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Its not the CMS, its the long term picture.

Posted 04/May/2015 by vicky

 

If you are looking into developing a brand new website or redesigning your existing site you will of course be dealing with several web design companies to obtain quotes and gather information and ideas for your project. As you enter into these discussions, you will inevitably enter into a discussion about the CMS that will best work for your website.

Different web design companies will of course use different CMS frameworks but your decision  shouldn’t be around what the majority use because its their chosen framework, your decision should be placed around the long term goals for your business.

Its not all just about the here and now.

The biggest mistake people make when looking into hiring a web design company is not asking questions regarding the long term outcomes for their business and the CMS you choose for your project plays a big part in this. What I mean by that is the last thing you want to do is invest your time, effort and funds into a website you love only to realise a year from now the extra features you want to add to your site can't be done because of the CMS your site was built on. This means you then have start over again and waste more time effort and money on going through the process again.

In order to avoid this scenario make a business plan, if you are a small accountancy firm for example you might think, right now I just want a basic 4 or 5 page website built. I can’t foresee any major issues with needing extra functionality so any CMS will do. But don’t just think about your website being a brochure website that displays information to your clients about your service, think about ways in which your site can help your clients (and you) streamline processes. Imagine if down the track when you have established a strong client base, your website allowed a system whereby clients can book their own appointments through an online booking calendar or perhaps have a client portal allowing clients to securely upload their documents instead of having to drop in to your office.

Now ask your web developers about the CMS flexibility, would the CMS they are recommending offer the flexibility to have their web developers add custom functionality like this down the track?

Cheap now, expensive later

We all want to keep budgets down and that is no different when you're developing a new website or redesigning an existing site but by having to re do things you could find yourself in the hole financially. So, think about long term goals as well as short term, understand how the web developers will customise the editing functionality to your site and requirements or will you have a stock standard framework and have to start over again should your business outgrow the CMS.

At Neubreed we specialise in developing websites on both the Druapl and WordPress CMS systems, we can talk you through the best option for your project so give us a call now on  1300 858 495