Top 3 Factors to Consider when Choosing a CMS for your Website

What is a CMS?

Content Management Systems (CMS for short) are software that provides flexible and optional modules. You can, therefore, change content on your website including adding or deleting web pages or changing various aspects of the page.

There are many benefits to having a CMS for your business’ website including the fact that it allows you to post fresh content on your website whenever you want. If you know anything about SEO, then you know that fresh content should be one of your top priorities.

Choosing a CMS

A CMS will give you control over your website. However, this is only possible when you select the right kind of software. There are no clearly defined requirements for a CMS. This only makes selecting a CMS that much harder. There are many different options with varying features and at varying costs.

The following are features that you should look out for in your CMS. You can use this list to establish a list of requirements to help you select the right one for your business and avoid common mistakes made.

Functionality

Not all content management systems were created the same. Not all were created for creating, editing, deleting and organizing the pages on websites. It is important not to assume but instead check the CMS for functionality.

Consider the basic functions you need to perform at the moment as well as those you hope to incorporate for the future e.g. the ability to organize and structure pages. Stay away from a CMS that does not allow you to complete these tasks.

It is also important to ensure that you can easily accomplish the tasks. Usability should go hand in hand with functionality.

Control over appearance

An editor is the interface that allows you to amend and add content. What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editors allow you to control how the content appears on the published web page. They allow you to apply basic formatting to the content such as color and font type or size.

However, if you intend to use a WYSIWYG editor, it is important to limit the level of control you give content providers. Consistency in design on your website is a vital part of branding and marketing. It is therefore important to ensure that content providers have limited control over the presentation of their content.

Choose a CMS that only allows the content provider to mark up links, lists, headings and various other elements of the content without controlling its appearance. This ensures that the control of the appearance of the website remains in your hands.

Search functionality

Search functionality is vital for a website. Many users will start by searching the website for content that interests them. However, many CMS have inadequate search functionality. Look out for the following when carrying out your assessment of this aspect:

Speed – How fast does the search engine return results?

Freshness – how often is your website indexed by the search engine?

Scope – does the search engine limit searches to particular sections of the website?

Thoroughness – Does the search engine index the entire website or just selected sections?

Customization – does the search engine allow the user to control how results are displayed?

Ranking – how does the search engine display results?

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