Content Management System blog

From Carla @ Altersage:

There is a definite link between website usability and customer satisfaction, especially for e-commerce websites.

When customer satisfaction converts to customer loyalty, one can assume there is going to be a long-term relationship between the business and customer, providing the level of service stays the same. So if this is true, have you ever considered to what extent usability influences customer loyalty?

Essentially satisfaction and ease-of-use will ensure repeat customers for your website and positive word-of-mouth. Usability can be explained as the quality of a user’s experience when interacting with a website. Your website’s usability score can be measured through the System Usability Scale (SUS), a questionnaire that determines how well an interface serves its users. The questionnaire comprises 10 questions and yields a score in the range of 0 – 100. According to Wikipedia the measurement of usability focuses on:

- Effectiveness: Can users successfully achieve their objectives?
- Efficiency: How much effort is expended in achieving those objectives?
- Satisfaction: Was the experience satisfactory?

Positive word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools and it is generated based on your customer’s brand experience. The customer experience can either be in-store, face-to-face, over the telephone or on your website. Since there are so many customer-brand touch points it is important to cover all your bases.

As part of your web strategy a goal can be to increase leads and sales through your website but, that being said, it is important to not focus purely on making the sale. Repeat customers contribute to the success of many businesses therefore it is important to attract visitors to your website, provide them with what they are looking for quickly and easily and make the experience memorable so that they will come back and tell others about their experience.

Some usability factors that can influence a user’s experience include:

- Page load time
- The website’s overall look and feel
- Easy navigation
- Informative content

Read more in Why You Should Invest in Good Development.

Contact information:
FormFunction
The Studio
7 Anemone Road
Cape Town
8001

 Tel: 021 462 0036

www.altersage.com

 

Filed under: Uncategorized  |   Tagged under development, Website design | 1 Comment »

TimeOut family magazines were looking to implement tailored web content management solutions for their business. The project required the integration of TimeOut’s pre-existing K4 Publishing System used for the print versions of their magazines with the power and versatility of Drupal content management systems for web publishing.

The solution would require a K4-to-Drupal Integration Module. Prior to the K4-to-Drupal module, companies that used K4 needed to go through time consuming and error prone processes in order to get the editorial content into their web content management system. Modernizing and simplifying these processes was the primary objective of the project.

January, 2010 – databasepublish.com: Content management is an important part of publishing and there are oftentimes difficulties transferring information efficiently among systems designed for paper publication and systems designed for printing to the Web. Many companies resolve data transfer problems by employing designated personnel whose sole responsibility is to copy and paste the content to the Web.

Although the K4 Publishing System is a powerful editorial workflow management solution that is robust and versatile for producing print publications, TimeOut required that it work seamlessly with Drupal.

Drupal content management systems are well known for their ability to streamline web publishing practices. They provide web content management solutions for organizations in an open-source format that is easy-to-use, which makes web content management processes accessible to non-technical personnel.

TimeOut family magazines, which include TimeOut New York, TimeOut Kids, TimeOut Chicago, and TimeOut Worldwide had been using the K4 Publishing System to produce the print versions of the magazines for several years. TimeOut wanted to redesign its website using the Drupal content management systems. The company also wanted to directly connect the K4 Publishing System to the Drupal CMS in order to arrive at a sustainable and more effectual web content management solution.

There was a clear opportunity for TimeOut to gain additional efficiency if it could leverage the power of both systems. Both K4 and Drupal CMS are excellent tools; however, a more efficient integrated solution would require a K4-to-Drupal module to act as a bridge between the two.

TimeOut hired DPCI to implement the K4-to-Drupal module that DPCI had created. DPCI is a content management system consulting business that implements web content management solutions for a wide range of organizations.

By integrating K4 with Drupal CMS the editors at TimeOut were able to publish semantically enriched editorial content directly to designated sections within Drupal. The K4-to-Drupal module leveraged the strength of K4 for content development and allowed for rapid release of articles and images from K4 to Drupal CMS.

The K4-to-Drupal Integration Module permits users to tag articles with keywords and key phrases in order to improve search engine efficiency and effectiveness. The website’s value is increased by having the actual content experts enriching and managing the metadata. In addition, the K4-to-Drupal module supports multiple concurrent workflows, reduces keystroke errors, and saves time.

The strength of the K4 Publishing System and the versatility of Drupal content management systems have been brought together into an integrated solution to improve TimeOut’s print-to-web workflow.

The K4-to-Durpal module, designed by DPCI is incredibly versatile allowing users to generate titles, URLs, meta-data, keywords, category, body copy, images and sub headings while in the K4 environment and it seamlessly generates into Drupal. In addition to the module capabilities implemented for TimeOut’s requirements, the K4-to-Drupal module may be customized further using a programming language (XSLT) to fit particular publisher needs. In short, the K4-to-Drupal module makes the Drupal CMS a seamless extension of the K4 Publishing System.

About DPCI: DPCI understands how to create competitive advantages in the marketplace by implementing and tailoring drupal content management systems. For the past 10 years, DPCI has acquired the professional and technical experience necessary for consulting, customizing and implementing web content management systems such as Drupal CMS.

Filed under: Uncategorized  |   Tagged under Drupal, Drupal Integration Module, K4, Publishing solutions | 1 Comment »

From the Joomla.org.za website.

In February 2010 it is time for the Community Oversight Committee (COC) to elect new members for OSM Board of Directors.

During the years this process always been done without community interaction. For this upcoming election we would like to change that.

We acknowledge that the greater world wide joomla! community for sure could help us a lot in this election process, and make us aware of potential candidates we may overlook. Therefore we would like to ask the joomla! community to help us, by you suggesting potential candidates that you as a community member feel would serve the interest of the community when becoming a OSM board member. We have created a form, and hope you will help the joomla! community and the COC by adding your favorite candidate and take the time to argue why.

For more info please visit www.joomla.org.za

Filed under: Uncategorized  |   Tagged under Joomla, Open Souce, OSM | 1 Comment »

A community member is seeking an entry-level Joomla web developer to assist in the development of a small business website.

The project would be on a free-lance basis.

Preferably situated in Durban / Pietermaritzburg.

If you have any recommendations please post your contact details below.

Filed under: Uncategorized  |   Tagged under Developer request, Joomla | 2 Comments »

One of the major challenges for web publishers across the globe is to be kept up to date with developments in the Content Management System (CMS) space.

The purpose of this blog will be a meeting place for the community to discuss different systems and to allow technology savvy people to interact with those who are less clued up about these systems.

From time to time we will also be posting developer requests for people or businesses looking to establish their web presence.

Filed under: Uncategorized  |   Tagged under CMS, Content Management Systems, Software, web development | No Comments »