Lots of factors will influence whether a particular content management solution is the best choice for your business, but unless you know what these variables are, you will have a tough time navigating this competitive market successfully.
To help you out, here are some tips to follow which should point you towards a suitable CMS and help you steer clear of inadequate alternatives.
Seek out scalability
Scalability should be a top priority when picking a CMS, since you want to be certain that as your business grows and your content volumes increase, the management solution you are using will be able to expand and adapt along with you.
Another perk of scalable services is that they should also prove more cost-effective, as you should only pay for the usage you require, rather than being overcharged for unused capacity or stifled by a restrictive package.
Embrace mobility
In the era of increased mobile and remote working, your organization will want a CMS that is built to accommodate this emerging trend.
Thankfully, there are lots of mobile content management solutions that go above and beyond the basic functionalities provided by established data repositories. The idea is to tailor the experience to the specifics of modern mobile platforms, making it easy to find files, collaborate with colleagues and make content accessible offline as well as through a persistent network connection.
Assess support features
Every CMS will need to be monitored, amended and updated at the backend, to ensure data integrity is preserved and to deliver a consistent, convenient experience to end users.
This means that scheduling maintenance tasks and implementing changes as seamlessly as possible should be a priority within any solution of this kind, whether you are going to handle this via in-house developers or rely on outsourcing this aspect to a third party.
Looking into the support features that are included in any prospective CMS is necessary in this context, as you want to do whatever you can to prevent costly downtime or any kind of service disruption where possible.
Examine the UI
The user interface of a CMS needs to be intuitive, logically laid out and suitably effective to ensure that it can be used productively, without frustrating users who interact with it on a daily basis.
Because of this, it is not worth committing to a particular platform until you have had a chance to see the UI in action. More complex, convoluted or plain badly designed UIs might necessitate additional training, which is obviously not ideal.
Use trials to narrow down your options
One of the best ways to find the right content management solution for your organization is to try out potential platforms on a trial basis.
Lots of vendors will let you do this free of charge, and this will give you the opportunity to pinpoint any problems and familiarize your team members with each system without needing to spend any money for the privilege.