Why your website needs a Content Management System
If your company is considering a website, or a website redesign, you may well have heard the term CMS (Content Management System). It's not just techno-waffle, it is a potentially critical component of ensuring that your site is attractive to far more than just those that know it exists.
In brief, a CMS lets you update the content of a website. It could be pictures, text, news items - anything. The CMS gives you, the website owner, special access to the content that your website visitors see.
The benefits
There are lots of advantages to having a CMS. One is very obvious, whereas some of the others are less so obvious to those outside of the web design industry.
Firstly, a CMS means your website content becomes dynamic. It changes and it changes when you want it to. You don't have to keep going back to your web design company and asking them to change this and that - and probably get charged for their services each time.
Secondly, your customers and other visitors see a website that they know is up to date, a real reflection on your company and that you care about keeping your public image a timely one. If you think about your own visits to websites we've all seen sites that have news items on them that are 6 months or more out of date - do you recall what impression that left of the company? Usually it isn't a very good one.
There are plenty of other reasons to have a CMS, but the one we want to bring attention to is the most overlooked of all - and perhaps the most important.
Search engines love regularly changing content. They like nothing more than to see a website that is being maintained by its owners, updated and worked on over a period of time to develop the value of the sites offering to the general public. By having a CMS (and using it!) you are going to raise the profile of your site with search engines, help your site get found by a lot more people and in turn increase the traffic to your site. In a nutshell, you're doing the single biggest thing possible to driving your site up the ranking of search engine listings.
Cost v Benefit
The initial extra cost of a CMS is easily outweighted by the long term benefit. The money you save by not having to ask your web design company to change things alone will usually add up to a useful saving and that is long before you consider the fact you'll be attracting more visitors and hopefully more revenue as a result of that.
So, if you're planning that new website - make sure you seriously consider a CMS. In our opinion, the most astute companies ensure they have one custom written to their requirements and they use it frequently. They're nearly always the ones with the most successful websites in the long term.
What to publish?
It isn't lost on us that once you have a CMS on your website you have to think up content for it.
Most companies have news. If you don't, it's probably not a particularly good sign in the long term anyway!
You'll have products or services that change over time. You can probably write reasonably useful articles that your customers or website visitors will find valuable. People often think that no-one will be interested in things they write - but thats because a typical mistake made is to make presumptions.
Write what comes naturally to you and make sure it is relevant to the overall purpose of your website. Make sure any photographs or images that you change with a CMS are good quality ones and match in to the overall colour scheme or feel of the site. There is nothing worse than a lovely website with a terribly poor photograph on it. It stands out like a sore thumb.
More than anything though - be original. Don't copy and paste text from other websites because the search engines aren't silly and they'll not give you any plaudits for doing so. Put a little time and effort into your content, sit back, and you'll see the long term benefit. Hard work is usually rewarded - its no coincidence!
