Why a CMS?
In any kind of business today, your website is a core and essential infrastructure component. People will search for you on Google and expect to find your official site. Getting it high up in search results is another matter entirely (we did an ePiphany solely about search engine optimization a couple of months ago). But you need to have something out there. The efforts related to building and maintaining a business website are not small, like any other technology consideration. And they will be ongoing throughout the life of your business. So it’s something you need to accept as part your bottom line, but with the right planning and strategy you can aim for the sweet spot of minimal cost for maximal site value. A key part of that equation for many businesses involves a content management system (CMS).
The most expensive part of getting a website up is of course an initial from-scratch design and development process. And although a CMS may streamline some of that process, you will likely still need a significant upfront investment for design. And someone with a technical understanding of a particular CMS, as well as some HTML, CSS, and Javascript knowledge would need to do the build-out of a site design within a CMS. However, the key is that once launched, your website is not going to just stay as is. The content of your site will need to be updated as your business ages and changes. A CMS can empower internal personnel without deep technical knowledge to make these updates. In many cases all that is needed is a little training on the particular CMS and anyone who knows MS Word can make site changes.
Where a CMS really contributes its value is with regularly generated new content. This could be events, news, staff bios, etc. With a CMS, you can add such elements to your site with a minimal ongoing maintenance cost. Without one, you would need to factor in the cost of a web programmer’s effort each time you need to add a new event listing. And in many cases, that cost would likely outweigh any tangible benefit. Without that cost as a factor however, you can dream up all sorts of dynamic content for your site. Done properly, it can help bring people back to your site repeatedly, better your search ranking, and give a general impression of web savviness. And even if you don’t currently envision dynamic content for a new website, developing it in a CMS gives you the ability to make static changes on your own, while retaining the option to later add dynamic elements with relative ease.
Astek would love to tell you more about our Webany, our very own CMS. Drop us a line, or read more about her here.
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Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, Technology, Web |
