15

When it comes to choosing a CMS for your college or university, the choices are many. So how can you know which product would be the best fit for your needs and your budget? Well, as with anything, not all content management systems are created equal. The key to selecting the right CMS product for your school is to look for certain critical elements or characteristics. This will help you narrow your choices and make a more informed decision so you’ll end up with the ideal solution.

Ease of Use – What good will a CMS do for your school if it’s cumbersome and confusing? The first element of a quality higher education content management system should always be usability. You don’t want to have to hire an engineer to manage your content, so look for a product that is simple to use, quick to implement and a breeze to maintain.

Accessibility – In order for your content to serve its purpose, it must be accessible to your audience. That includes more than just your main website, but also each of your subsites as well as mobile visitors. More importantly, mobile-friendly is not just a nice benefit, but a necessity these days (according to Google), so make sure the product you choose is mobile-ready.

Scalability – One of the biggest goals higher education institutions have is that of growth. To that end, you’ll want to select a CMS that has the capacity to seamlessly scale alongside your school. As you expand your programs and departments, your content management system should be able to accommodate these changes without much effort.

Support – Implementing a CMS shouldn’t be the end of the process, but rather the beginning. Many providers will offer the moon until they make the sale, then they’ll disappear, leaving clients holding the bag if and when something goes wrong. To ensure that your higher education website remains up and running and compliant, choose a content management system partner that offers continual testing, security, monitoring and upgrades as part of their service.

Does your school’s CMS offer all of this? If not, it’s time to re-evaluate your needs and make a change for the positive. We’d be happy to provide a free, no-obligation product demo to show you how the right CMS product can help bring your school’s web presence to the next level.

TAGGED: Tags: CMS, content marketing, content management system, best practices, features