How To Choose The Best Website CMS

The websites become an indispensable business tool. The share of online channels for attracting target audiences continues to grow. It is increasingly difficult to find a company that has not yet made a name for itself online. At least it is a business page on a popular social network. But to achieve the maximum effect from online marketing requires its own website. Hence choosing the Best Website CMS for your business is perhaps the most important decision you'll make for the future of your business. It provides more opportunities for communication with potential customers and the presentation of your products and brands. In addition, the company's own website allows not to depend on the rules and functional limitations of a particular service or social network.

What Is Website CMS?

In order to realize the full potential of the website and ensure the fulfillment of its business tasks, it will require an appropriate "engine", or content management system - CMS (content management system). Thanks to this system, your website will be able to initially provide a full range of required services and will receive functionality equally useful to customers and owners. The right choice of CMS will allow you to effectively implement their business ideas on the Internet, and your potential customers will be able to comfortably use them, buying goods, ordering services or just getting the right information.

CMS is best for those who are not adept at writing code. Data in a CMS is stored in a database and you can easily customize your page in a set of templates without knowledge of coding. 

Some Popular Website CMS that you can easily start designing your website are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Wix, and more in the list.

If you need a Website then you must need a CMS for it!

Choosing A CMS: Paid or Open Source?

The first question that naturally arises in the future owner of the site, it is a matter of saving. And in this market, CMS offers a simple (and at the same time difficult) choice. You can take as a basis for your site one of the free options (the same WordPress, Joomla or OpenCart) or use the services of professional developers for money (1C-Bitrix, UMI.CMS, NetCat). In addition, on the market of solutions for creating a website, there are online developers (Wix, Tilda, LPG, etc.) Each of the options has the right to life and its. 

FREE / OPEN SOURCE CMS

Advantages of free CMS

1. A large set of plug-ins that can be placed on the base engine to optimize your site - a guarantee of high functionality

2. Availability of various free CMS for different purposes (OpenCart - for e-commerce, Joomla - for business card site, WP - for almost everything)

3. Ability to find solutions for most tasks in enthusiastic communities on a fee basis

4. Price, or rather its absence. Your task is only to select an employee who will understand the intricacies of your "engine", or self-acquaintance and maintenance of your CMS.

Disadvantages of free CMS

Of course, such CMS has a number of disadvantages compared to "boxed" paid species. Limited potential for business development and expansion. There are no guarantees. You have no one to make claims and no one to get guaranteed support.

1. Traditionally it is considered that the safety of free CMS is much lower than at paid. High popularity and a large number of sites based on a particular CMS attract the unwanted attention of cybercriminals. And in case your site supposes storage and maintenance of payment documentation, carrying out information about clients' accounts or their personal data, a free system is not the best option.

2. With functionality it is not so simple: the base version of CMS most often has limited functionality, which is extended by adding additional extension modules (plug-ins). But far not all plug-ins are equally useful and not always optimally solve the problem.

3. The practice of paid extensions from external developers for popular free CMS is widespread enough. That calls into question the original plan to save.

PAID CMS

Advantages Of Paid CMS

In contrast to "boxed" CMS are stability and reliability, official support and guaranteed updates. Their advantages include:

1. Ready-made solutions for your needs.

2. Scaling and distribution of heavy load on the site.

3. Integration with other systems (CRM, CBA) from this or a third-party developer.

4. Guaranteed support from the manufacturer.

5. Own unique features: each commercial CMS manufacturer strives to make them better, regularly expands functionality, optimizes.

The Disadvantages Are

Even paid solutions can not ensure that all your wishes are fulfilled "out of the box". If you need specific functionality that is not available in the standard - for its development and implementation will have to pay.

1. The cost of the license and services of the certified experts in adjustment is far not always acceptable for the small and average business.

2. The necessity of training the employees to work with concrete CMS. Most marketing and IT-specialists quite well understand free products, after all, they meet very often. Paid CMS are less common and have their own features, to which staff needs to adapt.

What Should I Pay Attention To When Choosing A CMS?

Let's consider the main factors that play an important role in choosing a CMS for a new site:

1. Type of your site: An online store will require one platform, for chat or forum - a completely different functional solution, and a resource with a lot of content and will require very different conditions for implementation.

2. Try to consider all the options for using the website and highlight the most important for your business: 

On this basis, selected CMS, which in the basic version or with minimal modifications to ensure the performance of basic business tasks. If the main role of the site - online store, you need to focus on this, and the support forum, news section, and other related functions can be implemented through extensions, modifications or integration with another specialized CMS.

3. Do you plan to expand? If you need it in the future:

• Expand your website;

• Introduce multi-language or regional versions of the site;

• Add thousands of products and services;

• Provide simultaneous work with the administrative panel for dozens of employees;

• Guarantee data security and a quick way to restore the site;

• Stable work at peak loads, etc.

Try to list in as much detail as possible all the important requirements for your future site. In the future, solving these problems can bring a lot of unpleasant surprises, up to the need to change the CMS, taking into account all the nuances of data transfer from the old system to the new one.

4. Level and prospects of development of your company: To get a full-function license for 1C-Bitrix, if you open a site for one bakery - it is irrational. But if you want to integrate the site with other software solutions of your company, and the number of offices offline you have dozens, it makes sense to invest in a high-quality paid "engine".

5. The convenience of the platform for you and your employees: You and your employees will have to work with CMS on a regular basis, so it is important that you can function freely in it, avoid mistakes and get timely developer support if necessary.

6. Cost: Be reasonable about how much it will cost you to customize and customize a free CMS to fit you if you have someone to delegate all this work to, and how much they will have to pay. On the other hand, compare it to the prices of the license and maintenance of the "box" system. If the first option is simpler and cheaper for you, nothing is impossible! But if you are still not 100% sure of your abilities and capabilities, it is better to pay attention to ready-made solutions that maximize your needs.

If you have already decided on the choice of CMS for a long time and are actively engaged in the implementation of new marketing tools, in the next article we will talk about such an important topic for digital marketing as A/B testing. Don't forget to come to us and get new knowledge in marketing research using this method.