We’ve mentioned the content management system (CMS) Sitefinity before, particularly since a site we built with it won website of the quarter in Q1 last year.
With that in mind, we thought it would be worth explaining exactly why we enjoy working with the Sitefinity platform so much.
Responsive design
First, it’s responsive. And that alone solves many problems.
Websites built with Sitefinity look great and are easy to use across various devices. It guarantees a set experience, so you don’t have to worry about what your site is going to look like if someone’s browsing on an uncommon device, like the BB Passport.
Since consumers now are
entirely unwilling to tolerate a poor mobile user experience, and Google is increasingly intolerant of mobile unfriendly website, going responsive kills a lot of birds with one stone.
Drag-and-drop content management
We love a good drag-and-drop content management system. And it’s not just the fact that it makes the developer’s life (e.g., us) a lot easier.
It’s that, when you think about it, of course a CMS should use a drag-and-drop interface to help implement and move content.
For starters, it makes it very easy for the content managers. Which is how it should be. Developers are not often the best positioned people to be making decisions about content. Content creators, marketing, sales, customer support – all these teams have much more insight into what customers want and need from their site.
A drag and drop interface means that the best, most relevant content gets promoted most.
Second, implementing a robust content marketing strategy without a drag and drop content interface is nigh on impossible.
It takes speed and agility to produce, manage and push live the volume of content you need to capture and hold the attention of your audience.
Practically, the only way to do that without sucking up a prohibitive amount of developer time is a drag-and-drop content management interface.
Lots of websites, one interface
Let’s face it – there are plenty of great CMSs out there. But not that many have the same quality of single interface management that Sitefinity provides for customers with multiple different sites to manage.
And in fact, many content managers have this problem. Some have multiple brands, driving specific traffic to specific URLs. Others have multiple languages, or small regional websites. And still others just use multiple websites to structure their content marketing into niche buckets.
Whatever the reason, if you’re running multiple websites that all unite under one brand, the best way to reduce management and maintenance costs is to run it all through one place.
And that’s even easier if there’s only one interface where they can all be managed, which is why we love that Sitefinity does this so elegantly.
Effortless SEO
Take it from us: SEO can be difficult. With over 200 identified ranking factors for Google, there are literally hundreds of things you need to think about for every single page.
And sure, with other CMSs like WordPress, you can get plugins to help you achieve your SEO dreams.
Well, Sitefinity has that same solution, but without the
downsides of using a plugin.
With Sitefinity, users can:
- Create localizable URLs to tailor the SEO for different languages
- Develop simple mobile-friendly designs (which, as we mentioned, Google loves)
- Locate and fix legacy SEO problems like missing descriptions and titles
- Create and deploy canonical tags
- Quickly add title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags, among other on-page SEO tactics to improve overall site ranking
With Sitefinity, high quality SEO comes as standard.
Sitefinity integrates with everything
And we mean everything. The list of Sitefinity integrations goes on and on. For example, when we built Teknion’s site, we integrated Sitefinity with their chosen digital asset management system, Bynder. But Sitefinity will work with a wide range of CRMs, ERPs, and marketing automation software.
Popular integrations include:
Robust analytics
Finally, we love Sitefinity for how much it lets us know about what’s going on with a website. The enormous amount of data it gives its users in an easy to use dashboard is second to none. What’s more, you can build contextual dashboards to give you all the information you need, without having to wade through pages and pages of numbers.
And for those of you who are worried – yes, Sitefinity can generate reports and do everything else that Google Analytics can do. All from within the CMS.
And that’s actually the core reason to why we love Sitefinity. It’s not just that it’s a superb CMS that easy to use, or that it manages a robust features list without adding undue complexity and becoming an unwieldly mess.
It’s that it’s a totally, 100% self-contained CMS. Whatever you need, Sitefinity can do. No plugins. No extras. No features wish list.
Like the best software out there – it just
works.
All images courtesy of Sitefinity 