A New Website: Which CMS Best Suits Your Requirements?

If you’re looking for a new website for your company, a key consideration will be the Content Management System (CMS). A new website is a big investment - it is the core of your digital presence and is likely to have a significant impact on lead generation and sales. Therefore, choosing a CMS that will fulfil all your requirements is a critical decision. Hopefully, this article will give you an insight into some of the most popular CMS platforms. However, before we delve into the crux of the article, let’s first set some context….

What is a CMS?

A CMS is an application that allows marketers, digital marketers and content editors to manage the inception of pages within the website, without having to approach an agency for simple text and image changes. CMS platforms typically have user management, SEO tools, scheduled publishing, and lots of other useful features.

A New Website...

It can be a little overwhelming if you’re tasked with overseeing the design and development of a new website. There are many things to consider; the structure of your website, what pages you will have, the design and branding, what functionality you require, and the content, all whilst managing a budget, deadlines and your boss’ expectations! There are lots of CMS options, and scouring the internet to compare various features, functionality and costs is a time-consuming process. Often, you’ll be left more confused than when you started.

Which CMS Best Suits Your Requirements?

The truth is, and this may not be particularly helpful, but there isn’t one single “best” CMS, however, there is likely to be a CMS that best suits your needs. That is, different CMS platforms are suitable for different businesses and marketing teams. Whilst one CMS may suit company A, it may not be entirely the right solution for company B.

There are multiple factors to consider when deciding on the most suitable CMS including: -

  • Functional requirements - do you need to integrate with pre-existing systems? Do you require e-commerce functionality to sell products? Will users need to sign into a portal area to access their account?
  • Marketing requirements - SEO performance - how important is ranking on search engines to your business? Analytical tools - will you want to monitor the impact of any content changes on user behaviour, and to what degree? Do you want to deliver a personalised website experience by displaying content tailored to a user’s behaviour?
  • Content requirements - how much flexibility do you want when adding new content and creating new landing pages? How frequently will you add new content, and how easy and efficient do you want the process to be?
  • Design requirements - are you looking for a completely custom design for your new website so that you stand out amongst your competitors?

Umbraco & Sitecore

Umbraco and Sitecore are two of our favourite Content Management Systems which are suited to companies looking for a custom solution with more advanced capabilities. Both platforms are built on Microsoft’s .Net framework meaning that pretty much anything is possible from a functional and integration perspective.

Sitecore yields more advanced analytics and marketing automation out of the box, whilst Umbraco is arguably a more user-friendly platform lending itself to a smoother content editing experience.

Umbraco

Umbraco is a powerful CMS solution that is used for over 400,000 websites worldwide. Our favourite thing about Umbraco is the build-your-own-page tool. This tool allows you to create unique landing pages by placing brandable components in any order you wish, and is very popular with content managers! Furthermore, components may include UI elements with further customisability in the CMS. So, rather than having a set area of text, users can choose to have text on the left and images on the right or vice versa. For more information on Umbraco, check out our blog article: What is Umbraco?

Sitecore

Sitecore is an enterprise-level CMS with advanced marketing and analytical capabilities. Sitecore have nailed personalisation. The CMS will deliver personalised content based on multiple criteria for example, a user’s location or referral source. Moreover, Sitecore can integrate with your e-commerce store to promote and upsell products based on a user’s purchase history. For example, let's say you’re a football club, and one of your users recently bought an adult and child ticket to the game, the system could send an email in the run-up to Christmas promoting a child's football kit. How cool is that?! Finally, analytical tools allow marketers to measure the performance of messages and Call to Actions at a super granular level.

WordPress

WordPress is a cost-effective CMS platform if you’re looking for a simple information-based website with simple functionality. If you’re a smaller business or start-up, then WordPress may be a good option for you! There are thousands of themes available to choose from, and your web development agency should be able to set up the theme for you, make any brandable changes (colours, fonts, etc.) so that the theme aligns with your brand, install any plugins, and handle any technical jobs to launch the website.

Magento & Shopify

Magento and Shopify are dedicated e-commerce content management systems. As one of the biggest technology names in the e-commerce world, Magento powers some of the biggest brands around the globe. The platform works as a standalone CMS allowing you to control all areas of your website from content and marketing pages to product data and offers. Another e-commerce platform is Shopify, which provides solutions for both ends of the market from an easy drag and drop store builder with access to thousands of apps that help with accounting, marketing and SEO, as well as a dedicated app to help manage your store on the go!

An Experienced Web Agency

Here at CSI Media, we specialise in web development and work with five different CMS platforms; Umbraco, Sitecore, Magento, Shopify and WordPress. This experience enables us to select a CMS that suits the specific needs of your company, taking into consideration your sector, your objectives, budget, design requirements, functionality and much more. If you're looking for a new website, please complete our enquiry form:

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