Confused CMS Presentation - Internet World London 2011 #iwexpo. Delivered on behalf of Sitecore UK http://www.sitecore.net/unitedkingdom/Company/News/NewsAndEvents/2011/05/Internet-World-2011-London.aspx

1. Putting things straight
Tom Beverley (Digital Marketing Director),
Chris Lewis (Dev Team Lead)
10th May 2011
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2. Agenda
•
Introduction
•
Times we’ve felt we needed a CMS
•
CMS and digital marketing
•
Why we thought we had a problem
•
What we’re currently working on
•
Successes and Lessons Learned
•
Future plans
•
Q&A

3. Us
Tom Beverley
•
•
•
Digital and Customer
Marketing Director
Thomas.beverley6@googlemail
.com
Twitter: tombev
Chris Lewis
•
•
Dev Team Lead
Chris.Lewis@confused.com

4. Confused.com
• Pure play digital…
• … but huge ATL marketing spend (c£3m / month)
• Digital, eCRM and content channels increasingly
important
• 20+ products (not just car insurance)
• Microsoft technology stack

5. Agenda
•
Introduction
•
Times we’ve felt we needed a CMS
•
CMS and marketing
•
Why we thought we had a problem
•
What we’re currently working on
•
Successes and Lessons Learned
•
Future plans
•
Q&A

6. Why did we bother with a CMS?
• Critical tool for digital, content and eCRM
marketing…
• Giving all our marketers the power to easily
publish pages in a controllable, auditable and
robust fashion
Let developers develop and web producers produce

7. Channel based landing page strategy
Before Sitecore / a bad or no
CMS
•
Five to ten landing pages per
product. Maximum
•
With Sitecore / a good CMS
•
Car insurance over 200 landing
pages, channel and campaign
specific
Ability to A/B test and optimise
pages limited due to process and
IT resource constraints
•
Ability to A/B test much improved
as simple to roll out new pages
•
Random oddities in design
•
Robust design
•
Hard to track workflow
•
Simple, auditable workflows
•
Compliance tracking nightmare
•
Simple compliance changes,
change copy once and publish
across 100s of pages

8. Hugely transformational for SEO…
ANNUITIES SEO PAGEFLOW
Version 0.1
Direct to site
SEO annuities
AN01
SEO landing page
/annuities
AN2.n
Specialist keyword landing
pages (types of annuity)
/annuities/specialist
• Annuities site
map – 30 to 40
pages…
These will be prioritised by keyword
And all share IA below
AN1.0
Compare (quote)
Annuity.confused.com
AN1.1
Guide landing page
/annuities/guides
AN1.2
Annuities FAQ
/annuities/FAQ
AN1.1.1
Guide #1
/annuities/guides/wh
at-is-an-annuity?
AN1.1.2
Guide #2
/annuities/guides/XX
X
AN1.1.3
Guide #3
/annuities/guides/XX
X
AN1.1.4
Guide #4
/annuities/guides/XX
X
AN1.1.1
Guide #5
/annuities/guides/XX
X
AN1.1.n
Guide n
/annuities/guides/n
AN1.3
Annuities providers
/annuities/providers
AN1.3.n
Providers pages
AN1.4
Retirement options
/annuities/retireme
nt-options
AN1.5
Annuities glossary
/annuities/glossary
AN1.6
Case studies
/annuities/casestudies
AN1.7
News
/annuities/news
• … five different
page templates
• Two man days
to build site
and upload
content

9. … and PPC in just two months
Rapid ability to build out 100s of keyword relevant landing pages
in days not weeks  10% to 35% decreases in bounce rates

10. Content site of critical importance to
eCRM, SEO and content marketing

11. Agenda
•
Introduction
•
Times we’ve felt we needed a CMS
•
CMS and digital marketing
•
Why we thought we had a problem
•
What we’re currently working on
•
Successes and Lessons Learned
•
Future plans
•
Q&A

12. Why we thought we had a problem
A web content management (WCM) system is a CMS designed to simplify
the publication of web content to web sites and mobile devices — in
particular, allowing content creators to create, submit and manage content
without requiring technical knowledge of any Web Programming Languages
or Markup Languages such as HTML or the uploading of files.
Source: Wikipedia

13. Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
1. Hard to create or change content.

14. Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
2. Hard to re-use content.

15. Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
3. IT have “hacked” it – upgrade path blocked.
Automated Validation
SEO Tooling
Workflow Management
Collaboration
Web Standards Upgrades
Scalable Expansion
Document Management
Content Syndication (e.g. RSS, Atom, Email)
Multi Languages
Versioning
Multi-Variant Testing
User Tracking
Personalisation

16. Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
4. Editors share admin login – auditing impossible.

17. Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
5. “User access wars”.

18. Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
6. Poor automated validation.

19. Why we thought we had a problem
What makes a good CMS implementation?
1. Users doing what they should
2. High degree of Content Re-use
3. Rich native feature-set
4. Intuitive user experiences
5. System can grow with you
6. Good project management

20. Why we thought we had a problem
What did we do?
We knew we had a problem (Sep 2009)
We examined our options
We chose a new platform
We trained our developers
We ran a proof of concept (H1 2010)

21. Agenda
•
Introduction
•
Times we’ve felt we needed a CMS
•
CMS and digital marketing
•
Why we thought we had a problem
•
What we’re currently working on
•
Successes and Lessons Learned
•
Future plans
•
Q&A

22. What we’re currently working on
CMS Migration Project
Release 2 –
Confused
Provider Pages
(10th Feb 2011)
Project kick off
– Oct 2010
Release 1 –
Confused
Corporate Site
(18th Jan 2011)
Release 4 –
Confused
Content Site
(ETA - End May)
Release 3 –
Confused
Landing Pages
(23rd March
2011)
Release 5 –
Confused
Homepage and
miscellaneous
(TBC)

23. What we’re currently working on
*All new pages created
entirely be editors – zero IT
involvement.*

24. What we’re currently working on
Progress
• 7 Months in…
• Work to switch off legacy CMS 75% complete
• 9 developer sprints (69 man weeks*)
• 366 pages now live (2.6m hits per month*)
• ~4000 articles due end of month (5m hits per month**)
* Full time staff (excludes 13 contractor weeks)
** Based on analysing 4 days traffic (16th - 19th April)

25. What we’re currently working on
Measuring benefits
• Productivity
• SEO trends
• Throughput
• Flexibility
• Cost

26. Agenda
•
Introduction
•
Times we’ve felt we needed a CMS
•
CMS and digital marketing
•
Why we thought we had a problem
•
What we’re currently working on
•
Successes and Lessons Learned
•
Future plans
•
Q&A

27. Successes and Lessons Learned
Successes so far
 Page publication productivity
 IT drastically less involved
 SEO implications*
 Mass content migration from legacy system
 White-labeling
 Release automation

28. Successes and Lessons Learned
Challenges
! Sticking to platform’s best practices.
! Resisting urge for complicated workflows.
! Release & Config Management.
! Automated testing.

29. Successes and Lessons Learned
Lessons Learned
o Choose the right people.
o Choose the right parts of your site.
o Choose the right platform.
o Invest time (POC, Training, Testing).

30. Agenda
•
Introduction
•
Times we’ve felt we needed a CMS
•
CMS and digital marketing
•
Why we thought we had a problem
•
What we’re currently working on
•
Successes and Lessons Learned
•
Future plans
•
Q&A

31. Future Plans
Community /
User Engagement
MVT
Personalising
User Experience
Mobile

32. Agenda
•
Introduction
•
Times we’ve felt we needed a CMS
•
CMS and digital marketing
•
Why we thought we had a problem
•
What we’re currently working on
•
Successes and Lessons Learned
•
Future plans
•
Q&A

33. Q&A
Any Questions?

34. Q&A
http://bit.ly/kxBeUA
@Confused_com

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If you have questions don’t be shy!
Come to stand E6040 for a chat.
Join the conversation on twitter #IW_EXPO