Twelve Common Pitfalls to Avoid (and Best Practices to Follow) When Embarking on a Web Content and Experience Management Project

Pitfall 10: Looking solely at the product and not enough at the vendor

Best Practice:

Perform as much due diligence on the vendor company as you do their product.

When you purchase software, at some level you are "marrying" your Web CMS software vendor. Companies, like people, have personalities, and software companies often have strong personalities. Understand how your prospective vendor generally behaves, because you are going to be living with them for at least several years. How do they treat their user group(s)? How can smaller customers get attention? How many mergers have they experienced in the past three years (a predictor of internal disarray)?

Moreover, you may be working very closely with their professional services and support staff. Do they mesh well with your team? That chemistry alone could well have a greater impact on the success of your project than the suitability of the product.

Pitfall 1: Selecting a Web CMS package before developing solid requirements and a business case. Read the details of Pitfall 1 here.

Pitfall 2: Not getting a clear mandate from the top. Read the details of Pitfall 2 here.

Pitfall 3: Thinking a web content management package will provide a full CMS solution. Read the details of Pitfall 3 here.

Pitfall 4: Not involving internal Web CXM stakeholders from the very beginning. Read the details of Pitfall 4 here.

Pitfall 5: Involving only internal stakeholders. Read the details of Pitfall 5 here.

Pitfall 6: Spending insufficient effort describing and organizing content, and underestimating migration times. Read the details of Pitfall 6 here.

Pitfall 7: Picking a CMS package that doesn't play well with other company applications. Read the details of Pitfall 7 here.

Pitfall 8: Underestimating hardware needs. Read the details of Pitfall 8 here.

Pitfall 9: Underestimating integration and other professional service needs. Read the details of Pitfall 9 here.

Pitfalls 11-12: Coming soon...