Making the right choice has never been easy. There are always options that put us into a fix. Reading about the features of each, comparing them, understanding your requirements could be a daunting task. There are so many CMS in the market; it gets really tricky when you need to select one for your business.
Content Management Systems today are more evolved and more advanced and provide users with a host of features to ease website management tasks. A website owner need not be tech savvy to update information on their website. It’s a simple process of just logging in and uploading content, images, videos or any changes for that matter. CMS Web Development has evolved over the years and provides users a perfect separation of the website content from the website design, so that users need not worry about messing with the code – a few clicks and your website is updated with the latest product images, blog posts, content and lots more.
That said; let’s further ease the process of selecting the right CMS for your business. Here are the top five questions you should ask yourself when considering a content management system.
1. What am I expecting from a content management system?
The major deciding factor for selecting the right CMS for your business would be the answer to this question. The first thing you need to decide is what you want a website for? There are plenty of options here too. Decide whether you want a website to provide information about your business and help you generate business? Or, is your website itself your business (like ecommerce sites), whether it will be a news site, blog, forums etc. Once that is done, you’ll get a better picture of what kind of CMS you are looking for.
2. Will it cater to my growing business needs? (Extensibility)
Businesses grow with time and the CMS should allow such kind of expansion. A flexible, scalable and extensible system could be your answer. Search for one which provides these features. The last thing you want is getting stuck with a CMS that won’t provide for future growth of your business resulting in a lot of re-work for you.
3. How much does it cost?
The good news here is that there are many CMS that are available for free! Although some plugins and extensions are might cost you a little, but that’s generally not a very expensive option. You can even consider customizing the system from a CMS web development professional or company if budget permits.
4. Support for my queries if need be?
If you are selecting a CMS that is open source and free, this question is bound to arise. Who is responsible for this free product that has an open source code that can be freely edited and distributed by anyone? Who is then accountable when my system fails? Open Source products always have a strong backing from open source communities. Also, if you got your CMS customized by hiring a CMS web developer, you can be rest assured that you will get appropriate support whenever needed.
5. What are my options? Which are the most popular and reliable ones?
Again, options are plenty. The most popular ones are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, dotnetnuke, Magento etc. These are easily available for download and use out of the box too. Also, as mentioned earlier, you can hire experts to do the ground work for your website!
Getting it right the first time will help you select the best for your business.