Digitalisering
3. juni 2024
CMS should not determine your choice of web agency
Half of all new potential customers we engage with at Morningtrain focus on the CMS choice as one of the most central factors when they are evaluating agencies. However, that is a risky and misguided path to take.
CMS is not king
There are many important choices in life: your life partner, your first home, and not least your digital provider. You have landed at a digital agency, so the following are, of course, some points you should push to the top of your priority list when choosing an agency.
Read this post about choosing a CMS for a B2B website.
As for the other important choices in life, I have, of course, added a few links at the bottom—so you can cover everything now that you are at it.
So how do you find your way through the great jungle of great providers?
- Should it be big or small?
- Or local, national, or even international?
- Have you heard of anyone—or worked with anyone—before?
- Do you truly understand your own “pain” in depth—what is not working, and what potential do you believe you have identified yourself?
Your choice of provider can be the difference between merely reaching the finish line and winning the race. In some unfortunate cases, the wrong provider choice can harm your business, so that for a period you are not even in the race.
A wrong provider choice can look like many things, but one mistake you should avoid is the main point of this blog post—do not let technology come before people.
CMS should not be in your top 3
In the tenders we lose at Morningtrain, a recurring theme is that we were deselected at an early stage because of the CMS. Messages such as “We are used to working with Umbraco, so it required xx colleague that we continued with it,” or “we have an integration to Episerver, so we have to continue with it,” are things we often hear.
In this blog post, I will therefore share my perspective on why you should not choose a provider based on which CMS they work in. I do not believe that topic should be in your top 3 when you decide whether to choose an agency or not. It is not entirely irrelevant, but on the big scale and on the bottom line, it almost is.
Modern CMS platforms are all reliable and user-friendly
I have tried working professionally in most common CMS platforms. The well-known major systems such as WordPress, Drupal, Shopify, Episerver, Umbraco, and Joomla are unlikely to disappoint you when it comes to security, scalability, and usability. They all deliver what you expect. They are far from identical, but this is simply not the choice that determines whether your investment has an ROI of 0.8, 3, or 5.
WordPress is the world’s most widely used CMS (around 62% of all websites worldwide in 2024). It can be used by the amateur who wants to build a website about their bonsai trees, and by some of the world’s largest companies and organizations that rely on the system to run their business. We love working in WordPress, but that is not why you should choose us as your provider—more on that a bit further down.
Read our post “Shopify vs. WooCommerce” and learn more about how the systems compare.
The unknown hassle—switching CMS
Habit is powerful and difficult to challenge. Most people who need web development have preferences or familiarity from the past. Perhaps for many years you have been used to working in a specific CMS. In my two years as Commercial Director at Morningtrain, I have seen several cases where, in the end, people ruled out agencies in order to stick with the CMS that one or two colleagues were used to using—before they had actually met the agency and talked about all the important things. That is truly unfortunate, and a major growth potential is sacrificed on the altar of habit.
I have not yet experienced a CMS switch causing user issues that were not resolved quickly during the development phase—regardless of whether you moved to or from, for example, WordPress.
In our development projects, CMS training is a standard part of the process. Because whether you are an expert user in Drupal, Umbraco, or WordPress, those systems evolve continuously. So the new CMS installation will often also include new elements, options, and an appearance different from what you were used to.
My top 3—what you should consider when choosing a provider
Okay—I do not believe CMS is the most decisive factor for you. But what should you filter by, then? In my view, there is no way around spending a good amount of time meeting and getting clarity on these three elements.
- The human relationship
- Business development
- Design, process, and support
1) The first parameter you should use to choose or deselect a provider is whether there is professional and personal chemistry. This is the foundation everything is built on: trust in expertise, advice, and delivery. At Morningtrain, we ask many questions over a long period because we need to understand your business and starting point. What pain should we solve, and what potential can we unlock?
2) That brings me to point two, which is my passion—business development. For all I care, it could be the headline on our website. It is what we do. If the chemistry is good, you should assess your next agency by whether they take an interest in your case, regardless of how complex it is. A strong business developer gets to the core and identifies the most effective digital steps based on your starting point. It may be that the scope of the task is far smaller than you expected. It may also be that a clear digital roadmap emerges—one the business should invest in over the next 10 years. The ability to understand the business also matters after the web project is completed, because that is when follow-up and further development can happen, and new opportunities arise when the focus is directed that way.
3) The last very important element in choosing a provider is the processes during the development phase. How does the provider work with the link between business development, design, development, and subsequent support? Many times I have been disappointed that the connections became too weak from one element to the next—or that the support was unclear and lacked the business-development touch you can still expect from your provider six months after your new, polished solution has launched.
My concluding message, therefore, is this: trust that the technology choice can come much later. It can be a soft criterion rather than the knock-out criterion I myself have been part of on both sides of the table.
The true ROI in your new solution lies in the ideas created in the design, the ongoing marketing, and not least the overarching strategic business development. Spend time meeting the providers you are considering, and listen for whether the interest in your business is equally strong everywhere.
Do not hesitate – we are always ready for a chat
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