Selecting a CMS usually starts when you’ve already decided to redo or create your website. You already know your visitors expect to have content updated often, maybe a twitter feed, blog, an RSS feed, or a contact form. Maybe you have a community or web application that needs single sign on, a catalogue and payment integration. Perhaps your team needs to have an approval process for all content, create dozens of landing pages for marketing campaigns, do A/B or multivariate testing, and handle multiple languages. I mean, there are many things a CMS powered website can do. At the same time, the number of CMS options available is huge, and it is easy to get lost on the sea of options.

If you already know you want one, and are unsure of which one to get or how to start the process of selecting a CMS, here are a few pointers to do before even googling « web content management system ». You should take time to do the following:

• Define your goals
• Create a prioritized requirements list
• State your constraints
• Create a shortlist of potential systems.

Defining your goals

Web Content Management Systems come in many shapes, sizes and flavours. Understanding what you really need it to do is the most important step. Most websites have very specific needs, even if it is just for a brochure website, its purpose can be clearly stated. Brainstorming about goals and writing them down will only help you shape the perfect CMS. Ask yourself questions like:

• What is the main purpose of my website? Is it informational, is it a community site, is it a store, is it a portal, or all of the above?
• What do I need to fulfill that purpose?
• Do I need a blog to publish information and updates?
• Do I need to sell online?
• Do I need to serve personalized content?
• Do I have to manage several websites from a single system?
• Do I need to have different languages?
• Do I need to support digital marketing campaigns?
• Do I need to control who creates and publishes content?

Most probably you already know most of the answers to these, and other questions regarding your needs, but it is important to have the right vision of what you want the final website to do.

Creating a requirements list

After documenting your goals, you should create a requirements list built on top of your answers to illustrate your needs. A requirement should be phrased as an actionable item that the system or user must be able to perform, for example:

• Users are able to edit content in-context
• The marketing team must be able create dozens of landing pages a month
• The system should support A/B and multivariate testing
• The system archives different versions of content and is able to display the difference between versions
• The system has an ecommerce module with catalogue, shopping cart and payment integration
• The system allows administrators to manage several users and define workflows for approval processes?
• The system allows digital assets to be categorized and classified through meta data

With a big list of requirements, and some wishful thinking, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Let’s divide and conquer. Categorize your requirements into functional groups. Some groups could be content creation, content management, content delivery, technical, etc. With clear groups, you’ll be able to see which dimensions are more important for your company.

Not all requirements are created equal. Some of them may be more important than other, some might even be critical, and some might be just wishes. Be sure to prioritize your list, clearly indicating which ones are critical.

Most of the times selecting a CMS is about balancing tradeoffs between features, functionalities, and budget.

Stating your constraints

Now that you have defined some of your requirements and prioritized them, take a look into your constraints, that is, what limits your choices. Constraints could be either budgetary, resources related, or IT related, sometimes even internal politics play a role. Understanding these constraints will help you reduce the number of systems to consider and avoid wasting time with systems that simply don’t make the cut. Keep in mind the following:

• How much are you willing to spend? Approximately?
• Are you tied to a specific technology, web server, programming language, or database?
• Do you need a web hosting environment in the cloud, or a SAAS (Software As A Service) option?
• Do you have the internal resources to carry out the implementation, create templates, and maintain it, or do you need a reliable partner (like w.illi.am/)?

Create a shortlist of potential systems

Now, here comes the legwork. Do your research of what systems might be aligned with your needs and constraints. You’ll be surprised by the number of options out there, but don’t despair, all your hard work will pay off. Make a list of systems you are interested in and start doing some research about each of them.

Your requirements list will help you evaluate each system. Give each requirement a numerical score (for example from 1 to 5). Start by evaluating the critical needs. If one of your critical requirements is not met, move to the next system; don’t waste time with that system anymore. If no system satisfies that critical need, do you really need it? Could you build it? Soon you will have gone through the whole list, and all systems could be ranked by performance.

In many ways, the old adage of « Measure twice, cut once » applies to selecting your next CMS. Be sure to do your due diligence with respect to what the CMS is able to deliver, and do not rely on vendor documentation, do your research.

With a better understanding of your needs, and how each of the selected systems performs against your needs, you can do a better decision of what your next steps are, for example: find a reliable partner.

Right now we are done measuring. The next phase, implementing a CMS, is a different story, but at least you know that you have selected the right CMS for your organization!

Last week, I was giving my very new conference during the last event produced by Radian6 in Boston.

That was for me an important day for a few reasons:

1. I think that we’ll have to recognize that we are fans of this Canadian company. We are very proud to have this beautiful start-up in Canada and that has just been bought by Salesforce.
2. With the announcement of Salesforce and the fact it was the first event organized by Radian6 after their amazing 24 last months story… it was an honor to be a speaker.
3. It is happening now! Yes really! The platforms, the tools, the technology, the critical mass, the habits, the business understanding  … everything is aligned to give us the opportunity to get a real ROI through the social and digital marketing strategies.
4. The new trend: 3.0… how to interpret, visualize and use (with real intelligence) the data generated by the use of the web and social media.

For those who could be interested, here is my presentation file for the conference I gave : From Web Monitoring to Data Driven Strategic Management.

My team and myself wanted to give an overview of our vision about this question. We wanted to present the relationship between the community management, the community engagement, the web monitoring (web analytic and brand monitoring) and the whole data that is generated by the use of these platforms.

And the video of the 10 first minutes opening keynote by Marcel Lebrun, Radian6’s CEO.

Petite vidéo de mise en bouche.

Quels sont les nouveaux enjeux, les nouvelles habitudes et les possibilités offertes par le iPad?

Partie 1/3

Partie 2/3

Partie 3/3

En attendant de rudement mettre à l’épreuve la nouvelle interface de Twitter annoncée la semaine dernière, on peut affirmer que l’interface Web de Twitter n’est pas un chef-d’oeuvre ergonomique pour l’usager qui n’a que quelques minutes à consacrer quotidiennement aux réseaux sociaux. Il faut cliquer, sur chacune des listes, pour en consulter son contenu. Il faut cliquer sur le lien @mentions pour voir qui s’est adressé à nous. Tous ces clics représentent une perte de temps considérable. Heureusement, des outils plus performants existent pour aider les Web marketers que nous sommes à suivre les différentes conversations de son réseau.

Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Seesmic et autres.

Saisie d'écran de l'application Tweetdeck

Ces applications, la plupart offrant une version « desktop », donc téléchargeable et pouvant directement être installée sur votre ordinateur, permettent d’accroitre son efficacité sur Twitter. Grâce à ses applications, il est possible d’avoir une vue d’ensemble sur son compte Twitter, sans même avoir à poser le doigt sur la souris. La majeure partie de ses applications fonctionnent par colonnes. Chaque « type » d’information étant une colonne précise; tweets, listes, hashtags, messages directs, mot-clé, etc. De plus, il est également possible d’ordonner ces mêmes colonnes, permettant à l’usager de prioriser certains éléments, tels que les @mentions et les directs messages, par exemple, qui sont généralement des types d’informations sur lesquelles on désire garder un œil attentif. Ces applications offrent également une boîte de « notifications » qui apparaît en superposition sur l’espace de travail de l’usager, ce qui ajoute aux fonctionnalités nous permettant de surveiller de près certains éléments. En revanche, cette boîte de notifications ramène en surface les problèmes du multitasking au travail comme facteur de distraction, ou comme certaines études l’ont démontrées, facteur de productivité.

L’API Twitter

Toutes ces applications ne seraient pas possible sans la flexibilité de l’API de Twitter. En mars 2010, Twitter annonçait qu’il existait plus de 70 000 applications externes permettant d’interagir avec la Twittosphère. C’est donc dire qu’il existe des applications pour tous les besoins. C’est donc dire, également, que vous pouvez créer aisément vos propres applications pour servir les besoins de votre entreprise 2.0 grâce à un API souple et centré sur vos réalités. N’est-ce pas merveilleux pour une entreprise de pouvoir adopter un réseau social, hautement fréquenté et pertinent, qui permet de concevoir ses propres outils?

The strength of this tool comes from Radian6’s understanding of how social media functions and the philosophy of the web 2.0. The engagement console allows the user to communicate under their own name as well as under the name of the company through the corporation’s social media channels. This flexibility is a time saver that can quickly increase the productivity of employees when they interact in social media. It is a great solution for providing both a human touch and developing the brand on social media.

Moreover, the tool is perfect for the corporation because of its focus on collaboration. In real time, it is possible to see who has already responded to a message online which eliminates the time for searching if the user has already been engaged as well as seeing who took the initiative. This will save time, will not irritate the user, and will reflect the brand positively. The engagement console also shows the history of interaction with the user so that even if different employees replied to the user in the past, it is still possible to understand the conversation and answer fluidly as a company rather than starting the conversation over every time.

The beauty of the engagement console is that it merges the different social media together so that when the employee interacts with the public, it is no longer about tweeting or “facebooking” but simply communicating. It is not only about Twitter, Facebook or Blogs anymore but the whole social web.

Of course, since Radian6 is behind the console, the employees are not drowned with too much information because all the conversations on the web are pulled in. Rather, it allows filtering of the different conversations so that we can prioritize and focus on the conversations that matter the most right now.

The advantage of the engagement console for the corporation is that it can easily involve more people of the company in the social media communication. However, this is a double-edged sword because not everybody should be the voice of the company. Although displaying transparency, authenticity and a human side to the business is increasingly important to the eye of the public nowadays, it is still much more important to preserve branding than engaging the audience randomly and without a proper communication strategy. The more people are involved, the more chances there are that a message can be interpreted wrongfully.

The solution is not to reduce the number of people who can participate in the social media sphere. Rather, it is to train them to communicate their expertise properly in order to increase the number of brand ambassadors and contribute to the branding of the company.

Only then can the company benefit from the brand ambassadors from within the organization.

Picture by Geek and Poke.

Malheureusement cette acquisition causa plusieurs inquiétudes dans la communauté. En effet, Ext JS, une ‘branche’ de YUI (framework js pour créer des applications), était à la base complètement open source, puis un beau jour, la licence changea et le projet est devenu commercial. Pour utilisé Ext JS dans un projet dit ‘payant’ on devait maintenant acheter une licence. Qu’allait-il donc devenir de deux de mes projets préférés?

Heureusement Sencha a vite calmé le jeu, jQtouch et Raphael resteront sous la licence MIT. Même mieux, Sencha a mis à temps plein au moins 1 personne sur chaque projet, des projets qui étaient au départ personnels devenaient donc un travail à temps plein, parfait! Une chose ne faisait par contre aucune sens. Raphael je peux comprendre que la technologie sois gratuite et qu’elle aura un très grand rapport avec EXT JS, mais jQtouch, qu’avait-il a gagner à le laisser open source? Acheter un framework d’application iPhone et n’engendrer aucun revenu dessus ne faisait aucun sens.

Sencha introduit Sencha Touch

La réponse est venu 2 jours plus tard, Le créateur de jQtouch travaillait en secret sur un autre framework d’application web mobile. Sencha Touch, déjà disponible en béta, est un framework complet, compatible avec Iphone, Android, Ipad et autres tablettes, et bien sûr, il sera payant pour les projets commerciaux.

Sencha Touch est très impressionnant, on voit que Sencha a mis tous les efforts possibles pour créer le framework mobile de l’avenir. Beaucoup plus complet que jQtouch celui-ci se positionne comme le framework des professionnels, tandis que jQtouch, restera pour les applications simples, et n’aura pas de version iPad.

Quoi qui l’en soit, ça brasse du coté HTML5. Petite note de bas de page, Microsoft a sortit un nouveau ‘preview’ de IE9, les tags vidéo, audio, et même canvas ont été implémentés, bien des personnes avaient peine à croire qu’un tel évènement se produirait. Ses technologies sont des compétiteurs directes avec sa technologie propriétaire, Silverlight (quoi que maintenant il semble plus se positionner pour les intranets).

Un petit message pour remercier tout le monde avant de vous présenter le fichier de la présentation:

• MERCI à ceux qui organisent l’évènement. Bien mieux que la dernière édition! J’avais du visuel lors de ma présentation et surtout une bien meilleure logistique. Merci donc à Michel Chioini, Claude Malaison, Claude Thibeault, et à la nouvelle, Jolyanne Mathieu, et puis merci aussi à Jean-François Poulin pour sa grande attention envers notre passage. Les amis, cet évènement est un phare pour notre industrie, j’espère que nos projets de fédération des évènements montréalais saura vous transporter en haut de la scène internationale.
• Bon… comme chaque édition nous avons notre lot de malchance, cette fois-ci c’est Philippe Fehmiu qui, ayant mieux à faire et quittant la conférence, a préféré dire aux participants à la fin de la conférence me précédent: « Et bien merci à tous, bonne journée et bon appétit, c’est fini pour la matinée ».
• Heureusement, près de 80 personnes étaient là et surtout merci à vous Ô désormais grands Dieux  du web social (voir conférence).
• Merci à l’équipe de w.illi.am/ et tout particulièrement à Catherine Lafrasse pour toute la logistique de notre côté!

Et voici la présentation. Dans quelques jours nous vous présenterons la vidéo de la conférence montée avec la présentation incorporée… restez à l’écoute.

Par contre, désolé le fichier ne se transfert apparemment pas très bien et la vidéo à la fin, la voici: Social Nomics

Un peu d’histoire

Ce n’est pas par hasard qu’arrive ce changement d’attitude, Internet Explorer se fait gruger une petite partie de son « market share » chaque mois depuis maintenant plusieurs années. Après avoir gagné sa dure bataille contre Netscape, Internet explorer était seul maitre de l’internet, et il semble que Microsoft a fermé la lumière dans les labs de IE et à laissé litéralement pourrir sa version 6.

Firefox change le marché

La version 1 de Firefox a vraiment tout changé, avec une platforme plus ouverte, moins de bug, plus rapide et des outils plus performants pour les dévelopeurs web. Juste ce qu’il fallait pour faire une brèche dans le marché. Une lumière s’est alors ouverte dans les labs de Microsoft et ont a eu droit à IE7. Une version avec un peu moins de bug que IE6, pas vraiment plus performant, un petit ‘mashup’ quoi.

Depuis ce temps, Microsoft travaille d’arrache pied pour ratrapper son énorme retard… avec à peu près tous les fureteurs compétiteurs. Il y a une vraie guerre de vitesse en ce moment entre Google Chrome, Safari et Firefox. IE8 était un pas en avant, malheureusement il était déjà dépassé avant de sortir.

IE9 arrivera t’il juste à temps pour sauver le reste de ses parts de marché?

Internet Explorer 9 s’annonce très bien, extrêmement plus performant (revient vraiment dans la course), beaucoup plus de compatibilité avec CSS3 et HTML5. On peut vraiment dire que IE9 pourrait être le grand retour de Microsoft qui pourrait stopper son hémoragie au niveau du market share.

Alors, voici :

• Twitter compte plus de 100 Millions d’utilisateurs !
• Dans la même veine, ils gagnent 300 000 nouveaux comptes chaque jours!
• !MAIS! ON NE COMPTE QUE 40 Millions de comptes véritablement actifs et sur le long terme.

Voici l’article de Penn Olson.

N’hésitez pas à nous contacter pour comprendre comment vous pouvez tirer partie de ces solutions afin de répondre aux besoins de vos utilisateurs. À ce sujet, je donne une conférence lors du prochain Webcom Montréal 2010, le 26 mai prochain à l’OACI : Web social : les 7 jours de la création

Comment ça? du HTML pour créer des applications Windows et mobile!?

Le web à vraiment créé un très vaste écosystème de dévelopeurs spécialisés pour le web, que ce soit des designers, des dévelopeurs php ou python et des intégrateurs web. Il n’est donc pas étonnant que les entreprises veulent tirer profit de cette ressource ou tout évolue rapidement et ou le cycle pour la création d’application web est très court comparé au dévelopement plus traditionnel.

Une de ces compagnies c’est Appcelerator, qui ont créé la platforme Titanium. Cette platforme permet de déveloper une application qui sera traduite sur les platforms iPhone et Android. Et puisque vous êtes déjà habitué à la platforme, la transformer en application ‘desktop’ sur Windows et Mac se fera rapidement.

Il a vraiment un bon momentum autour de Appcelerator qui a passé à sa version 1 récemment, ils ont d’ailleurs lancé leur première application iPad sur le appstore.

Une autre de ses platforme c’est Phonegap. PhoneGap vous permet de créer des application Andriod et iPhone directement avec du javascript et du html. Nous avons aussi Mozilla qui à créé une platform de création de plugin pour firefox qui utiliseulement du javascript nommé Jetpack.

Un temps d’adaptation est nécéssaire

Bien sûr il faut apprendre tous ses nouveaux API. Reste que la barrière qui séparait le web du monde applicatif est de plus en plus mince, reste à voir maintenant si cette tendance va ce maintenir et que les technologies web devriendront la platforme par excellence pour tout ce qui est contenu par votre ordinateur.

In the next few days, we’ll do our best to present on this blog a w.illi.am/’s iPad review. Stay tuned folks!

w.illi.am/ participera au plus grand rassemblement québécois d’experts en technologies web.

Venez nous rencontrer à notre kiosque ou durant le Salon de l’emploi. 

Nous vous invitons également à voir la conférence : Optimiser les applications web, une approche thérorique, donnée par Sherif Zaroubi, Conseiller senior, le vendredi 12 mars à 14h45.

No this is not a application from the Itunes Appstore, what I am talking about is a mobile web application that could work on Iphone, Ipod touch, Palm Pre, and all Droid phone.

There is a new kid in town

If you own a mac you are probably familiar with the web browser Safari, well the Safari gut called Webkit is what is powering all the devices up there I am talking about, even blackberry is working on a browser based on webkit. What so special about webkit? Well it’s cutting edge technology. They implemented every animation you could have in a real application directly in the web browser using CSS3 and it have most features HTML5 will bring in the future, today. Most notably offline website and databases directly in the browser.

With all these devices, you get the big pie of the mobile web browsing, and you get a very good browser to work with. These was neither the case before. You had Windows mobile which use IE 5.5 rendering engine (ouch!), the nokia, backberrie browsers which was actually worse and opera mobile, which is actually pretty good, but do not have a big pie as smartphone goes.

Showtime is using jQTouch for its mobile website, you can save favorite shows and get your weekly schedule

Meet jQTouch and Pastrykit, mobille frameworks

On top of that, we get mobile frameworks popping up to ease the web application development. jQTouch is based on the jQuery javascript framework. To have used it before, it’s a pretty good  rapid development kit for mobile website. You can create basic website with lists and articles in a couple of hours and really feel like a mobile app. Pastrykit is the unofficial framework used by apple. It’s not officillaly released but some developers took the time to open the API to everyone.

An uncomfortable situation

As you can see, pretty much every giant step we took on the mobile web is based on the fact that Webkit is king of the mobile platform. What if the Firefox mobile would come to dethrone Webkit? Well that would be pretty bad for website based on webkit out here, most mobile framework are based only and directly on Webkit. But this is really not the trend right now, with blackberry soon switching to webkit and Google android phone becoming more and more popular (HTC, Samsung and others are developing phone on it), Webkit mobile seems to have at least some great years ahead.


Stats from Admob Metric

Alas, day two of the conference was the source of discussion that kept me thinking about business culture and global culture – both very interesting topics. Here are some inspiring quotes and my thoughts for the day: (Quotes are not verbatim. My comments in italics.)

Online merchandising that inspires

“Whatever you are thinking, think BIGGER…culture, customer service, clothing….we didn’t spend much on Adwords…viral is the best thing to do, as well as building the customer experience online and offline.”

(Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com)

Quite amazing really, from 2001 to 2008, Zappos’ revenues grew from 0$ to 1 billion. They focus on selling a culture. Almost all their employees are on Twitter, and active on other social network sites. They are extremely focused on their HR department, and ensuring employees are a good fit. Hsieh says they have offered employees $2000 to quit after one week if they thought they had made a mistake. They have two interviews with employees: one classic interview, and one focused on assessing cultural fit. “We want people who will be able to share our culture… the definition of happiness is different for every person.”

His speech was very inspiring. I am motivated to take more time for HR and get better support for recruitment

“Be there before the sale”…let users promote your product…you don’t have to sell directly…”

(Chris Brogan, President, New Marketing Labs, Author, Trust Agents)

I agree; instead of spending thousands of dollars on PPC and Cos, it’s better to make good use of social networks. PPC is to online advertising what traditional ads were a few years ago. Everyone is spending on it but most don’t take the time to optimize it. Costs are rising as agencies are growing – it’s time to react and use social networks instead.

Let them build it for us

In response to market demand and nuances of banking regulations in different countries, Paypal is opening up its payment system. “We need programmers all over the world to work on the development of whatever remains to be done, focused on our use cases…”

(Osama Bedier, Vice President of PayPal Platform and Emerging Technology)

Smart. Paypal is letting programmers outside Paypal develop with Paypal’s APIs to accomplish their goals. I was saying this to my customers just a few weeks ago: invest more money on an API program instead of developing new features that will only be used by a few people.

…let others innovate for you…

Real-world Counter-Culture

(Danah Boyd, Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, Fellow at Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society)

Danah gave a brillant presentation. It was very likely my favorite one.

Danah Boyd does random word searches on Twitter to discover twittering outside her normal comfort zone. …from racist words on Twitter to youth video content… she looks at the power of visibility online, getting a true picture of the real world. Is it sometimes better to be stuck with televised network programming? Not a chance.

Grinda: ‘le retour du succès”

OLX is a new classified site, very popular locally… it focuses on the South-American and Russian markets. 10M$ revenues per year with ad sense only…”

(Fireside Chat with Fabrice Grinda, Co-CEO, OLX, Inc. and Loic Le Meur, Founder, Le Web)

Grinda says “Whatever you do, you have to be within the top 3 leading markets. This could include your local market, but its best to focus on your top three.” I agree but I also think you need to think outside the box…there are other markets besides the US and Europe. I remember UNYK in Quebec, they were number one in South-America! Finally, they were sold to Viadeo (in France).

Russia Roundtable: Emerging Markets: Focus on Russia

Moderated by Jennifer L. Schenker, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Informilo.com

Sasha Galitsky, Almaz Capital Partners

Bernard Lukey, CEO, OZON.ru

Edward Shenderovich, Managing Director, Kite Ventures

Arkady Volozh, CEO, Yandex

Google is not a leader in Russia which is going to be the largest EU Internet market (Arkady Volozh, CEO, Yandex)

Amazon is not present at all in Russia and OZON  has taken the lead (Bernard Lukey, CEO, OZON.ru)

The blogosphere is not as well set-up as it is in the west…it’s more kitchen conversation. (Edward Shenderovich, Managing Director, Kite Ventures)

There is more US investment in the US. (Sasha Galitsky, Almaz Capital Partners)

I often wonder how it will all play out in Russia. Just like in Quebec, language can protect the market – that is why Russian companies have a lot of success – but it doesn’t last forever…just think of the Berlin Wall… it came down long before we thought it would…

Have a good week-end.

damien