Has your CMS become a drag on your organization? One of the most frequently-asked questions we get in conversations with clients is, “Should I upgrade my Content Management System?”. As trends in marketing evolve, so do the feature sets of tools used by marketers. As your CMS begins to show its age, the costs of keeping it up to date and adding enhanced functionality increases.
For many technical, marketing and IT teams, a clunky CMS, or one that they have simply outgrown, can mean lost opportunities to update and management content and analytics from one of the most valuable corporate assets. To help you determine if your Content Management System is weighing you down, we have put together a list of questions that can help you decide if it is time to upgrade your CMS platform.
First, Consider Refreshing your Brand
- When was the last time your refreshed your brand? If you don’t remember the answer, it’s probably time for a refresh.
- Is your brand identity fresh and modern? Take a look at your website, your logo, your digital assets and email campaign you use to sell your brand and connect with your customers. Also look at what your competitors are doing.
- When was the last time you did market/user research to identify your target audiences? Do you know if you are you still marketing to the right audiences?
- Does your messaging and positioning accurately reflect your current value proposition and customer pain points?
Asking yourself these types of questions should help determine if it’s the right time to progress your brand with a fresh perspective to meet customer preference and expectations. A brand refresh is the perfect timing for an update to your Content Management System. It also allows you to take advantage of the ever-growing feature sets that today’s platforms provide. Take the time to review the CMS market and do a comparison to determine what platform best meets your business needs.
Upgrade your Technology Stack
- Does your current CMS platform allow your team to easily and effectively find, create and update content?
- Are you managing several web properties across multiple technology platforms? Would it be easier if these were consolidated into a single platform?
- Does your Content Management System provide you with the tools you need to effectively reach and attract you target market?
- Is your Content Management System built for IT or is it built for Marketing?
Over the past few years, there has been a dramatic shift in ownership of Content Management Systems in the Enterprise. No longer are CMS’s provisioned and managed by your IT teams. No longer is it enough to provide an easy, structured way for non-technical users to create and manage content. No longer is it enough to provide useful tools such as WYSIWYGs, Form Builders, Workflow Tools and Enhanced Navigation Structures.
Today’s CMS’s are expected to not only support native content management tasks, but they are expected to support multiple digital properties. They are expected to keep up with ever evolving policies like accessibility and privacy. They are expected to enable a conversation with users based on what is known about them.
Improved Security
- Is your current Content Management System supported by a company and/or a community?
- Is your CMS currently up to date with the most recent version of the technology?
- Do you have old legacy custom code preventing you from updating the underlying CMS technologies?
Security is always a concern when dealing with your website. The last thing you want is for the homepage of your website to become a poster-board for the hottest deals on the dark web. Having an old or outdated CMS leaves you vulnerable to well-known security vulnerabilities that are just waiting to be exploited. It might be time to get that ticking time bomb disarmed.
Most platforms provide tools to keep you informed about platform security and notify you both when a vulnerability is found and when a patch is presented. We highly recommend learning how your platform handles this type of communication to ensure you are in the know. Below are some links to useful information for Drupal/WordPress.
- Drupal:
- CMS Provides Warning Messages from Admin UI
- Public Service Announcements: https://www.drupal.org/security/psa
- Security Releases: https://www.drupal.org/security
- Twitter Feed: https://twitter.com/drupalsecurity
- WordPress:
- CMS Provides Warning Messages from Admin UI
- Releases: https://wordpress.org/news/category/security/
Reduce Maintenance Costs
- Are you paying a hefty monthly retainer to keep the lights on for your CMS?
- Do simple changes (like text or image updates) require a technical team to implement and/or take days or weeks to get updated?
Wouldn’t you like to use all of the money you are dumping into keeping your technology up and running into your marketing campaigns and content initiatives? If you are spending more money on your technology than you are on your marketing, it is likely past time to upgrade your CMS. A CMS should streamline your content management tasks and empower your team, not suck it dry.
Save Time
- Do simple changes (like text or image updates) take days or weeks to get updated?
- Are your page templates flexible and adaptable across desktop and mobile?
- Are you spending a majority of your development efforts trying to keep your website up and running rather than enhancing it?
- Does your system allow you to effectively market to your customers?
If the answer to any of the questions listed above are “yes”, then it is likely you have outgrown your current CMS platform and need to upgrade.