A Content Management System (CMS) is the backbone of your company’s web presence. It is key in supporting the creation, update and maintenance of your digital assets and content. Choosing the right CMS for your business needs will have lasting effects on your company and should satisfy all of your business and technology goals. The question is: Where do you start?

From our experience guiding clients through the process of finding a CMS, we look at five key elements:

• Efficient and Flexible – Your CMS should be flexible enough to grow and change with your strategy, regardless of how many pages your site has or how much content you have on those pages, your CMS should deliver it efficiently.

• Enough “Out-of-the-Box” Features – Custom work can get expensive. You want a solution that helps minimize any custom work requirements. Lower cost or open source solutions might seem like the best choice, but they often come with a myriad of hidden costs as you have to build additional functionality.

• Multi-Device Support – As discussed in our Going Mobile First post, mobile should be a part of your digital strategy and your CMS should support that.

• Multilingual Support – Language should never be a barrier between your visitors and your site, you want a CMS that is able to handle multilingual support.

• Personalization and Social Media Integration – You want your site to stand apart from your competition and your CMS should enable that. Additionally, social is everywhere and your CMS should support your ability to push content to your company’s social media sites.

When you begin your search for a CMS solution, start by first by assessing your digital strategy and goals and then prioritize the five criteria. With proper planning and strategic alignment, you will be able to make an informed decision on the CMS solution that is right for your needs today and into the future.