You wouldn’t be the first person to feel overwhelmed (and confused!) when it comes to CMS, which stands for ‘content management system’. When creating a website, it comprises two parts – the front end and the back end. It may be a good solution for you if you’re someone who wants to create a website or update your existing website, with little technical knowledge and experience.
Here are a few pros to CMS:
1. There is no coding required.
Fabulous! Coding can be left to the developers. You are able to create, manage content and customise your website to suit your business.You can install extensions to add functionality to your site, all without having to worry about coding!
2. SEO features and extensions
CMS platforms have built in features to assist with optimisation for SEO. You can utilise the feature such as, customising page titles and meta descriptions, add image alt text and redirects.
3. Pre Design templates
Select a template that suits your business’s brand. You can choose a template and then customise just the way you would like it.
4. Blog formatting
Blogging not only offers information and education for your audience, but it drives traffic for SEO. It can create conversions, establish leadership/authority in your industry and generate backlinks.
5. Content scheduling
You can schedule your blogs for times when your audience is online without worrying about being online to make live.
So, what about the negatives?
1. It can be a larger Security Risk unless maintained and regularly updated. Content management systems generally invite more hackers than websites that don’t use a content management system or hard coded websites.
2. You will need to understand and implement updates and changes to the software on a semi-regular basis.
3. Learning a new system. Whilst many CMS are user-friendly, you will need to take some time to familiarise yourself with the software on how to use it to its best potential.
4. An added expense. CMS annually costs money. If your business decides to grow (yay!) you will no doubt need to upgrade as you go, which can become costly.
Now that we hope you have a better understanding of what a CMS is, what are some of different platforms and how do you choose the right one for you? We’ve listed the top 3 recommended for small business. Keep in mind you want to stick with a popular platform so that if you do need to reach out for help, you have plenty of developer options that are familiar with the CMS.
1. Hubspot.
You may have heard of Hubspot as it’s one of the popular CMS. It’s rated 8.6 (out of 10) for ease of use and rates number one for Content Authoring – This is for drafting and publishing content in an intuitive and non-technical way. You can use Hubspot for eDM’s, scheduling and as a CRM. Highly worth the investigation if you’re looking for an all-in-one type platform.
2. WordPress.org
Another popular option that many would have heard of. WordPress is used to create websites for all different business sizes. Its functionality is excellent and popular with developers in case you need some assistance. One of the great features of WordPress is you can add plugins for frontend access which makes it easy to design and add content. No code required and lots of templates to choose from. Rated 8.3 for ease of use, and like Hubspot rates number one for Content Authoring, followed by asset management (allows storage and management of rich files).
3. Duda
Duda has powerful team collaboration and client management tools for building and managing websites at scale. The platform enables you to build feature-rich websites that are perfectly suited to desktop, tablet and mobile, and automatically optimised for Google PageSpeed. It ranks number one in customer support and rated 9.3 for ease of use.
These are the 3 top recommendations for 2023, however there are a range of different options to choose from. It’s worth considering below for your business:
● Do you already have a website, but need to integrate?
● Are you building a new website?
● How much are you willing to spend each month?
● What type of business do you have?
● How much technical experience do you have and/or require?
● What are the main tasks/features you want from your CMS?
By keeping the above dot points in mind, this will help you decide the best CMS suited for your business.
Further explore the list here.