2019 Comparison Guide

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

A CMS should make life easier on the marketer, allowing them to easily publish SEO friendly content. To help show a marketer where to optimize the page for relevant keyword phrases, the CMS should provide clearly labeled fields for page title, description, tags and meta keywords. This will maximize the visibility of your website when people search for key terms on Google, Bing, Yahoo or other search engines.

ENTERPRISE SEARCH MANAGEMENT

Over time, information on your website becomes buried inside databases, folders, emails or other media. The value of the information is largely diminished if the content can not be found. The problem is that many CMS providers charge as much as a THIRD of the initial purchase price for their CMS just for an additional search mechanism. We believe this is an integral part of the CMS and should be included at no additional charge to the customer.

ANALYTICS, PERSONALIZED CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES

“Personalization and targeting engines are the frameworks from which the practice of delivering tailored, digital interactions is made possible. Personalization is the first principle of relevance and a cornerstone of a sound customer engagement strategy.” (Digital Clarity Group)

ECOMMERCE CONSIDERATIONS

eCommerce capabilities are becoming increasingly important. Basic shopping carts are no longer a sustainable model and analysts are taking notice. Look for user-friendly order and product management tools and intuitive customer analytics. Deep integrations with payment and partner platforms are also a must-have.

A CMS is only an effective tool to expedite the efforts of your team IF it can be utilized properly. Marketers have enough on their plate keeping the digital marketing strategy up-to-date and relevant. A CMS should reduce their workload not create another confusing platform to master during their daily routine. This brings a few questions to mind – Is the CMS dashboard clear and easy to navigate? How intuitive is the editing toolkit? Can you publish content easily? Consider whether your intended CMS is an open source solution or developed on proprietary software to determine your flexibility in customizing your site:

OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS

This model to web development implies universal – or free – access to a product’s design or blueprint for redistribution, including subsequent improvements to the source code by anyone.

PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE

Proprietary Software is licensed under the exclusive legal right of the copyright holder, distributed to licensees under certain conditions, and restricted from other uses – such as modification, sharing, studying, redistribution, or reverse engineering. Usually the source code of proprietary software is not made available.

“Open source platforms absolutely have their place in the CMS market and may be a terrific solution for cash-strapped businesses or ones with minimal content management needs. However, enterprise-level paid systems bring a lot to the table – security, compliance and document management features, for instance – that free platforms often don’t. No system is infallible but why not at least give your company a fighting chance when it comes to keeping your content safe?”

Lisa Hoover McGreevy, Fierce Content Management

You should make sure that your future CMS platform provider is ready to roll up their sleeves to help you get the most out of their platform.

INTEGRATION & DEVELOPMENT SERVICES

Does your CMS provider have an integrations team to ensure that your site is connected to technologies that you utilize to conduct business? Most businesses need to connect their site to payment processing platforms, customer relationship management platforms like Salesforce, and more. It helps to know there is a number to call and a support technician standing by to help.

DESIGN & USER EXPERIENCE ASSISTANCE

Does your CMS provider offer services to bring your web design aspirations to life or provide tips to ensure the best user experience? If you don’t have the internal resources available, it helps to know that there is a team that knows how to navigate your CMS and develop your site for you.

CLOUD & MANAGED HOSTING SERVICES

Does your CMS provider take care of all infrastructure, software, security, compliance, maintenance performance and capacity management? Before you develop a site on your CMS or enter a long-term agreement, it’s worth checking to see if they monitor your site for updates, backups and changes. It’s also worth looking in the disaster recovery options available if your site gets hacked.

Your CMS provider should be able to partner with customers to provide successful solutions that deliver real results.

There may not be a specific metric to measure the value of a CMS, but we can understand the value a CMS brings to an organization by discussing the costs and value propositions.

COSTS

Costs typically include a software license, maintenance costs, implementation labor, ongoing labor, consulting and training.

FINANCIAL VALUE

Financial value can include reduction or reallocation of intranet management staff, reduced website development time and lower cost of training due to platform support teams and online support channels.

SECONDARY VALUE PROPOSITIONS

Other financially measurable benefits of implementing a CMS for your business include improved sales conversions or upsell revenue based on intranet conversations or integration with social media, revenue from new business, revenue from sales activities managed through the CMS, improved ideation, reduced time to hire, improved marketing processes and cross-departmental collaboration, improved lead generation and nurturing workflows, and the list could go on and on.

A CMS brings value to many different members of any organization and requires buy-in from a varied team of stakeholders.Understanding the overall goals of your organization and how they can be achieved through the use of a CMS can bring to light the true financial and qualitative value of your upgrade.