Finding a content management system (CMS) that is secure, cost-effective, and capable of delivering a website that meets all your requirements can be challenging.

As we’ve discussed in a previous article, there are lots of excellent CMSs available today, and it’s difficult to know which one will be the best fit for your specific business. 

While most CMSs appear similar on the surface, with the same fundamental functionality, popular platforms like Webflow and WordPress have unique features and capabilities that differentiate them from each other. 

So, selecting between these two different platforms is an important process that requires careful consideration. After all, your CMS is a long-term investment, and you need to know exactly what you’re getting before you make your decision.

To ease this challenge for you, this article will provide a direct, objective comparison between the Webflow and WordPress platforms.

An Overview of Each Platform 

You want a CMS that will enable you to build sophisticated, high-performance websites, tailored to your business, with a set of tools that are simple and easy-to-use. 

Webflow and WordPress can both give you exactly that in their own distinctive styles. Both platforms allow you to build and manage complex websites without deep technical knowledge, but they each take slightly different approaches. 

Webflow

Webflow is a software-as-a-service product, not a typical CMS. That means it doesn’t require any hosting and is primarily delivered via Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud servers. 

As it’s a complete, mostly self-contained SaaS application, with everything built-in to it from the start, you can get up and running with your Webflow website quickly and easily.

You can use Webflow as a basic no-code website builder straight away. However, as you’ll certainly want to create a more dynamic, engaging website with a high volume of content, you’ll have to enable its CMS functionality to get up and running properly.

WordPress 

WordPress, on the other hand, is a more traditional CMS, intended to build highly scalable, dynamic websites full of rich content. The platform will need to be downloaded on to hosting servers, which can all be taken care of for you if you’re going to be working with an agency partner. 

WordPress is also a free, open-source platform, which means all users have access to its code. That allows talented developers to contribute to improving the platform with innovative new additions and enhancements on a near-constant basis. 

As WordPress is used to build almost half the websites online today, it also has a global community made up of millions of users who offer support, collaboration, knowledge sharing, events, and much more. 

Approachability and Ease-of-Use

A shared benefit of both Webflow and WordPress over certain other CMSs is their ease-of-use.

Both these platforms are approachable with low barriers for entry, even if you don’t have any existing coding or content management experience.

Webflow’s Usability 

As a low-code or no-code SaaS tool, almost anyone can use Webflow to build a website.

It provides a visual drag-and-drop builder with an emphasis on enabling users to create websites quickly and easily.

When using the CMS functionality to add more content to your website, like blog posts, the CMS is simple, allowing you to publish and manage the pages of your site with great efficiency. This is in the style of a classic content editor, which will probably be familiar to you.

WordPress’s Usability 

Almost anyone can use WordPress as well, even if you have no previous content management experience, hence its global popularity. In fact, simplicity and usability are arguably some of WordPress’s greatest strengths.

Almost everything you’ll need to set up and manage your website will be readily available when you first start using WordPress, making it very approachable. The platform provides you with an intuitive user interface (UI) that allows quick and easy publishing, management, and editing of content.

This is made even more efficient thanks to WordPress’s block-based editor. This is a method of building websites that offers significant advantages in flexibility, scalability, and ease-of-use. 

Particularly for large-scale websites that are likely to grow and evolve, this can save your developers valuable time and money, while also reducing your time-to-market.

You can learn all about the advantages of the WordPress block-based editor in our related article here. 

Their Features and Functionality  

For your investment in your CMS to be successful, it will need to have a range of features and functionality which allow you to create a website that delivers on your business objectives.

Webflow’s Features 

As touched on earlier, Webflow is a SaaS application in which almost everything you need is included as standard.

The core Webflow platform is all you need to build your site, although your agency will be able to add extra features for you by embedding code snippets from other services if you need them. 

For example, if you want to create the ability for your visitors to subscribe to your site as members, you could take code from another platform that facilitates subscriptions and use that to integrate the functionality. 

This is where the platforms start to deviate in approach. Webflow’s self-contained nature perhaps makes it a simpler platform because it doesn’t require many plugins, but that also makes it a lot more limited than WordPress.

Because Webflow doesn’t offer any plugins, you won’t be able to add many extensions that work directly in the Webflow interface. This prevents you from having one unified approach to your website management and marketing.

WordPress’s Features 

Most of the things you require to publish content and manage your website on a daily basis come readily available on the WordPress platform. WordPress’s sophisticated, dynamic features that come “out-of-the-box” are a great point of value.

However, if you do need to go beyond the standard functionality of WordPress, that can also be done with relative ease. Working with an agency with WordPress-specific expertise means that you can develop bespoke features and functionality unique to your website with almost no limitations. 

This allows you to tailor your CMS to meet your specific needs, and working with an agency to achieve this can still be very cost-effective. 

Not only that, but passionate members of the global community are always working hard to create new features and extensions that continue to improve the capabilities of the platform for free. 

How Well do they Integrate with Other Systems?

Beyond features, extensions, and plugins, your platform of choice should also be able to integrate easily with other tools and systems that are already present within your business. 

Integrating with your customer relationship management (CRM) platform, your email marketing system, and other software products is an important quality for a CMS to have.

Integrating with Webflow

While Webflow can integrate with some third-party tools, this is another area where the platform is somewhat limited. You can integrate your Webflow site with other tools, but there aren’t many native integrations available. Your agency partner will need to use more code embeds to achieve this, and you’ll have to use separate interfaces in many situations.

For example, using a lead generation form from your CRM on a Webflow site will require you to build the form in the CRM first, then add it to your web page using the embed code.

Not only does this approach create inconvenience for you and your team, but the extra time spent by your agency on more complex integrations will increase the overall long-term cost of the platform.

Integrating with WordPress 

Thanks to WordPress’s vast popularity, and the work of the global community, there are native plugins that can seamlessly integrate your WordPress site with almost any other tool or system. 

Simply add a plugin for any third-party tool to create the ability to access that tool’s functionality directly within your WordPress CMS. 

Even for more advanced requirements that need some bespoke development, like cross-platform automation, it’s usually an easier job for your development agency than it would be with most other platforms. 

How Secure Are these Platforms? 

Security should be a top priority when selecting a CMS. Concerns over cyber security and data protection are ever-increasing for businesses, so you need to ensure something as important as your website is fully secure.

Webflow’s Security 

Webflow is mostly based on AWS, an industry leader in secure hosting, so you can rest assured your platform will be highly secure. Webflow also has additional protective measures in place to bolster the security of all the data on the platform. 

Again, because it’s a SaaS product, this all comes out-the-box and doesn’t require you to take any steps yourself to secure your site.

However, that does mean you’re entirely reliant on Webflow to ensure that security is continually updated and reinforced. Neither you nor your agency partner have any control over the security of your site, which some businesses see as a negative. 

WordPress’s Security 

Your agency partner will typically be responsible for the hosting, maintenance, and security of your WordPress platform. We mention hosting and maintenance here because these things are influential towards ensuring your platform, and your website, are kept secure. 

WordPress is already a very secure platform out-of-the-box, though. There’s no need to think that WordPress’s protection is not robust enough for a large business, even in today’s volatile security landscape. Evidence of this security can be found in the number of global enterprise businesses that have chosen WordPress as their CMS.

Of course, there are vulnerabilities that can arise in certain scenarios, like if your platform isn’t kept fully updated on a constant basis. For this reason, it’s crucial to work with an agency partner who you can trust and rely on when it comes to security, including enterprise-grade hosting and continual platform maintenance. 

You can learn more about the security of the WordPress platform in our in-depth guide here. 

You can also discover 10 useful tips to further improve WordPress security and minimise your risks here. 

The Overall Cost and CTO 

As mentioned earlier, your CMS is not only a big investment, it’s also a long-term one. You ideally need to find a platform that offers good value for money, and a low total cost of ownership (TCO), in order to achieve a strong return on investment (ROI).

Your TCO will be determined by combining everything from your hosting costs, license fees, work with your agency, maintenance, bespoke development, and more.

Webflow

In terms of costs and plans, Webflow is more expensive than WordPress. This SaaS product offers two different types of plans, a site plan and a workplace plan. 

The average enterprise business with a dynamic website will be looking at costs of between £300 and £500 with Webflow. This makes it a far more cost-effective alternative than large-scale CSMs like Sitecore. 

As discussed throughout this article, though, Webflow’s lack of native plugins and integrations will also make bespoke development work more difficult and time-consuming for your agency. This will inevitably drive up the platform’s TCO, and that’s something you should carefully consider when evaluating your options.

WordPress 

WordPress is a more cost-effective platform, with a generally low TCO for most businesses. Its open-source nature means it’s free to use, limiting your initial costs to just hosting, agency fees, and post-deployment support. Any plugins or extensions of the platform will be licensed and paid for separately.

Since WordPress is such an intuitive and easy-to-use platform, any bespoke development work you need your agency partner to complete will still come at a reasonable cost. Similarly, whenever the WordPress platform is updated, testing and maintaining your site can be done in just a few hours. This creates a significantly lower TCO than you’d have with almost all other enterprise CMSs.

Make the Right Choice for Your Business 

Webflow and WordPress are both good platforms in their own right, with plenty of value to offer. The key thing to understand when making this comparison is that your CMS of choice needs to align with your business’s unique requirements and specific objectives. 

For instance, Webflow might be a suitable choice for one of your smaller competitors, but that doesn’t mean it will necessarily be a good fit for you if you need more advanced features and functionality. 

Whether you’re developing a bespoke website from scratch, or migrating your existing site to a new platform, you must ensure your CMS can deliver on your needs both now and as your business grows over time.

If you need further help selecting a CMS for your website project, read our comprehensive guide to understanding and evaluating the options for large businesses here.

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When a visitor lands on your website, the visual design is likely to be the first thing they’ll notice. It’s also usually the thing they’ll remember most. 

75% of consumers reportedly judge a business’s credibility based on its website design. This first impression can make or break a prospective client’s interest in working with you. 

The ultimate goal of your website is to attract and retain as many prospects as possible, and then convert them into clients. But most websites are designed in a way that leaves those goals unfulfilled, failing to reach their full potential. 

With that in mind, your visual identity should be treated as a top priority within the overall design of your website. Believe it or not, this can have a significant influence on the growth and success of your business.

When working on a web design project, you should always go through a careful visual exploration phase to find the right visual identity for your website. 

Whether you’re going through a full company rebrand or just refreshing the style of your website, it’s important to ensure your design is tailored to your specific target audience. This is how you begin to drive business growth through your website. 

Without a visual exploration process, your website may not convey your company’s brand identity and values as clearly as you’d like it to. 

In this article, we’ll outline the steps taken so you’ll know what to expect when working on a website design project. 

What Does the Process Involve?

The purpose of this process is to define the best visual direction to take with your site. 

This is a crucial aspect of your overall design, with aesthetic elements being brought together to create a look and feel that engages your site’s visitors and retains their attention. To achieve that, your visual design needs to establish a connection between your audience and your brand immediately. It should also demonstrate why your visitors should work with you. 

Exploring your visual identity will cover a wide range of elements, including: 

• Your brand 
• Your company values
• Your colour scheme 
• Your typography
• Imagery and other visual content
• Structuring of pages
• And other visual components that are used to tell your brand’s story across your website’s design. 

What are Mood Boards and How Can You Use them? 

The main tool used to help determine the right visual identity is a set of mood boards. 

These are a visual compilation of all the various elements that make up your website’s visual design. Each mood board is essentially just a single-page collage of design styles based on previous discussions and the findings from the research and planning phase of the process.

The aim of these is to capture your brand’s visual style and tone. This will give the stakeholders, and your designers, a shared understanding of the design you’re working towards. 

Mood-boarding helps you visualise the work on your website’s design before it begins and agree on a design aesthetic that accurately reflects your brand identity and values. 

Think of this like a problem-solving exercise. Your design agency will take a research and data-driven approach to conveying your brand identity, while also catering to your target audience and accommodating the latest industry trends.

Collaboration and Iteration

Like most processes within web design and development, this visual exploration process should be collaborative and iterative. 

You’ll typically be presented with a mood board and a set of ideas by your agency partner, then given the chance to provide feedback across several rounds of revisions. 

Rounds and revisions are always important in any creative process. It’s usually necessary for your agency to develop and present a minimum of three mood boards before the optimum aesthetic is agreed upon. This is a crucial step towards the ultimate goal of creating a new website that accurately reflects your brand and has a positive impact on your target audience. 

Connecting with Your Clients Through Design

Your website’s visual identity is what makes your brand resonate with your target audience. Your design needs to clearly convey the values of your business, the quality of your products and services, and the reason why your visitors would benefit from working with you. 

Working through this visual exploration phase is an important step towards designing a website that will attract more visitors and increase your conversions. 

Once this visual exploration is complete, the next phase of your web design process will be to craft your website’s user experience (UX).

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Making the best possible choice of content management system (CMS) is crucial for the success of your website. But, these days, not only do you have to navigate the many different options – from WordPress to Sitecore to Webflow – you also have the added challenge of deciding whether to go “headless” or not. 

Whether to take the less conventional headless approach with your CMS is a decision that could cause some confusion. It could even cause some challenges with your website if you end up making the wrong choice.

In this article, we’ll help you understand exactly what a headless CMS is, when you may need to take that approach, and highlight some key considerations to make before finalising your choice. 

What is a Headless CMS?

With a traditional CMS, the back-end and the front-end of the system are directly linked. This is how you use your CMS for both the content management (back-end) and to control how the content is presented to your website visitors (front-end). 

In this context, the back-end of the CMS is sometimes referred to as the “body” and the “head” is the front-end. In a headless CMS, that front-end is decoupled from the back-end of the system, hence the term headless. With this approach, you use the back-end as normal for content management and the presentation of content in the front-end is handled completely separately. 

This is valuable because it allows you to design your website front-end however you like, without any restrictions. However, it also requires more technical work from your development agency as a trade-off. 

With a headless CMS, your content is presented to your audience on your live website by using APIs that take it from the back-end of the CMS. This use of APIs also allows you to publish the same content in a variety of different formats via different channels as well, but more on that later. 

Scenarios in Which You Might Need a Headless CMS

It’s important to understand that you should only take a headless approach if it’s the most suitable way to meet a specific set of requirements or objectives.

Some scenarios in which you might need to take a closer look at adopting a headless CMS include: 

If a large volume of content is a key component of your marketing strategy. 

If you’re going to be producing and publishing a lot of content on your website, you may benefit from a headless CMS. Many people find it easier and more intuitive managing websites in the back-end of a headless CMS.

The decoupling of the front-end also means that your development agency will be the ones responsible for ensuring your audience is presented with dynamic, engaging content. 

If you expect to have high volumes of traffic and need to maintain performance. 

If the size of your website’s audience will put a heavy demand on your CMS’s performance, a headless system could be a worthwhile investment. Using APIs, and leveraging other intelligent techniques, the headless approach often delivers faster loading times, reduces the workload on your servers, and offers greater scalability.

If you have a multi-channel marketing strategy, or need to publish content across multiple digital touch-points. 

The headless approach allows you to take one piece of content, upload it into the back-end, and seamlessly publish it across several channels, including website, mobile app, social media, email, and even internet-of-things (IoT) devices.

This can help you maximise consistency, while providing your users in each channel an experience optimised for their preferred context.

If you’re prioritising personalisation. 

As personalisation is becoming much more important in modern marketing, headless CMSs are becoming more popular in enabling those tactics. 

If you need to create personalised experiences for your website visitors based on their demographic data, past behaviour, preferences, and so on, a headless CMS may be the right option. This is a useful approach for delivering tailored content to individual visitors, improving your engagement and increasing conversions.

If you have a multi-lingual or multi-regional website. 

Delivering the same content to visitors in different languages, across different locations, can also be made easier by using a headless CMS. Your localisation process can be streamlined by managing the content for all users just once in the back-end, then delivering it seamlessly in its different forms based on location or other conditions. 

Key Considerations and Potential Pitfalls

While a headless CMS can be a great choice to deliver on the requirements discussed here, it’s still not a straightforward decision in these scenarios. 

Firstly, it’s important to note that a traditional CMS like WordPress can still help you achieve all the things listed above, especially with the support of an experienced, talented agency. Secondly, there are some downsides to the headless approach that need to be considered while you’re evaluating your options.

Security

Security is an issue that needs careful consideration when looking into the headless approach. The headless architecture, and use of APIs, create more security vulnerabilities than you’d have with a traditional CMS.

It’s also common for a headless CMS to require more hands-on management in key areas such as hosting and compliance, as well as more thorough and frequent testing. 

Development Complexity

When you ask your development agency to build, manage, and maintain your website using a headless CMS, you’re asking them for more complex work than they’d be facing with a traditional system. This complexity is something you need to be aware of, both in your selection of an agency capable of delivering your requirements, and in the additional workload you’re asking them to complete for you. 

Time-to-Market 

Following on from the previous point, more complex development work often results in a longer time-to-market for your website. 

Developing a website using a headless CMS may require more time and resources from your agency to deliver the work for you. If you need to get your site up and running quickly, or if you may require future development work to be delivered quickly, a regular CMS may be a safer bet. 

Technical Skills 

Publishing content with a headless CMS may be easy, but if something goes wrong, or you need something changed, you’re unlikely to be able to do it yourself. A headless CMS requires more technical skills and development experience to maintain than a traditional CMS, even for small tasks. If you don’t have these skills in your team, you’ll be more reliant on your agency partner than you would be with a normal CMS.

Total Cost of Ownership 

All the points listed here will add up to a higher total cost of ownership (TCO). When accounting for the higher volume and greater complexity of work you’ll require from your agency, you’re likely to spend a lot more of your budget on a headless CMS. 

Unless you have specific complex requirements that demand the use of a headless CMS, it’s usually the more cost-efficient option to go with the more traditional approach.

Content Strategy

With all that said, it’s also important to consider whether a headless CMS is even necessary based on your content strategy. 

Unless you have an intricate, wide-ranging content strategy that spans various channels and platforms, it might not be worth adopting a headless CMS at all. 

Most of the requirements you have can likely be delivered by working with a reliable agency partner using a sophisticated, flexible CMS like WordPress. 

It’s also important to note that WordPress can be used in a headless context as well. This offers you a balance between a familiar, easy-to-use system and a more dynamic UX for your visitors in the front-end.

The Benefits of a Headless CMS 

If you do decide to take a headless approach, your CMS can deliver a wealth of benefits and strategic advantages. These include: 

Scalability

The headless architecture will enable you to build out your digital presence rapidly, on a large scale, across multiple channels. This scalability will be crucial for your website as your business grows and your requirements evolve. 

Customisation

Both the back-end of your headless CMS and the front-end presentation of your content are entirely customisable, tailored to your specific requirements. 

Flexibility

Headless CMSs provide a great deal of flexibility in terms of your selection of technology, content creation, and implementation of a multi-channel market strategy. 

Ease-of-Use

If you work with a skilled agency partner who can set up and manage your system for you, publishing and editing content with a headless CMS becomes quick, easy, and efficient. 

User Experience 

Delivering your content seamlessly – and consistently – across a wide range of channels and digital touch-points creates a far greater UX for your target audience. 

Performance

The headless architecture removes the need to render pages on your server. This creates the faster loading times and improved performance discussed previously, which also contributes to a better experience for your visitors. 

Competitive Differentiation

As mentioned earlier, the headless approach allows you to create a truly unique UX. In an increasingly crowded, noisy online landscape, this can help you differentiate your website and stand above your competitors. 

Future-Proofing

A headless CMS allows you to easily change or upgrade the technology you use for your front-end without having any impact on your back-end. This will help you become more agile and adapt quickly as new technology trends emerge in future. 

Making the Right Decision for Your Unique Requirements 

Ultimately, you should base your decision here on the specific requirements you have for your website and the circumstances you find yourself in. 

While a headless CMS does offer a range of innovative capabilities, the additional costs and resources you’ll need to invest may not be worthwhile. For example, the traditional use of WordPress can provide you with most of the benefits discussed earlier.

Carefully consider your objectives, your strategy, and the resources you have available. Use those to weigh up all the pros and cons listed in this article in relation to your own website project.  

The key thing is to clearly understand exactly what you need from your CMS, and use that to select the option that aligns best with your requirements.

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When you’re tasked with selecting a content management system (CMS) for your business, you’ll likely appreciate that the number of viable options available can make things complicated. From Drupal, to Umbraco, to WordPress, there are plenty of quality technology platforms to choose from. 

But finding the CMS that’s most suitable for your specific business is an important process that requires careful consideration and a lot of research. Of course, devoting sufficient time to this can be difficult when you have dozens of other priorities on your mind. 

To ease this challenge for you, this article will make the process of choosing between two popular CMSs much simpler. In this new content series, we’re providing direct, objective comparisons between some of the leading options for CMSs today. 

This second article of the series will look at the comparison between Umbraco and WordPress, and you can find links to the rest of the articles in this series at the bottom of this page. 

The Platforms

A CMS is a software-based technology platform upon which you can build and manage websites and applications. While most CMSs are similar in terms of their fundamental functionality, they each have varying levels of complexity and development requirements. 

Umbraco 

It’s important to start by noting that Umbraco is a platform intended specifically for developers with a certain level of technical proficiency. 

When you first set up Umbraco, it won’t be approachable for the average marketing manager or any other non-technical users. Initially, much of the key functionality expected from a CMS will be missing. The purpose of this is to encourage you to spend time and money developing the platform. Often, this has been known to rule out Umbraco as a viable option for a lot of businesses.

To get full value out of Umbraco, you’ll almost certainly need to hire someone – either an agency partner or an in-house developer – to help you get things up and running. 

Having said that, no matter which CMS you choose, you’ll be significantly better off working with a platform-specific web development agency supporting you. For most businesses, an agency plays a crucial role in helping you implement your new system and develop your site (but more on that later).

WordPress 

WordPress is the polar opposite of Umbraco, in the sense that it’s designed so that anyone – even if you have no previous content management experience – can use it easily. That’s why it’s the most popular CMS available today, with around 45% of all websites on the Internet built using the platform.

Almost everything you need to manage the day-to-day responsibilities of your website comes readily available in the software, making it much more suitable for a wider range of businesses.

This allows you to begin building immediately and facilitates a quick time-to-market for your websites and applications. WordPress’s rich, dynamic features that come pre-existing with the platform “out-of-the-box” are to thank for that. 

Content Management and Usability 

You should consider ease-of-use as a key indication of whether or not you want to invest in a CMS. If a CMS doesn’t offer simple, intuitive usability, you’re probably better off avoiding it.

Umbraco’s Usability 

As mentioned above, in its initial state, Umbraco can be very difficult to work with for the average user. It’s mostly intended for more technical users who have coding skills or some development experience to build the infrastructure. 

However, once you’ve invested sufficient time and money into tailoring the platform to your own preferences, it becomes a great tool for publishing and editing content on a website. Umbraco has a wealth of features that allow you to create high quality websites and dynamic web pages.

On a side note, if you’re a Microsoft user, you’ll be pleased to see some similarities in the structure of Umbraco’s user interface (UI).

WordPress’s Usability

WordPress is far more straightforward when it comes to usability. It provides you with a convenient, efficient user interface (UI) that allows seamless publishing, management, and editing of content on your sites.

It’s simple editing content on a page-by-page basis in WordPress, which saves you valuable time, with a handy block-based design.

The ease-of-use makes it possible to share responsibilities across your team, even if some of you don’t have any previous experience with a CMS, unlike the more technical Umbraco platform.

Customisation

Customisation with Umbraco 

Umbraco is known for being highly customisable and flexible. It’s best used as a clean slate for developers to tailor to the business’s requirements. However, this isn’t easy to do for the average user. 

As mentioned earlier, Umbraco isn’t suitable for the average CMS user in its initial state. Unlike most CMSs, you’re required to spend some time customising Umbraco in order to make it into a platform that’s approachable and easy-to-use. Once you’ve done that, however, Umbraco can become an excellent CMS with great content editing capabilities.

Customisation with WordPress 

WordPress allows you to customise it to your own liking as well. The difference here is that you don’t need to change much about WordPress’s set of tools and features before you can begin using it comfortably. 

This allows you to create quality content from day one, with the freedom and flexibility to make adjustments to the platform as and when you require. WordPress is also an easier platform to upgrade with custom features due to the quality of its community-sourced plugins.

How Secure is Each Platform?

Cyber security is becoming a greater concern each day for businesses. Choosing a platform that delivers robust security should be a top priority, so you can have full confidence in the protection of your data. 

Umbraco’s Security 

Umbraco comes with a high level of in-built security. The software is based on Microsoft’s .NET platform, which gives it support from Code Access Security (CAS). Working alongside that CAS, Umbraco provides identity-based security, and that makes it considerably more secure than the average CMS. 

Having said that, you shouldn’t let this act as an excuse for your agency partner to take security for granted. Every web development project should be approached with security at the core, no matter what in-built protection the platform has. 

It’s also important to note that Umbraco is an open-source platform, meaning a community of developers regularly creates updates and new features within the software. This means that any new additions should be tested carefully for security in case they create new vulnerabilities. 

WordPress’s Security 

While it is generally very secure, WordPress is another open-source platform backed by an active developer community. It’s important to be cautious of the raft of new features, updates, and plugins that are regularly released. 

From a security perspective, be mindful of plugins, both in terms of where they come from and ensuring they’re correctly tested, maintained, and updated. For any CMS, these issues are best left to an experienced agency partner who has the expertise to minimise these risks for you. 

Aside from that, WordPress does offer enterprise-grade security, with organisations like globally renowned pharmaceutical company Hutch Med and leading venture capitalist firm Balderton Capital using it today.

How Scalable is Each Platform? 

Scalability should be another important part of your criteria when selecting a CMS. Fast, agile expansion is crucial for the platform, just as they are for your business as it grows.

Therefore, you need your digital infrastructure to be able to scale cost-effectively with more pages, additional functionality, and perhaps even more sites.

Scalability with Umbraco 

Umbraco’s scalability is one of its strengths. With Umbraco, your site can seamlessly evolve as your business grows and your requirements change. 

It’s especially useful for teams that need to manage a high volume of pages simultaneously, making it very suitable for large businesses. 

Scalability with WordPress

In the past, WordPress mistakenly had a reputation among some for being most suitable for smaller businesses. However, its excellent scalability proves that to be nothing more than a myth. 

Just like Umbraco, WordPress is agile and scalable enough to grow alongside your business and adapt to your changing requirements. 

Cost and TCO 

A CMS is a big investment, and should be considered a long-term one. In order to ensure you’re achieving a strong return on investment (ROI), it’s helpful to find a platform that offers good value and a low total cost of ownership (TCO). 

When assessing this, it’s important to factor in costs such as hosting, licenses, agency fees, maintenance, bespoke development, and more.

Umbraco’s Up-Front Work and Ongoing Costs 

Because it’s open-source, Umbraco can be free-to-use. 

However, as mentioned earlier, it’s a platform that requires a great deal of technical expertise and initial development work. That will typically involve longer timelines with your agency than other CMSs, which inevitably mean high costs. Because it’s a complex platform, you’ll also face higher costs whenever you need to develop new functionality or work on integrations.

WordPress Value and TCO 

WordPress comes with a far lower TCO than most other CMS options. Its ease-of-use and flexibility out-of-the-box make it a very cost-effective platform. 

WordPress licenses are free, so your implementation costs would be limited to just hosting, agency fees, and post-deployment support. 

Any plugins or extensions you want to apply to the platform will be licensed and paid for separately, but it’s unlikely you’ll need to add many new capabilities because it’s such a feature-rich platform by itself.

Developer Communities 

If a technology platform is supported by a strong community of developers, that will be highly beneficial to your business. Dedicated users from around the world work hard to continuously create improvements, additions, and updates to help the software become the best it can be.

Umbraco’s Community 

Umbraco has been around since the year 2000, making it one of the oldest CMSs. That means it’s had a long time for a large, skilled community of developers to grow around it. 

As touched on earlier, Umbraco is built on a Microsoft-based infrastructure, using a C# framework, and is the most popular platform of this kind.

However, it’s important to note that Umbraco is facing some decline. More popular platforms, like WordPress, gaining widespread adoption have seen developments with Umbraco slow down in recent years.

WordPress’s Community 

WordPress has a healthy global community devoted to constantly improving the platform. 

WordPress developers are renowned for their creativity, producing a wealth of innovative new themes and plugins that can be used by any business with ease.

The WordPress community also regularly holds free events to help people learn more about how to use the platform. For instance, WordCamp is a non-profit event that has been running since 2006 across several continents.

The Important Role of an Agency 

As touched on throughout this article, another factor which will influence the success of any projects with your chosen CMS is a development agency.

When finding the right CMS is such a challenge by itself, many businesses underestimate the importance of finding the right agency partner to support you with your CMS. 

But as mentioned earlier, how well you handle critical aspects of the platform like security, testing, usability, and even your TCO are often determined by your agency. 

With Umbraco, all the platform’s functionality has to be custom coded, which makes development time in the back-end longer than most businesses expect. This also makes Umbraco difficult to work with internally, as well as for any maintenance and updates. When working with an agency, this will see your costs increase when compared to WordPress technology. 

Whichever CMS you pick, they’re all considerably easier to use, and to achieve healthy ROI, with a specialist partner supporting you. Finding an agency with the right experience and expertise to help you unlock the full potential of your platform should be another important part of your overall decision. 

Making Your Decision 

So, how do you take all these comparisons and decide which CMS is right for your business? 

In all honesty, both Umbraco and WordPress are both good options that would work well for most businesses. Although, it is generally accepted that Umbraco is a less approachable platform than WordPress unless you have technical skills within your team.

In order to determine which one will be more suitable, it’s useful to look at each of the characteristics listed in this article in relation to your unique requirements and business needs.

Remember that every business, and every web development project, is different. Think carefully about your specific strategic objectives, budget, users, technical specifications, and any other important factors. That should make it clear which CMS is the better choice to deliver what you’re looking for. 

If you need more help in your evaluation of the various CMS options: 

• Read our comparison between Sitecore and WordPress here. 
• Read our comparison between Drupal and WordPress here.

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For designers, it’s almost an impossible task to effectively deliver a project without understanding the joint language of design. This terminology and jargon can often get thrown around in meetings, although it’s good practice to read the room and speak a mutual language it’s good to get a little insight. Below is a glossary of essential UX/UI terms grouped into topics.

General terms

Accessibility
A measure of a web pages usability for a range of people, including people with disabilities.

Design system
A document that houses design components and styles to use across a website or product, ensuring consistency.

Design thinking
The process of creating and executing strategic ideas that solve problems.

Flat design
A form of design that focuses on minimalism using 2D elements and strong colours.

Human-centred design
An approach that finds solutions with a human perspective in every step of the design process.

Information architecture
Or otherwise known as a sitemap, is the structural design of information.

Landing page
A stand-alone page that a person lands on after clicking from a digital location.

Onboarding
A flow that guides the user through a set of instructions such as choosing preferences, product usage and UI elements.

Responsive design
A design and usability process that adjusts content based on the device screen size.

UI Design
This determines how an interface will look and guide the user on how to interact with a product such a colour choices and layout.

Usability
The quality of the start-to-end user experience.

UX Design
The process of determining how a digital product should work based on relevant user research and best practices.

Acronyms

CTA (Call to action)
A graphical component that guides the user through the main flow and encourages them to take a specific action. Normally it will be the element that stands out most on a page.

CWV (core web vitals)
Are three metrics that score a user experience loading a page, those are: how quickly content loads, how quickly a browser loads the webpage and how unstable the content is as it loads.

GA (Google Analytics)
A web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports web traffic.

KPI (Key performance indicators)
A Performance measurement approach based on certain metrics over a certain time period.

MVP (minimum viable product)
A version of a product that is released with just enough features that deliver on the initial user needs to then improve and develop further.

PM (Project manager)
A person that leads a team in order to achieve all the project goals in a set of timelines.

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic)
A two-dimensional vector-based graphical element that is scalable and widely supported across the web.

SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
A marketing tool that identities assess your business and analyse your competitors.

Design Process

A/B testing
A UX method that involves showing two versions of a specific page or product to see which one works better.

Card sorting
A technique that can be used by both UX designers and users that help determine the information architecture of the product based on logical ordering.

Cluster mapping
In other words, an affinity diagram is for sorting UX user findings into organised sets to lay down the foundations for desirable features.

Competitor analysis
A research method that shows strategic insights into a competitor’s features, functions and even visual positioning.

Eyetracking
A study that allows researchers to evaluate the movements of a particular user when they are using a product.

Focus group
Typically a researcher will talk to a group of people to find out opinions and generate ideas on the product or service.

F shaped pattern
Is a layout designed to guide the user’s eye to specific information based on human behaviour.

Mockup
A visual representation of a product in an environment could be a concept or the finished product.

Moodboard/style scape
Is a collection of visual inspiration gathered from an initial concept to visually communicate an idea.

Prototype
Is an early version of a product that is simplified to test main user journeys and functionalities.

Sketch
There will always be a place for pen and paper. At this stage in the prototyping process, a researcher can quickly come up with design solutions and compare them to determine the best one.

Storyboard
A visual way of communicating the user journey. 

Usability testing
An approach that is done typically throughout the whole design process, ensuring that the product has ease of use and matches the user’s requirements.

User flows
A flow that represents a users task from an entry point to a desirable end one.

User interview
A one-on-one chat that can gather information for a user persona and insight on their behavioural habits on a product and or service.

User journey
Like the user flow, a user journey is a route that maps out their journey from beginning to end, the difference is that a journey includes emotions and behavioural choices.

User Stories
A narrative-based resource that sums up the patterns of how they interact with the product, focusing on motivations and frustrations.

Wireframes
A low-fidelity design that focuses just on structure and layout without clouding the mind with visuals. Its purpose is to ensure the interaction between user and interface is solid.

Design elements

Breadcrumbs
A layered component that allows users to navigate through multi-level pages.

Contrast Colour
Ensuring there is enough visibility between two colours to the layer or text is legible and ideally meets WCAG standards.

Grid
Is a layout system with rows and columns, making it easier for designers and developers, also for making clean and symmetrical interfaces for users.

Layout
The order of certain content such as text and images are laid out on a page.

Navigation
An organised hierarchy of information allows the user to find the information they are looking for.

Typography
Typeface or Font. there is a difference. A Font is a weight or variation of a typeface and typography is the arrangement of those styles to ensure it’s legible and appealing.

White space
Or negative space is the strategic positioning of elements on a page so they have room to breathe and for people to absorb content. 

Widget
A self-contained design component that has certain functionality. 

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