Why a Toolkit is Must for Multi-site, Multi-Brand Environments?

Businesses with a multi-site or multi-brand ecosystem usually undergo a series of roadblocks. Such organizations have the manpower yet lack the right platforms to communicate their daily affairs, resulting in inefficiencies.

Currently, most enterprises operating on a multi-site or multi-brand model have adopted advanced technologies to address these flaws.

The most appropriate medium for an organization with a multi-site, multi-brand structure is to establish a customized toolkit capable of supporting the concerns within your operations.

Further in the article, let's deeply understand the troubles of multi-site, multi-brand organizations. And how effortlessly can these situations be addressed by incorporating a toolkit for management, dismissing the hurdles for content authors.

 

What is a toolkit?

For global organizations, it is common to have the web presence span a few dozen websites, microsites, and landing pages.

A piece-by-piece approach of allocating teams to work on each website separately drives the cost of hosting, maintenance, and development. It creates a complex infrastructure, ultimately leading to inefficiencies in the process.

This issue can be solved by adopting a multi-site implementation methodology that has the following highlights:

• Component-based UX and UI
• Pluggable and reusable themes
• Optional content authoring helpers (validations, batch workflow management, etc.)
• Modular architecture with hub and spoke model
• Reusable components

Once the development is complete, the multi-brand, multi-site backend can turn into a single custom infrastructure you can access via a toolkit.

Whether the content authors are building a new website or updating pages for an existing site, they can find what they need to achieve their digital goals in this toolkit.

Everything from style guidelines, development best practices, and key metrics to measuring success is baked in.

 

What is the purpose of a toolkit?

The toolkit is developed to make a website more streamlined, consistent, and successful. By compiling all the best practices, guidelines, and technical tools, the toolkit can help a team realize economies of scale. It also ensures that the teams can launch high-quality digital assets more quickly and efficiently.

A toolkit is not a blueprint that dictates how to build a website but a set of flexible tools that allow content authors to create a digital asset suited to their market and specific business challenges.

 

How does a toolkit help the content authors?

A toolkit experience enables teams to explore an interactive component library online to plan, view, and imagine website experiences for their programs. In addition, the toolkit can help the content authors in:

 

Better onboarding experience

• The toolkit provides a robust onboarding walkthrough of the ability & features of a toolkit to the business users. It gives business users access to a list of components at their disposal.
• The toolkit can also provide offline material that can be used for training in PDFs or sample documents.

 

Ease of use

• It provides the ability to browse or search through content (component list, content authoring guide, best practices) in the most accessible manner.
• It also provides users with some sample pages they can refer to before starting content authoring on their pages.
• The toolkit simplifies the content jargon so all users can easily understand it.
• It also helps the content authors to get information about an individual component that will help them understand: the functionality of the component, the intended use of the component, and, any additional configurations that might be required.
• It helps the content authors check the different functional and visual variants available for a component. Hence, ensuring the content authors are aware of all the variations available for the element before they start authoring.
• It is helpful to visualize which components have been stitched together to build a page. This helps the content authors to understand how the built components are connected to form a page. Different page designs can be available for a single page type based on a requirement. The toolkit can also highlight all these page design variations.
• The toolkit can also be used as a guide for content authors to ensure proper best practices for content authoring are followed. These best practices can range from folder structures, naming conventions for folders, page structure guidelines, etc.

 

Better problem-solving experience

• The toolkit can give business users the ability to reach out to the technical team to get clarification regarding any issues.
• It also provides the ability to showcase the latest content & features that have been added to the content library to ensure that business users have complete visibility.
• It allows the users to collaborate.

 

Things to keep in mind while building a toolkit

The primary purpose of a toolkit is to guide the content authors and the business stakeholders about the components, best practices, and guidelines for any websites that will be built in the future. Hence, the toolkit should be created while focusing on the three pillars:

• Modular: The toolkit should be flexible and modular to allow the business users to customize the site experience based on the brand's unique needs, content, goals, and users.
• Efficient: Since everything one could need for a website is in the toolkit and can focus on goals and content rather than starting from scratch, identifying a component and understanding the element's functionality should be efficient. The content authors should be able to navigate through the toolkit easily and find the components that suit their needs.
• Scalable: The workflow and level of effort will differ depending on the brand's requirements and business goals. Whether keeping it simple or creating a more customized site, the system can seamlessly grow and adapt according to the brand's needs over time.

 

Summing Up

A toolkit allows you to develop, discuss, improvise and quickly deploy the content programs prepared. In addition, it brings more clarity and lets you discover the gaps and audit them.

With expertise in helping businesses manage multi-site, multi-brand ecosystems, our team is quick to understand your organization’s needs.

Well-versed in platform services for enterprises, we can provide you with solutions suited to your business. Get in touch with us to know how we can help you.