How to choose the Right Digital Publishing Platform?
Whether you publish academic text books, test preparation books, children books, or newsletters, or journals, you may pose the same question that a majority of publishers have; how do I decide which digital publishing platform best suits my publication plans? With a range of options, from custom designers to self-service platforms, choosing the right one might look like a minefield.
Some platforms are built for wide use, while others are designed for the benefit of specific industry verticals. Some platforms are intended for self-publishing, while others need continuous support from an external team. Some platforms charge a recurring monthly payment, while others charge a one-time license fee.
Ahead of contemplating an ideal digital publishing platform, you need to know all the necessary details to ensure that you pick the right one.
Here are the key and most common considerations for selecting digital publishing platform for your business:
#1. Build vs Buy Dilemma:
Open-source CMS, such as WordPress, generally offers basic system features complimentary, and charge an incremental cost for additional plug-ins, thus making an affordable choice for professional publishers. However, this is more suitable for publishers having good internal technical capability to build and support the platform, besides the luxury of time to customize it to the business needs.
Alternatively, you may go for an off-the-shelf publishing platform that offers most ready-to-use features, which can be quickly configured to your business needs at minimum time-to-market.
While the systems are quite configurable, any customization beyond the functionality/features supported can become an expensive and time-consuming affair.
#2. Support for Interactive Content:
Does the platform enable you to add interactive features like videos, pop-up media? animations, etc. to build user engagement? It’s not necessary to have these features enabled upfront in the platform, but the platform should be open and flexible enough to be able to support such plug-ins, on need basis.
# 3. HTML5 compatibility:
Web publications built with the support of HTML5 do away with the need to download any app or an extension for content access. This makes it easy to access content; this is why your publishing platform should be compatible with HTML5 to ensure that your readers can gain access to your content directly through their browsers.
#4. Multi-platform Support & Optimization:
Make sure that your publishing platform is compatible with the various OS, Device and Browsers; and at the same time, possesses capability to distribute content through various digital and social media channels for users’ consumption
#5. Cost of Ownership:
This is a topic we got to get to, sooner or later. The cheapest publishing platform available today could cost your reputation in the long run. And this doesn’t necessarily mean that you always get more, when you pay more! It’s important to understand the overall cost of ownership of publishing platform – one-time costs, recurring costs, maintenance & support costs, customization costs, plug-ins/interface costs, annual costs, price escalation costs, migration and life cycle costs, and all other hidden and displayed costs. Ideally, choose a platform that offers pricing scheme proportional to your business/transaction size and grows alongside as you reap the benefits of the platform.
#6. KISS is Today’s Norm:
Keep it simple and silly (KISS) is today’s need for all businesses. Ease of us is must, even for the most flexible and powerful platforms. Publishers want their teams to focus on the core business, with less-brainer involved in leveraging the publishing platform. This simplicity is resultant of many factors such as – technology choice, user interface design, navigation process, speed and tool-set offered to the users.
#7. Measurement and Analytics:
The platform should provide built-in capability in the form of content insights, traffic details, customer/user engagement details, by integrating and leveraging analytics from Google and other media/platforms.
Are you searching for the best digital publishing platform? mPowerO is a digital publishing platform that focuses on providing integrated solutions, ranging from content design and creation to distribution to marketing. Reach out to us for a one-on-one conversation today.
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