A Content Management System (CMS) is a tool used for managing content by letting multiple users write, edit, and publish the website content without knowing the technical details.
With a Content Management System, you will never have to create a web page or store images because it manages the entire infrastructure so that you can emphasize the front-end of the website.
Key features of the Content Management System
The following features are prominent under the Content Management System:
- Content Creation– Users can conveniently create, format, or edit content as required.
- Content Storage– Let you store content systematically in one place.
- Workflows– This feature assigns separate permission for different roles such as authors, admins, and editors.
- Publishing Feature– This feature lets its users organize the content and make it live.
How can Content Management System benefit you?
There are a variety of benefits of accessing the Content Management System. They are as follows:
- The collaborative aspect of CMS lets multiple users log in and contribute by creating, managing, and scheduling content to publish.
- CMS interface is browser-centric which provides easy access to users on a large scale from anywhere.
- It is an added advantage for those people who lack technical knowledge and skills because it lets users create and manage the content on the web without learning programming languages.
- The content management platform lets its users insert text and transfer images without necessarily knowing about HTML and CSS with the help of Drag and Drop Editors.
- The use of CMS is mainly for publishing web pages by reducing its dependency on front-end developers. This process is an easier and faster way to publish web pages by implementing changes.
Few examples of Content Management systems (CMS)
With the available hundreds of options of CMS platforms, there are a few popular providers of CMS such as Squarespace, Joomla, WordPress, Magento, Wix Drupal, and Optimizely Content Cloud CMS.
What exactly will you get from CMS?
Before deciding on the content management system, dig deep into understanding how your website and its content will be utilized.
You must choose a content management system based on the business problems you need to solve rather than selecting a popular or trending content management system. You must also be aware of your business’s specific requirements.
There are all sorts of CMSs available, and each of them has its specific characteristics and advantages.
Depending upon the needs and available resources of a company CMS type will vary. For example, some may be ideal for bloggers, others may be appropriate for E-commerce sites with exclusive features supporting the functioning of online stores and pricing.
Deciding your budget
For choosing a suitable content management system, you need to decide whether your budget is low or high. If your budget is low then you wouldn’t have a variety of justified options to suit you while if you have the resources to spend money then you will be able to choose from specifically-designed features for content creation. These features might be complex but are ideal for sorting out the challenges content creators and editors generally face.
Determining the type of business operations for CMS support
Once you get clarity on pricing, it is more than essential to understand and analyze the business operations which will need CMS support. You will need to ask questions about your company’s need to publish videos (say 100 videos) in a day, change the pricing on products each day, or upload blog posts.
Creating and publishing too much content could prove to be tedious for team members alone, therefore content management platforms can help you manage and collaborate content easily.
Integrating CMS with technologies
Apart from CRM, Web Analytics Program, or ERP, your company will require a different CRM integrating with available online marketing software. If you do have in-house developers, a strong API and proper documentation might be of use.
Process of creating and editing content
If a company operates on a larger scale, there is going to be a huge gap between the CMS end user, and the person who is executing it. On a positive note, the CMS’s back end will appeal more to users because of its user-friendly interface and highlighted feature called the drag-drop-editor (WYSIWYG). This feature is special as it enables a user to edit content online without having any idea of coding. Advanced companies following the latest trends seeking more than just templates could use a Headless CMS. This is even useful for CMS mobile apps.
Different users for CMS
It would help if you analyzed the level of rights required for CMS. You need to understand the different roles associated with users and also the manager’s role in scheduling and reviewing content. The other users also need to manage their documents- PDF files or CMS images. To acquire better digital experiences, having excellent Digital Asset Management is crucial.
Gauging the size of a company or website
Larger businesses will require stricter applications for content management and seek those features that solely exist in enterprise CMSs. Smaller companies should utilize accessible user interfaces with simple maintenance because the teams managing software applications are smaller.
How to analyze success?
Measuring conversions is an excellent way of becoming aware of how far you’ve been able to accomplish your CMS goals. What goals did you set for CMS? Was it a blog, or a commerce site? Based on your CMS goal, you can choose to measure conversions with the help of a Web Analytics Platform such as Mixpanel, or Google Analytics. Authors can implement faster changes to the content without any front-end developer. You can also measure these changes through an A/B test, further telling you how these have impacted your website. User-friendly software will make the above process more manageable and more straightforward without having the need to develop any complicated integrations.
Are the CMS platforms supportive for users?
Ask yourself which way your users are supposed to find your website? You will require automation for CMS to carry out the basic tasks associated with the on-page optimization if you prioritize top-ranking on search engines. These tasks could include URLs, title tags, alt tags (images), and smooth structure for internal linking. You might use CMS software to manage such requirements. SEO practice is an excellent method of organizing your website’s appearance on social media channels specifically when users spread and share links to your websites.
Which CMS technology should you use?
For integrating with your current marketing systems, CMS platforms operate through custom templates with the help of developers, or implementation agencies. These agencies and developers aren’t customary in working with every CMS type. Therefore, it is recommended that you choose software that aligns with your developer’s knowledge about it. Few programming languages you could choose from include NET CMS, PHP CMS, or Java Script.
Do developers accept CMS platforms?
WordPress and Drupal receive more massive support from large developer communities with massive open-source. It is more significant to have support from a sizable community because of the online help and documentation it provides under the feature of customization.
Developers can also make use of Optimizely Content Cloud which consists of a large and active forum.
