Whether you’re looking to upgrade your existing content management system (CMS) or you’re a first time shopper, there are many platforms to choose from and what’s right for someone else may not suit your specific business needs and goals.

Over the years we’ve worked with hundreds of websites built on a variety of platforms.  This is what you need to consider when choosing a CMS that will be most suitable for your business, and your budget.

Objectives


The first step should be to make a list of all of the features that you want from your website – both Frontend and in the admin area.

Technical Knowhow

Think about who is going to be updating the website: adding content, updating logos, adding menu items etc. Be sure to get input from everyone who will be using the CMS when researching your options. It doesn’t make sense to choose a CMS that the majority of your users will have a difficult time operating. However, you should also choose a platform which better suits those individuals who will be using it most frequently.

Budget

The amount you spend on a new website will always be a factor.  You have to consider the benefits, and potential rewards, that the new site will bring to your business.  There are certainly a number of factors to consider here, such as the time saved updating your website to search engine visibility and visitors experience…

What’s out there?

Proprietary Vs Open Source

Back in the day, you needed to hire a Web Development Company to build you a completely bespoke system to suit your needs.  Fortunately this is no longer the case, and we find that Open Source has the solution for most companies.  We sum up Open Source in one phrase: “Whatever you need the system to do, someone else has probably had the same objective”.
So, do you need a Proprietary CMS? With the amount of Open Source development nowadays, most companies can choose an Open Source CMS.  The only example that we have come across when this isn’t the case is when a business had a very complicated internal system and they needed a ‘purpose built’ CMS.

Open Source CMS Platforms

There are an impressive number of platforms to choose from, and this is where your list of objectives is required.  From this list you can browse the different platforms to see which ones cover your requirements. You can then dive in a bit deeper and look at the demos available on the different platforms, to get a feel for what your admin area will be like.

So many CMS platforms

The last time we looked there were over 200 CMS platforms on CMS Critic.  From our experience, easy to use drag and drop platforms like GoDaddy and Wix have been poor for Marketing purposes, with key elements missing.

Our personal favourite, by far, is WordPress.  We have used this for numerous types of businesses and it has always performed exceptionally well.  From an SEO perspective it gives us everything we need.  Also, with the continued development over the past few years: e-commerce, subscription, magazine, services and brochure websites have been exceptional.

Other key platforms such as Drupal, Joomla and Magento are preferred by many but are not recommended, by ourselves, because they simply don’t offer the same scalability and diversity as WordPress. In fact, we have worked with a lot of companies that want to move away from Joomla and Drupal as soon as possible.

Lastly, there are impressive Solely Marketing Platforms which are also out there. These combine the CMS knowledge with a Content Marketing focus. The leader in this area is Hubspot which does offer an impressive platform with marketing training.

Need Help…

If you need any help deciding which platform is right for you, then feel free to contact us. We have worked with a huge variety of platforms and even if we haven’t worked with the one you have in mind, we can analyse it for you.

Alternately, if you are looking to change or upgrade why not contact us for a consultation?