites require careful design and updates that need to be carefully coordinated with developments on the public Web site. In addition to everything else, this kind of content needs to be managed.
Another form of content that is available at most e-business sites consists of downloadable files. These file objects can be Microsoft® Word documents, PDF files, archives, images, or any other type of file.
Therefore, for the purposes of this article, the definition and scope of "content" needs to be as broad as possible.
For an e-commerce site, content includes:
- Web pages and page elements such as text, graphics, controls, multimedia, advertisements, and scripts
- Applications, middle-tier components, database procedures, and other programming logic that enables and supports e-commerce
- Database information that directly supports the creation of dynamic Web pages or enables the customer to execute business transactions
- Downloadable or online viewable files of all types
- Content on ancillary support sites in addition to the primary public site
Determining what makes up site content was the hard part. It's important to understand the process of content management and its value.
The Content Management Process
Web content management procedures enable the design, authoring, review, approval, conversion, storage, testing, and deployment of all Web site content. Once in service, content needs to be maintained, monitored, upgraded, and eventually retired and archived. Comprehensive end-to-end content management also consists of sophisticated reporting and analysis components.
Effective content management requires clearly defined roles and documented workflow for all forms of content. This includes review and approval processes and clear interdepartmental hand-offs.
The overall process of managing Web site content may or may not be supported by specific commercial or in-house tools. The important point to keep in mind is that the process needs to be well defined and supported by the organization. Once the process is analyzed and fully understood, it is much easier to determine the tools and third party packages, if any, that can add value to the content management process.
Four Scenarios
Following is a list of four short examples that details the process flow of Web content beginning with an idea and ending with published information or Web site functionality. These vignettes will enable us to understand the similarities and differences in content management processes required to support different types of busy Web sites.
News Site Scenario
The goal of a news site, such as http://www.msnbc.com, is to provide timely and accurate news articles presented in an attractive and easily accessible manner. News articles, the primary product of the site, consist of text, images, streaming audio, and video.
Once the decision has been made to cover a particular "story," an author is selected and assigned to do the piece. After gathering enough details, the author/reporter decides on the right "angle" and writes the news article. The story is edited, reviewed, and eventually approved by editorial managers. This can involve multiple levels of approval, including legal counsel.
Keeping in mind that timeliness is paramount, there are also other related activities happening concurrently that support the development of the story. These tasks include acquiring and editing supporting images, audio, and video content for the story. Once these assets are reviewed and approved, a production designer determines the best way to present all of the various elements as a news article on the Web. Appropriate links, sidebars, and other elements are added as needed.
When all of the content has been assembled it is finally integrated by the technical staff and placed on a staging server for testing purposes. At some point, advertising placements (banner ads) are integrated into the presentation, most likely through a template-based interface. After it passes all testing phases it gets final approval and it is replicated to the public site.
After a day or so the article will likely be moved to a "recent stories" section. It will then be moved to a searchable archive, and then eventually removed from the site when it ceases being newsworthy altogether.
Technical Support Site Scenario
For this scenario, we will portray what likely goes on behind the scenes at a tech site such MSDN Online. MSDN provides "essential resources for developers" in the form of technical articles, product information, downloadable white papers and executables, code examples, press releases, success stories, and more. MSDN's primary content is technical information in textual form.
The authoring/approval/publish cycle is much longer for technical articles than for news items. Once an article has been written, edited, reviewed, and approved (editorially, technically, and legally), it is ready to be integrated into a Web page. Metadata may be added to the document's properties to allow more accurate search results. The article is formatted using a common template, possibly checked for compliance against basic standards, and then pushed to a staging server and its assigned relative URL for final testing. After passing final testing, it is replicated to the public Web site(s) by an automated process.
The useful life of an MSDN article is considerably longer than a news article and may remain at its original URL for months. Over time, as new product offerings become available, the article may be updated by the editorial staff to keep it fresh and relevant. Eventually, the article is moved to an archive area until it is finally retired and removed from the site. This process may be hastened by a lack of reader interest.
B2C E-Commerce Site Scenario
The goal of a B2C e-commerce site is to become profitable by selling large volumes of products by offering the customer great deals and service. The B2C site improves the customer experience by presenting timely and attractive product promotions and enabling the visitor to quickly locate and purchase desired merchandise. Product information on most B2C sites can be volatile due to frequent changes to prices, promotions, advertising, actions by competitors, product image changes, availability, as well as other reasons.
For B2C enterprises, it is essential that they have the ability to quickly create and manage product promotions on their Web site to capture the customer's attention and help drive sales. Once the business decision is made to initiate a promotion, the product manager must work with various people to bring it to the Web. Decisions are made regarding the timing of the promotion launch, details of pricing, availability of product, text and images to be placed in the promotion, placement of the promotion on the site, cross-selling opportunities, and duration of the campaign. These decisions affect other product managers, developers, creative content developers, and other cross-functional personnel.
If there are to be adjustments to the regular price of the promotional item, then this needs to be reflected in the product database. If product information is stored in special search catalogs, then the catalogs will need to be refreshed or rebuilt.
Once the content is created, a copy editor will review and approve the text and an art director may approve the graphics if they are not directly supplied by the manufacturer. After both text and graphics have been approved, they will be integrated into the designated Web page by a developer. The promotion will then be staged, tested, and deployed to the public Web site.
The promotion may last a day, a week, or longer before expiring. While the promotion is ongoing, it may require price or availability updates. Eventually, it is removed, and will probably be replaced by a new promotion.
Application Development Scenario
The final scenario involves the development of a new middle-tier component. Application content is indeed within the scope of all Web site content, particularly in an e-commerce situation.
Mature development organizations utilize standard processes in the development cycle. The business case is first articulated in the vision/scope document, followed by separate phases for requirements, functional specification, design, development, testing, and finally deployment. There are reviews and approvals at various stages in this process. On an e-commerce Web site these processes are usually compressed and expedited.
Quality control includes both unit testing and integration testing. The test team accomplishes unit testing in an isolated environment called local mode. Integration testing involves moving the new application components to the staging server. Here is where application content and creative content are brought together and tested thoroughly. After passing all tests and gaining final approval, the components are registered and installed on the appropriate servers.
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