Unless website design and development is your full-time job, you probably won’t want to spend more time than necessary going through the daily routines of updating your site, arranging frames and images or removing unwanted content. And even if you are someone who is into all that stuff, you would want to do it in the shortest possible time and with the least margin of error; you would use a content management system (CMS).
But apart from easing your work burden, a good CMS can actually help you with your business itself.
Let’s have a look at how:
- You Don’t Have To Do It Alone: with a CMS in place, you can delegate the work to your colleagues. They can administer the content in their specific fields of interest at any given time. And it’s not just the administration either, you can hire writers or give access to contributors to your site who can then work from anywhere in the world.
- Designing Is A Breeze: when you get tired of the looks of your site, you can simply get a new template and apply it to get a fresh, new look. A CMS will apply the new template over the whole site with one go. Of course, if there are some structural changes (like going from one-column to two-column design) you will need to do some tweaking – but once done, it is automatically applied on all of your site’s content.
- You Can Put It On A Timer: one good search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is to keep content fresh by publishing new articles and blog posts on a regular basis. Once you have your articles and posts written, you can save them in draft mode and then “tell” your CMS when to publish them. That way, you won’t have to be there to actually do it, and there is no chance of your forgetting to submit your work on time.
- SEO, SEM, Online Marketing: let’s face it, promoting your website online is a – to put it politely – really taxing job. It’s a non-stop process that you need to keep repeating over and over again, and that is if you know how to do it to begin with. With a CMS in place, you will have a tool that will help you make sure your content is SEO-friendly, has all the required input (keywords, and phrases, length of content, etc.) before you even publish it. Once it goes online, you will have a reporting tool letting you know who visited what and from where, which keyword they used to find it, what website they were forwarded from… lots of goodies to track how well (or poorly) your content is performing. That information, in itself, can then be used as input on how to proceed with the current strategy or whether to come up with a better one.
- Easy Enhancement: when using a CMS you can add features that help your site’s performance. Additionally, you can add features that help you perform your job much better. For every CMS out there, there are thousands of “plug-ins” that can be installed to improve their (the CMS’) performances. Whether it is monetizing your website using Google’s Adsense, or adding an e-store where you can sell your own products or those from an affiliate program, there are a myriad of choices you can choose from – and most of them are for free! You just have to download and install them.
- Getting A Clean, Professional Look Is Easy: although most people love getting involved in every aspect of their business, not everyone can be good at everything. Likewise, although you may be good at running your business, you probably won’t be adept at designing your site. Well, that is unless of course, you are running a website designing firm. For the rest of the world, having a clean and professional looking website is just a matter of searching online from among millions of free and premium templates, downloading them and applying them. Your online branding will receive an instant boost with the new look.
- Optimization For Mobiles And Tablets: today, the majority of people surf the internet using a handheld device. Not too long ago, you would have needed to create a second site that would allow such visitors to go through your content. Now, a good CMS will make sure that all the content on your site renders perfectly no matter what type of device your visitors use – thus ensuring you don’t lose any potential clients simply because they can’t see what you are offering.
- Your Customers Will Appreciate It: a CMS also comes with useful customer relationship management (CRM) tools. This means they can use your FAQ pages, your help section as well as your comment and contact forms to interact and keep in touch with you – a good way to build a lasting rapport.
And so, these 8 points alone should be enough to convince you about the importance of a CMS solution. If you don’t have one, now is the time to get it – before you lose contr
