Site Maintenance Options from Your Web Development Company
When creating your organization’s web site, your web design company should be working with you to determine the purpose of the site and what you want it to do for you. This could be as simple as being an online brochure for people to find out more about your organization to providing a site that has current event information and online registration for workshops or seminars.
The question you have to ask yourself as you go through this process is how easy it is for your organization to maintain the web site content?
Some organizations assume that web sites can only be maintained by a web site design and development company. This means that they will be subject to maintenance fees when they want to update content on their site. So they end up with a simple web site that presents their organization online however does not provide any reason for a web site visitor to return to their site as the information remains unchanged over time.
The fact of the matter is that more and more web companies are empowering their clients to update their web site themselves with a variety of tools that are cost effective and easy to use. A lot of the tools to edit your web site are web based and can be accessed through your web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer) with a user name and password. Accessing the tools through the web allows authorized administration staff to edit the web site pages from anywhere they have access to a computer, internet connection and internet browser. Consequently this avoids your organization purchasing software licenses for expensive web editing software to maintain your site. Most cost effective web editing tools are good for updating the web site content on existing pages. The function of adding new pages would still require a web development company’s expertise. However the cost for adding a new page is minimal in comparison to having them do monthly updates for you.
If you have opted for the web editing tools from your web design company, even a simple web site becomes a much more powerful business tool because you can communicate new messages to your web site visitors by updating the content more regularly. The site is more interesting and will bring visitors back to find out what is happening in your company and industry. When your web site is easy to update it would not be surprising if you wanted to expand your simple site to have a page for posting newsletters or adding a “What’s New” page.
For the organization just researching the different kinds of web sites that are out there, the ability to update your own web site gives way to a whole other world of opportunities. Imagine a web site tool that would automatically archive your news items after a specific date or time had passed. Think about how clean and useable your site would look if all events were displayed consistently and the event that is coming up next automatically showed at the top of the list. Save valuable time by accepting online registrations for workshops and easily print off an attendance list through an online tool.
Some web site design and development companies offer enhanced tools that use a database to manage content. While this option can be more costly to implement, if weighed against the time it takes for an administrative assistant to update the site by copying and pasting the past event into the Event Archive page and then adding in the text for the new event(s) on the “Current Events” page it could make financial sense to have the more advanced web tools. You will never have to worry about outdated content in your Events area of your site again.
The last option that a web development company might offer you is something called a content management system (CMS). These systems are driven by a database and give you even more control over your site and how it functions. The web development company would set up the look and feel and the initial pages however any additional pages you want to add can be done through the CMS without the assistance of the web development company. These systems can be costly and depending on the size of your site and the amount of content you need to maintain on a daily, weekly or monthly basis it might not be worth the additional cost.
A CMS is a great tool for sites that are large and have many users working on different pieces of the site. It gives the web editors the ability to control the content as well as the pages on their site. While this can be a good thing, it is always important to remember that web professionals understand web site users and how they navigate the web. Consulting a web site designer from time to time about new pages and their placement is generally a good idea, even if you have full control over your site, to ensure that the overall usability of the site remains consistent.
As you can see there are many options for maintaining your web site, no matter what complexity of site you have. The web site development companies that offer these tools will know which one(s) will suit your needs and ensure that your web site performs its best through the use of these tools. So get out there and find out how you can turn your simple site into a superior communication tool, by maintaining your web site content, and delivering even more value to your web site visitors.
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