FRONT - A Strategy, Design and Technology Studio

We’re doing some research into the user experience of content management systems, so if you’ve ever been involved in managing a website, we’d love to get your insight.

Click here to take the short survey!

Everybody wants to talk about social networking, and building relationships, and rich experiences…but what are we talking about? Probably an imageContent, she says, is just not sexy. It is rare to find a client, or company, or anybody who has a solid understanding that producing and governing content is complex and requires attention from day 1 of your project.

Content, content, content - not a “thing” you throw into your project late in the day, or something you can ignore completely, but definitely something you can plan for, produce repeatedly and use to build trust with the people who use your products and services. If I could teleport all of our wonderful (love you guys!) clients to one talk at Web 2.0 Expo, this would be the talk.

The news industry (in case you haven’t heard) is in crisis. Unlike most crises, this one has been dragging on a bit. For 20 years, newspapers have been struggling to come to terms with realities of online publishing and the snatching of advertising revenue from under their noses. Where once there was the printing press, now there is WordPress. Where once there were the classifieds, now there is Craigslist.

Deal With It

News outlets have been coming to terms with the digital age, in their own way, on their on time. Some titles are still on denial, anger - this isn’t happening, there’s no money to be made on the internet, try our new printed supplement paid for by the three advertisers we have left. Some have passed through into bargaining and depression - give us more time, our new website looks just like our printed paper, we hate ourselves.

Others, like the Guardian and the New York Times have managed to suck it up, climb out of bed and move on. How are they doing this? By accepting that the internet isn’t going away, and by applying a 200 year old business model - find the story, tell it in a compelling way, syndicate it efficiently, and charge for commercial usage.