A No-Frills Guide to Choosing Your Mobile CMS
Choosing a content management system for a mobile platform is vital for companies that are looking to get the most out of their marketing efforts. This is due to the proliferation of mobile phones and devices, and the fact that most of us use Android, Apple iOS or Windows platform powered devices to access the internet. There are various factors you need to look into when choosing your ideal mobile CMS, and we’ll be exploring a few of these in this article.
It Starts With Analytics
To begin with, you need to know what the figures are in regards to your target audience that are accessing your site via mobile phones or other hand-held devices. A great place to start would be Google Analytics, a free tool that displays all the pertinent data to give you an idea of whether going mobile would make financial sense in the long run. Metrics found on
Google Analytics helps you answer questions such as:
– What are mobile visitors searching for (keywords)?
– Is the structure and information flow in your site mobile-friendly (site search, page depth, conversions and site speed)?
– Are they having trouble finding information (landing page bounce rates and average time on page)?
…and so on. Armed with this information, you can start creating a CMS that’s able to get you better conversions as well as boost your visibility online.
A mobile CMS should be basic, intuitive and minimalist. However, there’s the problem of having different needs for different mobile platforms that makes it necessary to have a mobile CMS that can have the same effectiveness across all platforms. For example, things like presentation style, interaction style and software stacks are all important things to pay attention to when creating your ideal mobile CMS.
Device Agnostic vs Device Specific CMS Development
There are two approaches to mobile CMS creation: device agnostic and device specific development.
Device agnostic basically means that the CMS is not tied to a particular device, or it is machine-independent. This means that it won’t need manual modification in order to make it work across devices and platforms.
Device specific mobile CMS development provides unique mobile experiences depending on the device your target customer is using to access your site or app.
Device Plans and Matrixes
When you’re developing a mobile CMS, you need to have a device plan right from the very start if you’re going to ensure that people accessing your content or platform have the best possible experience. For example, the device matrix for mobile browsers stretches from A to F, meaning that you will need to do due diligence from the data you’ve collected so you can know what class of browser your audience is using to access your mobile site.
User Interaction
User interaction should also be another thing that needs to feature in your plans while creating your ideal mobile CMS. Your CMS should thus have this functionality or allow for a plugin to be used to provide it. At the very least, your CMS should give you the ability to post forms and record responses even on a mobile platform.
If you’re shopping around for a good mobile CMS provider, Magnolia is a great option given its popularity, ease of maintenance, flexibility, and scalability.
Do you have any questions or comments regarding mobile CMS development? Please take some time to leave your thoughts in the comment box below.