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How to Select the Right CMS Platform for Your Business?
Content management systems or CMS is becoming a vital aspect for all businesses. They not just help you design and manage your websites but can also help in making it more engaging. With the world moving online, how you manage your content can potentially determine how engaged you can make…
Content management systems or CMS is becoming a vital aspect for all businesses. They not just help you design and manage your websites but can also help in making it more engaging. With the world moving online, how you manage your content can potentially determine how engaged you can make your customers feel. However, selecting the best CMS platform can be a complex task.
Here is a list of some points that you need to keep in mind while deciding which content management system to go with.
There are many types of CMS platforms. You can choose to go with the open source model that have the ability to be easily modified and customized based on your requirement based on the options provided by developers working on the platform.
Alternately, you can choose to use proprietary CMS platforms where a company owns the platform and can customize it to your needs and charge a licensing fee for using their product.
#1. Business needs
Before you start analyzing different CMS platforms that are best suited for your business, first, identify your business needs. There are a whole bunch of CMS platforms out there that do different things but without deciding what features you can’t do or do without, making a decision on which is the best CMS platform for you is pointless. Identify if your website will be simple brochure site, multiple, or inter-connected sites if you require third-party software integration, and so on. For instance, if ‘easy to use’ is your priority, WordPress may be a good option for you; if you are looking to manage multiple internet properties then Joomla or Drupal might be the best content management system for you. List all your priorities beforehand to help make the decision on the best CMS platform.#2. Core functionality
Identify what the core functionality of the CMS platform is. CMS platforms are typically multi-functionality, but each one of them has a set of core functionalities that they do better than anyone else. WordPress, for example, is known to be one of the best CMS platforms for blogging, while Magneto is probably one of your best choices if you wanted to have e-commerce on your website; Joomla, on the other hand, can do a bit of both.#3. Scalability
You will need to keep adding new content to your website to retain the eyeballs on your page. Therefore, scalability is an important requirement. If scalability is something that is required for your business, then the best CMS platforms would be platforms like Magento, Sitecore or Drupal.#4. Security
Malicious attacks and fear from hackers is not a rare phenomenon anymore. It is, therefore, imperative that the security of your CMS platform is protected. With every update of the CMS platform versions, developers strive to increase the security cover for CMS. It can be said that Magento probably is one of the best CMS platforms as far as security goes.#5. Mobile Responsive
Everything is on mobile today. With the increased sale and use of smartphones, tablets, and iPads your business could lose out big-time if your website is not responsive. This means the same websites are accessible across all the different devices. While most CSM platforms provide you the features to build responsive devices, WordPress is probably the best content management system that supports mobile responsive website. Despite whether you choose the free version or the premium one, WordPress provides a host of responsive themes.#6. Budget
This is the most obvious reason to choose one CMS platform over the other is how much you are willing to spend on it. For instance, apart from what you actually require, if a CMS is cheaper you will probably pick the cheaper one. If you are a new business, chances are that you would want to spend more money on driving traffic to your website rather than spend money on hosting it. That said if the CMS platform is the backbone of your business, then you might want to spend more on finding the best CMS platform for your needs. Though there are multiple free options in the market, Kentico is an example of a not so expensive option to choose with a host of features associated with it.#7. User interaction
It is very important to identify how many people access the website and what kind of purposes they access it for. These days users are very particular about how accessible the websites are and what features are available for them to access. It is important to therefore, keep the users in mind while selecting the best CMS platform for your business. Additionally, ensure that the CMS platform also supports plugins like chat tools, social media and so on, to make your site more interactive.#8. Customizability
Web development is becoming dynamic in terms of content and changes to the website to keep users engaged. This means that there must be constant changes to the content and design alike on the websites to keep the users engaged. Given that, doing these changes should also be easy and manageable since keeping a full-time person dedicated to only CMS updates might not always be feasible. Additionally, usability and accessibility are also important aspects when businesses want the turnover time for changes to be quick. Therefore, platforms that have extensions are more useful in these situations.#9. Type of CMS platform
There are many types of CMS platforms. You can choose to go with the open source model that have the ability to be easily modified and customized based on your requirement based on the options provided by developers working on the platform.
Alternately, you can choose to use proprietary CMS platforms where a company owns the platform and can customize it to your needs and charge a licensing fee for using their product.
