CMS Developer Marketing Moves

- Our sunflower oil does not contain cholesterol!
- Of course, no sunflower oil contains cholesterol.

In this article I want to talk about the most common advertising moves of the developers of commercial CMS and explain why these are just marketing moves and nothing more.

As you know, the key to a successful business is marketing and advertising. Tell about the advantages, the disadvantages to present as advantages, and which did not work - hide. With content management systems exactly the same story. Bitrix and UMI are considered market leaders not because they have really good products, but because they have really good marketers. In fact, all CMSs do not differ much in their essence - they provide exactly the same opportunities in the same way. But the product must somehow be distinguished from the rest, it is necessary to write something in the “System Benefits” section. So they come up with virtues that do not exist or which are not virtues at all. Further on the most common ones.

"... our system allows you to fully manage the content of the site"

Have you ever seen what would be written in a car advertisement: “You can drive our car” , and in a shovel ad, “You can dig with our shovel” . Site management is the main function of the CMS, and not an advantage.
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"... our system is really easy to use, it has an intuitive interface"

In fact, no CMS-system is easy to use. If only because the management of the site is not an easy task, but rather specific. The system can be convenient for a person who is used to working with CMS. But convenience and an intuitive interface are different things, moreover, they often conflict. In other words, it often turns out that if something is clear with time, it becomes uncomfortable, and if something is convenient, most likely, it is not clear at first glance. Like hotkeys.

"... our system has high performance"

You can talk about the performance advantage of the system by comparing its performance with others on a common basis. And even then it will not be entirely true, because no one knows on what equipment the system will work for the client.

The performance of the system depends largely on the hosting, on the workload, on the channels and other parameters. Therefore, the assertion that the system works quickly cannot be refuted. True, and prove it is also impossible.

"... our system can work on almost any hosting"

In fact, this is more the merit of the hosting providers, if there are enough applications on their sites to ensure the operation of almost any CMS. As for the CMS itself, then there is just a practical necessity - few people will buy a system that requires too much. There are exceptions of course, but then this deficiency is usually offset by the opportunities provided by high system requirements.

"... our system contains a visual editor, similar to Microsoft Word and does not require special knowledge"

“Write a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.” Having WYSIWYG is a disadvantage rather than an advantage. But it is a disadvantage because if the secretary Zina can be controlled with the system, then Zina will most likely be imprisoned for managing the system. Zina will quickly arrange the pages in pink bold italics on a light green background, so the pages will resemble a r ... row with strawberries. Zina likes this.

But seriously, WYSIWYG will make ugly HTML, it will take a long time to load, fail under the explorer, etc. But rarely will improve the visual design of the pages. Is that only in very capable hands, which is rare.

All the above statements are suitable for almost any CMS. I had read enough about them, but I didn’t meet a single one, in whose advantages there wouldn’t be at least 3 out of 5 given statements.

For those who choose CMS, let me give advice: reading about the merits of the product, immediately dismiss statements of this kind. They mean absolutely nothing.