Maintaining content management

One of the guiding principles of good website design is to change your site’s content as often as you can. The problem, of course, is how to keep your site bang up to date without it costing you huge amounts of time and manpower that would be better spent elsewhere in your business. But what if you could update any number of pages on your site by just filling in a few online forms and clicking a couple of buttons? This is the promise of content management systems (CMS) that were once the province of large corporations, but are now affordable for any size of enterprise.

So what exactly is content management and why should your business be investigating what it can do for your website? Kerry Marriott, UK marketing communications manager of Mediasurface, outlines what CMS is capable of: The purpose of every website is delivering the right information to the people who need it, when they need it. The easiest way to do this is using a content management system.

She makes the point that, when changing a logo on a site that appears on every page (regardless of whether you have 30 pages or 30,000) the issue is still how much time it will take to get the job done. By using a manual system, a company would have to upload the image, store it on the homepage, then repeat on every page where the image appears. That is going to take one person a significant amount of time. A good CMS, she says, will allow the company to drag the item into their site, and save it in a repository where it naturally propagates itself throughout the site ñ a job that is most likely to take approximately two minutes.

Three routes to choose from
CMS fall into three broad categories: the first are systems aimed at smaller companies that may need to update their sites often, but don’t have demanding layouts on their pages. These are typified by desktop systems like Contribute 3 from Adobe. So-called open-source systems also fall into this category. These are essentially free, but do need a fairly high level of technical knowledge to get them working effectively on your site.

The second group is aimed at the mid-market and offers mature technology that can be tailored to your needs. These solutions are typically based on a system that is modified to suit your website.

The last group is enterprise solutions. These offer a complete bespoke system that is built end-to-end. Costs with these systems can easily spiral out of control if you don’t keep a firm grasp on the development process that should be properly project-managed with an agreed budget.

Essential for both sides
Content management for B2B companies is just as important as B2C sites aimed at consumers. In fact, it’s arguable that B2B enterprises have to work harder to gain and then retain their customers as they are operating in a more competitive environment than consumer-facing businesses. Quite simply, a CMS can give you the edge over your competitors.

This can translate into huge jumps in revenue as Richard McCarthy, product marketing manager at Tridion, points out: ìB2B sites clearly have different needs from B2C sites. One particular need they have is to be able to serve their distributors or resellers by providing all the relevant content (documents, brochures and price lists, etc.) in order to promote and sell the products. However, distributors often need the content customised to their own needs. This may involve just white-labelling so that the content is the same, but the look and feel of the distributor’s site is quite different from the manufacturer’s; or it may involve content needing to be localised (such as in language or currency) to the distributor’s needs. The business benefits of serving your resellers or partners in such a way are huge.

Often, when a CMS is implemented, the responsibility for the content on the site can revert solely to either IT or marketing. It’s imperative that everyone in your business works together to ensure that your site’s content is always of the highest quality. Try and put in place a clear workflow so each department in your business knows their responsibilities when it’s time to update the content on your site.

CMS can empower marketing, for instance, when it feels that they no longer need your IT department to make changes on the website. But before you place all responsibility for content management with one department, ensure that they can cope. If a technical issue does arise can this be dealt with swiftly? The last thing your business needs is to have its website down because a simple change to a template within the CMS needs to be carried out, but there is no one available to do the work.

Tools of the trade
Content management systems can be bought off-the-shelf. The best known is Contribute 3 from Adobe. This desktop-installed application is perfect for smaller companies who don’t want ñ or can’t afford ñ a bespoke system.

In essence, Contribute enables anyone to update the content on their website via an easy-to-use interface. Once your site layout is finalised, perhaps by a design company, you can take complete control of the update of the site’s content yourself. Too often businesses have a website built by a third party with no thought given to how they will update the content once the site is handed over to them. With Contribute, site updates are fast and don’t (in most cases) need the input of an IT specialist. If you can use Microsoft Word for instance, you can update your website with Contribute. Packages like Contribute offer a fast and simple way of implementing a simple CMS.

If you have an IT department it may be feasible for you to build your own CMS with tools that are freely available on the Internet. Open-source CMS are usually free but do need a high level of technical knowledge to get the most from them. A good example is Typo3. This is an off-the-shelf script that runs on your website’s server. You’ll need a good grasp of HTML and CSS to get the system working on your site.

Enterprise CMS, from companies such as Sitekit, Ektron and RedDot, offer the ultimate in CMS but can be expensive if your needs are extensive. Hosted packages are also available, which are much cheaper than buying a bespoke CMS that will reside on your servers. UK-based Emojo offer a hosted package called Affino, with Hyve offering free set-up and support of the Mambo CMS.

Search marketing
One area that is often overlooked when CMS is installed is how search engines will treat your new website. In traditional HTML-based websites, search engine optimisation (SEO) was the key to a sustainable business. With CMS you should still pay close attention to SEO as Peter Aylward, MD of RedDot Solutions explains: ìIt’s important to consistently check all new content for SEO key phrases and, if possible, add SEO as a step into the content creation process. Search engines are a different audience than your customers, so you need to follow all your SEO best practices, and it is important that new content is examined so that it fits within any SEO strategy.

Ultimately, to gain a good ranking on search engines you need to create compelling content. If you gear your business to putting relevant and timely information on webpages, this will be rewarded with high search engine rankings. There are no shortcuts you simply have to work at making your content the best it can be.

Every business can use CMS to leverage better market exposure, which can result in small firms being able to punch well above their weight simply because they manage the content on their websites more professionally than their competitors. IT consultant Graham Oakes outlines how you should choose the right CMS for your business. Start with the core users of the CMS: your content authors and editors. How do they work? For example, are they comfortable with a well-defined workflow, or do they work in a more free-flowing, collaborative way? Some CMS support one style more easily than the other. Also think about the types of content you’re delivering. Are you focused on traditional webpages, with perhaps a few documents? Or do you need to deliver a mix of video and audio, etc? Is it all targeted at a standard web browser, or do you want to support a range of mobile devices too?

Different CMS will perform disparately in each of these areas. Are you just delivering content, or do you want to engage in a dialogue with customers through mediums such as forums, blogs or wikis? Again, this will influence your choice of CMS.

With over 2000 different CMS to choose from it may seem like you are trying to find a needle in a haystack, but the key to adopting the right system for your business is to look closely at your needs. Once you understand what you want CMS to do for you, it’s much easier to find a system suitable for your website.

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