10 SELECTION CRITERIAyou need to consider before choosing a CMS

Remco van Iersel 09-11-2016

Introduction

10 selection criteria choosing a CMS

Without selection criteria you’ve got a huge chance not choosing a CMS meeting

your business criteria. We’ve made a list of criteria you should consider choosing a

CMS. A list is never complete, but we think we captured the most important ones.

1. Content Management

1. Content Management

Make sure content is manageble. Choose at least a CMS with a Wysiwyg editor. Do

you want to use content fragments in multiple pages or multiple sites? In that case

you should make sure that you can drag and drop content fragments.

2. Asset Management

2. Asset Management

The content management system you select should force content providers to add <alt> attributes to images in order to rank high in search engines. You may also want a CMS that provides basic image editing tools, such as cropping, resizing and rotating.

Also, consider how the content management system deals with uploading and attaching PDFs, Word documents and other files. How are they displayed to end users? Can descriptions be attached to the files?

3. Search

3. Search functionality

The search functionality is an important part of your website. Approximately half of all users start with search when looking for content. Consider this when selecting a CMS:

Refreshing: how often does the search engine index your website? Thoroughness: does it index the entire content of each page? What about attached files, such as PDFs and Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents?Speed: some search engines can take ages to return results. Scope: can you limit the scope of the search function to a particular section of the website?Ranking: how does the search engine determine the ranking of results? Can this be customized?Customization: can you control how results are displayed and customize the design?

4. User interaction

4. User interaction

Interaction with your audience is key to know what drives them. Poor quality of interaction makes them going to your competitors. What you need on your website depends on you business.

At a minimum, you will need to be able to post forms and collect responses. How easy does the CMS make this process? Are fields customizable?

Maybe you also want an option to chat? Are RSS feeds supported? All things you should consider selecting a CMS.

5. Workflow management

5. Workflow management

Do you have multiple content editors using the CMS? You might not want all of them to touch every part of the website. You should have the option to limit their rights. For example to edit content, but not to publish content.

Or someone should have the right to make changes on certain parts of the website such as writing a blog, but not on changing the homepage. How does the CMS handle those workflows?

6. Versioning

6. Versioning

You might make mistakes in producing content or making changes to content Being able to revert to a previous version of a page allows you to quickly recover.

The best versioning systems have complex versioning functionality that allows you to roll back to a specific date.

7. Multi-lingual management

7. Multi-lingual management

Only selling products in your domestic country? Or is your product language specific? Just because you are targeting the domestic market doesn’t mean you can ignore the issue of language. We live in a multicultural society in which numerous languages are spokenIt might change in the future.

Think ahead. It is important that your CMS be able to grow with your business and evolving requirements.

8. Multi-site management

8. Multi-site management

Although you may not currently need to be able to manage more than a single website, that could easily change:

- You may decide to launch a new website to target a narrower audience.- You may decide to launch your products or services in more country’s in the future.

9. Security

9. Security

Make sure hackers cannot affect your website. Before selecting a CMS you first should investigate how the CMS handles security threats.

Besides threats from outside, accidents happen in every system. Servers crash, databases get corrupted and components fail. When that happens, a backup can save the day. Does the CMS make automated backups?

10. Integration possibiilties

10. Integration possibilities

A CMS is a content hub. It’s is a central place where you can manage your website. But you might want to do more with your website content. Maybe you want to sell products and you need an e-commerce system. You might want to integrate CRM systems to your website. At least you should analyze your audience with an analytics tool.

CMS’s vary on the way they integrate with other tooling. This can be a real hassle in some systems.

Tricode preselected 2 CMS’s

2 CMS’s meeting your requirements

Tricode implements CMS’s since our start in 1999. We selected two CMS’s for you handling all the considerations mentioned in a more than proper way:

- Adobe Experience Manager - Magnolia CMS

Do you want to know why we chose those CMS’s? Contact us!

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