As sites get more complex, engineers have developed software to support the design and build of websites and help manage increasing quantities of content.

The software they developed became the groundwork for modern content management systems (CMS). A CMS is an essential piece of website development, especially for enterprise companies that have to be able to handle large volumes of content and many users. 

We are moving towards a development approach that is led by agile marketing teams and powered by modern visual-first tools.

What is an enterprise CMS?

An enterprise CMS is a comprehensive platform that allows organizations to store, manage, organize, and publish digital content across their entire operation. Unlike basic CMS solutions designed for simpler websites, enterprise CMSs are built to handle complex content workflows, multiple user roles, and integration with other business systems.

Organizations need enterprise CMSs to effectively manage vast amounts of content across departments, ensure brand consistency, maintain regulatory compliance, and deliver personalized experiences across various digital channels. 

A robust enterprise CMS enables businesses to streamline content operations, improve collaboration among teams, enhance security through granular permissions, and ultimately create more efficient digital experiences that drive business objectives at scale.

Key features of an enterprise CMS

To find the right type of enterprise CMS for your website, it’s important to consider not just the content it needs to manage or the end-result user interface but also what kind of workflow the platform enables for the teams who contribute to your website.. Here’s how to assess how each of the platforms above could perform for your company. 

Security

Make sure the platform you choose takes measures to protect both your information and that of your customers.

Compliance

The best way to assess whether a platform follows reliable security protocols is by looking to see what third-party certification standards they meet. SOC 2 certification is a comprehensive third-party audit. 

This audit considers how a platform secures customer data on five counts: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. It’s an excellent way for companies to evaluate whether a platform has high standards for security. 

You should also get a TLS/SSL certificate, so your website will have secure, end-to-end encryption to keep any data communicated to or from your website private.

Get a comprehensive view of a platform’s approach to security updates and adherence to current protocols. Platforms, like Webflow, offer integrated security practices, while others, like WordPress, use third-party plug-ins like Sucuri to enable security functions. Evaluate login and account security features. Current best practices to look for include single sign-on and two-factor authentication.

Third-party additions

Third-party applications and plug-ins each represent additional security risks. More established services like PayPal or Mailchimp have their own robust security practices. However, plug-ins created by independent developers with little oversight are much harder to evaluate.

To maintain a safe website, make sure your development team is staying on top of installing every single plug-in update. This is a major security risk of WordPress. A Patchstack report identified 96% of WordPress’s security vulnerabilities were due to plug-ins. With a site potentially using dozens of plug-ins, each one represents an opening for hackers.

Performance

Making sure your website loads quickly and stays available to customers is a non-negotiable for enterprise companies. Choose a platform that will support your site’s performance and grow with the demands of your user base.

Scalability and future-proofing

Your site needs to be able to grow in its capacity with the successful growth of your company.If your company hosts a large volume of visitors or content, a DXP may be the most robustly scalable option. Their systems can handle huge, far-reaching content and sites, but this infrastructure will be overkill for the average enterprise.

A headless CMS can feel more future-proof since you can change out the front-end as the web evolves, but it is reliant on developers to make changes or refreshes when the site needs them.

Webflow, however, supports future-proofing with regular improvements and updates without the user having to intervene manually.

Loading speed

Watch out for bloat that can slow your site, and ensure your programmers or the software can optimize content for the user. Mobile sites should be able to load quickly, even on slower networks.

Sometimes quick load times can be a trade-off with other considerations. For example, Adobe Experience Manager’s (AEM) interface handles lots of content, but its data-heavy back-end can make pages slow to load for users. WordPress plug-ins can also significantly slow load times.

Webflow offers several automatic features, like lazy-load photos and scalable responsive images, that optimize page load times, especially for mobile users.

Traffic surges and rapid growth

It’s vital to build a site that can handle sudden spikes in traffic. This is especially important for fast-growing start-ups, businesses in fields that are prone to viral popularity, or companies that regularly host a high volume of users.

Headless CMSs like Contentful ensure the content infrastructure behind the site can perform at scale. For developer-led platforms like AEM, your team will need to program your site architecture with organic traffic spikes and DDOS attacks in mind..

Webflow supports scalability from the hosting side by using Amazon Web Services, so sites are backed by a reliable network of 100+ data centers and servers worldwide. For an open-source program like WordPress, choose hosting that has similar support.

Agility

If your business moves quickly or needs to enable responsiveness to customer needs, choose an agile platform to enable quick site changes and market responsiveness.

Templates and repeatability

Developer-created templates and repeatable elements can support faster development processes while supporting brand consistency.

A headless CRM like Contentful needs developers to code the front-end elements of your site, but there are compatible Jamstack themes. Slightly more repeatable is a system like AEM, which uses pre-programmed elements that designers can assemble into pages and websites.

Webflow has an extensive library of templates and community-created sites you can copy wholesale or element-by-element and then customize. It also uses a system of Components — reusable components your team can design without coding and then insert anywhere in your site.

Speed of changes

The speed at which your team can execute changes depends on the techniques for creating and using repeatable structures and how much you will need developer labor to execute the overall workflow.

Designers can use AEM’s repeatable elements to assemble pages quickly, but they first need to be created by developers. If additional elements or changes to existing elements need to be made, you’ll need engineers.

WordPress themes offer several settings that designers can change to shift the full layout of the site. They can execute these changes themselves for the most part, but more complex updates need developer support. Virta-Health’s director explained their experience:

“[When we used WordPress] updates were tedious. Frequent and simple changes, like those to our press page, required engineering involvement, which wasn’t the best use of their time."

- Paul Sytsma, Senior Director, Corporate Marketing, Virta Health

With Webflow’s Symbols, you can change the settings of any Symbol and see those changes across the entire website, making design adjustments consistent and quick to implement. MURAL’s design team benefitted from this workflow, explaining:

“Ultimately, we wanted to control our own destiny when it came to the website, and Webflow gives us the freedom to make the changes we need without relying on other teams.”

- David Chin, Design Strategist, MURAL

Ownership

Empowering marketing teams to make changes directly on your website enables them to respond effectively to customer needs and take full ownership of your site. With the rise of visual-first solutions like Webflow, this type of workflow is what the future of web design is rapidly moving towards.

When trickier website details need attention, engineers can write custom code, but they aren’t needed for the day-to-day design and updating of the site. Reducing engineering tasks has the added benefit of freeing up their team for more business-critical functions. Attentive found freedom with this workflow for their website update.

“Our new designs didn’t need to go through anyone else besides brand and marketing — no engineers needed. The freedom and flexibility we gained through Webflow was invaluable.”

- Elyssa Albert, VP of Design, Attentive

Even when an enterprise needs a heavier-duty CMS, you can use visual development tools in a hybrid approach: as a DXP for the main site and as visual-first tools to build functioning design prototypes and smaller satellite sites with more direct input and agility. With a fully functional prototype, engineers know exactly what design intends to build, and they can make adjustments before you spend hours and dollars coding the final site.

The types of tools used to build an enterprise website

The tools a company can use to build an enterprise-level site fall into four main types. Each type of platform handles the front-end website development and the back-end content management slightly differently, with its own strengths and weaknesses.

• Open-source CMS: The most common option, you can install a large variety of add-ons, plug-ins, and templates, and your developers can code any additional functions needed. The collaborative nature enables a wide range of creative processes, but this can also be inefficient and complicated to manage. Programs like WordPress are popular, though the need for plug-ins and developer support for additional coding means it has its limitations. To create an effective enterprise-level site, plug-ins for features such as visual design, e-commerce, forms, security, SEO, analytics, and content management are essential.
• Digital experience platforms (DXP): A suite of tools for managing high volumes of content and unifying that content over a network of sites. Developers code the websites themselves within the program, creating templates and components that designers can then assemble. Front-end development has evolved, but the programming language used hasn’t changed. As a result, it is fairly out-of-date, so it can be challenging to find developers willing to work with the program’s outdated language.
• Headless CMS: Separates the back-end (content) from the “head”—the front-end website, compared to monolithic CMSs that couple them. This separation allows for greater flexibility, scalability, and content reuse across different platforms. If a tool or technique goes out of date, web designers can create a new front-end with updated technology and plug it into the existing back-end. The drawback is you need to hire developers to custom-build each customer-facing site. This also gives companies a multitude of options for where to put content — a network of websites, mobile apps, kiosks, or a retail point-of-sale system, all linked by a shared content database.
• Visual-first, composable CMS: Create dynamic, content-driven experiences without writing a single line of code. Features like symbols and classes make design choices repeatable, consistent, and able to be changed instantly across the whole site. Support responsive design allows you to adjust your site to be legible on multiple devices, such as mobile phones and tablets. Code is still written in the program as your team makes visual changes, so developers can step in and insert custom code for added functionality. A platform like Webflow allows all the teams who have a stake in your website — marketing, engineering, sales, and more — to take part directly in the development of your website, improving the long-term viability of this investment.

Top 5 enterprise CMS platforms

When evaluating enterprise CMSs for your business, consider these top options on the market:

1. Webflow
2. Contentful
3. WordPress
4. Adobe Experience Manager
5. Jamstack

To choose the right enterprise CMS, rethink what it means to create a modern website

A traditionalist team with WordPress. A company that has extensive engineering support might choose a headless approach For a forward-thinking business that values agility, is looking to scale content production, and wants to reduce developer reliance, a visual-first, composable CMS is likely the answer.

To learn even more about picking the right CMS, watch our recent webinar, Next-gen CMS requirements, to hear five reasons why a cutting-edge enterprise CMS is not just a nice-to-have, but a necessity for teams aiming to thrive in the digital arena.