A decade in the past, 100% of our shoppers utilized WordPress as their content material administration system. Years later and that quantity has dropped to lower than half. There are some very legitimate explanation why our potential and present shoppers have moved away from their CMS and migrated to a different.

Notice: This text is targeted on companies that aren’t primarily on-line shops.

Listed here are seven key causes that you could be want to contemplate a brand new content material administration system:

1. Integrations – As corporations develop, they usually purchase a plethora of programs that want built-in to their content material advertising and marketing system. With this in thoughts, the finest CMS in the marketplace often is the absolute worst to combine and develop to. It’s important to investigate the efforts essential to combine your entire third-party platforms.
2. Efficiency – Websites are likely to develop over time in content material, customizations, and integrations. Usually, this hurts a website’s efficiency. When velocity is impacted, so are search engine rankings, social shares, and – finally – conversions. In case your website has develop into unruly, it could be time for a rebuild or a migration to simplify your on-line presence.
3. Expertise – Older content material administration programs are sometimes constructed on foundational ideas which might be not important. One instance was when cell browser use skyrocketed… CMS programs that couldn’t optimize for a mobile-first viewers needed to be deserted. Newer programs incorporate expertise administration, dynamic content material, and personalization capabilities that at the moment’s in style CMS platforms don’t accommodate effectively.
4. Course of – As corporations evolve, so do their inner processes for growing, designing, and publishing content material. Many CMS platforms don’t supply any sort of course of workflows (eg. having an legal professional approve content material previous to publishing). In case you require particular processes, chances are you’ll need to determine a CMS that includes your course of reasonably than attempting to work round an present CMS with out these capabilities.
5. Optimization – The flexibility to totally customise your website and optimize for better site visitors from search, social media, combine with e mail, A/B check different experiences, and enhance conversion charges is a important one. Many CMS platforms don’t supply any alternative to do that – on the detriment of the companies using them.
6. Possession – We’ve run into a number of shoppers that utilized proprietary CMS programs that anchored them to the platform’s licensing and providers. Whereas that’s an applicable answer for a lot of corporations – outsourcing the complications related to a CMS – it can be crippling to an organization once they discover out they don’t personal the platform and may’t simply management the content material they’ve closely invested in.
7. Internationalization – We dwell in a world market and firms which might be restricted to English-only CMS platforms (internally and externally) could must migrate their content material and groups to a brand new platform that may accommodate each translation and non-English consumer interfaces.
8. Laws – Whether or not its privateness considerations or accessibility, your content material administration system must assist any authorities rules controlling the way you make the most of information and the way you make your websites accessible to these with disabilities. Not each CMS can handle this.

Why We Usually Suggest WordPress

• Unimaginable Theme selection and assist. Websites like Themeforest are a favourite for me the place I can discover probably the most superb templates at a minimal value that we will implement and construct upon for our shoppers. We don’t even supply customized themes anymore since we will construct upon a little one theme and assume all of the father or mother theme’s superb options. Extraordinary websites could be in-built a fraction of the time.
• Plugin and integration selection and assist. As a result of so many websites run WordPress, it’s a should for nearly any firm that needs to combine with a content material administration system. From e mail distributors, CRM, touchdown web page options, and many others… it’s virtually troublesome to discover a firm that hasn’t built-in.
• Utilization is in every single place, so discovering workers and directors that make the most of WordPress is pretty commonplace. Ramping up a brand new CMS can require further coaching time inner to an organization, so utilizing a well-liked one could make issues a lot much less painful internally.
• WordPress Managed Internet hosting platforms like Flywheel, WPEngine, Pantheon, LiquidWeb, and even GoDaddy, and extra have gotten commonplace. Older internet hosting corporations by no means truly supported WordPress regardless of it being so in style so corporations usually had been in a battle between the host and developer on what could be fallacious with the positioning. These providers supply safety, built-in backups, content material supply networks, SSL certificates, monitoring, staging, and a number of different instruments to make your website each quick and steady.

If that appeared like me promoting WordPress, persist with me. Points have arisen which might be beginning to make us suggest shoppers to different Content material Administration Programs.

Why We Usually Don’t Suggest WordPress

• Efficiency – By far, the best problem to utilizing WordPress is bettering the efficiency of the platform. It’s why there are an array of devoted internet hosting platforms and caching plugins in the marketplace. WordPress could be fairly sluggish, particularly as you add themes and plugins which might be poorly developed.
• Sources – If our shopper doesn’t have any expertise utilizing WordPress however hopes to imagine management of the positioning, we could hesitate at recommending the plaform for them. WordPress has limitless potential… which can also be limitless potential for issues!
• Upsells – WordPress was bullish on any sales-related service, theme, or plugin. They’d usually block anybody from publishing instruments inside their system that provided a price ticket on it. However now, should you combine Jetpack, you’re met with nag messages to buy Automattic’s backup providers. So, abruptly the open supply advocates at the moment are promoting their very own providers. I’m not sad they’re doing this, it’s simply that it was frowned upon.
• Safety – Due to its reputation, WordPress has additionally develop into a goal for hackers. A median website with a well-produced theme and a dozen plugins could depart a gap open for hackers so website house owners, directors, and hosts should be further vigilant to assaults and keep on prime of theme and plugin updates.
• Growth – I’ve a shopper that has a website and typical set of plugins proper now that has about 8 references to Google Fonts of their header as a result of their theme and various design plugins all supply it as a service. Regardless of there being a strategy to making sure a service isn’t referred to as greater than as soon as, builders ignored it and simply added their very own references. This hurts the positioning for velocity and rating… and isn’t one thing the common consumer would know with out troubleshooting. Poor practices in WordPress API integration have gotten increasingly more commonplace. I’ve dozens of tickets open with builders to right these points. Most are responsive, many are usually not.
• Complexity – A typical house web page in WordPress could have options pulled from widgets, menus, website settings, theme settings, and plugin settings. Typically to edit one merchandise on a web page, I spend half-hour looking for the setting! It’s troubling that WordPress hasn’t constructed out a finest apply to make sure builders put their settings the place it’s simple to seek out and replace.
• Ecommerce – Whereas WooCommerce has come a good distance, we discover that Shopify is a way more mature ecommerce platform with an array of productized integrations that may’t be beat.

Ought to You Replace or Migrate?

One situation we’ve run into over time are shoppers who’ve a destructive opinion of their CMS when the CMS isn’t the issue in any respect. WordPress is a good instance of this. Themes and plugins can wreak havoc on how the platform is managed and content material is deployed. When an company develops code towards finest practices or incorporates poorly developed themes and plugins, it could possibly dramatically change the general expertise of utilizing the platform. In my view, most corporations don’t actually hate WordPress… they hate the theme, the plugins, and the way their websites had been developed and the way they should be managed.

In these conditions, we now have opted for updating the shoppers’ cases. We’ve developed little one themes, decreased plugins by customizing theme code or plugins, and dramatically modified the administration for ease of use.

What Different Content material Administration Programs Are There?

So, what different content material administration programs have we carried out? Whereas we proceed to look to lean on WordPress for its potential to be search engine optimized, we’re seeing good outcomes with different content material administration programs:

• Craft CMS – we’re helping a shopper, Canvas, with optimizing their website on Craft CMS and I’m already in love with its simplicity and ease of use. There’s additionally a large community of well-supported plugins for Craft CMS as effectively – making it simple for us so as to add enhancements to the positioning for search and conversion optimization.
• Drupal – should you’re a developer or need to construct a extremely complicated and huge website, Drupal is a pacesetter within the open supply CMS trade.
• Hubspot CMS Hub – In case you’re a small to medium-sized enterprise and want to construct your website round a buyer relationship administration (CRM) system, Hubspot leads the best way. No want for third-party integrations to seize leads, it’s all constructed proper in.
• Sitecore – we’ve assisted fairly a number of enterprise shoppers that make the most of Microsoft applied sciences all through their corporations and have carried out Sitecore. It’s a implausible CMS with huge assist within the Enterprise area. We wouldn’t hesitate to suggest it.
• Squarespace – for the non-technical do-it-yourselfer, I’m unsure there’s a greater CMS on the market than Squarespace. I’ve one shopper who was in a position to construct their website in a few weeks with no expertise in anyway and the outcome was lovely. We helped tweak and tune the positioning, however a WordPress implementation would have by no means been carried out in the identical period of time. The earlier website was WordPress and the administration was simply too troublesome for the shopper to navigate and replace. They had been annoyed earlier than, and are completely satisfied now! And Squarespace presents ecommerce options as effectively.
• Weebly – one other D-I-Y platform that continues to advance and shock us on its wealthy options, together with ecommerce. We’ve not managed a shopper right here but, however Weebly’s array of integrations (apps) is sort of intensive and appears to have all the pieces one wants.
• Wix – after having a tough begin with search engine marketing, Wix has invested closely in it’s natural search visibility and instruments for its shoppers. It’s fairly a formidable platform that’s come a good distance over the past decade.

That is only a quick checklist… in fact there are numerous extra content material administration programs which might be unbelievable to make use of. Our strategy to figuring out the correct CMS for your small business is to analysis the integrations obligatory, perceive the conduct of your audience, determine the channels you want to market to, determine the competitors and traits, and perceive the interior assets and processes you need to determine the very best match.

Are You Caught with Your CMS?

We additionally have a look at dependencies. If a CMS doesn’t have the capabilities of exports or imports with a clear mechanism, it may be a trigger for concern. Think about your organization engaged on a CMS for a number of years, constructing authority with search engines like google, and driving tons of conversions solely to seek out out that you just’re implementing a brand new CRM that’s not supported by way of any integration. Your group decides that it desires emigrate however the CMS doesn’t supply any instruments to do such.

We’ve seen this a number of occasions – the place an organization is tied and locked into their vendor. It’s irritating and it’s pointless. A fantastic CMS supplier that’s assured in itself will at all times supply a method emigrate on or off of it as a substitute of attempting to lock in its clients.

How Do You Migrate To A New Content material Administration System?

Migration could be fairly a fancy course of. Our strategy is:

1. Backups – backup the total website and expertise utilized. We sometimes hold the present infrastructure in place whereas growing the brand new infrascture within the occasion it must be rolled again.
2. Crawl – we crawl the prevailing website to determine all pages which might be revealed. We regularly determine many pages that had been forgotten about and nonetheless have to be managed.
3. Scrape – we scrape the present website to obtain textual content and different property within the occasion we have to rebuild pages on the brand new system.
4. Redirects – if the URL construction has been modified, we make sure that we construct all obligatory redirects to correctly show the brand new web page if an outdated hyperlink is clicked or a backlink exists that can drive site visitors or search engine authority.
5. Construct – we construct the brand new website, switch the content material, and get approval from the shopper on design, navigation, and content material adjustments.
6. Integrations – we construct all integrations essential to seize any lead or conversion information.
7. Analytics – we correctly configure tags and analytics to make sure all occasions, campaigns, and behaviors could be captured in analytics.
8. Go Stay – we push the positioning dwell and monitor it throughout analytics and search to make sure it’s performing effectively below the quantity of regular guests.
9. Optimize – we optimize the positioning inside a month of going dwell to make sure the positioning is bettering on natural search outcomes, social media integrations, and conversions.

In case you are contemplating a brand new content material administration system, we will help you with the seller or platform choice, internet hosting, and migration.

Contact Highbridge

Disclosure: We utilized affiliate hyperlinks inside this put up.