7 Tips for the Right Web CMS Platforms

written by Maggie Sawyer on July 13, 2016

A website represents you and your business and boosts the online presence of your business site across the globe. Thus, building a beautifully-designed website becomes essential if you want to increase the flow of web traffic, conversion rate and sales of your site.

With the use of a content management system, you can create, customize and modify your website easily and efficiently. The web development software lets you add, create and publish digital text without any hustle-bustle.

Over the last few years, it has become a buzz word in the web development sector because of its advanced features and functions. There are many content management systems available in the web market that allows you to start off your first/next online venture quickly and smoothly. But all of the CMSs have different functions, features, and benefits, so it becomes difficult to choose the most suitable option.

Many business owners hastily select the web CMS platform without even knowing their specific business needs and then survive in the web development industry. If you want to create a unique identity for your site and run a successful business, you need to make a wise decision while selecting the most suitable CMS for your site.

In this tutorial, we will share the Seven effective tips to help you select the right web CMS platforms without any difficult.

1. Carefully select the Web CMS vendor

Always look for a web CMS vendor who is capable of developing a mutually beneficial partnership. Features and specifications may vary based on your needs and resources, but the requirements will mostly fall into the following categories:

(a) Support
While selecting the CMS vendor for your web project, make sure that they will provide the robust support to you. However, this may be restricted to elementary product patches, but it includes several crucial services such as hosting, strategic guidance, user mentoring, etc.

(b) Community
A vibrant, thriving and engaged community can help you find the talent that can create a customized web project according to your needs. Try to choose a CMS which is supported by thousands of developers, designers, and experienced webmasters to help you if you stuck somewhere in the middle of web development process.

(c) Stability
If your ultimate goal is to grow the business dimensions across the web, then you need to choose a CMS vendor that can bring stability and consistency within your business site.

(d) Vision
The way the vendor understands the marketing strategies and the role of the product will determine the success of the product. If the customer and the vendor are working together, then expected features will be added and the product will show the sign of the growth. But if they aren’t, then the new features will scatter the product.

2. Understand the needs of your business

Before making any final decision or investing in any CMS software, take a look at your business needs that can help you determine your goals in a long run.

Don’t rush for the CMS selection without comprehensive research and understanding of the market. You can cross the capabilities of the CMS with your business needs as it can help you find the best solution with ease. Make a proper strategy before investing your money in CMS software.

Suppose, if your site is under-performing because of dysfunction, then a CMS software selection will distract the resources and attraction from the actual problems. Thus, it is essential for you to understand your business strategy before purchasing any software.

3. Creating a short list isn’t easy

There are two reasons behind selecting a reliable content management system: supports your specific needs and user-friendly interface. However, determining the CMS software’s functionality and usability becomes crucial especially for a novice web master. So, the last thing you have to do is to waste your time in getting close with the wrong products. In order to understand your needs, you need to create a list by dividing into two categories:

• Idiosyncratic Requirements: These are highly specific to the business such as- the need to support digital properties in 25 languages in a decentralized manner while synching them all.
• Extreme priority requirements: These requirements appear standard in nature such as “ease of content editing, but they gained a lot of priority and they deserve special focus to help you quickly filter candidate products with ease.

4. Evaluate features matrix of CMS software

It appears in the form of a spreadsheet and includes a list of capabilities or requirements – the selected product must have to meet your requirements. These capabilities are recorded by high-level category, down the first and left column.
You can use it to write down whether the requirements are met according to your needs or not. You can score each product as per their level of usability in the respective area.

5. Dig deeply into usage scenarios

You need to understand your requirements to find the right product that will meet the needs of your organization. To achieve this, you have to lean completely on usage scenarios and raise exciting questions.

A scenario is a short story which is written in a language that common people understand with ease. It describes the interaction of the user with the system with an objective to achieve the desired business goals. A scenario summarizes a ton of specific requirements to give them better meaning and context.

• Well, there are the four attributes for a robust scenario:
• It is written with particular users in mind
• It focuses on an imperative and commonly executed task
• It references the content that you target to manage
• It is flexible enough to encapsulate the difference between the product design and approach.

6. Seriously take product demos

After completing your work on feature requirements, developed your usage scenarios and done the initial product research, the next step of the selection process is the evaluation of products against your documented requirements.

If your selected product or implementation partner is compatible with both your content and your business needs, you have successfully completed this step. In short, the product meets both your business objective and subjective needs.

You will learn more by analyzing a product in action than reading an analyst report or proposal response request from a vendor. But, a product demonstration requires considerable investment from both ends.

7. Avoid overbuying the software

Overbuying the software is obviously a captivating but pretentious trap for buyers. Many people overbuy the product when they don’t have the robust strategy – they think they can minimize the risk by acquiring additional capability. But this is the biggest mistake.

Overbuying product means wasting money in buying additional functional that you don’t need. It also adds complexity to the execution that increases the risk of failure. After deploying the solution, the additional complexity makes it harder to use and that increases the chances of failure.

You can do a five-year total cost of ownership to ensure that you are responsible for the broader costs, including software licenses, along with support and maintenance, customization, implementation, training, and other direct expenses.

Conclusion

With the help of these tips you can pick out the most suitable web CMS software for your business. You can evaluate your business needs, marketing strategy and convert your plans into action for effective results.