When asked to define their relationship with their company’s website, most people will fall into one of two distinct camps: it’s either a perfect partnership or a constant battle.
A stalemate situation
It’s a fact of life that some sites are more user-friendly than others; and if your company’s website has been built on an inferior CMS (content management system), the task of maintaining it will continue to be a daily battle until you take action.
Whilst most modern websites have a CMS that allows administrators to update content with a few clicks of a mouse and taps on a keyboard, you would be surprised how many people don’t have access to the ‘back end’ of their company’s site.
This leaves them with no choice but to pay an external developer to make amendments — no matter how small — whenever they need to make a change. Although some people might prefer to outsource this process entirely, it takes time — most web design agencies will need to book your work into an already busy schedule, and developers will need time to reacquaint themselves with your site.
As a result, the task of updating information is often neglected because it is too time consuming and costly. This means that the all important news articles and blog posts don’t have a hope of being refreshed on a regular basis – any SEO professional’s worst nightmare since we all know that content is the key to SEO success.
Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could just log in and tweak some homepage text, add a new employee or publish a blog post yourself?
Taking command
There are different options available to you if you want to make your website more user-friendly. You may need to find a web design agency that can completely rewrite your site on a different platform, or you might just need to speak to your original agency and/or hosting provider to see whether there is any CMS training that is available.
In my view, websites shouldn’t be unmanageable and they certainly shouldn’t be inaccessible. A website with content that is constantly refreshed and updated will not only perform better in terms of SEO, but it will also be more engaging and encourage visitors to return time and time again.
Engagement
Social networking is all about engaging people and starting conversations, so if your website is static, unchanging and stuck in the past, it is definitely the weak link in what might otherwise be a flourishing online strategy.
Website re-development can be a daunting task but there’s no need to go it alone. If you’re looking to have your website transferred to a more useable CMS, or if you’d just like some advice, talk to us. We’d love to help.