5 Things to Keep in Mind While Choosing the Right CMS for Your Website

Don’t think of a website purely from an online presence perspective. It is a critical tool in your digital transformation strategy as well. In a world where digital-first is an imperative if you want to compete and prosper, your business needs to choose its CMS with a lot of foresight. Yes, WordPress is a popular CMS and it’s definitely a go-to CMS for numerous businesses across the world, but is it the right choice for your website? E.g., if you are using a Django website, you need to think carefully whether transition to WordPress from Django will make sense.

This is the critical question.

The ideal CMS should be able to deliver highly engaging and satisfying customer experiences to visitors. It’s not just about how easy it is for you to keep your website updated and running full steam, it is also about the functional experience of its users.

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If popularity is a key determinant of making the right choice, then WordPress towers over all other content management systems, and the difference between WordPress’ market share and that of its nearest competitors is stark.

However, it is important that you not only focus on the popularity of a particular CMS, but also on your needs and expectations

How do you go about choosing the right content management system (CMS)? Here are a few things you must consider:

1. The Focus on a Personalized Experience

Customer-centricity is the key. Will the CMS offer a convenient and personalized service to its users. Remember, website visitors are not just visitors, they are your potential customers or product consumers. Think of your website as a conversion machine that converts potential customers into paying customers. So, don’t take them for granted because your competitors won’t be making that mistake. You need to think about making the website experience better for your customers.

The CMS you choose must be able to offer a unifying experience across all devices used by your customers like desktop, laptop, and mobile. This means these must be effective and seamless rendering of your website ensures your customers are able to navigate the site, access all information and make a positive buying decision.

2. Need Based Approach

Let’s take the example of healthcare. If you are active in the healthcare domain and are looking for the perfect CMS to meet your needs and requirements, the first question that you and other decision makers should ask themselves is, "What is the kind of functionality, I want from my site?"

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Take a closer look at Insights & Trends from Geonetric’s 2020 Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends Survey, and check what marketers/website stakeholders expect from their healthcare website. When they go about choosing a CMS for their needs, they have to make sure that the website features will align with their needs.

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The same survey underlines what stakeholders feel are competitive differentiators when it comes to website features. Your website has immense strategic value and more often than not plays a critical client/customer facing role. Its features can ensure, you are able to steal a march over your competitors.

3. The Global Approach

There is a phrase you must have come across very frequently – globalization. Your website must also cater to the needs of a global audience. A website should help you reach out to an audience that resides in multiple geographies. This means a single website is targeting an audience that isn’t homogenous.

One of the biggest differences is language.

"Based on a survey of 8,709 global consumers in 29 countries in Europe, Asia, North America, and South America, CSA Research found that 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy products with information in their native language. In addition, 40% will never buy from websites in other languages."

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This is a marketing challenge, but with the right CMS you can deliver localized content in numerous languages.

This essentially means you don’t have to worry about getting your message across in a different language. This will be taken care of by the CMS at the backend. In WordPress, you can activate a multilingual plugin to get the job done.

Here are a few multilingual plugins, you can use for this purpose:

• The WordPress Multilingual Plugin
• Weglot
• Polylang
• GTranslate
• TranslatePress

This allows you to offer content in a language that your customers understand.

4. Adapt to Technology That is in a Constant State of Flux

Your website must evolve to keep up with the rapid advances in technology. We are living in a world where technology is being used to automate repetitious tasks; Big Data is being used to make key business decisions and various other tech advances are helping businesses empower their key marketing activities.

Your website is a key component of your business’s marketing ecosystem and it can act as a critical driver of technological advances across your business. You need a CMS that allows you to incorporate as much technology in your marketing activities as possible. Your CMS must be flexible enough to adapt to technology and should help you capture, analyze and evaluate visitor data to make key business decisions.

5. The Mix of Content and Context

A vanilla CMS doesn’t work these days. This is the time for content mixed with context. An impersonal website experience needs to be shown the door. Welcome abroad a CMS that helps you deliver the kind of content experience that drives brand recall and personalization. A CMS must be directly aligned with customer journey so that it is able to deliver the right offer to the customers at the right time in the right context, up until the customer makes a decision that is favorable to your business.

Ideally, you need to be able to focus on your business and your CMS should be configured in such a way that it ties in with your business needs and objectives. You don’t need to wonder if your CMS is aligning perfectly with your needs in the background. You must ensure you have picked the right CMS that meets your expectations.

Conclusion

We want to conclude with the 5^th tip. You must work with an expert web development company, who will be able to identify the right CMS for your needs. We keep saying WordPress is super-ideal for your needs because it ticks all the boxes that we have mentioned in this article. But it is your website, and your business. Get all the information, you need and only then take a call regarding the CMS you should choose.