A few days ago while reading through various articles about the future of websites and web presence, I came across a post by Thomas Baekdal that started off with a look back to the beginnings of web design:
Back in 1998 designing for the internet was all about 3 things:
Design for the desktop, where the vast majority was using 800x600, with their browser maximized.
Design a website, a place where people could come to you. With emphasize on getting traffic and have them stick around as long as possible.
Optimize for the many search engines, because that was the primary way people would get to you.
But if we fast-forward to today, none of these really matters anymore. You still need them, but they are no longer the best things to do.
The reference to 1998 immediately brought to mind the recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management: while the MQ does cover concepts newer than Baekdal’s 1998 list, the basic approach for this MQ is very 1998: it’s déjà vu all over again…
Then I recalled this passage in Jon Marks' post on the 2010 MQ:
Most of these little yellow dots haven’t drifted very far in a year – the report is pretty similar despite the M&A activity that has kept us bloggers busy. So pretty much a repeat of last year.
If I were a police officer, I would be repeating: Move along, nothing to see here. No offense to most of the vendors in the benchmark, but this MQ does nothing to excite us about the future of websites / WEM / web presence nor does it do much to stimulate buyer interests for finding the right-fit solutions for business needs.
Redux: Moving Beyond WCM - Web Experience Management Software Solutions and Markets
So I decided to take a look at an article I wrote almost a year ago about understanding WEM (web experience management) markets and solutions: the article includes a reference to the 2009 Gartner MQ for WCM. I wanted to see how many of my reactions to the 2009 MQ would now be different >> answer: none. Which sadly means that not much has changed with this new 2010 Gartner benchmark for providing value to vendors and buyers:
When it comes to how to select the best-fit Web Content Management (WCM) software, a great deal of confusion continues to haunt vendors and customers alike. Industry analysts have done little to make this any easier by perpetuating these mistakes:
- Frequently lumping together disparate offerings that target clearly separate customer segments and customer needs
- Failing to segment WCM offerings into solution categories, such as: Web Experience Management (WEM) for Enterprise, basic web publishing for internal business processes/intranet, mid-market solutions for e-commerce, and so on
- Persisting with the pointless notion that WCM is a functional subset of Enterprise Content Management (ECM), especially in light of the speciousness of the ECM platform; such a notion is even more off-target when considering WEM solutions
- While understanding that WEM solutions are directly tied to interactive/digital marketing initiatives, analyst reports and benchmarks fail to use this understanding as an essential tenet of such reports
Looking for WEM?
Web Experience Management has come together as a segment of WCM software solutions and reflects current directions for websites and web presence for certain companies and organizations:
It has been mainly customers who have helped to propel the WCM industry into providing the sorts of capabilities that are really needed for external-facing websites that are central to strategic business objectives. So a significant segment of the overall WCM market has evolved into Web Experience Management (WEM), for which a much larger solution ecosystem has come together. Most Web Experience Management platforms have little to do with basic content management or basic web publishing (à la WordPress and TypePad), and even less to do with the so-called ECM (enterprise content management) platform.
A more complete WEM solution description includes:
- Understanding of solutions for B2B, B2C web/marketing initiatives
- Sophisticated digital / interactive marketing strategies
- External-facing web presence / multi-channel content delivery
- Website essential to corporate business strategy
- Ecosystem of ancillary tools to complete end-to-end solution for customer objectives
- Savvy use of social media, well-integrated into website and marketing plans
- Alignment with interactive/digital agencies
So a Web Experience Management solution is really a composite of several “markets”:
- WCM solution suite, with usability both for business users and IT personnel (includes behind-the-scenes “content management”, workflow, design tools, and so on)
- Enterprise-quality portal / presentation management
- Recommendations-like technology for social search and personalization
- Web analytics / testing / content monetizing tools
- Rich media and video content management (monetizing components as appropriate)
- Social collaboration / social marketing capabilities
- Extensive integration / interoperability capabilities at several levels of the enterprise infrastructure
For buyers in search of WEM software solution vendors, it’s going to take some work to find them in the 2010 MQ. While the 2010 MQ dances around a number of the above capabilities, it never directly addresses WEM solutions, preferring to stick to more of a “classic” (1998?) description of WCM:
Gartner defines WCM as the process of controlling the content to be consumed over one or more online channels through the use of commercial, open-source or hosted management tools based on a core repository. We exclude products such as portals and e-commerce engines even though these technologies have overlapping functions in areas such as personalization, content management and content delivery.
Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management 2010
Source: Gartner (August 2010) subscription or purchase
Also available as pdf downloads from CoreMedia and Sitecore, as well as web “display” document on Oracle website
The Inside-Out Corporation
This particular MQ report for web content management seems to epitomize the work of a corporation more interested in its own goals, and one that is not operating from the customer POV, even though a lot of its revenue is customer-driven. And this particular MQ seems comprised of artificial parameters that only benefit a Gartner agenda. Drawing on my 1998 flashback, this benchmark also seems to be advocating “old school” decision-making processes for tech purchase decisions, focusing on IT rather than business/marketing decision-makers, and on recession scare tactics by primarily advocating big vendors to make the “safe” decision.
In a recession economy, for a company to effect growth, risks have to be taken, and business should be conducted in new ways with new technology paradigms. Companies must make tech purchases based on business goals and needs that contribute to success and competitive edge. Corporate websites and web presence are critical to the success of many businesses: to connect to potential customers wherever they are on the web; to engage buyers - whether B2C or B2B. How a company effectively uses the internet is constantly changing, so corporations need forward-looking solutions – unfortunately we aren’t finding guidance for such solutions in this Gartner MQ.
Evaluations of WEM / WCM solutions are somewhat unique in that they must consider two levels of customers: one is comprised of the buyers of the technology to build websites and manage web presence, and the other is comprised of the target customers that the original tech buyers want to attract/engage with their websites and web presence. Since WEM / WCM solutions impact two levels of buyers, we must look at the technology as a means to an end – it is the “end” that really matters and must be foremost in the minds of solution buyers. Unfortunately this Gartner MQ is not very focused on either the direct buyer of the technology or the customers that the WEM solution buyer hopes to attract.
Vendors Offerings Are Part of the Problem
WEM / WCM vendors also own responsibility for the failure of analyst benchmarks to provide clear guidance for buyers. Most vendors adhere to the vague domains of “WCM”, or worse, “CMS”, hedging their bets with offerings that are too horizontal to know if they truly align to the needs of buyers in search of specific WEM capabilities. WEM is one of few truly segmented solutions in the larger mass of WCM. It’s time for vendors to shake off non-differentiated, broad offerings, to declare real solution segments and target markets (by working with specific industry scenarios and revenue segments). By doing so, vendor solutions will only get better at meeting the needs of specific markets and customers.
I’m frustrated by the continuation of terms like WCM / ECM / CMS – these vague terms just blur a “solution space” that is populated with scores of products from very basic to very complex. Lately there has been a superficial debate that WEM is yet another meaningless vendor buzzword. To the contrary, overly generalized terms like WCM and CMS are the buzzwords that have no real meaning anymore because they include everything and define nothing. WEM is an actual solution with clear purpose and defined capabilities. Whether or not a particular vendor provides an authentic WEM solution is another issue – but to assume none are providing WEM is ridiculous.
Back to the Future
Web presence and the various purposes of websites have changed dramatically and will continue to do so. In this MQ, Gartner seems to have overlooked the importance of distributed web presence and new approaches to marketing on the web. New solutions are evolving that are not necessarily based in “classic” WCM.
But what may be the most important factor for a lot of companies is a strong emphasis on the customer-focused web presence for the company. And this may mean that company web presence will show up on other websites, instead of on the corporate website. Additionally a WCM/WEM software platform may only be one of the components of a new management framework for all web presence (management of web content still matters but may not be tied to a specific website anymore).
Content is extremely important to a lot of web marketing plans and strategies, and content is the meat of most social sites, whether it is a conversation thread, a video, a blog post, and so on. So look for WEM solutions themselves to continue to evolve as the means of managing and delivering any kind of content for sites anywhere on the web, through any channel.
Web marketing and customer relationship strategies are changing (and improving) – companies need new solutions and practices to manage the new world. More companies have come to understand that first they must build the web marketing / presence strategy that will accomplish their goals. Then they have to figure out how to achieve the goals of the marketing strategy, which will involve preferred practices and processes, as well as technology. With web presence evolution, marketing strategies should include orchestration of web presence via other sites, and how to integrate with conversations and content from those external sites.
To find significant forward-looking thinking regarding the future of web presence and websites, it may be best to look at the many talented writers and practitioners for website design and WEM solutions technology who understand the evolution taking place right now. Many writers and practitioners for marketing technology, digital marketing and social media also contribute valuable insight for the future of web presence. Here are a few suggestions to get started:
Web Content, Website design:
CMS Wire has been featuring many talented writers and recently added a WEM focus (in CMS Wire WEM is “web engagement management” but the capabilities and intent are the same)
Interactive Marketing – Social Media:
Jeremiah Owyang and Altimeter Group
David Armano and Edelman Digital
Related Articles:
Moving beyond WCM - Web Experience Management software solutions and markets
Goodbye Corporate Website – Hello Web Presence Management Framework?
The Effective Intranet – Engaging the Employee as Customer
B2B WEM / WCM Software Vendors Targeting Mid-Market customers: stay where you are!
About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished software industry analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Market & Competitive Intelligence Services
Disclaimer: Julie Hunt occasionally contributes articles to CMS Wire.
Hi Julie,
An excellent article, a healthy contribution to the discussion on engagement and web experience. I especially enjoyed this exploration of how this fits with the traditional view of this space and how we evaluate our requirements and the tools within it.
Plus of course, thank you for the link - it is absolutely a subject dear to my heart. I'd also recommend checking out a (free) paper that my colleague Mary Laplante authored last year (http://gilbane.com/whitepapers/FatWire/FatWire-Web-Engagement-WP-7-08.pdf).
Enjoying your work!
Cheers,
Ian
Posted by: Ian Truscott | 09/15/2010 at 05:52 AM
Hi Ian,
Really appreciate you stopping by to leave such a thorough comment – thanks so much for the kind words. There is a wealth of great content coming from many writers regarding the potential and real-world use for WEM – it’s great to know about Mary LaPlante’s WP! Looking forward to reading more of your thoughts!
Best,
Julie
Posted by: Julie Hunt | 09/15/2010 at 04:49 PM