Are you actively seeking ways to level up your business website so that you can make the most of it? Regardless of the size and kind of business you own, your answer for this question is always going to be yes.

While there are plenty of techniques and strategies to accomplish this little by little, you can also consider a CMS migration if the current platform is really not working for you.

Now for the more pertinent question: How do you know that a particular CMS is the right one for your business website? Let us start by looking at the primary factors to consider in the decision-making process:

Factors to Consider When Choosing a CMS

Choosing a content management system for your business is a big decision, so it is only fair that you consider a combination of multiple factors and parameters before you arrive at a decision. Out of the many questions you may have at this point, here are the most critical factors that you want to consider in the process of choosing a CMS:

1. Price and Budget Fit

Regardless of whether you are a small business or a big enterprise, you will have a budget when you set out to choose the right CMS. So, the price associated with a CMS is also one of your primary considerations when choosing a content management system. 

But the more important thing here is establishing the right fit between your budget and the cost associated with implementing the chosen CMS. Some CMSes offer freemium options wherein you will only have to pay for certain advanced features or functionalities, and while others offer different tiers of plans to choose from depending on the kind of website you want to create.

2. Speed of Implementation

The second important consideration when you are choosing a CMS, is the amount of time it will take for you to implement it. This matters even more if you are looking at shifting from one CMS to another, which is likely to be more complex and take additional time. 

Say, you are conducting an Umbraco to WordPress migration, you will need to create a backup of all your existing data, transfer all this data to a new CMS, and then ensure that the new CMS handles it correctly. A migration will also cost you more than creating a website on a CMS from scratch.

3 . Team Skills and Capabilities

While you have an array of CMSes to choose from, you ideally want to go for a CMS that falls within the purview of your team’s expertise and experience. If your in-house team’s expertise lies in Magento or Drupal, choosing to go for a CMS that does not utilize those languages will be a waste of talent on your end.

You want to ideally align the skills and capabilities of your resources with the CMS you choose, so that you can utilize them fully. It is also important to consider that your website implementation quality is likely to be higher, if you have resources who are already well-versed with the CMS.

If you do not have the relevant talent already in your team, you might want to consider the following questions:

• Do I want to hire new resources who have the relevant skills and experience?
• Do I want to outsource the effective implementation and maintenance to an agency?
• Do I have the necessary means to train my team in the inner workings of the new CMS so that they can fully utilize it?

Seeking answers to these questions will help you in the process of deciding the CMS that will be most suitable for your business website.

4. Quality of Customer Service

Once you have implemented a certain CMS platform for your website, you will only need to deal with its long-term maintenance. While this may seem like a straightforward task, it will only remain so if you get the right type and amount of customer service from the CMS company.

It is important to consider that the customer service will either make it easier or more difficult for you to deal with the CMS implementation. The company should either provide you round-the-clock customer support or at the very least have a robust support network through its community forums.

Along with verifying how active the community associated with a CMS is, you also want to check if you will receive regular updates and glitch fixes over time. If not, you will be stuck with an updated website for a very long time or, worse, need to go through yet another CMS migration.

5. Versatility & Flexibility

As your business grows, so will your dependency on third-party integrations and applications for automating and managing your processes. When you are taking a major step like switching CMSes, you want to ensure that it is compatible with any other crucial applications you are dependent on, and can accommodate any other integrations you plan to implement in the future.

Some CMS platforms make it very difficult for users to stray away from the default layout and data structures. So, you want to ensure that you are able to integrate custom codes easily, and that the CMS is usable with little to no training even by the non-technical users in your company.

You may also want to check the list of plugins and extensions offered by your CMS, so that you can get a better idea of how flexible the CMS is, and how versatile it can prove to be for your business. For instance, WordPress offers a wide selection of free and paid plugins that websites can use to extend and boost your website performance.

6. Scalability

When you are choosing a specific CMS for your business website, you are doing so to take it to the next level. So, it is important that the chosen CMS allows you to scale up your website design, and prove to be functional when your business grows and your requirements increase.

If your CMS does not have the features or capabilities to accommodate the growing needs and demands of your company, it is not the right one for you. Say, your small business starts with a mostly static website with limited features, but as you grow, you require a few more interactive elements and forms on your website. Your CMS should be able to accommodate this for you seamlessly.

7. Security

The next important consideration you should pay attention to when choosing a CMS is whether it has the right security features to support your business website. Regardless of the nature of your company, you can never take you or your users for granted, and this consideration should be at the top of your list when choosing a CMS.

You should also consider the likelihood of your website being hacked and the security features that the CMS offers for preventing phishing, spam, and other hacking tactics. Most of the CMSes will offer features that are in-built into the platform’s infrastructure and provide additional plugins that you can implement to amp up your security.

Even if you find the right CMS considering all these factors, you want to hire experienced personnel who can guide recovery efforts in case of a hacking attempt.

Concluding Remarks

Your choice of CMS can decide how your website will function now, and in the foreseeable future, so the most important consideration for you should obviously be whether it is able to help you achieve your goals. Apart from that, it is a good idea to use this list to ensure that you have implemented the right CMS for your business website.

⸻ Author Bio ⸻

Lucy Manole is a creative content writer and strategist at Marketing Digest. She specializes in writing about digital marketing, technology, entrepreneurship, and education. When she is not writing or editing, she spends time reading books, cooking and traveling.