How to Choose the Best Content Management System For Your Business?
With many CMS vendors and products on the market, choosing the suitable CMS can seem like a daunting task. Over the past decade, our team has seen the adverse effects of making the wrong choice time and time again - and the results can haunt your business and its IT department for years to come. This blog provides you a way to help you make this critical decision correctly.
The truth is that there is no perfect CMS, and no one solution fits all situations. Purchasing a CMS that requires excessive monitoring and support will severely reduce your team's ability to manage content and ultimately lead to an undesirable website experience. And choosing and implementing a content management system is just the beginning of what will pay dividends or significant losses in t
The problem is even worse for organizations that run multiple websites and other digital assets. It's an oxymoron that a system designed to enable your team and your site to function is, in turn, a significant obstacle.
The first mistake a plethora of people and organizations make when choosing a content management system is to overlook the long-term cost of an inexpensive solution, underestimate the amount of work required to manage a sound content management system, or forget to align the needs of the team with the capabilities of the content management system—or to fail to combine the needs of your team with the capabilities of your CMS.
10 Tips for Choosing the Right CMS
To help you choose thesuitable CMS for your team and avoid mistakes, follow these ten tips.
1. Don't build your content management software
It is tempting to believe that our team can build a custom CMS, including open source. However, we have never seen a successful example. No matter how you plan, your team doesn't have the years of experience to lend a hand in dealing with the many complexities that come with a CMS. The long-term need for developer support outweighs the cost of selecting and purchasing a CMS, not to mention that custom builds often fail.
2. Avoid over-reliance on developers
This is a recipe for disaster. The speed of development does not dictate the direction of your business. Ensure the content management solution you choose allows your team to focus on implementing campaigns and strategies to increase web traffic rather than spending too much time on technical management.
3. Make sure it's a scalable CMS
Scalability is a no-brainer. As your business grows, so does change, and that change will affect your website. Make sure you choose the right CMS solution that can grow and scale as quickly as you need it to. A good CMS development company can create a highly scalable solution for you.
4. Choose a content management system that is ready for omnichannel
Even if your company is currently using only a desktop or mobile site, it's essential to consider other attributes that you may not have considered yet, but may consider in the future. Content exists today in the form of AR/VR, mobile, kiosks, digital assistants, Jumbotrons, etc., and it's here to stay. When you're ready, make sure you choose a CMS solution that can handle the new channels.
5. Don't limit your system to a single code.
Even the best content management system will fail without the right programmers. The headache of traditional content management systems is the need to hire resources with a high level of expertise and skills in a particular content management system infrastructure, which can be very limiting and a bottleneck. Choose a system that allows developers to code in the programming language of their choice, using their strengths.
6. Support is more important than software.
A system may be all you need, but it's unfortunate for everyone if the platform team can't help you when you need it. Finding a content management system that allows your inhouse team to work without interfering with content creation and management will save your business time and money.
7. Always test and get proof of concept first
Before implementing a CMS for your entire website, always test the CMS and get a proof of concept. Implement a portion of your website first, and have team members and end-users check it out, from creating and writing pages to establish workflows. Testing can alleviate many problems that are not apparent, saving you a lot of time and money.
8. Choose an intuitive user interface
Having a user-friendly interface is especially important if you have a team that uses the system every day. You want a solution that is easy to use, that does not require a lot of technical knowledge or training, and that you can quickly grasp when you log in again.
9. Make sure that the CMS has Api and supports integration with other applications and microservices.
Whether you are trying to incorporate personalization into your marketing strategy or trying to understand how users interact and behave on the web, businesses such as partners and marketing need very different They need applications and microservices.
Marketing requires a solution that can easily integrate with marketing automation tools, business intelligence tools, Google Analytics, RSS, etc., to deliver personalized content. Partners need to connect with partner management platforms (e.g., NetSuite) to manage their partner alliances better. Choose a CMS solution with a robust API and easily connect to third-party content management tools, such as a headless API-first CMS.
10. Properly visualize and organize your site
When implementing a new content management system or redesigning a site, the first thing to do is bring all stakeholders together to gather their requirements and opinions. A failed plan is a failed plan. Half the battle is to develop a well-thought-out content structure and taxonomy that will help your business achieve its goals for success.