The Best Website Platform Is the One Your Organization Can Actually Sustain

Your Org Chart Is Part of Your Technology Stack

Two organizations with nearly identical websites may need very different platforms.

Consider two nonprofits, each with 50 employees.

The first has a digital team of five. They routinely create landing pages, analyze website performance, run campaigns and work comfortably inside a CMS. Leadership gives the team considerable autonomy.

The second has one communications director who manages the website as perhaps 20 percent of her job. Program managers send her Word documents containing updates. Website changes sometimes wait for executive approval. Nobody wants to touch anything that looks remotely like code.

Giving these organizations identical technology because they have similar budgets, traffic and content requirements would ignore one of the most important differences between them: how work actually gets done.

The first organization may benefit from flexibility. The second may benefit from guardrails.

This is why organizational structure belongs in platform discovery alongside traffic requirements, integrations and security.

Who will create pages? Who approves them? Who updates navigation? Who fixes something when it breaks? Who understands the CRM integration? Who monitors analytics? Who is responsible for accessibility after launch?

If the answer to most of those questions is the same person, the website should probably be designed differently than one operated by a dedicated digital team.

More Flexibility Isn’t Always Better

Organizations understandably ask for flexibility during website projects. They want editors to be able to change layouts, create new page types, move components, modify navigation and build new experiences without calling a developer. That sounds ideal. But flexibility creates responsibility.

Suppose a university gives dozens of departments tremendous freedom inside its CMS. On launch day, the website is attractive, consistent and accessible. Two years later, one department has created 14 slightly different versions of a landing page. Another has uploaded enormous images that slow page performance. Someone has used headings to make text larger rather than to establish proper document structure. Another department has copied and pasted formatting from Microsoft Word across hundreds of pages.

The platform did exactly what the organization asked it to do: it gave everyone flexibility. The problem was that the organization did not have the governance structure needed to manage that flexibility.

Sometimes the better system is one that says “no” more often. It limits choices, protects design standards and makes it difficult for an occasional content editor to accidentally damage accessibility or page performance.

The most powerful platform isn’t necessarily the one that allows the most things. It may be the one that makes the right things easy and the wrong things difficult.

The Website You Launch Isn’t the Website You Will Have in Three Years

A new website receives an unusual amount of attention. Executives participate in discovery meetings. Content is reviewed. Old pages are deleted. Navigation is debated. Designers carefully establish typography and spacing. Developers optimize performance and accessibility. Everyone is paying attention. Then the website launches.

The executive team moves on to other priorities. The project budget disappears. Employees leave. New employees arrive. Programs change. Someone creates a workaround. Then someone else creates a workaround for the workaround. Three years later, the website reflects not only the original design but hundreds or thousands of small organizational decisions made since launch. That is why sustainability should be considered during platform selection rather than after implementation.

A good discovery process should ask what happens when the person who knows the website best leaves. It should ask whether documentation will actually be used, whether employees have time for training and whether the organization historically maintains technology investments after launch. Those can be uncomfortable questions. They are also extremely valuable ones.

Institutional History Matters

Organizations rarely approach a website project with a clean slate.

Perhaps the current Drupal website was built eight years ago and has become difficult to maintain. That does not necessarily mean Drupal is the wrong platform. The problem might be years of deferred maintenance, custom development that was never documented or an implementation that no longer reflects the organization’s needs.

Likewise, an organization may arrive convinced that WordPress is unreliable because its existing WordPress website is slow and frequently breaks. But investigation might reveal dozens of outdated plugins, inexpensive hosting and years without systematic maintenance. Those are very different diagnoses.

Switching platforms without understanding why the previous website struggled can simply recreate the same problems on a new platform.

If an organization chronically underfunds maintenance, changing CMSs won’t fix that.

If nobody owns content governance, a new CMS won’t fix that either.

If every department insists on maintaining its own exceptions, rebuilding the website will not automatically produce consistency.

Technology can solve technology problems. Organizational problems usually require organizational solutions.

Budget for the Website You Will Operate, Not Just the Website You Will Build

Website budgets tend to focus heavily on launch. An organization may have $150,000 available for a redesign but very little allocated for the years that follow. That can create an odd situation: the organization buys a sophisticated digital platform and then lacks the resources to maintain it. Platform decisions should therefore include the total operating model.

That means asking about hosting, security updates, CMS and plugin updates, accessibility monitoring, analytics, development support, integration maintenance, performance optimization and future enhancements.

Imagine an organization choosing between two approaches. Platform A costs somewhat more to build but can be comfortably managed by the existing communications team. Platform B appears less expensive initially but requires specialized development expertise for routine changes. The cheaper implementation may become the more expensive website. Conversely, paying more for sophisticated capabilities that nobody will use is not an investment either.

The meaningful question is not simply, What does this website cost to build? It is, What does this website require from us every month for the next five years?

Be Particularly Honest About Content

Content management is where the difference between organizational ambition and organizational capacity becomes especially visible.

During discovery, organizations often describe the website they intend to maintain.

“We’ll publish three articles every week.”

“Each program director will keep their section current.”

“We’ll regularly update staff biographies.”

“We’ll create new case studies every month.”

Maybe.

But platform planning should also examine what has actually happened during the previous several years. If the existing news section hasn’t been updated in eight months, building a homepage that depends upon a constant stream of new articles creates a predictable future problem. If staff biographies are consistently outdated because nobody owns the process, a new CMS does not solve the ownership problem.

This doesn’t mean organizations should stop aspiring to do better. It means the website should distinguish between current capacity and future ambition.

Design for what can be sustained today. Then create a roadmap for what can be added when the organization is ready.

Sometimes the Right Answer Is External Support

Organizations sometimes treat outside support as evidence that a website is too difficult to manage. It doesn’t have to be.

Most organizations outsource things they could theoretically perform themselves. They use accountants, attorneys, security specialists, payroll providers and IT consultants because maintaining every specialty internally would be inefficient. Websites are no different.

An organization may be perfectly capable of managing content while relying on an agency for development, hosting, security and updates. Another may need assistance with analytics and digital marketing. A small nonprofit might deliberately choose a platform knowing that its agency will handle anything beyond routine content changes. The important thing is to decide this intentionally.

Problems arise when a website is selected on the assumption that internal staff will perform work they have neither the expertise nor the time to perform.

A sustainable model can include outside help. In many cases, it should.

Choose a Platform You Can Succeed With

Choosing the right website platform is not simply a matter of comparing WordPress, Drupal, Webflow, or the latest technology. It means understanding how your organization works today, where it wants to go and what it can realistically sustain along the way.

That is where New Target can help. We work with organizations from the earliest stages of platform selection and digital strategy through UX and design, development, integrations, content migration and launch. Just as importantly, we remain involved after launch with managed hosting, security, accessibility, performance optimization, analytics, maintenance and ongoing development and digital marketing support.

The goal is not to sell an organization the most complicated website we can build. It is to build the right digital ecosystem for the people who will actually use and manage it — and then provide the expertise they need as their organization grows.

If your current website has become difficult to manage, your team has outgrown its platform, or you are beginning a redesign and aren’t sure which technology makes sense, New Target can help you evaluate the options and build a website your organization can actually sustain. Contact us.