Buyer's Guide: How to Choose the Right Digital Magazine, CMS & DAM Vendor

I recently ran across a well thought out article for publishers considering digital strategies for their magazine. 


The entire article can be found here.


A key component of the article posed some key questions that should be asked :


Questions for Vendors
When selecting a vendor, publishers should always ask the basic business questions, of course. Pricing, customer service, and reliability are essential to any purchase decision. However, for digital publishing and content management providers, there are some specific matters to address:

• Does the digital content display to a typical subscriber's satisfaction on multiple devices, operating systems, and screen sizes?
• Is the content viewable in text form -- especially on smaller devices? 
• How easy is it to add rich media, such as video or animation?
• Does the vendor make it easy to use a device's built-in features, like a camera, or social media venues? 
• Does the vendor make it easy to discover and purchase the digital edition or content?
• Does the digital content service provide new opportunities and benefits for advertisers or sponsors?
• Does the vendor provide a path to responsive design publishing on multiple platforms?
• Does the vendor's system provide ample measurement of reader activities and responses -- to both editorial and advertising content?
• Does the vendor's system leverage the publisher's existing production skills and capital investments?
• Does the underlying CMS or DAM provide a high level of automation, or otherwise lower the overall labor and capital costs of producing digital content?

Decisions, Decisions
Making a digital content move should not be done lightly -- or simply because others are doing it. If at all possible, the process for creating and managing digital content should leverage existing skills and capital investments on the print side -- especially if print is still the primary channel for subscribers and advertisers. However, since the content experience on tablets and smartphones is often radically different from print, new skills and technologies will be required.
Every magazine has a unique base of subscribers and advertisers -- with a knowable relationship to emerging technology. When selecting digital publishing vendor partners, be sure to select those that will best help you be there at the right time for your audience.