Our experience here at Gibe Digital across a number of CMS systems has led us to understand what to look for when choosing the platform to build on.
Don't all CMS do roughly the same thing?
A common perception but not necessarily true which is to say all CMS platforms are not all born equal. Each CMS has been built with particular potential customers in mind and understanding your needs can sometimes help fit you to a particular system. As an example Drupal is particularly strong at community building (Forums etc).
The report highlights areas where marketing teams find either barriers or weaknesses and one of the main issues is the ability for everyone to access the system easily without a degree in C#. It appears that for a lot of companies the IT department is still choosing the system even though their input in the future will be minimal. The decision should be a joint effort between marketing and IT, integration with existing systems being the domain of IT and content management marketing.
In terms of integrating other digital marketing tools as a standard you should be looking for a platform that offers easy to manage analytics, the ability to create a personalised environment for customers and the management of digital assets such as video, images etc. This means the site becomes the centre of all digital marketing and keeps the message constant across multiple channels.
Currently the main wishes are that mobile/responsive design is supported so the business can develop an optimised experience across all devices, segmentation to further increase the personal feel of the site for targeted user groups and social media management. This can be on and off-site allowing the conversation to follow between customers and the brand creating user generated content along with the brands own messages.
The main goals of any website and therefore CMS system is to improve and increase engagement with customers making the site sticky and reducing bounce rates. Obviously attracting more visitors is also key however the CMS is only a tool in this regard rather than a complete solution. Finally making the marketing teams life easier through easy administration is a benefit and is likely to increase new content delivery.
The moral is choose carefully but don’t expect to find a single platform that does everything you need as well or better than any other, instead consider your priorities and get the best fit. Of course your friendly digital agency can help you with your choice and appraise a variety of platforms before helping you implement the solution.
