Web Content Management - Business Guide
Introduction
Ignia has seen an explosion in the use of Content Management Systems (CMS) by Perth businesses. But what do Content Management Systems do and how do they empower you to create powerful and compelling websites that have far greater impact than a basic collection of web pages? What is the business value of Content Management in general and how does Content Management enable the marketing department to get your company’s message out there? This article describes what Content Management Systems (CMS) do, rather than discussing the nitty gritty of how they do it, and gives you meaningful scenarios that business people can relate to. If you are interested in specific Content Management System technologies then this technical article may be of interest.Content Management 101
Imagine your website has just been published and then take a moment to think about what it will look like three months from now? How much effort did it take to get your website out on the internet? Will it need maintaining, updating, is somebody tracking statistics that will tell you what visitors are looking for? Will it look the same in three months as it does today? It is not uncommon for a company to launch a website and then leave it alone for months or even years. Imagine picking up a newspaper weeks from now and reading the same news that was printed today, you would stop reading the newspaper, because it’s filled with the same old stories. So how does a business use a CMS? Sticking to our newspaper metaphor above, a CMS basically lets people write articles knowing the section that the articles will appear in, but not worrying too much about how the article will be formatted when published, i.e. how it will appear. The most important activity in creating a website is to get involved in writing articles, which in Content Management terminology is called Authoring. Your website will be divided into sections, such as Services, Company News and Recruitment. Website sections group similar articles together, just as flicking through a newspaper would reveal the news section, sports and what’s on TV. Similar articles are much easier to find when they are grouped. The next aspect that Content Management Systems bring to writing articles is structure. You can demand that each article has a relevant picture, and as well as the main body, it should also have an abstract. You can even connect the new article to existing articles that you deem to be similar. Suddenly your website starts to come to life and make suggestions to visitors on what other pages could be of interest. Structure is enforced through the use of a template, which is a collection of input boxes, which need to be filled-in to complete a piece of content. Consider a company news content item which may have a picture, headline, body, abstract and linked articles. The news item template will guide authors to provide all the information that is required to have a well thought out useful piece of content to add to your website.Presentation
We read earlier that people can write articles without worrying about what they will look like. Our company news item now has enough fields filled with information to enable us to use it in different ways. Firstly, when a website visitor comes to the company news page they will see a summary list of news articles with a small picture, headline and the abstract which gives an overview of each article. When the article is clicked the website will display the full text. So our Web Content Management System enables us to present articles in different ways depending on what the purpose of the web page is. If the purpose of the webpage is to provide summaries of articles then visitors will be able to quickly browse for items of interest, and when they click on an article, they will see the full detail. How many times do you find a web page that you want to print without all the clutter of the website menus etc? Presentation features within Web Content Management Systems enable you to format articles in different ways depending on how they are being viewed. For example, if the article is printed it could look significantly different from when it is viewed on screen. Similarly if it’s viewed on a desktop computer you may use multiple columns, but if it was viewed on a mobile phone then it would need to be a single column and formatted for a much smaller screen, where the user needs to scroll more.Maintaining your Website
Maintaining your website once you have the Web Content Management System installed is very simple. If you need to add a news article you simply switch to edit mode using your CMS editor and browse to the news section and select “Add new article” or “Add a news item” and begin writing the article. Web Content Management Systems typically know what types of articles go in which section and guide staff to use the system correctly.Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
One thing that can be difficult to master is creating website pages which are easy to find using popular search engines, such as Google. Web Content Management Systems format your pages in a structured way which helps to boost your website’s visibility to search engines. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art of developing pages that come high up on search lists, typically on page one of the search results. Content Management technology is incredibly useful for this, but not all Web Content Management packages have an SEO module, which will guide you to creating a page that will rank highly in search results. It is certainly a worthwhile investment to purchase a CMS that has an SEO module available as this can make the difference between people finding your site and not.Which Web Content Management System is right for me?
There are a host of Web Content Management Systems available on the market including Sitecore, RedDot, FarCry, Joomla, Mambo and more expensive offerings such as FileNet and Stellent. Ignia has selected Sitecore CMS as its Web Content Management system of choice because it comes in a range of sizes to suit small to medium business, starting with the Small Business Edition and ranges up to empower global brands including Siemens, Toshiba, Thrifty and Microsoft. The largest Sitecore Web Content Management offering is called Foundry and can be used by nationwide companies to control hundreds to thousands of individual websites. If your business has a need for regional websites Sitecore Foundry allows the corporate head office to control the company branding and ensure that every website has a common look and feel. Sitecore focuses on powering websites that are part of your internet and extranet based communication efforts. For Intranet sites, which comprise document management, collaboration, knowledge management and stakeholder management systems, then Ignia recommends Microsoft SharePoint technologies. Where information needs to be shared between your Intranet and Internet website Ignia can integrate Sitecore and SharePoint together to provide a single coherent Content Management system across your entire business.Summary
This article has described the basic function of a Content Management System describing how content items are authored, grouped and presented in various ways on your website. We have learned that Web Content Management packages empower you to refresh your website content more often so that it doesn’t go stale and people stop visiting. Finally we have skimmed the surface of what Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is and identified a feature that will set some Web Content Management packages apart from others.Contact Ignia today, your SharePoint, Intranet, Extranet & Content Management experts in Perth
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