Choosing a content management system (CMS) is one of the biggest decisions a news media company has to make, yet it is a decision that has become increasingly difficult as publishers look for a system that meets all their needs.

The growing array of needs brought by technological advancements means publishers have more to consider than in the past and, at the same time, it’s important to keep future demands in mind as well. 

During the CMS Project Town Hall on Wednesday, Jodie Hopperton, INMA’s Product Initiative lead, introduced a new joint project between INMA and Google News Initiative (GNI) to help make CMS selection easier. The project resulted in developing the CMS Vendor Selection Tool, and this week’s Town Hall aligned with the release of the INMA report, How News Media Companies Should Choose a CMS.  

In that report, Hopperton provides a step-by-step guide to selecting a CMS vendor, and she began the meeting by taking a poll of how members felt about their current CMS. Half of the respondents said it could be improved, and the other half ranged from “needs changing ASAP” to “love it!”

Creating the CMS selection process

INMA and GNI implemented a three-step process that began with identifying publisher needs, Hopperton said. After many one-on-one interviews to better understand those needs, they developed a vendor analysis using a detailed questionnaire, demonstration, and customer references. As a final step, INMA and GNI created an interactive tool that allows publishers to access a shortlist of potential vendors.

Hopperton made it clear that the selections are unbiased and the research into the vendors was carried out by a third party: “This is not a certification or a recommendation service,” she said. “The vendors are ones that have come up time and time again in our research with our publishers.”

GNI became interested in doing such a project because it continuously heard publishers complain about their CMS not performing or meeting their needs, Justin Kosslyn, director/product management at Google, explained: “There’s so many options out there. It’s so hard to sift through the pros and cons. And there’s no objective third-party standard to look at to help triage and do a shortlist that [publishers] can more deeply analyse.”

With the release of the CMS Vendor Selection Tool, INMA and GNI have streamlined a complicated process and provide “concrete, clear, pros and cons for CMSs,” Kosslyn said.

“There’s an objective statement that publishers can read and understand, at a glance, is this a fit for me? How does this align with my needs? We’re just excited to get this in the hands of publishers and to hopefully start being useful.”

Part of the GNI story

This project fits well with GNI’s mission to work with news organisations around the world, Robbie Brown, lead/news partnerships at Google, said. It also has a Labs Programme, which includes a six-part Fundamentals Lab that provides publishers with a Web site audit and recommendations of how they can improve their sites.

“It’s free if you’re selected, [and we] take you through a crash course in suggestions on how to attract more readers, keep them on your site longer, make more money off ads, make more money off reader revenue,” he said. “We really dive into the data behind our recommendations and prove to you the things that we are suggesting you do.”

GNI also offers a less exhaustive, free, online option in the form of on-demand lessons to learn some of the same kinds of information. The CMS Vendor Selection Tool fits well with other programmes developed to support publishers around the world.

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