If your website has become a source of frustration or worse, embarrassment, and you can point to more than one of the following practical reasons, it’s probably a good time for a new website.

1. Content and Design is Out of Date (see Part I)
2. Not Search Engine Friendly (see Part II)
3. Doesn’t Have any Interactive Elements (see Part III)
4. Can’t Update it Yourself
5. Doesn’t Work on Mobile

Follow this series for elaboration on all five points.

Can’t Update it Yourself

Since the dawn of websites people have complained about the monthly contracts, the cost and time lag of needing to get their web developers to make the smallest change to their sites. Until just a few years ago creating an environment where non-coders could easily update their website content required custom building of wysiwyg editors. That was expensive, especially if you had to integrate it with some special functionality.

Now there are many great platforms to build on that make it much easier – WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and more. They’re all open-source and supported by active communities who are constantly developing very useful and cool modules or widgets (like shopping carts, membership areas, polls and photo galleries, etc., etc.). Even a site coded in straight HTML can likely be edited with Adobe Contribute.

Most of them also have templates available, but most find them too limiting. These systems will also support the custom design and architecture of a more sophisticated site.

Protecting You From Yourselves

We believe clients shouldn’t be able to edit everything. They often (rightly so) feel everything is important and often want everything to be a main navigation button. However, if they are free to alter the navigation structure they risk breaking something and reducing usability. Rule of thumb is 5-9 main nav buttons, which is often balanced visually as well. Best discussed with a professional. There’s also a risk that changing layout or main images just won’t look good or break things. Having to pay to have it fix it is to contrary to getting a CMS in the first place.

However, if they need to update their services or a bio, do a blog post or add something, they should be able to do it without calling us or your web company.

If you have any questions about Content Management Systems, please don’t hesitate to contact me.