Best Practices for DevelopingCMS Architecture

Criteria for selecting a CMS

Support

Evaluate the following aspects when you decide on the CMS architecture:

• Evaluate the extent of intuitiveness in terms of:

Evaluate:

• Whether the CMS facilitates responsive design:

• Prefer a mobile-first approach:

• Cost factors, as in:

Easy & appealing user interfaceUser-friendly nature of CMSAllows marketers to do tasks without much developer supportIn-line editing options with responsive preview features

Actual cost of the suiteCost to customize the CMS, if required

Internal costs to facilitate & configure the new CMSTraining costs

Technical and non-technical support costOpportunity cost owing to loss of productivity in adopting the new CMS

• Technical support

• Non-technical support• Reaction and response times for downtimes• Cost of support in general

Support for installation – whether new site design required,or CMS fit into existing architectureHosting related support – cloud, on-premises or hybridWeb server configuration supportTroubleshooting

46% of customers do not return if the webpage doesn’t load properly on the device81% of users access the CMS suite itself from multiple devices

There are 5x more smartphones in world than there are PCs55% of Internet usage in the US is through mobile devicesGoogle’s algorithm changes penalize websites not optimized for mobile

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Functionality &Integrations

ManagingTemplates

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• Provision for the extent of out-of-box functionality on offer:

• Ensure scalability to co-opt new functionality & capacity when required

• Evaluate the number & type of third party integrations supported

• List the range of extensions available

Web publishing toolsContent management toolsCollaboration toolsSocial media functionality

“Nucleus Research estimates productivity increase of 26.4% when addingsocial networking and mobile access to CMS applications.”

E-commerce integrationsCRM integrationWeb forms

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Define contentre-use strategies

Evaluate the currentauthoring process

Asset managementfeatures

• Have effective database management plan and options• Deploy backup options

• Devise effective storage, versioning, and management options for :

References:

HTML5 templates for responsive websites

Make provisioning for re-use oftemplates & layouts

Blueprint importing templatesfrom external sources

Identify scope for creationof new layouts

Evaluate the extent of ready touse customization options available

Videos Images Documents

Focus on making contentsharing process simple

Institutionalize taggingcontent, making re-use easy

Have a global repositoryfor common content

Facilitate contentsharing withestablished processes

• End-user problems rather than system configuration• How to eliminate duplicate content

• How to simplify content sharing• Automate ordering and sharing of contents

• Add revision notes to content

Pay attention todetails in workflow8

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Allow users to cachecontent- more efficient

access to web pages

Establish consistentguidelines for how

content appear

Provision to classifycontents for better

search engine rankings

Add field visible tocontent authors, totrack revision notes

0504030201

Tie workflowengine logs to

analytics software

http://www.nonlinearcreations.com/Digital/how-we-think/whitepapers/CMSArchitectureFullWP.aspx

https://www.cmsbestpractices.com/sitecore-architecture-best-practices-par t-1-understanding-architectural-basics/

https://www.universitybusiness.com/ar ticle/best-practices-using-cms

http://www.cmdagency.com/13-search-statistics-convince-design-mobile-first/

http://mediumrareinc.com/ar ticles/the-true-cost-of-a-cms/

http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/aboutus/calls/Procurement%20Related%20Documents/PROC_2015_009%20-%20Reference%20E%20-%20Technical%20Requirements.pdf

http://www.bigcontacts.com/news/9-staggering-statistics-that-will-motivate-you-to-invest-in-crm-software-for-your-small-business

http://www.superoffice.com/blog/crm-software-statistics/