When you take your business online, you’ll need to find a content management system (CMS) to call home. This platform will be used to create and manage digital content.

You don’t need much technical knowledge to find your way around a website’s backend. Content management systems help maintain websites, update and edit content all from a simple and easy to use platform. This is what has propelled them to become the backbone for nearly every website we visit each day.

Different systems and platforms are designed to fit different needs, tackle user-friendliness their own unique way and allow a plethora of compatible add-ons and plugins.

WordPress

You might have heard of WordPress, it’s the most dominant CMS on the market standing tall above the competition with a huge chunk of the market share. WordPress revolutionised the way we use the internet since the release of its first version in 2003.

According to W3techs, WordPress has a 61.8% stronghold of the CMS market share. This is more than all other systems and platforms combined.

If that wasn’t enough – WordPress websites make up a staggering 35% of the entire World Wide Web! This number continues to grow every single day with over 455,000,000 WordPress websites and counting.

WordPress has a huge community and an extensive catalogue of plugins which extend the functionality of websites greatly. Most developers are fluent in WordPress, so to speak, so finding support or an agency who works on the platform is no problem at all.

We build websites on WordPress – we find it to be the most efficient, comprehensive CMS platform which allows ease of use and scalability.

WordPress websites make up 14.7% of the Top 100 websites in the world – including NBC, CNN, TED and People magazine. Even the White House’s website now uses WordPress!

Drupal

Another popular CMS platform, which offers similar features as WordPress, however, does not have the vast number of plugins and extensions available as the latter. This makes it less extensible.

We find Drupal to be a little outdated in terms of functionality. It’s always playing catchup with WordPress and we can’t find an argument for you to not switch over to WordPress. Even the White House website (www.whitehouse.gov) was running Drupal for many years before making the switch over to WordPress.

It is the 3rd most used CMS platform in the world behind WordPress and not far behind Joomla! which is sitting in 2nd.

Joomla!

Joomla is the 2nd most widely used CMS in the world. It has a 5.7% market share with around 2.5 million active sites. 

Joomla offers better SEO and security features than WordPress. But again it falls way behind in terms of extensibility with fewer plugins and support than WordPress. This CMS platform benefits social networks, forums and blogs with built-in functionality out the box.

E-Commerce Platforms

If you plan on selling goods or items on your website. Obtaining the right platform can be a huge factor in your ability to turn those visitors into paying customers.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a hugely popular e-commerce platform which can turn your WordPress website into an online shop. It has a huge range of plugins – just like WordPress which makes it easily customisable and flexible.

It can be a great option given its close relationship with WordPress – many designers and developers will be able to help you get started with ease. Filled with many features that can offer a lot of capabilities, it can provide the scalability your business might need.

Shopify

A cloud-based e-commerce platform which allows you to create an online store, manage products, payments, shipping and inventory. It is a standalone platform and not an extension of WordPress like WooCommerce. This might mean that if you have a website, your e-commerce shop might be separate from it.

Out the box, you’ll be able to whiz around the backend thanks to Shopify’s setting up when you start subscribing. However, you don’t get the control and flexibility you do with WooCommerce.

There’s also a Shopify Plus you might have heard of. It’s the same as Shopify but with a higher level of customisation and account features. It’s a more expensive subscription cost than regular Shopify. However, even with all the added features, it still doesn’t match the flexibility, control and vast array of plugins than WooCommerce possesses.

If you need to discuss CMS and e-commerce platforms a bit further. One of our team would be more than happy to help. Get in touch today.