Do You Need Content Management System?

Business And Visibility

The goal of a web site for a company is to provide up-to-date information and content for a broad audience, with the ability to rapidly update and modify this information to reflect the latest company position, products etc. In this agile world, business moves rapidly, new promotions are introduced, prices change, and product features change. A successful web site ensures that the latest and most relevant information is shared with customers. Such rapid move typically results in growing not only content volume (numbers of items) but content types (documents, images, streaming media, instant messages, mobile portals, e-mail and so on). In order to comply with such requirement some kind of Content Management System (CMS) must be used. The roots of the CMS software are in the necessity to have a tool to help in structuring large amount of data and content types, managing the site and the most importantly delivering the web site in a short period of time.

Well designed web site provides information and services, not just data, it is well organized, and easily navigable. Over the years, the Content Management Systems have become integral part of the web sites. In past years we have observed a rapid growth in both content volume and content types which requires not only more powerful hardware but also significant improvement in the management capabilities of the CMSs and capability to meet users’ expectations.

Delivering a Web site (Internet or intranet) that is successfully presented to its target audience is a challenging task. The problem or challenge can be attributed to a growing number of users who expect often more from a web site than the authors ever intended to deliver. Successful websites are expected to deliver more than just static information that is poorly laid out, with unclear navigation paradigm, and difficult to find. The successful website presents well navigable content and services matching customer requirements for information, good performance, and stability. In additions, businesses often use portals to support faster access to information, people, knowledge and education as well as provide the access to multiple services on single site.

The CMS and custom developed service delivery attached to the CMS typically present a variety of information:

• • Information and services are dynamically published from back-end databases.

• • Map-based displays

• • Services such as booking systems, buy / sell transactional services

• • Variety of dashboards often allowing personalization

• • Front end business applications are often served via customized CMS

• • Collaborative tools and wikis

• • In Intranets, some functionality is delivered by HR or finance systems which need to be incorporated to the CMS.

Many of the above information and services are supported by some custom code in order to deliver required functionality and sophistication. The ultimate aim is to provide the web site to match customer expectations but at the same time maintain the currency of the information and keep the site maintenance within the budget brackets.

Web Sites Design For Success

We all have some experience with web sites and portals failing. The reasons are mostly because organizations do not understand the target audience, and their expectations. The designers of the successful web site should adhere to the rules outlined below: