Small business owners who are developing a website or re- designing their existing one, may want to consider installing a content management system (CMS) for their website.  CMS, described as a non-web designer’s tool, makes it easier to manage and edit website content such as articles, images, videos and more.

WordPress, for  example, is a content management system where you can choose your blog’s look, write blog post articles, categorize the posts, reject or accept comments and a whole lot more, without any knowledge of web design or devleopment.

A content management system is of benefit especially if  you have any of these requirements:

  • Updating site often, every day or weekly
  • Someone with no knowledge of web designing would be updating the site
  • You are mobile and need to make updates from places other than your office
  • You have many items for sale
  • You have a blog or require in blog format
  • You need to quickly publish or make changes sitewide

Before deciding on  a CMS, there are things to consider:

  • If it has seach engine friendly urls
  • If there is search engine optimization (SEO), where there is  minimal page code and specific tags to describe each page, heading, image, product, etc.
  • Is easy to use for staff, visitors and customers
  • If the speed is fast as some  load more slowly
  • If there are any marketing or advertising options if needed
  • If  there is accessbility for physically disabled people to obtain information easily like a screen reader.

There are several content management systems that are available online and can be tried for free before installing. WordPress is a popular CMS and is  free to use. There are also hundreds of free themes you can choose to get the design you want. If you need a premium theme or the CMS customized further, there are many online web designers and developers that can offer the service for a fee.