Evaluating the Future of Web Content Management Platforms

News broke in January 2020 that Gartner, one of the world’s leading analysts of technology trends, was going to discontinue its famous Magic Quadrant report for Web Content Management software. The report was widely recognized as the industry’s best guide to the evolving category of software that allows marketers and businesses to create, publish and manage their website. What did the discontinuation of that famous report mean to the web content industry? Was that the end of websites we had come to know them?

Thankfully, no. The news was just the latest harbinger that the idea of web content management is increasingly morphing into something fundamentally larger and more powerful: the idea of a digital experience platform. In the mid-90s, the idea that every company needed a website was just starting to take hold, requiring that marketers and business leaders’ partner internally with IT organizations to create website. Businesspeople would create content, often as MS Word documents, and then hand the content to their internal IT department, who would manually code web pages and websites and make them available to the web surfing public.

This process quickly became tedious and time-consuming and as a result, web content management (WCM) software was created to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical users. Instead of working with IT resources, marketers and businesspeople created content directly within the WCM platform, speeding up the publishing cycle and reducing IT costs in the process.

A dizzying array of WCM vendors sprung up and it quickly became very challenging to select the right WCM tool. As the value of websites became more and more apparent, the need to create and update multiple websites became more important. The choice of WCM platform became that much more important because organizations were making larger and larger investments on the web. Choosing the wrong WCM platform would be an expensive and limiting process, frustrating marketers, customers, and IT organizations. The stakes for selecting the right WCM became critical.

That’s why the Gartner Magic Quadrant report on WCM became so valuable: its frequent updates provided a detailed examination of the top WCM platforms, and tools, providing summary recommendations on where to invest. It detailed specific strengths and weaknesses of each platform, along with recommendations for ongoing support, the partner network, and longer-term predictions around the viability of the specific software tool. In short, it quickly became the go-to source to consult when trying to determine the best WCM platform for an organization.

Over time, expectations of website visitors elevated beyond simple web page experiences. Increasingly, customers and site visitors wanted to access functionality online; the ability to pay their bills online, to research, compare, and shop online and the ability to have an increasingly personalized experience all drove the need to evolve beyond basic websites. WCM platforms initially tried to morph into web content tools that also did e-commerce or extended into blogging and social features. This resulted in a fragmenting of the WCM marketplace; some WCM tools were better at commerce or personalization or supporting multiple websites with one toolset. Again, Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report on WCM became invaluable for organizations seeking clarity on making the right choice.

Ironically, WCM has evolved today into a completely new paradigm: Digital Experience. Today’s platforms are expected to offer comprehensive web page management, but also B2B and B2C commerce, support all forms of internationalization, deliver persuasive personalization technologies, manage email and related campaigns, automate and drive both CRM and marketing automation tools, collect and predict actions based on analytics and to deliver experiences outside of the web (including mobile applications, augmented reality, and virtual reality). It’s this expansion in focus that has caused Gartner to recognize that WCM is but a small component of what Digital Experience platforms is expected to deliver.

The stakes have never been higher because the decision of a DX platform is so much more than just any of the underlying components. Different organizations have different priorities. For some, baseline marketing content with personalization is the major focus. For others, powering multiple experiences is a priority (think of an airline who must run a website, a mobile app, and kiosks inside an airport from the same platform). Still others are focused on international commerce, delivering across multiple geographies, rules, and regulatory requirements.

In each example, a DX platform is the answer, but defining which DX platform is the best suited toward a specific organization’s unique needs is still challenging. Rest assured that Gartner’s Magic Quadrant on Digital Experience will continue to be a trustworthy guide to making those important decisions.

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At Artech, we have specific experience with the industry’s leading DX platforms, including Adobe, Sitecore and EPiServer. We partner with organizations to craft and deliver persuasive digital experiences that move the needle for business today.