One of the biggest determining factors of whether or not a .NET CMS implementation with Sitecore (or any CMS for that matter) succeeds has nothing to do with technology. CMS history is littered with countless of CMS projects that have been delivered roughly on time and roughly within budget but have still failed. Why would an otherwise successful project be quickly declared a failure? The simple, non-technical answer is this: end-user rejection. It’s a classic case of a system being implemented perhaps with the right technology, but without a clear understanding of what end users want, what their level of technical proficiency is and how they expect to use the system. Nothing can kill a CMS project like end users who rebel against the system, sticking to their old practices, complaining loudly to upper management and starting rogue projects to address perceived deficiencies in the new CMS.
Non~Linear Creations (NLC) has orchestrated many impressive implementations of Sitecore that demonstrate the best in ASP.NET CMS technology practice and system usability. What stood out to me so powerfully in their Outstanding Solution application was not simply their technical prowess – this was something I have long been well aware of – but the fact that they applied their technical dexterity directly to the problem of usability for content authors. Non~Linear impressed me with the fact that in numerous cases they had gone the extra mile to really understand the audience for the CMS and to make sure that this audience had the tools they needed to succeed.
Now, why did NLC need to focus so much on usability? Isn’t Sitecore already an extremely usable system? If you look at tools like Page Editor and Page Designer, it’s really hard to imagine a web content management system that’s easier to use. But here’s the catch: I’ve conducted an unscientific survey and have found that many Sitecore implementations don’t make use of these extremely valuable (and cool) user interfaces. Instead, a great number of implementations stick with Content Editor as the preferred authoring interface.
Sometimes there is good reason for that. If most of the content authors are fairly sophisticated system users or if they feel more comfortable in an interface that provides a global view of the content repository, Content Editor is a good fit. But what about the many less-technical users who would love to be able to just browse the web site and start typing on the page? It’s these less technical users that really need the CMS implementation to speak directly to them.
Why doesn’t every project implement Page Editor and Page Designer? Here’s why: Many CMS projects have a division of labor between HTML developers and .NET developers. The HTML developers create their beautiful, cross-browser compatible artistry in XHTML and then throw it over the fence to the .NET developers who make it work with the CMS. But remember, all of Sitecore’s interfaces are 100% browser based. There is never anything to download in order to start editing content in Sitecore. (This, by the way, is a system administrators dream come true.) But, because Sitecore is rendering its interfaces using HTML and CSS, there are sometimes collisions between the coding practice of the HTML developer and Sitecore’s own approach to coding its UI. It might seem like Page Editor or Page Designer are not dialed in properly because Sitecore’s HTML is conflicting with the HTML designer’s code. This is always something that can be addressed by minor CSS tweaks. But, in reality, this division of labor means that the HTML developers don’t really understand the CMS – they may never have even been trained in Sitecore so they don’t know that they are writing code that will impact the Sitecore UIs.
Here is where NLC’s usability magic comes into play. Their analysts know Sitecore, their HTML developers know Sitecore and their .NET developers know Sitecore. It is like an orchestra where all members are playing together perfectly and the resulting harmonies just blow you away. At NLC, you work with developers who are trained to think like content editors. This means that the team that is working on your site’s HTML is making sure that they aren’t defeating the incredible usability of Sitecore’s UIs. It means that developers aren’t designing solutions that are technically elegant, but not directly responsive to business users needs. And it means that NLC is always on the lookout for new ways to tweak the standard Sitecore UIs to make them fit perfectly into a new business context. While this blog has focused on Page Editor and Page Designer, NLC shared with me numerous other examples where they have gone the extra mile to make the CMS user interfaces beautifully harmonize with the needs and technical level of the system’s end users.
All of this is just the tip of the iceberg of what NLC offers. In fact, it’s just the tip of the tip of the iceberg. I encourage you to check out their web site if your are looking for an implementation partner or need help in selecting your content management system.
Non~Linear Creations: http://www.nonlinearcreations.com
