8 Features You Need When Choosing Your CMS Platform

Here are eight of the most beneficial CMS features that can have a big impact on how you manage your content:

1. User friendliness

Not everyone using your CMS will be a tech expert, so it's important that the system is relatively easy to use. Even the most casual users should be able to log onto the platform and complete basic tasks such as viewing past, current and forthcoming content, or search for particular items.

The best CMS platforms will find a balance between user friendliness and complexity, meaning the simplicity of navigating and working with the system doesn't come at the expense of advanced tools and functions for specialist users.

2. Inbuilt SEO

Optimizing your web content for search remains as important as ever, so it's hugely beneficial to have a CMS with integrated functions that can monitor everything from the meta descriptions on your blog posts to ensure they're search-friendly to your page URLs.

As any SEO professional will know, Google is constantly tinkering with its search algorithms to ensure its users are able to find the best content, so it's important that the optimization tools in your CMS are able to keep up.

3. Security

The increasing prevalence of cyber threats and the risks posed - both financial and reputational - by data breaches mean every business needs to take targeted action to protect their digital assets and their users.

When you're weighing up the pros and cons of different CMS platforms, it's worth thinking about the various security measures and options. This is particularly important if your business depends on taking online payments or processing sensitive data.

4. User management

Chances are, there’ll be a number of different people regularly using your CMS, all with different jobs to do and goals to meet.

For that reason, it's useful to have a dedicated, reliable user management element to your system, which will let you assign roles to various users and provide the necessary permissions and access so people can work without hindrance.

5. Third-party add-ons

A good CMS can meet a lot of the average businesses needs when it comes to managing web content, but it's always possible that you’ll have very specific requirements that demand specialist tools and functionality.

This is where it proves useful to have a CMS that supports a range of third-party integrations, plug-ins and add-ons, which can help with processes like improving your search visibility or encouraging social sharing.

6. 'At-a-glance' features

CMS platforms can offer a range of 'at-a-glance' features that give you quick and easy visibility into your content, helping you to manage it with maximum efficiency. Examples include task widgets, traffic light-style status notifications and alerts.

7. Ecommerce tools

Good content has an important part to play in your digital marketing efforts. It can provide the fuel you need to generate ecommerce results and success.

As far as your CMS is concerned, as well as simply supporting your content, the system itself can provide handy tools and applications to boost your ecommerce performance, such as landing page templates and services to improve the shopping cart experience.

8. Data analytics

Analytics has such an important role to play in business success these days that it's a major advantage to have this capability built into your CMS.

The most effective systems can offer a range of functions to optimize your data gathering and analysis, such as easy collection of details from on-site capture forms and integration with Google Analytics.

Further reading:

• The Definitive Guide to Choosing a Content Management System
• The Hard Truths Every Marketer Needs to Hear
• The Case for a Marketing Content Hub