Late last month, CMSWiRE published an article by Dom Nicastro titled, "Discussion Point: What Frustrates You About Your Web CMS?" In it, Nicastro asks three different digital agencies what frustrates people about their web content management system? The answers sounded all too familiar to us.
Robert Mohns, lead strategist at agency imarc, works with several different web CMS platforms. Mohns says plainly, "Most CMS's are not design-friendly." He highlights the scarcity of simple styling tools, lack of live previews, and almost-never-seen auto-save functionality. In his experience, workflow and efficiency appear to have been afterthoughts, or at least not very well thought out.
Next up, Lisa Beaudoin from Perfect Sense. Ms. Beaudoin co-founded her agency and has worked on the design-side for many years. She graduated from the Parsons School of Design, for goodness sake. In the article, that design esprit shows through, as Beaudoin laments the limitations and constraints with which designers struggle as they labor to give life to their creative vision, only to be stymied by the software in which they must work. "After all," says Beaudoin, "the most frustrating thing about any platform is when it gets in the way of doing great work."
Last (but certainly not least) to appear in the article is James A. Gardner from Connective DX (formerly ISITE Design). Now, Mr. Gardner might be a "sales guy", but he knows his way around marketing, digital experience and software. And because he's on the client side, he hears any client complaints first and loudest. Gardner reminds us that technology is but one of seven organizational competencies required for digital experience success. His comments resonate with our research findings (see link, below) on the gaps in people, processes and technologies and their effects on customer experience.
The article is a good read...especially if you're a web CMS product manager. For additional insights into the limitations of modern web CMS and customer experience platforms, my most recent CMSWiRE article would make a good follow-on read.
