Time for a new CMS? 3 Questions to Ask First
Media Tech News Roundup
X introduces a new plan for programmatic ads
It’s no secret that X has, in the words of Quartz , “a major advertising problem.” It experienced a 50% drop in ad revenue over 2023-2024, according to its largest shareholder, Elon Musk. This advertising slump is likely a big reason X is now considered (by the Wall Street Journal) “the worst buyout for banks since the financial crisis.”
But X is pushing forward. According to a leaked pitch deck, X will soon offer a programmatic ad tech solution called Trend Genius, which displays ads when relevant topics are trending.
Trend Genius aims to reconnect X with Twitter’s original value proposition: access to real-time conversations on the platform. By leveraging X's API, Trend Genius detects when a topic starts trending and deploys relevant ads. This approach reflects a shift back to X's early focus on immediate, dynamic interactions.
How Does Trend Genius Work?
We don’t know for sure how Trend Genius works since these materials haven’t been officially released, but here’s how it appears X’s new adtech will operate:
This process is designed to align advertising efforts with peak user engagement periods. The pitch deck also introduces a “sports data” mode for the tool, which allows for placements based on game results. The pitch deck’s example shows an aviation company’s ad turned on when the team it sponsors wins a game. Another example from the deck shows dynamic ads that use game scheduling, results, and other factors as triggers.
Critical Considerations
While Trend Genius offers potential benefits, there are several factors advertisers should evaluate:
Newsletter Platform Updates
2. beehiiv revamps its editor interface. The new version provides a clean, distraction-free place to write and a tabbed production experience that separates composing new content from configuring email details like subject lines and SEO metadata. The new design is intended to help creators optimize the full production process.
3. Substack app adds an election tab. Substack is angling to establish itself as a comprehensive info source for the 2024 election. The app often uses tabs to sort its feed for, say, the Olympics or New York Fashion Week. They’re now adding an “Election 2024” tab placed right after the Home tab, providing what Substack’s product update release calls “an abundance of incisive political voices.”
How to Disaster-Proof Your Site Migration
Nothing in life is certain except for death, taxes, and site migrations. If you’ve been in the web content industry long enough, you’ve heard the horror stories: lost text, broken images, plummeting organic traffic. The fear ends here. Welcome to Disaster-Proofing Your Migration, a practical guide to avoiding risk and excelling on a new platform.
Part 1: Is it Time to Migrate? Vital Questions to Ask Before Getting Started
Migrating a website—that is, moving all the content data from one platform to another—is inherently risky business. But then again, so is staying on a lackluster technical platform that suppresses audience growth, search engine optimization, and brand expansion.
Indications it’s Time to Rethink Your CMS
Recognizing the need for a website migration is the first step toward growth and innovation. Here are some indicators that it might be time to consider the change:
Question 1: Does my current CMS meet my business needs?
Your CMS should align with your business objectives, help streamline operations, and enhance user experience. If it falls short, it can slow down your workflow, reduce engagement, and hurt your company’s bottom line.
How to evaluate your tech:
Question 2: What limitations are we facing?
Recognizing these challenges enables you to seek solutions that overcome these barriers, improving efficiency and performance.
How to know if your CMS is holding you back:
Use these tips to better understand your current tech stack’s constraints. Want an expert to do this part? Reach out to Refact; we’re happy to help!
Technical Limitations:
Performance Issues:
Load Testing: Use tools like LoadRunner or Apache JMeter to assess how your CMS handles high traffic.
Error Logs: Check server logs for recurring errors or downtime incidents.
Scalability Constraints:
Content Volume: Determine if there's a slowdown as you publish more content.
User Base Growth: Assess if the CMS can handle an increasing number of concurrent users, editors, and managers.
Functional Limitations:
Feature Deficits:
Missing Capabilities: Identify necessary features that are absent (e.g., syndication feeds, advanced analytics).
Inefficient Workflows: Note any cumbersome processes that slow down content publishing.
Integration Challenges:
Third-Party Tools: List any external tools you cannot integrate (e.g., CRM systems, email marketing platforms).
API Limitations: Check if the CMS's APIs are restrictive or lack necessary endpoints.
Compliance Limitations:
Compliance Issues:
Data Protection Laws: Ensure compliance with regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and WCAG.
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Accessibility Standards: Verify adherence to WCAG guidelines for users with disabilities.
User Experience Limitations:
Backend Usability:
Training Requirements: Assess how much training new users need to operate the CMS.
Customization Limits: Determine if you can customize the interface to suit your team's needs.
Frontend Limitations:
Design Restrictions: Check if the CMS limits your ability to implement desired frontend designs. You can find some insight in this comparison of 4 CMS candidates for newsrooms.
Mobile Responsiveness: Test how your site renders on various devices.
Question 3: How well-supported and scalable is the CMS?
A good CMS is more than the technology itself. An active support system ensures you can resolve issues quickly, minimizing downtime and maintaining productivity.
How to make sure your CMS can support you:
Official Support Evaluation:
Availability: Check if support is available via email, phone, live chat, or support tickets. Open-source CMS options like WordPress or Ghost don’t have this type of support. Instead, they have active communities and abundant repositories.
Response Time: Look for published average response times or SLA commitments. Alternatively, send a non-critical support ticket to see how long it will take them to respond.
Support Resources:
Knowledge Base: Explore the depth and breadth of documentation, tutorials, and FAQs.
Training Materials: See if the vendor offers training programs or certifications.
Forums and Discussion Boards:
Activity Level: Visit official and unofficial forums to gauge the frequency of posts and responses.
Quality of Interaction: Evaluate the helpfulness and expertise of community members.
Stack Overflow and similar forums: You can test how well the community works for you by posting a question and see how fast and helpful the replies are.
Social Media Groups:
Reddit Communities: Participate in subreddit discussions related to your CMS. You can also ask around about any other support features of the CMS you may not know about.
Plugin and Extension Libraries:
Quantity and Variety: Check the number of available plugins to extend CMS functionality.
Update Regularity: Ensure plugins are regularly updated to maintain compatibility and security.
Developer Community:
Contribution Rates: Look at the number of active contributors on platforms like GitHub.
Meetups and Conferences: See if there are events where users and developers share knowledge.
Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your current and potential future CMS provides a baseline for evaluating new systems. This assessment helps you pinpoint essential features and improvements needed to support your strategic goals.
Need More Advice? Need a Tech Partner?
Refact has helped well-known brands like Workweek , HubSpot ’s The Hustle , and Stacked Marketer migrate to a new CMS and launch with a new design. Contact us to learn more.
What Inspired Me This Week
Saeedreza Abbaspour
❝A bottle so distinct that it could be recognized by touch in the dark or when lying broken on the ground.❞
Wow! This is The Coca-Cola Company 's design brief for its famous bottle. In 1915, the “Trustees of the Coca-Cola Bottling Association” issued a challenge to design and manufacture a unique glass bottle to replace the generic one they had been using till then. This also was an initiative to combat copy-cats that were weakening Coca-Cola’s brand positioning at the time.
That's the brief! Simple, effective, no long list of specifications and pre-requests that gave us one of the most iconic objects you can ever encounter.
This makes me think about how I approach website design for my clients. Like Coca-Cola’s brief, the most effective designs often stem from simplicity. Instead of overwhelming clients with lengthy lists of features and requirements, I focus on capturing the essence of their brand—creating websites that are as distinct and memorable as the Coca-Cola bottle.
Whether it's a bold color scheme, a unique layout, or an intuitive user experience, the goal is to ensure that anyone who visits the website knows instantly who the brand is and what it stands for.
Meet our Partner: Flexpress 🚀
We’re excited to feature Flexpress as a trusted collaborator, helping us provide the best to our community. Flexpress’s superior infrastructure sets up high-traffic websites to increase revenue, grow audience size, and reduce engineering costs by 20%+. They offer best-in-class, thoughtful developer solutions for growing high-traffic websites.
Learn more about Flexpress here.
Revenue & GTM Strategy at Flexpress
2moThanks for the shoutout!