How to Choose a CMS & Build a Great Site: Clutch Asks FINE

FINE Director of Operations, Lori Dunkin shares her know-how with Clutch about choosing the right website platform based on business goals. Which means to say, figuring out those goals is the first step in the decision-making process.

Each platform out there serves clients in different ways, so determine the must-have features and requirements, and cross-check with CMS considerations. It gets pretty simple from there: if the top CMS option doesn’t meet core requirements or address the site’s short-term goals, then it doesn’t work.

Lori explains how popularity can often win over the process, but the selection ought to be deliberate. “For WordPress, the ideal client is one where complex blogging functionality is the primary requirement. When it comes to more generalized web content, it can be a bit of a mismatch, either because of how cluttered and complex the interface is, or by how much customization it can take to try and set up content in a way that is more object-oriented in nature.”

Figure out what the site is trying to solve before selecting a tool to try and do it—whether custom, open-source like Fae, a blogging platform, or templatized website generator—and then that tool will do its job. “While monthly hard costs of some platforms might seem low, the true opportunity cost of an uninformed selection is high,” Lori says. “It takes considerable investment to analyze, learn, customize, configure, design, troubleshoot, and, ultimately, set up the business processes to seamlessly function around a system. You do not want to go 50%, or even 100%, of the way down that path only to later learn it does not solve for a critical business requirement.”

Read Lori’s full interview to learn more about balancing challenges with features, and how thinking long-term is really just future-proofing against wasted money, and worst yet, time.