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

Pitfall 12: Not preparing for content change

Best Practice:

Anticipate future content changes in your site architecture.

When people find publishing easier, they will often generate more content. That can be a good thing if you've put in place a solid quality-control scheme. Just make sure your systems will scale for it.

Alternatively, you may need to be able to adapt and modify existing content very quickly to meet customer demands.

One system that can get stressed right away is the site information architecture and navigation scheme. New types of content, heavier volumes of content, or new emphases can tilt the balance of the visitor experience away from ease of use towards clutter and confusion.

Debrief your content and marketing specialists during the prototyping phase to anticipate and address future information flows -- not just current information needs.

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.

Pitfall 10: Looking solely at the product and not enough at the vendor. Read the details of Pitfall 10 here.

Pitfall 11: Missing or underestimating internal change management issues. Read the details of Pitfall 11 here.

I hope you found these pitfalls helpful. What did we miss?