Since the advent of the browser based Internet websites have been plagued with the reality that just like the clothes in your closet, they need to be updated periodically in order to stay in fashion or in the case of a website, relevant to your audience. Stale content will turn your new business and core audience away much more quickly than it did even 5 years ago. Consumers and business clients alike expect to see updated videos, digital images and textual information that is informative and exciting.
A Content Management System or (CMS) is an excellent tool to allow non-technical staff to keep your website up to date in real time. Normally a CMS is programmed into a website during the initial design or a redesign of the site. However this is not an absolute rule, most existing websites can be modified on the back end to handle a CMS.
Most CMS’s have a very easy learning curve and can be taught to use on the most basic levels in a few hours of training. Many of them have intuitive user interfaces that keep a similar look and feel to popular word processing programs such as the Microsoft Office suite.
There are two basic types of CMS’s; open source and proprietary. In most cases an open source CMS such as WordPress, Drupal or Joomla will suffice for your website requirements. Large scale website operations may need a more robust solution which a proprietary CMS may be a better long term fit. An example would be a website for a retail clothing chain or manufacturer with multiple locations, customer and employee logins that handle accounting, inventory, shipping and receiving.
A good rule of thumb to know if you need a CMS for your business would be if you require content on your website to be updated more than three times per month. Instead of incurring monthly maintenance fees you may want to look into pricing out a CMS solution. Also, you will need the internal staff on hand that can conduct routine updates, so this can be a fine line to walk. Some companies find that outsourcing website updates to a 3rd party vendor can be more cost effective that implementing a CMS and using internal staff to update the site.
The good news is most open source CMS’s can be administered by anyone with basic or little computer skills. And as I always say, do your research, not all solutions fit the same need. Please feel free to contact me if you would like to learn more about the benefits of implementing a CMS for your business.
