Content MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS)

In the not-so-distant past, developing a website, maintaining it, and improving it was a job for advanced coders and engineers. This process was often slow, complicated and drained corporate resources, and for companies whose livelihood depended on daily or hourly news updates, this reality proved costly, undesirable and - for some - unsustainable.

Now if necessity is the father of invention then inconvenience is surely its mother. From the pain points of this labor intensive process came an industry-altering innovation. Today, websites can be easily managed and updated thanks to the power of a content management system (CMS). Anyone from journalists to marketers can manage website content without learning to code! In fact, as of 2021, only 36% of websites are hand-coded. This signifies a 56% decrease from a mere ten years ago (in 2011) when the vast majority of websites were, in fact, hand-coded. Let’s explore the importance of a CMS, and why, especially in our digital age, it's crucial to businesses.

A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management). Within a CMS, the user can find a library of helpful tools such as templates, extensions, and widgets to create an organized, functional and visually pleasing website. Most content management systems have the ability to host websites as well, therefore providing a full service experience that includes: an easy way to set up a domain, the services to enhance search engine optimization, and the capability to execute social postings and advertising efforts. In other words, a CMS enables a user to easily create and manage website content without the need of advanced coding skills.

How can a cms work for you?

If you’re not using a CMS, you are likely hand-coding, utilizing CSS and Javascript to create elements on the website. However, if you’re using a CMS, website design becomes as easy as drag and drop. You simply pull features (like buttons, images, etc.) onto the page without the need to write (seemingly) endless code to create designs and make tasks actionable. As users shift content blocks, add videos and create interactive features, the CMS handles the coding of these demands seamlessly, behind the scenes.

Using a CMS streamlines your whole editorial and marketing process. As discussed, it eases the heavy lift of hand-coding an entire website and can bring additional functions and capabilities. Here are a few of the key advantages for publishers:

SEO: search engines have strict criteria when it comes to the pages they’ll present in response to a query and where they’ll rank in the results. A good CMS has Search Engine Optimization built-in to optimize your features and content to boost search ranking.
Extensions & Plugins: A CMS simplifies the process of layering in key marketing tools such as surveys, forms, ad tracking code, videos, etc. There are even web-specific plugins to add some cool features to your website!
Collaboration: The CMS allows you to set up multiple users with permission to access the website. This means that they can make updates to your website at the same time without causing any issues.
Templates: The beautiful thing about a CMS is the flexibility it gives users. Most feature an entire suite of predesigned templates tailored to your field or web goals. Looking to build an e-commerce store? You can choose templates specifically designed for checkout. The templates themselves can be edited or customized to support your brand.
Cost-Effective: Website maintenance without a CMS can get very costly. If your website management requires a developer for every change or update, costs can add up quickly – not to mention the delays experienced when waiting for changes to go live. Investing in a content management system can save both time and money.
Security: The threat of being hacked is real and can be especially costly for an e-commerce site. A CMS can provide additional security via plug-ins and extensions. Additionally, a CMS goes through rigorous testing by developers in an effort to reduce threats to the person or business utilizing the platform.
Content Management: As the name suggests, a CMS is all about streamlining the editorial flow and managing the constant updates to images, videos, and web pages. Upload an article, unpublish it to make a quick edit, and restore it: all actions that are now possible with just a few clicks.

As great as a CMS can be for managing the editorial and content side of a business, many content management systems are not set up with monetization in mind. This stems from the age-old church-and-state division media companies have maintained between editorial and ad sales to assure journalistic integrity. Having this dichotomy translated into technology creates friction that hampers the consumer experience, impacts ad quality, and requires publishers to spend more time troubleshooting than content creation. The biggest issues:

Bad Design: Sites optimized for content can result in ad placements that pile up in one spot or even block content. Ugly sites don’t bring users back for more.
Latency: Poorly designed pages that have poor integration with ad tech tend to get heavy and load slowly—this makes for a bad consumer experience which, of course, impacts both the advertiser and publisher.
High Bounce Rates: Studies show that most users won’t wait more than two seconds for a page to load before they simply click away to a new site. Two seconds is shorter than the time it took you to read that last sentence.
Under-Monetization: Poorly designed ad placements don’t work for consumers, so they don’t work for advertisers either. Continually low ad performance leads to fewer bids and less revenue.

How Your CMS Can Support Adtech Integrations

Advertising revenue is a central part of most publishers' revenue-generating models. Despite popular belief, a brand’s CMS and ad tech plugins can co-exist and even complement each other. Publishers who’ve brought these systems closer together have experienced the following:

Improved User Experiences: Consumers will increase their average time spent on site, and as a result, site viewability will improve dramatically.
Enhanced Search Rankings: Search engines favor faster-loading sites with a better UI which leads to higher rankings and more clicks.
Increased Revenue: The right solution eliminates the need for plugins or outside vendors, providing improved monetization and efficiency.
A Return To What They Do Best: With fewer CMS headaches, publishers can invest more where it matters—bringing in more talent, introducing new site features, and measuring customer experience and yield more holistically.

Sounds too good to miss, right? Before you begin to integrate your CMS and ad tech, take a quick CMS Fitness Test to target key areas that need improvement:

How many third parties are plugged into your page? Think about which technologies and partnerships will change once third-party cookies and mobile IDs are gone. Make a list of partners to talk to about new solutions that are future-proof and more efficient.

How many companies are bidding on each individual ad your site serves? Think about how this is affecting your site performance by creating site load lags and ad timeouts.

Who is taking a bite out of your earnings? Pinpoint the source of your demand and determine where you can shorten the supply path to increase ROI and build closer relationships with buyers.

How hard is it to configure custom ad experiences for your advertisers? Ideally, you should be able to create customizable pages that are beautiful, fast loading and contextual.

What are your options for improvement and growth? Do a “build or buy” comparison. Is it more efficient to build your own CMS or buy one that’s turnkey.

That last hurdle is a crucial one. Building from scratch is a big, expensive undertaking that takes time and money up front and requires a staff and budget to keep it updated with fast-moving innovations. This is the primary reason why the publishing industry continues to try to force their CMS and ad tech to get along.

Kargo has stepped up to the challenge and delivered. With our proven expertise in both publishing and advertising, we created Fabrik, the first CMS built to serve publishers, advertisers, and consumers equally. It’s currently in beta with several publishers in place, and we’ll be sharing more about its efficacy in the months ahead. In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more, give us a shout.

Content MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS)

How can a cms work for you?

How Your CMS Can Support Adtech Integrations

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