Why Your New Website Should be Built on a Content Management System
Gone are the days of having your website be a static brochure for your company. You need to be adding and changing content on a daily (or at least weekly) basis to really start to enhance your website.
There are many advantages to using a content management system (CMS) for your new site. A CMS is basically a piece of software and a database that runs on your web server. The software has a password-protected administration area where you can make modifications to the information on your website. This simplifies the content editing process. Also, the software has optional add-ons which are relatively easy to install, but provide powerful functionality, like spam prevention, e-commerce, Google Analytics, and more.
In this Web 2.0 world, a CMS is the ultimate tool for easily tying together all the features you need to make your website successful. Here is what your website should be doing for your business, and how a CMS helps you achieve your goal:
* Easily edit your content without special software or contacting your ‘web guy.’ When you use a CMS, you can login with your username/password and have an ‘EDIT’ button on each page. Clicking ‘EDIT’ allows you to modify the content of that page like you would make changes to a word document, with no risk of ruining the overall layout or styling of the website. This saves you the maintenance cost of your webmaster, and you get to make the changes on your own schedule, not theirs.
* Add powerful applications and plug-ins with only a few clicks. Note the ’share’ buttons at the bottom of this page. From the time I thought ?Hey, I should add those little social networking buttons to the bottom of my pages, to the time that they were there, was about 30 seconds. I just typed in ’social buttons’ on the plug-in finder, clicked ‘install’ on the popular package, and it was automatically downloaded to my web server, installed, and activated, just like that. The same is true for analytics software, spam-blocking apps, and many other useful plug-ins. These add value by allowing your visitors to easily share your website with their network, and save you time by weeding out the spam comments. There are tons of different plug-ins, for just about everything you can think of, and the right combination can really make your website perform at its best.
* CMS should stand for ‘Charm More Spiders.’ Search engine spiders love to crawl content-managed sites. By installing the SEO plug-in for your website, you can send out a notice to the crawlers every time a page is updated. This results in quicker indexing times, and can get you ranked higher more quickly. The SEO plug-in will also rename your URLs using search-engine-friendly text: www.sample.com/your-page-title instead of www.sample.com/?=page_41?=page.
* Blogging is a snap. All of the big CMSs have blogging capabilities built in that allow you to easily post new articles and entries. This is a necessity for companies big and small. By providing that fresh content, search engines will like you more, and you can position your company as an industry expert. Blogging is very good for business.
* Sell your wares! If you want to sell products on your website, the VirtueMart extension for Joomla is one of the most popular solutions. The installation process should be handled by an expert, but products and their details can be added, removed, or modified without the help of a techie. A full-featured shopping cart like VirtueMart will handle product management, user accounts, inventory, and even shipping calculations.
As you can see, there are some very sizable advantages to using a Web 2.0 CMS as a backbone for your new website, giving you the capability to create an excellent user experience for your visitor, and grow your business using the power of the Internet. As always, I’m here for your comments and questions – email me – tony[at]vanivo[dot]com.
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