Award Winning Websites

I'm gathering the Gold and Silver winning materials from the Paragon Awards from NCMPR National Council of Marketing and Public Relations. Came across the web-site submissions that got awards for 2008. Thought you'd like to see them...the gold winner was my favorite. The visuals are appealing, new, fresh..very in. Feels like you are in a blog website. --Micaela

Check them out...

GOLD: http://www.wccnet.edu/
SILVER: http://www.hacc.edu/ (check out student success stories: http://apps.hacc.edu/admit)
BRONZE: http://www.kwantlen.bc.ca/home.html

Article: The Top 12 Options for Web Content Management

Written by Steven Walling / August 11, 2009 1:05 PM / 3 Comments

« Prior Post

Readwriteweb.com

Gartner has published its Magic Quadrant for Web content management in 2009, to help CIOs and IT decide just what will meet the needs of the enterprise. Web software is now the fastest growing sector of the enterprise content management market, according to Gartner, and was valued at more $3.3 billion last year.

This annual report identifies the leaders in the industry. We've picked out the top dozen vendors aimed at enterprise content management on the Web. Here are their strengths and weaknesses, to let you get a handle on what's best for your business.

Leaders

While there's some overlap with generally popular offerings — Drupal-based solutions and open source are getting more attention than ever — most of the top dogs in ECM on the Web are specialist vendors who focus solely on the needs of enterprise. Gartner's choices for who fits inside the Magic Quadrant bear this out.

Oracle remains one of the biggest players in this area, despite being better known in many circles for its databases. What really brought them on the scene was the acquisition of Stellent in 2007, and since then their strength has been integrating WCM into their wide-ranging offerings for content management.

Autonomy, which entered the sector through its acquisition of Interwoven this year, tends to appeal most strongly to the marketing side of WCM. While they offer an ability to deliver content that's highly targeted, WCM will continue to be a sideline in terms of profit. While Autonomy can deliver right now, they lack a detailed roadmap for the future of the product.

Open Text is one of the most well-known in this space, and is the top pure play vendor for content management. Despite a close partnership with Microsoft, Garner predicts that Open Text's top competitor will continue to be SharePoint and other .NET software packages.

SDL acquired Tridion in 2007, and since then has shown impressive growth. This is the result of solid capabilities in multilingual and multichannel content management, as well as robust SharePoint integration.

Challengers

While the three companies listed at challengers by Gartner hardly seem like underdogs, software from Microsoft, IBM, and EMC are increasing in importance very rapidly.

Microsoft's SharePoint is growing enormously in market share as a Web content management solution. In addition to feeding off the trust that the Microsoft name inspires in just about every CIO, one of the strengths of SharePoint compared to current leaders is the partner ecosystem that is growing rapidly, and how tightly integrated it can be with Microsoft's other products in e-commerce, Web analytics and search. Of course, as fast as it grows in WCM, SharePoint is hated for its weaknesses as an intranet and document sharing system.

IBM's greatest strength in content management is also its greatest weakness. The fact that Lotus WCM is vertically-focused and is closely integrated with the entire Websphere Portal makes it appealing to organizations who already use the portal. But for those who don't, Lotus seems lacking without the rest of IBM's system.

EMC has been slowly brewing its WCM capabilities since it acquired the fairly popular Documentum in 2003. EMC is especially good in the sense that it works with a broader ECM solution, and can do DAM and records management of Web content too. It's also shown some of the biggest improvements in its latest release, 6.5, through adding technology first used in X-Hive, an XML database and dynamic delivery environment.

Visionaries

A list of honorable mentions shows up in the Visionaries section of the Magic Quadrant. The label might sound fanciful, but most of these up-and-coming vendors are making a real name for themselves.

Sitecore is a Denmark-based company that's also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Their .NET CMS is unsurprisingly tied to Microsoft in a multitude of ways, which can be either a plus or a minus, depending on where your enterprise stands technologically.

FatWire Software has a Java software package that focuses on collaborative features and analytics, but suffers from what Gartner calls "costly" customization needs to make it play nice with related technologies.

Ektron is especially famous in the SMB market. Its CMS400.NET integrates relatively well with SharePoint Server.

Day Software sells software based on Java EE, and it's made strides in usability. Despite these improvements sales have lagged, and Gartner predicts that the partnerships with IBM and HP that this Swiss-based vendor has will decline in the future, weakening its position.

Clickability is a pure SaaS vendor in Web content management which is making progress with enterprises fed up with the costs of on-premise WCM, even if SaaS remains on shaky ground.

There are at least a dozen more vendors in enterprise-class Web content management who get short mentions in Gartner's report. Solutions such as Alfresco's open source software or Acquia's Drupal distribution might not warrant inclusion in any list of leaders yet, but they're making respectable gains. For a detailed account, be sure to read the full report.

Drupal/CMS Notes from June 2009 Meeting

Author: Phil Munroe

I wanted to follow up from the Drupal/CMS web meeting we had last month. I have created a web page (CMS Redesign) that briefly outlines the Drupal Content Management System.

On another note, there are at least a couple things I'd like to implement in the next two months, related to Google.

1) We need to include Google Analytics on ALL our pages. We currently have it enabled on some pages, but not all pages. This would enable us to better observe traffic flow throughout our site, as well as complement other statistics that we are able to gather.

2) I am looking at replacing our "Google Syndicated Search" with "Google Custom Search". The Syndicated Search, while still working, is deprecated and is not actively supported by Google. Custom Search is essentially its replacement. It also gives us a little better control of how it searches our site, including a Dashboard for managing the Custom Search.

There are no costs to to our college for either of these Google services. If you have comments or questions about something mentioned here, feel free to reply-all, or contact me directly.

Thanks,
Phil

Google Analytics

Author: Phil Munroe

Google Analytics (GA) can provide traffic flow, from total number of visits, pages per visit, average time on our website, and much more. It is based on a small piece of Javascript (smaller than many scripts we may use ourselves), and therefore has no impact to our own servers—only client side. The current tracking code is 18K in size, and is cached on subsequent page loads. It is apparently fail-safe, as if there is a GA Javascript error, it will not cause the page to hang, and it's also the last piece of code to be loaded on any page.

GA also tracks browsers, browser version, operating system, and IP addresses, but goes beyond what is capable in processing raw server logs, such as being able to detect screen depth (colors), resolutions, Flash versions, movement throughout the site, connection speeds, detect if a visitor is a new or return visitor, detect bounce rate (where someone visits one page and leaves, but doesn't visit any other pages), and more. Enabling it sitewide will be much simpler, as any page can be viewed at will from the Dashboard. GA also has the ability to perform automatic A/B Split and Multivariable testing to allow reporting of which "version" of a page is performing better.

It is better to consider GA as a tool for measuring trends, rather than raw numbers, as GA only collects data if Javascript, images, and cookies are enabled in the client's browser. GA is free, and is capable of providing much more than I've been able to monitor using AWStats. And it's free. Many of our colleges are using GA on the home page.

Google also provides all these statistics in a customizable dashboard style format, with draggable blocks to show the statistics that are most important. Stats are generally available a few hours past real-time. In any case, GA is a tool that can supplement other data sources.

http://www.google.com/analytics/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics
GA vs Server Logs comparison

2008-09 Media Preferences Survey Data for WEB

Phoenix College participated in the Media Preferences Survey along with 93 colleges across the nation. Below are the results from all students in regards to web sites.

Lots of Color:
It's OK 42%
Like it 30%

Lots of Things to Look At:
It's OK 42%
Like It 24%

Lots of White Space
It's Not OK 30%
It's OK 28%
Dislike It 22%
Hate It 12%

Different Type Styles and Sizes
It's OK 42%
Like It 21%
It's Not OK 12%

Lots of Text in Paragraphs
It's OK 38%
It's Not OK 22%
Dislike It 18%

Navigation Throughout Page
Like It 38%
It's OK 32%
Love It 18%

Nav Shrtcts Deep into Site
It's OK 32%
Like It 28%
Love It 18%

Site "Sticks" to LH Side Window
It's Ok 38%
It's Not OK 20%
Dislike It 13%
Like It 12%

Website "Floats" in Mid of Window
It's OK 35%
It's Not Ok 22%
Dislike and like =

Photos/Graphics of Students
It's OK 50%
Like It 25%
Love It 13%

Photos/Graphics of Campus
It's Ok 38%
Like It 38%
Love It 22%

Photos/Graphics of the Faculty
It's Ok 45%
Like It 30%
Love It 15%

Photos/Graphics that Change
It's OK 42%
Like It 32%
Love It 28%

Pages W/Out Photos/Graphics
It's OK 35%
It's Not Ok 23%
Dislke It 20%
Hate It 15%

Flash Animation
It's OK 48%
Like It 20%
It's Not Ok 12%

Lots to Click On/Do
It's OK 48%
Like It 25%

Lots Diff. Topics to Read
It's OK 42%
Like It 35%

Games
It's OK 35%
All Other =

Podcasts or Vodcasts
It's OK 45%
Like It 22%

Good Internal Search Engine
Love It 45%
Like It 37%
It's OK 23%

Pgs w/Clickable Links, No Content
It's OK 38%
Like It 28%
Love It 22%

Content Updated Daily
Love It 42%
Like It 32%
It's OK 22%

Content Updated Weekly
Like It 39%
It's OK 38%

Content Updated Monthly
It's OK 32%
It's Not OK 23%
Like It 12%

Unique Site Just for Current Students
It's OK 32%
Like It 33%
Love It 25%

College News Blog
It's OK 42%
Like It 28%
Love It 19%

Videos About Programs
It's OK 40%
Like It 28%
Love It 20%

Video Campus Tour
It's OK 32%
Like It 32%
Love It 28%

Register Online
Love It 67%
Like It 20%
It's OK 12%
Hate/Dislike/Not OK 1%

Pay Fees Online
Love It 67%
Like It 18%
It's Ok 12

Ability to Buy Books Online
Love It 58%
Like It 22%
It's OK 17%

Online Advising/Counseling
Love It 39%
Like It 22%
It's OK 23%
It's Not OK 8%

Free Email from College
Love It 47%
Like It 25%
It's OK 22%

Ability to Download College Forms
Love It 60%
Like It 22%
It's OK 12%

Download Mtrls from Library
Love It 63%
Like It 22%
It's OK 15%

Take Class Online
Love It 55%
Like It 18%
It's OK 20%

How Often Visit Favorite Fun Website
Always 45%
Often 32%
Sometimes 15%

How Often Visit Favorite Info Website
Always 48%
Often 38%
Sometimes 12%

Gas Prices-How Affected in General
Very Affected 41%
Affected 31%
Some Affect 19%

Gas Prices - How Affected College Experience
Somewhat 28%
Frequently 22%
All the Time 18%
Not At All 18%
Rarely 14%

Gas Prices - Likely to Take Online Courses
Very Likely 24%
Somewhat Likely 18%
Likely 15%
Not At All 16%
Unlikely and Somewhat Unlikely 24%