The content management vendor community is doing its best to fuel the exodus from static to dynamic web pages across the web. However, many site operators surveyed by JupiterResearch indicated that they simply aren’t ready to deliver innovation and are incapable of change because their internal process and organizations are not in order. Inhibitors such as conflict between Marketing and IT plagued website decision makers; and managing content across organizational silos affected others. Decision makers are challenged to satisfy the needs of different visitor segments because they lack a deep knowledge of these customers and don’t have a method to alter their messaging or timing to deliver content in a relevant context.

Furthermore, 72 percent of sites are still delivering static pages in areas of their public-facing web properties. These same companies expressed their top two content management challenges as keeping content fresh, and keeping content relevant. Each of these challenges can be addressed as resource issues that can be resolved with proper allocation of staff and dynamic content automation and delivery, yet too few website decision makers are focused on effectively delivering dynamic content. These issues are compounded by the fact that many decision makers surveyed admit that their content management strategy is not well defined. Poor planning and ill-defined content management strategies often result in misguided technology selection, which results in heavy customization and retrofitting of tools to meet needs after purchases have been made.

The effectiveness of a web property can often be measured by the level of customer interaction with the site and the ability for site visitors to accomplish desired tasks online such as completing a transaction, generating a lead, or downloading information. These interactions are currently measured by 49 percent of website decision makers as a method to quantify user interaction and calculate an engagement metric. Engagement, while difficult to measure, is a key metric for next generation web properties because it is the method used to determine the effectiveness of interactive web pages, RIAs (like AJAX, Flex, Flash and Silverlight), dynamic content, user generated content (UGC) and social networking tools. As site operators look to the near-term future to identify features and functionality they wish to deliver on their sites, they must evaluate the capabilities of their content delivery technologies and establish processes for measuring effectiveness and quantifying the business value of next generation functions.