5 Reasons to Get a Custom CMS.

When your business scales, your website becomes your diving board to better results or the one obstacle you can’t seem to overcome. Your content management system dictates which way you’ll move forward.

If you’ve been using off-the-shelf solutions for a revenue-driving website, it’s time to consider a custom CMS. Today, we’ll explain the 5 key benefits of a custom content management system.

1. Should You Consider a Custom CMS?

Despite the benefits, custom content management systems aren’t for every business.

Don’t Get a Custom CMS if...

• You’re a small business, and your needs are still served by standard architectures like WordPress or Webflow
• You don’t need a high-performance website
• You don’t have a lot of content or multimedia

Get a Custom CMS if...

• You need a high-performance website
• You need custom features
• You have a marketing website stack with multiple 3rd party integrations (and your devs worry about your website security
• Your existing solution is making it hard to implement changes and stay competitive
• Your website upkeep costs are increasing constantly
• Your website isn’t converting

Ultimately, if your current CMS feels two sizes too small and you want to build a powerful marketing website, you need to consider a custom solution.

2. The Benefits of Custom CMS

2.1. A Custom CMS Is Tailored to Your Needs

You constantly have to juggle your requirements and implementation possibilities with a traditional CMS like WordPress. Every new feature comes at an additional cost; plugins, custom development, or simply the need to pay more for servers because you host more content.

In contrast, a custom CMS is built to fit you. If you want core functionality with the rest of the website being open-ended, so you can adapt to changing consumer preferences as they appear, that’s not a problem.

Boosting your SEO? Not a problem. A custom CMS or a headless CMS like Sanity was made with expansion in mind, so your website will maintain high performance even as you add more content and features.

Do you want to use your website as your marketing headquarters, the central operations dashboard that directs (and automates) the rest of your lead generation, retention, and expansion processes? With a custom CMS, it’s possible.

Ultimately, a custom CMS or even a headless CMS is your canvas. Paint whatever you’d like.

2.2. Add More Functionality Faster with a Custom CMS

You need to constantly retrofit a traditional CMS to make it serve your needs. Significant changes require overhauls - not tweaks. Our standard content management systems were built in the early 2000s when websites weren’t more than blogs.

Contemporary websites are marketing machines in disguise. And your machine needs to serve its purpose to increase your revenue.

A custom CMS allows you to add more features with ease. Typically, the code is written in a popular programming language, so your developers don’t have to struggle to implement additional functionality.

Instead of waiting for weeks (and months) to launch a new program that will increase your revenue, a custom CMS allows you to get off the ground in a few days.

2.3. A Custom CMS Increases Your Website Speed and Security

Traditional CMS are hackers’ playground; they’ve been around for such a long time that hackers know all the easy ways in. WordPress infections are constantly on the rise, and other CMSes like Drupal and Joomla aren’t safe, either.

To mitigate the risks, you constantly have to update servers, templates, and plugins. And even then, you’re not entirely safe. Your developers don’t have the obfuscation methods with which they could protect the core code of your website.

In contrast, a custom CMS is built to fit you. Even though some headless solutions offer core functionality, the rest is still up to your developers. You get a sandbox that you can fortify with advanced security measures.

Similarly, you don’t have much speed leeway with a traditional CMS. Every asset on your website is served from the same place, reducing your speed. As you add more features, automation, integrations and content, your website will keep slowing down until you start paying four-figure sums just for the CDN.

A custom CMS can be built with JAMstack, Sanity, and similar headless frameworks so that your website's core is protected, fast, and only called when needed. Everything else is tackled by APIs, increasing your speed.

2.4. Unlock Precise Tracking and Marketing Attribution

Any CMS tracks core metrics; visits, page engagements, and traffic sources. However, marketing has gone much farther than that. With multi-touch-point conversion funnels, you must understand how your website affects every step of your buyer’s journey.

With a custom CMS, you can easily set up custom metrics, track performance, and understand which campaigns and programs affect your revenue the most. Say goodbye to proxy metrics and convoluted marketing attribution stacks.

Get the data you need at a glance.

2.5. Take Control over Your Content with a Custom CMS

No one loves custom CMSes more than marketing teams. Content needs are no longer confined to uploading blog posts and adding featured images. Marketers today are tech-savvy. They want to be able to build robust content programs without dedicated dev resources.

Similarly, as digital marketing evolves, your website needs to keep up. A traditional CMS makes it impossible to execute a finely-tuned lead generation campaign or support omnichannel retargeting.

On the other hand, a custom CMS places the reins back in your hands. Due to its clean code, developers can add more features, but you’ll be able to use it even if you don’t know your SQL from PHP.

Free your team’s minds and execute every campaign you dream up.

3. Custom CMS: Yay or Nay?

If your website powers your marketing, choose a custom CMS. Even if you’re not ready to start from scratch, you can easily use the JAMstack framework to get off the ground faster.

Your budget will thank you in the long term, and so will your marketing team.

-

Are you ready to launch a website that lasts? Mawla builds next-generation JAMstack websites with optimised performance, workflow automation, and beautiful delivery to increase your revenue. Get in touch with us.