Wix or WordPress? Squarespace or Shopify? React or Rails? Hybrid or Headless? What does it all mean?
As your web project moves from conception to reality, you’ll eventually come to a place where you need to pick the right platform. Every development team will have it’s favorite–the perfect tool for every job–but the truth is that each project is unique. There may be a perfect platform for you, but the first step is understanding your own goals, as well as your budget. Once you’ve established where you’re going, then we can plan the best route to getting there.
Determine your goals
What do you want to achieve with your website?
- Do you want to increase brand awareness or have a simple digital business card?
- Are you going to implement a strategy to generate leads and increase traffic?
- Will your website handle transactions with customers, selling physical goods or digital products?
- Or are you creating a place for members to log in, share content, and participate in an online community?
Each of these use cases will have a dramatically different effect on what platform you choose. Sites that focus on marketing typically need a robust content management system. A platform like WordPress is ideal for anyone who plans on creating a lot of searchable content or has a design-oriented marketing team that plans on designing beautiful landing pages.
On the other hand, if you’re planning on using your website to conduct business or collect donations, you’ll want to review all the unique integrations that you require. Payment processors, inventory, shipping, recurring revenue- many of these features while require a lot of up-front research to ensure that the platform you choose plays nicely with all the other tools in your organization.
Calculate your budget
Every website incurs regular costs, from hosting and domain registration to software and security. Each CMS can range in price from free to thousands of dollars per year. It’s important to factor in the cost of the CMS itself, as well as the cost of any add-ons or extensions that you may need.
For example, WooCommerce is a popular, free e-commerce platform that won’t take a percentage of every sale. That said, you may end up paying hundreds of dollars in annual license fees to get important features like shipping or subscriptions.
The popular e-commerce platform Shopify is a proprietary solution, meaning you don’t have as much control or access to the code running your store. That said, because Shopify is a closed platform, their fees will be all-inclusive, meaning you rarely have to worry about your security or your infrastructure. Those features are baked-in.
By evaluating your goals, determined earlier, with your budget, you may need to make a few hard decisions or even consider starting by developing an MVP: minimum viable product.
Ongoing support is critical
Finally, when choosing a platform, it’s important to consider the technological experience of your own team members. Does your staff have the ability to handle advanced tasks like running updates and restoring backups? Or are you interested in partnering with an outside team that does have the expertise?
Open source solutions like WordPress and Drupal offer the most flexibility, but they require the most technical expertise and ongoing maintenance to keep them running smoothly. A website platform like Squarespace or Wix will mostly include maintenance as part of the monthly cost.
One rule of thumb is to consider how much revenue your website is directly responsible for. If you went offline for a day, how much would it affect your bottom line? The answer to that question can help you determine how urgent, and therefore how much investment, your website requires.
Making a decision
Choosing the right CMS is an important decision. By taking the time to consider your needs and goals, you can choose a CMS that will help you achieve your success.
That said, it’s often worth collaborating with an expert instead of simply doing your own research. For larger projects or entire rebuilds, consider entering into a “discovery” project with an agency who can help you clarify your goals and work within your budget, making a recommendation of the most appropriate services with a team that you can rely on.