In the lead up to the 2010 Open Source CMS Market Share Report, water&stone surveyed a group of users of open source content management systems. The survey asked users to evaluate the most popular open source content management systems and to share the criteria they use to select a system. During November and December of 2010, over 5,000 people participated in the survey. Of that group, 2,647 answered the question: “How important were the following factors in the selection of your [present] CMS?” In this article, we share the insights gained from that question.
A note about the participants
- The survey was voluntary.
- 79.7% of the participants in the survey were from small to medium-sized businesses (less than 100 employees).
- Many of them (84.3%) indicated that they were directly responsible for the selection of their company’s present CMS.
- Though the survey was in English, the participants came from 98 countries around the world.
Survey Results: CMS selection criteria.
In an attempt to understand the priorities that drove the CMS selection process, the survey participants were asked to rate a variety of selection criteria on the following scale:
- NOT Important
- SOMEWHAT Important
- IMPORTANT, or
- VERY Important
The three most important criteria give us some insight into what drives the decision process. Of the entire set, the top three were the only choices to be marked VERY Important by more than 50% of the survey participants.
- According to the survey, the most important factor was ease of use. It was named as IMPORTANT or VERY Important by 92.5% of the respondents. Less than 1% of the group labeled this factor as NOT Important.
- The second most important criteria was the availability of extensions. 89.1% of the group named this factor IMPORTANT or VERY Important to their decision.
- The third most important factor was the availability of community support. 88.6% of the respondents categorized this factor as IMPORTANT or VERY Important.
There was a measurable gap in influence between the top three factors and the rest of the selection set. Nonetheless, the fourth factor was also significant.
- Technology platform was the fourth most important criteria, but this factor was rated as VERY Important by only 42.5% of the survey group. In contrast, 25.1% classified the technology platform as NOT Important or SOMEWHAT Important.
All other factors listed were shown to be rather less important to the decision process. None of the following were predominantly rated as VERY Important.
- Editorial features was named by 70.8% of the group as IMPORTANT or VERY Important.
- Lagging significantly, but still coming in sixth in the analysis was the availability of third-party templates. Only slightly more than half respondents (56.9%) rated this as IMPORTANT or VERY Important. More than 20% of the group indicated that this factor was NOT Important.
Of the remaining factors, more than 50% of the survey group rated all as NOT Important or merely SOMEWHAT Important. Put another way, these factors were not considered to be dominant in the selection process.
- The availability of consultants or developers was listed as IMPORTANT or VERY Important by slightly less than half of the group – 49.8%.
- Previous experience with the system was even less persuasive, with only 47.4% of the respondents indicating that this factor was IMPORTANT or VERY Important.
The final two criteria fared very poorly in the survey.
- The availability of commercial support was not a significant source of influence, with 40.6% characterizing this as NOT Important and another 30.9% labeling it merely SOMEWHAT Important.
- Coming in last in the survey was recommendation of vendor or consultant. This factor provide largely unpersuasive, with more than 50% of the survey participants saying it was NOT Important. In contrast only 7.3% called it VERY Important to their decision.
What lessons can we take away from this?
First, it may be obvious, but we would point out that usability is king. The dominance of this factor in the decision process helps explain the success of systems like WordPress and Joomla!, both widely recognized as being among the most easy-to-use of the open source content management systems.
Second, extensions are tremendously persuasive. Projects would do well to note that the availability of extensions for the system plays a significant role in the decision process. This gives the biggest players a clear advantage and creates a significant barrier to entry for new systems. Projects need to keep their extensions developers happy, motivated, and prolific.
The same can be said for the project’s relationship with the community. The size and strength of the community that surrounds the project often translates into a wide array of extensions for the system. Moreover, the community’s willingness and ability to provide support was shown as the third key factor in our survey. Projects must cultivate community as a key attribute of success.
Compare the importance of community support to the lack of interest in commercial support. While this slant may be a by-product of the survey’s preponderance of SME companies, the fact that more than 70% of the group characterizes the availability of commercial support as no more than SOMEWHAT Important is a pretty strong statement.
A surprise here was the lack of influence of experience. Only 20.2% of the respondents indicated that previous experience with the system was VERY Important, while 26% said it was NOT Important. We read this as indicative of a lack of brand loyalty by the survey group, and a willingness to look at alternative solutions. The fact that the respondent has never used a system previously is clearly not a barrier to adoption of that system.
Also less than persuasive is the recommendation of others. The decision-makers seem quite happy to take a decision on their own. Is this an indicator that the SME market is largely driven by those who are willing to help themselves? Given what the survey has shown us about (1) the importance of community support, (2) the lack of importance of recommendations, and (3) the relatively low importance of the availability of consultants and developers, we think it reasonable to assume that self-help is rather the rule of the day in this market. SMEs, either due to a lack of resources or a need to be self-reliant, seem to be focused on self-help options. Their decision process seems driven by the need to find a simple system, with a range of packaged extensions, and a readily available set of community help resources.
While our judgment about what SMEs are looking for may seem rather presumptive, it is consistent with what we know about the market leaders. WordPress and Joomla!, and to a lesser extent Drupal, exhibit the attributes that would make them a “right fit” to the decision criteria we describe. The fact that those three systems have a commanding lead in market share seems to support our conclusion.
Do you have a different opinion on the subject? If so, please share it with us…
