While Interactive Palette remains committed to assisting clients with timely site updates, we understand there are times when it’s more convenient for the company itself to make such updates – and this is where content management systems come in. A good content management system (CMS) will help to ensure that a company’s website reflects the latest change in their business, and contains the most accurate and up-to-date information for your visitors.
How do you decide which CMS is right for your business? With so many to choose from, it can really be an intimidating task. Before you make your decision, read our top considerations to help you make the best choice for your business.
Here are 4 things to consider before choosing a CMS:
1. Functionality
The first thing we recommend you consider is functionality. The core functionality of a CMS is to manage the website, by giving users the ability to create, edit, add, delete and maintain the web pages. Going beyond the core function of a CMS, consider what else you need it to do for you. Do you need an online store? Do you need to upload new content on a regular basis? You can more easily weed out the systems that don’t meet your needs when you have a clear idea of what you want from it.
Here are some functions you might need:
- Log in area for customers
- SEO
- Newsletter sign up
- Event booking system
- Whitepaper downloads
- Contact forms
- Social media sharing
- Image editing
2. User interface
The interface is the editor used to manage the content and maintain the pages of your website. The interface should be visual, should make it simple to manage, add, and edit content, and be easy to navigate without too much instruction. You don’t want it to take hours to update content, do you? We understand that time is valuable, and a great user interface could really make a difference. As an example, let’s take a look at the user interface of the WordPress dashboard. This editing interface shows overall things happening in your website like recent comments, site state, activity, WordPress news and such. It can also be integrated with different WordPress plugins like Yoast SEO and countless others, which can be customized, allowing users to remove or add new tabs to the dashboard.
3. Planning for the future
As your business grows, your CMS should be able to adapt with you. Imagine this sticky situation – you choose a made-to-order, in-house CMS, and later when you need extra functionality you’re told that your website has to be rebuilt from scratch in order to adapt. This is when open-source content management systems are the better choice. Open-source means that the CMS has a free license and is constantly being improved with new functionality by a community of developers. This means that when the time comes for you to add more features to your growing company’s website, there’s a good change that the feature has been created and can be plugged into your CMS a lot quicker than a made-to-order platform. No need to start from scratch! Some open-source CMS systems include WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.
4. Support
The last consideration is support. This is important if something should happen to go wrong. With many open source CMS systems, there are large support communities and forums you can find online – but not always someone you can call. You might want to consider partnering with a digital agency who provides a support package that ensures the CMS is working well.
We hope these considerations will help you in the search for the perfect CMS for your business. Keeping your company website up-to-date, reflecting the latest changes and containing the most accurate information will be most beneficial to your visitors and potential customers. With so many options out there, hopefully these considerations will make the task of choosing a little less intimidating.
