What We're Reading This Month: CMS News, Sales, Marketing, and More!

Here at WSOL, we regularly share our thoughts about our industry, covering topics like CMS strategy, Inbound Marketing, and web design, but we also want to share some of the other news and opinion that we encounter across the web. We asked the members of our team to share some of the interesting articles that they've been reading, and we hope that you find them as helpful and informative as we do!

Bill Casey:

2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management

Here on the WSOL blog, we wrote about Episerver's recognition in as a Leader in Gartner's annual Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management, but I think it's worth checking out Gartner's press release about the Magic Quadrant as a whole. It looks at each of the CMS platforms that were included and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each, providing a good look at the prominent names in the current CMS space.

Dennis Kardys:

Uncertainty and Scope

This is a good look at how the scope of a web design/development project affects its outcome and how defining and narrowing that scope is the key to success.

Determining Your Design Principles

This is a great look at the importance of defining the principles your team follows when designing websites, and how to determine how they all fit together.

Chris Osterhout:

How To Design Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, and Drip Email Campaigns (Guide)

I thought this was a great article about how salespeople can create a process for lead scoring and then use those scores in their lead nurturing campaigns.

Allison Casey:

Infographic: 11 amazing hacks that will boost your organic click-through rates

This infographic has some great insights about how to improve the click through rate (CTR) of your site's pages in organic search results, which will then likely improve those pages' search rankings.

Why We Started Treating Blog Posts Like Campaigns (and You Can Too!)

This look at the process the team at Unbounce followed when creating a highly successful blog post comparing the presidential candidates' campaigns from a digital marketing perspective is a must read!

AJ Laporte:

A video guide to marketing automation and customer journeys

I really liked this collection of videos that look at some successful marketing automation campaigns and demonstrate how marketers can use these same ideas to find success in their own online marketing efforts.

Ricardo Herrera:

Amazon found every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales.

This is a nice read about how the time that it takes for a web page to load can affect a company's sales.

Doug Miller:

Sell Service: Online Marketing and the rise of Black Ops advertising

In an age of lack of tolerance for commercials, many organizations are turning to “branded” content. How is it different? What are some potential problems for organizations? Mara Einstein’s book gives some great context and case studies, and this interview with her on the This Is Hell! podcast raises some great questions and possible answers.

Sarah Corley:

Finding Better Mobile Analytics

This article from our friends at Smashing Magazine has some great insights on what analytics we should look at to get insight on how people use mobile site and apps.

This is just a small sampling of the great articles we've read lately; there's always more fascinating reading available out there. If you have an article or blog that you would like us to include in future roundups, please let us know in the comments below!