Emerging Trends in Web Content Management

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Dec 18, 2009

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Yes, we all know web content management (WCM) 1.0 is dead. But we still seem to be having a hard time defining exactly what 2.0 is about. We will continue to grapple with the emerging definition. In the mean time there are emerging trends shaping web content management and the vendors that provide it. Here's a look at what's on our radar.

Platform vs Specialization

This year has seen plenty of discussion about where web content management should be focused. Some have even gone so far as to say WCM is a badly misused term and should just be dropped from our vocabulary permanently.

There was a time when all that a Web CMS had to do was offer a broad range of content management capabilities that an organization could then use and/or customize to suit their needs. It's not that simple anymore.

The WCM Platform Route

Many vendors choose to continue to offer platforms or frameworks that work in any situation with the right customization or configuration. These platforms offer the full gamut of capabilities from presentation, to basic content management, to content delivery (whatever the device or channel). Solutions that follow this approach include Drupal, DotNetNuke and others. These offerings are typically referred to as web frameworks more than web content management systems.

The WCM Point Solution

Others vendors have focused their software more specifically, for example, on integrated online marketing. Fatwire, Sitecore, SDL Tridion and Autonomy Interwoven all spring to mind.

What you see in these instances is a focus on marketing automation and user experience optimization. Capabilities found in this corner include integrated analytics, campaign management, multivariate and A/B testing, and integration of CRM, social media and more. These solutions, while having content management at their core, are probably less about content management and more about presentation.

The Trouble with Generic Acronyms

And so questions arise: What does WCM mean? …is the term dead? …should it be? Jon Marks writes in his blog, "The term WCM is horse$@%!, unnecessary and should take a long walk off a short pier." (we love the brutal honesty).

He differentiates between web frameworks that really offer web publishing tools (like Drupal), and content creation and management systems (like Vignette), saying that bucketing these different types of solutions into a single WCM acronym is misleading and wrong.

And this goes to our point that as we continue to move forward in the WCM space, maybe we really need to think less about WCM as the only way to categorize a product/solution/platform and start thinking tag lines like "Web Publishing Framework", "Integrated Online Marketing", "Content Creation and Management". Are we caught up in trying to define a market that is changing so rapidly that it really defies definition?

While there's no clear answer and no wonderful acronyms jostling to replace WCM, it is an area in which we're sure to see more stress fractures as 2010 unfolds.

Integration of Web Analytics

On the presentation side of WCM, the need to provide increasingly engaging and profitable user experiences has come to the fore, and with it the need to analyze behaviors and optimally target content. Some Web CMS vendors see directly integrated analytics as the best way to do this.