Online CMS demos: do they work?
Categorised under: Content management
Part of my job is to keep up with the the web content management systems in the market: new ones that arrive in Australia and the constant upgrades of existing products. Normally I get vendors to drop by to give a face-to-face demo, allowing me to ask a whole pile of picky, in-depth questions.
In this instance, however, I needed to look at a product that has become very popular in the web agency market, produced out of the Czech Republic. Getting a demo in person was clearly not an option. So I made use of their online demo to build an understanding of their product.
First off, it’s great that they offered a fully-featured online demo with a straightforward sign-up process. A few confirmation emails later, I’m working in the CMS that allows everything except customisation of the code. (They also provide completely transparent and public pricing; I wish more vendors managed this!)
I know a lot about CMS, and have probably seen 50+ products in the last 5 years. I know what I want to see, what to look for, and where to probe for weaknesses. Within five minutes I can get a sense of what type of product it is, and therefore what to expect.
What struck me, however, is how important this background knowledge is to assessing the product. Documentation was minimal, and there was no guided tour. If I was a novice, using the online demo to determine what product to buy, I’d be in a lot of trouble.
Most people only select a CMS once (and probably vow never to do it again!). Without a lot of domain knowledge, it would be easy to get lost in these types of online demos. A lot of clicking later, you’d have an idea of how to publish a page, but could easily miss entire sections of the solution (what is the versioning like? how easy is it to setup workflow? what are the online forms capability like?). There are also small but vital elements that need to work (cutting and pasting from Word, table editing, link management).
So: are online CMS demos useful?
In short: yes and no. If you know what you’re doing, they can be valuable. As a way of building an understanding the CMS marketplace, they’re likely to be more baffling than useful. Use with care, and beware of spending time without gaining insight.
What can vendors do to help? Provide a proper step-by-step guide to common tasks in your CMS, given to everyone who signs up for an online demo. Make it easy for people to get a mental map of what the CMS is doing, and what it provides.
What would I recommend? Write up good CMS scenarios, and use these as the basis for a structured vendor demo, held face-to-face. This will give you a lot of information very quickly, as well as providing a framework for product evaluation.
What have your experiences been?
Tags: content management systems, demos, evaluation, scenarios
James Robertson is the Managing Director of 