A Quick Checklist to Choose the Best Content Management System
Ankit Mashru ?
Empowering Businesses with Impeccable Digital Transformation, Technology & Innovation.
Nowadays, businesses struggle with the new digital era of content management, such as reaching the right audience, on the right device and at the right time and managing multiple channels. Customers demand meaningful experiences each time they scroll down your content. Gradually increased pressure to create and update the content quickly and seamlessly is also a challenge for many.
To meet the requirements and opportunities of both existing and new users, enterprises and businesses need to figure out;
- What their users are expecting from them?
- What are the best options available for them?
- How they will fulfill their requirements?
These days, the Content Management System (CMS) is an essential component of any business website. That’s why choosing the best CMS for your website is crucial.
CMS is a platform that lets the business control their website. The management needs to carefully scrutinize the right platform for them to create, manage and edit the content that is on their website. However, oftentimes, important details get overlooked leading to disastrous outcomes for the company leading to inefficiency, reduced savings, increased expenditure and low ROI.
The ultimate objective of the CMS is to facilitate an engaging interaction between your brand and the user who can become a loyal follower or customer. This ensures that the visitor enjoys a personalized digital experience on your website no matter where he is on his purchase journey with your brand.
Here, we detail a few important pointers that will help you select the right Content Management System to create, manage and deliver content through multiple touchpoints.
Tailor-made CMS
Many popular platforms claim to be flexible for customizations and they make it possible for business owners to use their platforms without having advanced technical knowledge.
As a stakeholder, you need to make sure the CMS you select can be customized according to your requirements. It should also provide a hassle-free process for you to upload and/or update text, insert links and add images or videos. It must have a smooth process to add, customize or remove the web pages.
Most importantly, it should be intuitive and manageable for both your technical and non-technical employees.
Great UI/UX
The back-end part of your website is not visible to website visitors. However, this doesn’t mean it should be cluttered with a complex user interface (UI). Your CMS should have a user-friendly interface either on the front-end or the back-end that promises a seamless User Experience (UX). Here are some of the signs -
Intuitive – CMS should be instantly “at home”, it should make the visitor want to explore content instantly.
Significantly well-organized – It should have a clear and easy to understand structure - clear title formatting, description, post body, keywords, etc. without breaking the workflow.
Well-documented - The documentation should be well-written, clear and accessible for each aspect of content management that you might require. It should have short parallel text or short hints that can explain what are those fields or bullets or functions are about.
An SEO-friendly CMS
You certainly don’t want to choose a CMS that dents your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts or rankings. A good CMS is always equipped with SEO-friendly features such as:
- Does the platform allow you to create new or customize existing URLs?
- Do the URLs show up with page and subpage or as some random URL like – page456_12?id=ABC
- Does it allow you to secure your website with an SSL certificate (HTTPS browsing)?
- Does it allow writing unique titles and page descriptions?
- Are there any SEO tools integrated with the CMS?
- Does it allow the functionality of integrating third-party applications, plugins and more that enhance the user experience?
Choose the platform that can also handle the technical SEO aspects for you and your website.
Integration of web analytics
It is important for you to check whether the marketing automation and CRM integration are possible through the CMS for lead generation.
Make sure the CMS you choose is able to track key performance metrics. Also, check how the CMS integrates with analytics tools like Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.
Highly Secure CMS platform
The loopholes in Content Management Systems make businesses vulnerable and easy targets for cybercriminals. This is a crucial factor that needs to be considered when opting for a CMS. Carry out in-depth research in alignment with your business needs. Find out what security features the CMS offers and also learn how to make it more secure.
Other important questions include - hacking, pages being lost, content being accidentally deleted, recovering lost data, site crashes, backup, upgradation, security patching, maintenance and more.
Simply put, ensure that the CMS is easy to use even for an amateur stakeholder who can easily get a hang of things along with the factors we have listed out. It will help you save hours of training in case of assigning or sharing responsibilities with new users or editors or contributors.
We can help you create digital experiences that are personal and adaptive using the most relevant CMS platform for all your business-specific needs. Our 100% agile, technology-first approach ensures you get what you need with speed and superior quality.
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