Seamless and Effective Content Deployment & Management
Many small and medium-sized business owners contact a website design firm to get them started with an online presence. A great deal of time is spent in discussing and reviewing the structure of the website, the content, the message and the layout of each page – which is extremely important! However, when it comes to managing the actual content to be hosted on those pages, not much thought is put into it at the outset.
A good web designer will not only advise you on the look, usability, image and feel of your website, but will also provide invaluable inputs into your website content management, and how you might benefit from using an easy to use yet powerful Content Management System (CMS).
A CMS – What Exactly Is it?
If anyone has used, or knows about, document processing systems of yore, then you’ll probably appreciate the role of Content Management Systems (CMSs) even more. While today’s word processors, like Microsoft Word, Google Docs or Adobe), make creating content a breeze, the old document processors were a nightmare.
Simple tasks, like setting margins, inserting tabs and paragraph indenting, which are done with just a mouse-click or tap today, took a lot of time to accomplish back then. In today’s digital age, where web content rules supreme, a web development team, website owners and webmasters spend inordinate amounts of time “fussing” with content, for example: colouring, highlighting, adjusting font-size, making paragraphs, general formatting etc.
CMS’s are tools that have moved website content management from the dark ages of document processing, into modern day online word processing. They have empowered web content managers by simplifying and automating all of the tasks highlighted above, and many more besides. However, you need to have the right CMS so that you can leverage the benefits these CMS tools offer for managing and maintaining your online content.
This is something a professional website design team will be able to advise you on as there are literally thousands of different CMS systems.
Reaping The Benefits Of A Premium CMS
So, how will a CMS assist you in “taming” the wild website content beast that many small businesses have to contend with? Here are a few ways that web content producers and website content publishers can benefit from having the right CMS:
1) Collaboration: Truly effective content is the product of collaboration between web designers and content creators. By separating the physical design of the site from the content, CMS’s lay the foundation of effective cooperation between multiple teams. May staff can work on the one CMS at the same time and a good CMS will have a document locking system in place so only one set of web page content changes can be submitted at a time.
2) Streamlined Workflow: A good CMS will enforce a discipline when it comes to creating content, reviewing and editing it, testing how it will look once updated, staging it for upload to your website and refreshing it periodically. This rationalised work process can end up saving you countless hours of work/re-work and prevent many an erroneous content piece from going live.
3) Standardisation: Nothing sends a more negative image about you and your company to your customers and business partners than a highly “varied” website look'n'feel – one that is un-homogeneous and filled with nonconformity. Through the use of one or more website templates and forms, a CMS enforces a standardised look and feel across your website, blogs and social media forums. No longer will your web presences look like the product of a web designer with the help from “too many cooks”, but one that is the result of a well thought-out online strategy.
This makes adding new web pages easy as the website editor just has to choose what layout they want for the page and the corresponding website template layout is used for that new page and with it comes the standardised fonts, colours, header, footer etc of the other website pages.
4) SEO Enablement: If you speak with your web design team you could even be introduced to some CMSs that will help you with optimising your content for search engines. Platforms MODX, for instance, have built-in features that can help you create and manage Search Engine Optimised (SEO) rich content so that you can more effectively reach your specific target audience and be able to add and mange this website content in a time efficient manner..
Ultimately, investing in a CMS is about enabling you and your team to produce, present and manage web content more effectively and time efficiently than you do today. With the right CMS tools in place, your business will spend less time worrying about how to organise and manage your web content, and more on running and managing your business. Your website content management is vitally important but it should not be taking too much time away from looking after customers and replying to new sales enquiries.
Of course, like all good tools, you need the right one in your corner to help you produce the results you are looking for. That’s also true about a CMS. That’s why it is important to have an open conversation with your web design, hosting and content development team about the best CMS for your business and your colleagues. They are trained and experienced across many different CMS systems to provide you the right advice and support.
If you would like to discuss your CMS options feel free to call us on 01-6216866 or email info@myit.ie .
