Although it may not sound like it to many decision makers, selecting the right content management system (CMS) for a corporate or ecommerce website is critical for its future online success - and by extension - for the business it serves. 

Whether you are a one-man operation, an ambitious startup or a vast ecommerce franchise, making the wrong turn right off the start can lead you to a long and painful road to failure, whereas opting for a scalable, cost-effective solution may prove to be the best business decision you’ll ever make. 

In this article we ask 3 of the most pressing questions you need to ask yourself before you make that choice.

Stay tuned to our series to find more questions... and find out why SeoToaster CMS is the best answer to each one of them. After all it’s never too late to make the right choice!

1. How easily can you track, debug and extend your CMS?

Regardless which software you choose to run your website on, you simply can’t afford to keep your code in a “black box”. 

Without full access to website code, you will give up full control your website behavior. That issue is the most powerful reason why you should steer clear of proprietary software, but you will also most likely relinquish the possibility of customizing easily your CMS as proprietary software vendors rarely grant related extension rights. 

The answer to that conundrum holds in two words: “open source”. Choosing an open-source solution like SeoToaster gives you a lot of flexibility moving forward. Direct access to the code simplifies debugging, customizing your CMS is simple and you’ll find plenty of other developers that can work with your code should the need arise. 

Simply put, open source software is your insurance for a truly flexible and scalable - not to mention cost-effective - content management system.

Thankfully, SeoToaster is a 100% open source CMS software which means that you can not only tweak every single aspect of your website, but also customize the admin interface itself to perfectly suit your own needs, as well as benefit from the open source community of developers that helps make SeoToaster one of the best CMS on the market.

2. Can your CMS publish sync desktop and mobile versions?

Did you ever give a blank look to a customer when asked if his website content will automatically (and correctly) update on both mobile and desktop?

Unfortunately, most CMS applications still only address desktop users’ experience, and if you are in that case you are probably losing much business. As a designer, you are bound to focus more and more on responsive/adaptive designs and engage mobile-first style thinking.

SeoToaster V2 and its mobile responsive wireframe Flexkit offers a straightforward and effective way to build mobile websites by creating a mobile version of your website and keeping that mobile website synchronized with the desktop version of your website.

Opting for a mobile-friendly CMS means to be able to manage multiple publishing channels from the same instance: you enter content only once and by simple clicking publish the same content to intended channels. Any other way would be a waste of your time and your client’s money.

3. How good is your CMS for Search Engine Optimization? Is it W3C compliant? Is it using web semantic?

Nowadays, these in fact are one and the same question. Managing a website and submitting it to Google is a first good step, but it’s not making sales.

Whether or not you provide SEO services, your CMS should be dead serious about search engine optimization. Your customers know that, and they will eventually want a CMS that can handle serious Search Engine Optimization in order to outcompete everybody else in search engine rankings.

In this area, just about every single CMS out there will claim to be search engines-ready or propose some sort of integration to help with SEO. But do not be fooled, as high expectations meeting high claims end up too often in utter disappointment and major SEO disasters.

How many of these supposedly seo friendly CMS’s output in fact W3C compliant code? What about their plug-ins? minimum features you should expect are an easy landing page creation process with integrated optimization, 301 redirection to handle the site life-cycle management, robots.txt edition and media acceleration features.

SeoToaster, on top of its core and all plug-ins being fully W3C compliant, integrated media servers for fast web page delivery, and native web semantic objects & geo-optimized files for maximum local SEO performances, automates a large number of SEO tactics to help drive qualified traffic to websites and enhance their organic visibility with search engines.

Lack of such capabilities will be a harder sell to your customers, that much we can promise.

More questions & answers on how to build your website with a professional web builder CMS in a couple days! See you soon!