Content management systems: Software buyer’s guide.
Six must-have capabilities for your CMS.
Content management software: Selecting the right CMS.
Discover what an end-to-end CMS software can do for your organisation and the most critical features to look for when considering an enterprise content management system (CMS). In this guide, we’ll walk you through the six must-have capabilities of a CMS and why they matter.
From improving site performance metrics to driving omnichannel experiences and scaling content creation, you'll learn how a composable architecture helps you to create optimised, performant sites across audiences and surfaces.
Running enterprise websites can come with unique operational challenges. Publishing and managing content at that scale can be overwhelming and slow without the right content management system (CMS) in place. Your CMS must provide smooth workflows and governance to enable hundreds of individuals to create, manage and publish millions of pages. Moreover, it needs to keep this massive content base compliant with brand guidelines, local laws and security regulations. This is true regardless of whether you use traditional, headless CMS or responsive web design models.
Discover the six must-have capabilities when selecting content management system software.
1. Boost conversion rate with improved page load speed.
53% of users won’t wait longer than 3 seconds for a website to load, resulting in billions of dollars in lost sales annually.
Source: Google Adsence
A site that loads in 1 second has a 2.5-3x higher conversion rate than a site that loads in 5 seconds.
Source: Portent
An edge architecture CMS boosts your site performance.
An edge architecture CMS is a headless CMS designed to deliver fast and responsive experiences across your digital platforms. Edge architecture facilitates data processing by utilising the outermost edges of the network, which are closest to where the experience is consumed. This contributes to healthy core web vitals and high Google Lighthouse scores.
Customer spotlight
With Edge Delivery Services in Adobe Experience Manager Sites, Volvo Trucks boosted its mobile performance score from 35 to 100 and increased its visibility score from 2.5% to 43%. Merative improved its web performance score from 34 to 100 and reduced its page load speed from 10.9 to 1.6 seconds.
2. Scale content creation.
The increasing speed of digital business requires marketers to publish content at a faster pace than ever. 53% of senior executives using generative AI report significant improvements in team efficiency, while 50% report significantly faster content ideation and production.
Source: Adobe
How your CMS can turn everyone into a content expert.
With familiar, easy-to-use authoring tools, teams can accelerate the editing and publishing process, allowing content to scale across teams, regions and channels.
Customer spotlight
Pethealth Inc. used Experience Manager Sites to combine the strengths of its five brands into a single, cohesive content ecosystem, all while publishing content 82% faster and doubling its marketing productivity.
3. Accelerate A/B testing to improve conversion rate optimisation.
Ecommerce sites that run successful A/B tests have seen a 50% increase in revenue per unique visitor.
Source: VWO
How your CMS can optimise A/B testing.
A/B testing for a single element or page helps identify the most effective content strategies and components. By optimising their content creation efforts based on performance insights, organisations can maximise the return on investment (ROI).
4. Enable seamless omnichannel experience management.
54% of customer-obsessed companies experience better customer loyalty and improved retention from omnichannel efforts and current customers spend 67% more on average than new customers. This makes effective omnichannel experiences critical for maximising retention and lifetime value.
Source: SAP Emarsys
What your CMS needs to support omnichannel digital experiences.
To deliver engaging cross-channel experiences, your CMS must include a consistent design system, reusable content components, direct access to governed assets and responsive design tools. With these features, you can empower your entire team to build connected experiences across your digital properties, eliminating the need to repeat tasks on each channel.
5. Stay flexible with a headless, hybrid and composable CMS.
59% of marketers and developers say they’re not equipped to reuse content and it’s slowing them down.
Source: Adobe
76% of people who rate their organisation’s digital maturity as advanced mainly use a hybrid CMS.
Source: Adobe
How to design your CMS for tech stack flexibility.
A CMS should be able to cater to a headless, traditional or hybrid delivery approach, allowing you to manage cross-channel content in a central hub. Teams can publish content across all front-ends — including single-page apps, mobile apps, IoT and more.
6. Develop high-performing web and app experiences quickly.
54% of marketers and developers rank skill gaps or a lack of specialists as one of their top-three pain points.
Source: Adobe
The most significant current competency gaps are in digital marketing, data and analytics, proving ROI and data privacy and compliance.
Source: AMA
What your CMS needs for faster web and app development.
The best approach allows authoring, designing and coding to occur in parallel — unlike the traditional linear development process where various stages occur sequentially which restricts flexibility and speed in the development process.
Edge Delivery Services Spotlight
Through Edge Delivery Services, Adobe’s engineering team is now able to deliver features to Adobe.com 2.5 times faster.
Explore accelerated development features
Adobe Experience Manager Sites checks all the boxes.
The best CMS for your organisation is the one that empowers your marketers and developers to create high-performing content across any digital property — from web to mobile to apps.
Experience Manager Sites is an industry-leading CMS that dramatically improves the speed at which you can build, author, publish and load pages across devices and channels, enabling you to keep pace with the speed of digital business. Ensure your organisation stays ahead with our best-in-class CMS features and proven leadership in the industry.
Learn more about how Adobe Experience Manager Sites can help you to maximise your web performance.
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