24 November 2009
A website is an important marketing tool in today's modern business. It increases the company's visibility and enables communication with a global audience. It can be a powerful instrument or it can be a stagnant brochure.

A website is an important marketing tool in today's modern business. It increases the company's visibility and enables communication with a global audience. It can be a powerful instrument or it can be a stagnant brochure.

Websites are often built without any thought of future upgrades or modifications. The business owner gets excited about creating a company website and spends a lot of time ensuring the right design, pictures and content that portrays the company's products or services. However, all too often, once the website is launched , it is forgotten about. Left as an artist would leave a painting. Yet, a website is not the same as a painting. It is an organic, expandable marketing device.

A stagnant website, a website that is not regularly updated, may lose search engine position and customer's attention. Search engines like Google seek out and award websites that update their content on a regular basis. They give the website a higher ranking because they assume the company must be actively trading if they are adding new content or modifying older content. Search Engines like Google understand that the customer searching for a company or product will appreciate a website with a lot of content that is kept fresh. A visitor will only return to a website if there is something new to see. They might stay on a website in order to learn more about a product, but it would be highly unlikely that they would keep coming back if the content is not updated or continuously improved.

Continuous improvement to a website can be achieved either by paying a web development company to make the changes or by installing a Content Management System (CMS) into the website so that the website owner can change their own content. Some web development companies provide website maintenance contracts for a monthly fee. A contract of this nature will give the website owner a certain amount of hours of website modifications or enhancements for the month. The website owner will inform the web development company of what changes are needed and provide the content to them. The web development company will then make those changes at a discounted hourly rate. On the other hand, having a content management system will cut out the web development company and put the website owner back in control of their website again. With a customer friendly CMS, the website owner will stay in control of their own website.

A Content Management System (CMS) is a software application that controls all elements of a website. It allows a user with little or no knowledge of programming or mark-up languages to create and manage website content. Contrary to popular believe, a CMS cannot be attached to a website. A CMS is used as a building tool for a website. If a website does not currently have a CMS system then one would need to be installed and the website would need to be rebuilt. The right CMS will give the website owner almost full control over their website. They will be able to modify content, upload images and PDF's, add images to a webpage, add new webpages and even create a new section of their website. The CMS will also facilitate the business owner to write blogs or news items, update products on an E-commerce website and even email out newsletters. All of this can be achieved without any prior knowledge of programming or website technology.

Advantages of a Content Management System (CMS)
The advantages of having a CMS system on your website can be seen immediately. First and foremost, it puts the business owner back in control of their website. The business owner and their staff manage the content creation of the website, reduced costs can be realised by taking charge of this service, communication with clients is improved, testing marketing material is simplified, customer service is enhanced, and the website becomes expandable and modifiable.

Changes can be made anywhere, anytime
Other advantages of having a CMS system on a website is that the website owner can make immediate changes to their website from anywhere at anytime. This removes any bottlenecks that could occur if the company has a web team or hires a web company on retainer.

Restricted User Accounts
A good CMS system will also provide user accounts that can restrict access to certain areas of the website administration. This will allow the website owner to set up an account for staff members and allow them access to a specific section, i.e. the Blog section. A restricted account will prevent them from editing content which they are not authorised to change.

Design is Preserved
All CMS systems store the content of the website in a database, this help to separate the design from the content. Content from all authors is then displayed consistently throughout the website using the same design. The website owner does not need to worry about a staff member breaking the website as they cannot make modifications to any of the design.

Navigation automatically modified
A good CMS system will automatically adjust the menu items when a new webpage is added. Of course the website owner will have the option of having the webpage display on the menu system or not. This will also prevent broken links in the menu, as the system will automatically remove the link to the menu if the webpage is removed.

Cooperation
Making use of groups and user accounts the website owner can assign certain tasks to individuals or groups. This encourages faster updates and ownership of content. Collaboration among authors is enhanced and accountability is generated.

Article written by Vince Doherty, Dakor: http://dakor.ie a full service web design company based in Kildare.