Putting things straight
Tom Beverley (Digital Marketing Director), Chris Lewis (Dev Team Lead)
10th May 2011
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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
Us
Tom Beverley Chris Lewis
• Digital and Customer
Marketing Director
• Thomas.beverley6@googlemail
.com
• Twitter: tombev
• Dev Team Lead
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
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
Why did we bother with a CMS?
• Critical tool for digital, content and eCRMmarketing…
• Giving all our marketers the power to easily publish pages in a controllable, auditable and robust fashion
Let developers develop and web producers produce
Channel based landing page strategy
• Five to ten landing pages per product. Maximum
• Ability to A/B test and optimise pages limited due to process and IT resource constraints
• Random oddities in design
• Hard to track workflow
• Compliance tracking nightmare
Before Sitecore / a bad or no CMS
• Car insurance over 200 landing pages, channel and campaign specific
• Ability to A/B test much improved as simple to roll out new pages
• Robust design
• Simple, auditable workflows
• Simple compliance changes, change copy once and publish across 100s of pages
With Sitecore / a good CMS
Hugely transformational for SEO…
ANNUITIES SEO PAGEFLOWVersion 0.1
Direct to siteSEO annuities
AN01SEO landing page/annuities
AN1.3.nProviders pages
AN1.1Guide landing page/annuities/guides
AN1.2Annuities FAQ/annuities/FAQ
AN1.1.2Guide #2/annuities/guides/XXX
AN1.1.4Guide #4/annuities/guides/XXX
AN1.1.nGuide n/annuities/guides/n
AN1.1.1Guide #1/annuities/guides/what-is-an-annuity?
AN1.1.3Guide #3/annuities/guides/XXX
AN1.1.1Guide #5/annuities/guides/XXX
AN1.0Compare (quote)Annuity.confused.com
AN1.3Annuities providers/annuities/providers
AN2.nSpecialist keyword landing pages (types of annuity)/annuities/specialist
These will be prioritised by keywordAnd all share IA below
AN1.4Retirement options/annuities/retirement-options
AN1.5Annuities glossary/annuities/glossary
AN1.6Case studies/annuities/case-studies
AN1.7News/annuities/news
• Annuities site map – 30 to 40 pages…
• … five different page templates
• Two man days to build site and upload content
… 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
Content site of critical importance to
eCRM, SEO and content marketing
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
Why we thought we had a problem
A web content management (WCM) system is a CMS designed to simplifythe 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
Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
1. Hard to create or change content.
Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
2. Hard to re-use content.
Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
3. IT have “hacked” it – upgrade path blocked.
Automated ValidationSEO ToolingWorkflow ManagementCollaborationWeb Standards UpgradesScalable ExpansionDocument ManagementContent Syndication (e.g. RSS, Atom, Email)Multi LanguagesVersioningMulti-Variant TestingUser TrackingPersonalisation
Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
4. Editors share admin login – auditing impossible.
Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
5. “User access wars”.
Why we thought we had a problem
Features of a “bad” CMS implementation
6. Poor automated validation.
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
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)
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
What we’re currently working on
CMS Migration Project
Project kick off – Oct 2010
Release 1 –Confused
Corporate Site (18th Jan 2011)
Release 2 –Confused
Provider Pages (10th Feb 2011)
Release 3 –Confused
Landing Pages (23rd March
2011)
Release 4 –Confused
Content Site (ETA - End May)
Release 5 –Confused
Homepage and miscellaneous
(TBC)
What we’re currently working on
*All new pages created entirely be editors – zero IT involvement.*
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)
What we’re currently working on
Measuring benefits
• Productivity
• SEO trends
• Throughput
• Flexibility
• Cost
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
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
Successes and Lessons Learned
Challenges
! Sticking to platform’s best practices.
! Resisting urge for complicated workflows.
! Release & Config Management.
! Automated testing.
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).
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
Future Plans
Community / User Engagement
MVT
Personalising User Experience
Mobile
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
Q & A
Any Questions?
Q & A
http://bit.ly/kxBeUA
@Confused_com
If you have questions don’t be shy!
Come to stand E6040 for a chat.
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Join the conversation on twitter #IW_EXPO
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