The core values behind Perch Runway.
Perch Runway is a product from development company edgeofmyseat.com. It was developed as a version of our “really little CMS” to be the developer’s version of Perch. A product designed for content heavy websites. Our aim is to provide a first class CMS based around the idea of structured content.
Speed matters. It matters to Google, where site speed is used as a ranking factor in search listings. Speed makes a difference to your conversion rates, visitors will abandon purchases or your entire site if it doesn’t load quickly. Speed matters in your site Control Panel too. If it is difficult to update the site because the Control Panel is so slow, your client will stop updating and the site will become out of date and serve them poorly.
Keeping your site and the Control Panel fast is the driver behind many decisions in Perch Runway. We believe that it is worth the extra effort on our part, to make your site fast every time a page is loaded. Couple Perch with well optimized front-end code and you’ll be heading for standout results at WebPageTest, and very happy clients with every project you ship.
Perch Runway is based around the concept of structured content. You may know this as custom fields in other systems, however everything in Perch is a custom field. This approach gives you a huge amount of flexibility in your admin forms, including the ability to create your own Field Types. It also ensures that rather than storing a big messy block of HTML, you get neatly stored content that can be reused in different templates around the site. You can even output that content in a different format - for example as XML or JSON.
Content Editors - your client or the person who keeps the site updated after handover. They are often the forgotten users of a CMS. We worry about how long it will take to build the site, we consider the experience of visitors to the site, what about the person who needs to keep it updated? So often content management systems expect content editors to understand the underlying data structures in order to manage the site. This requires a lot of training, handing over knowledge can be lost as staff change.
Perch Runway is different. We try to structure the Control Panel in such a way that content is where the editor expects it. We also give you tools to help guide your editors through creating content, preserving the initial work you do on content strategy. This means that the site stays updated - and you don’t keep getting phone calls asking how to make changes!