How Do You Pick The Right CMS For Your Business?

How do you pick the right CMS for your business? Should you just use WordPress like millions of others or should you look at different platforms? As a top web development company, we think it is important that each business makes a decision on a CMS that will fit their needs and situations. But how do you figure that out?

In our experience there are a handful of key questions that a business should ask itself first before shopping for a CMS. Once you have those answers, you are then in a better place to find the right product for your needs.

What should you be asking?

These are all vital pieces of the puzzle when it comes to choosing a CMS:

• Will it provide the functionality you need? – What do you need from your CMS? Do you need to just enter and edit content? Do you need to add pages and update menus and links? How are URLs generated? How does SEO come into play on pages? What about images? You need to make sure you have a list of what you need the CMS to be able to do.
• Can you import and export content easily? – Surprisingly not all systems allow you to export content. This can be a big surprise down the road when you want to change systems or if you simply want to export content to use elsewhere.
• How easy is it to expand? – While the initial setup might be sufficient for you to get started, what happens when you need to grow the CMS? Open source CMS platforms are great because of the capacity for growth compared to those proprietary options.
• Who will develop it? – Of course there is the question of who will develop the CMS initially and for any expansion. This can be tough because with a CMS like WordPress there are a lot of “developers” out there who really don’t know much about the system but claim to.
• Who will maintain it? – If you decide on WordPress then you 100% need someone actively maintaining it to prevent data breaches. Joomla also has had its fair share of exploits. When you update a CMS or add plugins, etc it can open the door to exploitation. Ideally you will have either someone in-house or a firm available for maintenance and troubleshooting.
• Will it work in conjunction with my site? – You should pick a CMS that works well with the other technologies you have in your business. Why make like harder by picking technologies that are far enough apart to limit your familiarity and understanding? That just means more work on your end.
• What do your top competitors use? – This is a scenario where the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. If most of your competitors are using Joomla or Drupal and nobody is using WordPress that should make you re-think about using WordPress. Not that there is anything wrong with WordPress but if another CMS is a top choice in your sector it most likely is for a reason or reasons that should be looked into.

The bottom line is that it can be hard to pick the right CMS for your business. Each platform is different, and while yes WordPress is by far the most installed CMS in the word, that doesn’t mean it is the best option for your business. Consider the questions we asked today and your answers will then form a checklist for what you need out of a CMS that you can then compare against each ones specifications.

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