1. Intuitive User Interface and Experience (UI/UX):

It’s unlikely that end-users of the CMS will be proficient at technology or programming. An intuitive UI/UX ensures that any layperson can understand and use the CMS. The user should be able to find out key functionalities based on visual cues (such as text or icons) rather than remembering how to find them. A user-friendly experience also makes it easy for users to troubleshoot basic errors and seek support whenever necessary.

2. Flexible Site Structure:

There are three aspects to the site structure:

• • As your content production increases, the CMS should be able to keep up with it without impacting performance.
• • Initially, the user should be able to customize the permalink to structure the website content according to their needs. The CMS should also offer features to segregate content based on categories, tags, etc.
• • The CMS should keep it easy to make changes in the appearance or content templates with buttons or basic HTML skills.

3. Powerful Editor:

A CMS editor can work in both - WYSIWYG and HTML editing modes. The editor should support various content formats such as simple text, images, video, gif, image gallery, and so on. It should also allow users to add third-party content such as YouTube videos, Twitter tweets, or podcasts by inserting the embed code through the HTML editor, although newer editors are capable of achieving the same by adding the direct link.

The scheduling feature should allow users to schedule posts in the future or backdate them.

4. On-page SEO Tools:

You can optimize individual web pages and blog posts using on-page SEO tools. These tools allow users to edit the URL, title tag, meta description, etc. When it comes to image optimization, you should be able to add a caption and alt text to the image.

To make the website easily crawlable for search engine bots/spiders, users should be able to add it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools and add their code snippets to the CMS.

5. Content Management:

While uploading images and other files in a CMS is a walk in the park, accessing them later can be a nightmare, especially when looking for older files. A robust content management feature will enable users to search, sort or filter files by their name, date, format. The draft feature lets users keep a content piece offline without having them to delete it.

Basic image editing features like crop and resize will make it easy for users to make changes to files within the CMS.

6. Third-party Integrations: Depending upon the packages.

The ever-expanding martech stack calls for sophisticated workflows to manage process redundancies. While it’s impossible for a CMS to offer every single feature, it should provide functionalities to integrate third-party applications to automate various processes. For instance, you can use plugins in WordPress to extend its capabilities. Here’s a partial list of integrations that would simplify the CMS workflow:

• • Security: If the CMS doesn’t provide robust security features, you should be able to integrate security plugins to prevent site attacks and data breaches.
• • Data backup: The data backup solution allows you to save the most recent backup of your website. You can do it either manually or automate the process at scheduled intervals.
• • Email marketing: By integrating email marketing platform with the CMS, you can automate list building efforts and set up workflows that can send an email to your subscribers every time you publish new content.
• • E-commerce: You can set up an online store using an e-commerce integration such as Shopify.
• • Social media: Plan your social media activities around your blog’s editorial calendar. Similar to email marketing, you can schedule social media posts for newly published content.
• • Analytics: While many CMS offer a built-in basic analytics feature, you can analyze your website at a much more sophisticated level by integrating it with an analytics tool such as Google Analytics.

7. Multiple User Roles:

Assigning user roles hierarchically ensures that content management is a breeze, and the publishing workflow isn’t disrupted. For instance, the super admin will have all the rights, including making aesthetic changes to the website to publishing content. Whereas a contributor can add content, but can’t publish it unless the editor approves it.

Depending on your team structure, you should be able to assign the roles of editor, author, contributor, etc. to respective team members so that content publishing goes through the standard process.