Content Management Software

These days, every software company has to offer some sort of mobile component to stay competitive, even if working extensively from a mobile device isn’t the most favorable situation.

At the beginning of this month, CrownPeak announced their own foray into the mobile space: CrownPeak CMS will be available on any mobile device, and features a WebKit based browser like the ones already found on the iPhone and Android phones. CrownPeak has been a SaaS advocate for a long time, so smartphone accessibility is an obvious step for them—and a much easier change for them than for some other CMS providers.

CrownPeak simultaneously released a series of mobile templates for their customers to use when creating mobile versions of their sites—this is perhaps the even more valuable mobile component. Feature-rich mobile sites are crucial for all B2C companies, and it’s nice that CrownPeak has made these two mobile components available at the same time.

In the press release discussing all things “CrownPeak mobile,” the online marketing-CMS vendor states there are 450 million mobile internet users, and that that number will surely grow. It’s interesting that in light of these numbers, CrownPeak is eschewing the BlackBerry crowd. Perhaps only iPhone and Android users are meant to propel mobile CMS usage.

With the end of every year comes a plethora of forecasts for the next year, and we’re no different—today we’re going to take a look at some of the things we expect to see more of in the web content management space.

One of the least surprising trends in the web content management space is the continual addition of social media. Content management systems are somewhat social by nature, but lately the additions of internal and external social computing modules have blurred some of the lines between “web content management,” and “social media.” You’d be hard pressed to find a CMS vendor that doesn’t offer social media capabilities, and right now, social functions range from micro-blogging to alternative identity solutions to commenting and tagging. Also, SharePoint 2010 is promising to “break down the silos between enterprise and web,” so 2010 is going to be an eventful year.

That the influx of social media capabilities is blurring the lines between social networking platforms and web content management has some people pushing to have the system rechristened. Some feel that “WCM” is a hackneyed acronym, and at this point a misleading one. Given that content management systems allow users to publish information—and perform other tasks, like online and email marketing—the “management” name seems unfitting. But we’ll likely have to wait and see how much the platform’s fundamentals changes before we see a new acronym.

One emerging addition to many CMS platforms is integrated marketing. We reported recently that CrownPeak added online marketing to their product, and many other vendors are following suit. The need among CMS users to create engaging and profitable content is on the rise, and vendors are working to meet their needs. Most of these online marketing additions have integrated analytics tools, like the ones offered by Bridgeline and Sitecore. Still, some vendors are partnering with third-party analytics companies, or sticking with Google Analytics. Yet another addition pushing for a fundamental change in traditional CMS is integrated search—browser-centric information management is becoming invaluable, and crucial to optimizing content.

This year can definitely be thought of as the year of SaaS and cloud computing, so it’s probably a surprise to no one that cloud-based web content management offerings will take a greater hold in 2010. More users will likely switch to entirely SaaS platforms, while others will follow the trend put forth in other technology segments, and add cloud-components to their on-premise systems.

Amidst all the activity surrounding the announcement of Salesforce’s Chatter platform last month, a couple of enterprise software news items escaped us, and unfortunately this was one of them: CrownPeak launched its Online Marketing Management Suite as a supplement to its content management platform.

CrownPeak's Landing Page Manager

CrownPeak Online Marketing Management offers unique content management and marketing tools that intended to enable marketers to easily engage their target audiences. Users of the new Suite will be able to test, target, and measure the content relevance in websites, landing pages, and other applications created within the CrownPeak CMS. The targeting and testing is directly measurable, with a full set of reporting tools and the ability to measure everything from conversions to visits. Those doing the reporting can also compare reports against reports from other campaigns being managed within the CMS. CrownPeak’s online marketing also enables codeless creation of content testing built into the CMS interface, meaning that marketers won’t have to waste time copy and pasting snippets of code into pages to create A/B testing.

We haven’t come across any reviews of the product yet, but it is certainly a smart addition to any content management system. Considering the pressure companies—with or without marketing agents—face when creating websites, I expect other content management solutions vendors will ape these new tools.

When using social networking platforms for marketing, one of the biggest obstacles for marketers is adding URLs without letting their length detract from the message. It’s always best to keep URL length at a minimum, and there plenty of tools can help. This week, CrownPeak launched a URL shortening solution for its CMS subscribers, allowing them to more easily and effectively publish to social networking pages and to existing analytics solutions.

The URL shortener is aimed to help digital and online marketers, and gives them the option of either customizing the shorter URL, or having CrownPeak’s CMS automatically generate one. When a URL is selected, the CMS will present the user with a list of available content to be assigned within the system’s social networking tools. Thus the information will be can be easily accessed and used for social media updates.

Integration with an existing analytics platform eliminates fuss, and the URL shortener can adapt to many analytics systems, not just the one native to CrownPeak CMS. This integration also allows marketers to easily test newly implemented strategies, as it unifies Web analytics for pages available with both longer site-related URLs and the shortened URLs.

Landing Page Manager Enables Clients To Create, Manage & Measure Online Marketing Campaigns

Los Angeles, February 18th, 2009 – CrownPeak, the market leader in on-demand Website management software announced today the launch of its newest product, CrownPeak Landing Page Manager™ (LPM). The application addresses a core challenge that marketers face in a down economy – the need for a simple and cost-effective solution that enables Website managers to create, manage and track landing pages to drive greater ROI from marketing campaigns. With CrownPeak LPM, companies can significantly improve online campaign performance, track results and experiment with new marketing strategies and messaging – without the added expense associated with a cumbersome technology suite.

Read more

Company recognized as a leader in the Software as a Service arena

Los Angeles, January 19, 2009—CrownPeak, the market leader in on-demand Website management software, today announced that it was awarded the first ever Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award. The award, given by SaaS (Software as a Service) Showplace, a service of THINKstrategies, Inc., is aimed at promoting the measurable benefits provided by today’s SaaS solutions.

Read more