Churchill Business CMS demo
CMS? Oh yes.
In Churchill Business, we don't have any development resource. The CMS helps our team keep moving, without having to beg, borrow and steal from other squads.
It's allowed us to build a new Churchill Business website from scratch in four months.
What's a CMS?
Another in the long list of DLG acronyms.
CMS stands for Content Management System.
Sites like Wordpress and Wix are popular examples of a CMS.
What does a CMS do?
It's an easy-to-use website builder
Focus on content
Simple interface that's easy to adapt
Why use a CMS?
- Predefined components - allows non-designers to build content
- Speed of work - quick and easy to update and publishÂ
- No need for developers for simple changes (typos)
- Easy to mock up pages for approval or A/B testing
- Publish quickly without waiting for a release
A peek behind the scenes
Let's take a look at the editor and site structure.
How do we build a page?
Add a page and populate with content.
Add an intro banner
An intro banner is a page hero. We have a few options to configure how it looks.
Add a feature box
This is what we use for main content and it's the most powerful component. We use these for unique selling point bullets, downloadable documents and can add in-line link buttons.
What about updating a page?
Edit CMS presentation
Did you notice the typo? There's no prize, just for brags.
How has the CMS helped our team?
TAG & Underwriting feedback
Quick and easy to make TAG and Underwriting copy changes and re-submit for approval
Flexibility
Allows us to test ideas, re-design pages and tweak copy whenever we want
Design consistency
Create pages and elements that we can use across the site
It's not perfect
We can't pretend everything's great. These are some of the issues we've had:
- Quite a lot of back and forth with Pancentric to perfect design elements. Having an internal CMS dev team will be more invested in the project
- Overwriting work if more than one person updates a page at the same time (which has happened a couple of times for this presentation)
- Permissions - who gets to publish? How do we prevent rogue publishers if using in bigger teams?
- Feature development takes time - accordion, secondary button, utility links
To sum up
Designers can focus on real user problems
Content Creators have more power
Fewer developers needed
Is CMS the future?
And what would it look like for all of our brands?
We may need to look beyond this small business system
Potential for shared content and components that we can update once and populate across multiple pages or sites
We could use CMS to build our Quote & Buy journeys
Before we go... to the pub
Adam and Will are happy to take any questions, but we may not always have an answer. No guarantees.