The Importance of Website Content Management Software
7/15/2009 by Jack Burnett
Working mostly with small and mid-market companies across the
Southeast, we run across similar business challenges. Some of
these include:
- Increase Number of Sales
- Generate More Leads
- Market Products to a Wider Audience
- Increase Quality of Customer Service with Lower Cost
- Expand Business with Dealers and Manufacturing
Representatives
- Corporate Web Presence that is Leaner, More Relevant and More
Responsive to the Marketplace and Competition
Many times an eBusiness solution, a website or portal integrated
to internal business systems is the most cost-effective
answer. To meet the business challenges above, the content
management system (CMS) is the key component of the corporate
website. TwinEngines has expertise with two different CMS
software to satisfy the breadth of content management needs and
corporate cultures found in small companies to businesses with
global operations and reach. One is an open-source CMS and
the other is a closed source system. Here, open source means
no license fees, but more importantly the source code is available
for customization and extension. The vendor must make modifications
in the closed source CMS.
Our focus is on the business needs and the business goals and
objectives, when advising a custom website solution built with a
content management system. TwinEngines can tailor the web
presence to meet varying levels of investment, and can provide a
unique user experience online with a website that is the best fit
and best value for small and mid-market companies. Our
approach keeps firms from falling into the trap of trying to fit
their web presence goals into an out-of-the-box or hosted solution;
perhaps even a website that they cannot change
themselves.
A custom website with a CMS empowers businesses to quickly
respond to their competition and the marketplace. The return
on the investment is easily measured by website performance
metrics, not to mention the opportunities and money saved by
not relying on third parties to edit the website.
umbraco CMS
TwinEngines evaluated many open source content management
solutions in 2008, and picked umbraco for the following
reasons:
- Built on Microsoft's .Net technology. Being a Microsoft Gold
Partner, a .Net open-source system allows our development team to
easily and quickly extend the CMS to meet unique functional
requirements. We have a tool-box of functions to simply plug into
websites and to jump-start custom work.
- Umbraco does not have its own template engines, so we can
easily add html templates purchased online or custom design
templates from web graphic designers.
- Basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics are easily
managed
- There is an active user community, support forums and
documentation.
- In addition, there are commercial versions of the umbraco CMS
that offers support plans and tools.
TwinEngines uses the base components, and if needed, quickly
extends the umbraco CMS to fit any unique interactive functions. An
example of this is our own TwinEngines website - built on the
umbraco CMS early this year. Our goal is to share knowledge
with our community of customers, vendors, suppliers and friends in
our Industry Insights section. In addition to news,
insightful articles and information on events, we implemented a
blog to meet this goal. We believe the blog is also a great
way to draw people searching for information to 'find' our industry
insights. TwinEngines developers started with the umbraco
blog, and quickly extended it to incorporate key SEO features and
other administrative functions to make it easy to share
information. You can explore our blog at www.twinengines.com/blog.
Another example showing how TwinEngines extended the umbraco
CMS, is the Horse-listing section in the Little
Creek Quarter Horses website. Little Creek needed easy data
entry and a custom display for the key characteristics of each
horse including text, pictures, video and horse pedigrees. As
horses are bought and sold at the Little Creek horse ranch,
ranchers can easily update the list of horses without having to
rely on any third party or html developer.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
While umbraco satisfies the content management needs for simple
and complex websites, there are times when an enterprise content
management (ECM), like Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, is
required to manage web content and more. ECM
includes:
- Document management and imaging
- Web content management
- Records management
- Digital asset management
- Collaboration
- Business process management
MOSS 2007 is considered a closed platform where the code is only
modified by Microsoft, and there is an enterprise-like license
fee. MOSS 2007 makes a lot of sense when a business wants to
take advantage of the benefits of a common technology platform for
their Intranet portal, their customer extranets and their
public-facing website. It also may be the right solution for
multi-lingual websites, content publishing workflow approvals, and
content heavy sites with auditing and compliance requirements.
TwinEngines is an expert with the Microsoft Office SharePoint
Server 2007 platform, and specifically the application of MOSS 2007
technology for web content management.
In addition to the expected CMS functions, the key
benefits of MOSS 2007 for web content management are:
- Publish Web content in a timely, controlled manner with
integrated workflows
- Leverage Active Directory for user administration rights and
permissions
- Multi-lingual websites
- Automated Content deployment methods to production
websites
- Powerful search functionality
For ABM Industries, MOSS 2007 is the common technology platform
for development, administration and content management in their
Intranet, Extranet and public website. TwinEngines started
with the out of the box building blocks in MOSS 2007 and
implemented a custom design for the ABM Industries
website. All forms engaging users to take action on the
website use InfoPath, which allows integration to a third-party
sales support system and workflows for processing
requests.
Different departments, leveraging the Active Directory accounts,
update their own content, with approval workflows to ensure a
consistent marketing message. New features are routed from
the development environment through a staging environment to the
production site, with SharePoint deployment tools. Because
SharePoint is the common technology for IT and for front-line
employees, the maintenance of the site and the content is
accomplished with the same user interfaces and methods found in the
company intranet. This reduces IT support and content
management costs, and provides a common environment where employees
can quickly and easily get their jobs done.
Conclusion
While corporate websites will have different website designs,
content and calls to action, the common thread to a successful web
presence is the content management system. With a
content management system, businesses can realize the following
benefits:
- Employ search engine optimization techniques as needed
- Use images and copy from off-line marketing efforts
- Empower marketing staff and reduce reliance on IT
- Reduce your cost to update content and products
- Easily deploy coupons, campaigns and promotions
- Support multi-lingual audiences
- Respond quickly to changes in your market and with
competitors
- Ensure consistent branding on all pages in the website
Without a content management system for the website, a business
risks an out of date, stale, irrelevant and possibly broken web
presence for its customers and potential customers. If a
company is relying on a third party, then they are not in control
to post updated content at some additional expense. Either
way, it is difficult to respond to the marketplace and search
engines, resulting in missed opportunities for sales and leads.
If your website is static or customers cannot find you online,
it may be time for a face-lift to the website that employs a
content management system for you. Call TwinEngines today for
a free website evaluation, and we'll give you an objective view of
where you are today and what improvements will help you achieve
your business goals.