When you need a website or need to seriously update your existing website, the first thing you should do is evaluate the available website platform options. For smaller sites, it is easy to start digging into pay by the month website vendors like wordpress and wix, but when you need a new business website, who should you look to? Gartner just came out with this annual Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management and the top right quadrant features leaders in the space. This year the top 3 are Adobe, Sitecore and Acquia.

Acquia runs their WCM platform off of Drupal. Drupal should be one of the first options you consider, especially if you are operating an enterprise level website.

Here are the reasons why marketers love Drupal:

1. Modules! Modules are extensions of your website that allow you to customize your site as needed, and enable you to connect to a service or a feature you may want. Drupal has a large community of developers creating new modules, which are updated daily. This flexibility ensures you will have an up-to-date and relevant website.
2. Integrations. Drupal was built with API first in mind so it is fairly easy to integrate with other services through your Drupal website. This is especially true with Drupal 8. For example, we integrate with Demandbase on Acquia.com through an API service, in addition to Marketo.
3. Flexibility. With some larger vendors you are limited to their tools and to their roadmap. If you want a feature you may need to wait until customer demand is high enough to prioritize feature development. With Drupal you can use any service you want, and no need to stick with the vendor option or pay a developer to build it for you. This allows you to get what you need , when you need it t. Some of the larger vendors can’t provide that flexibility.

What are the things Marketers think about most? In order to do these things they need to be able to have a platform that can support them. Drupal can be that platform.

• Better conversion rates
• SEO
• A/B and Multivariate testing
• Analytics
• Direct Sales
• Lead Capture
• Integrations
• Social
• Localization/Translation
• Responsive Design

Is Drupal the right choice for my Marketing website? Yes, and I strongly recommend it. Even if your marketing site begins as a basic brochure website, you might need all the flexibility and scalability options Drupal provides in the future. Why not set yourself up for success by choosing the right platform up front. That is also the beauty of Drupal, because it is open source, the platform itself doesn’t cost you anything. It costs what it takes to build, customize and host, so you can start small and build up as your business grows. Drupal will extend to be as complex as your business demands. Drupal is a definitely contender in the WCM space, make sure to check it out.