Top 5 Reasons You Need a CMS

With millions of developers around the world working on the internet every day it should be no surprise that the internet is evolving. Many of the website problems of just a few years ago have been solved. Now a person who has very little experience with the web can envision, design and create a website with text pictures and video. That is something that an expert would have spent weeks on a few years ago.

But the problems aren’t gone. They have just moved up a couple levels. Instead of worrying about getting tables and fonts to line up correctly with pictures and the safest way to post regular updates or connect to a database, we have to consider how often our site is searched and what conclusions the search engine might make about the purpose and intent of our site. If a user searches “hard candy” should a candy maker be listed above a candy store? Much of that is determined by the arrangement of the site, or of the site’s content.

A CMS system is the logical progression from low-level website implementation concerns to higher level content and concept management.

1. Reduced customer interaction cycle time.  If the loop from customer-having-an-issue to customer-issue-solved is shortened customer satisfaction goes up drastically. If you can shorten this cycle with very little cost, you both win. Picture a customer who used to have to call in and wait for a call back from a specialist who now can see the solution posted on the site by the decision maker. Does she look happy?
2. Decision makers post data, not technicians. There is something nice and comforting and efficient about having the person who is in charge of the timing, sense, wording and look of a post be able to actually post the data. There is no middle-man converting your post into HTML. Modern CMS tools are advanced enough that managers and non-technical people think they are as easy as Word, or easier. With web 2.0 you don’t have to draft your content in one program and then have someone squeeze it into a website. You just hit send.
3. Technicians aren’t posting your data. That means they can be doing something else. Most programmers and IT types have long lists of to-do’s that effect the efficiency of your whole system. The more time they can spend on building, improving and optimizing your system, the faster your company moves into the future. They really don’t need to be interrupted to do a rush post of the latest press release.
4. Improves data integration. Relational databases are great, but it is many web technologies that are improving data integration and data fusion. Web search tools find data relationships that would take weeks using standard database searches. Wiki’s and free or cheap search technologies can help you find data items or files almost instantly. They can do it over and over again. Wiki’s or other “loosely coupled” data structures are also about a thousand times easier to set up or to modify.
5. It’s what everyone else is doing. This is not merely a call to follow the pack. It has more of the sense that, “everything is moving to the internet” or “everyone is starting to use cell phones” over a decade ago. The more people using similar systems, the more integrated you will be. Your clients are using CMS. Your vendors are using CMS, or they will be. It also means that this is where developers are developing. New products are coming out every day, some of them free, most of them cheap. Many tools even have videos telling you exactly what to do and where to click.

There are many free or cheap CMS’s to choose from. The best way to pick one is to choose the smallest one that has everything you will need to use for the next six months. If you are only going to be blogging and keeping a few lists Wordpress should be fine. If you know you want group calendars or data integration within the next 6 months choose Joomla or Drupal or another more full-featured CMS. Download the trial and give it a try.