CMS website vs. HTML website—I want to do it myself

It started off a few years ago as a low grumble but eventually turned into a full-on roar. Small business owners were itching to be able to make updates to their own websites without the expense of a Webmaster. They felt like they were being held hostage because of their lack of website coding knowledge. In fact, that was mostly true.

In general, business owners understood the need for an experienced web developer to make major design changes and add new or complicated functionality to their html website. But it just frustrated the heck out of them that they were not able to make even the smallest text or image adjustments themselves. Changing the price of an item? Call the Webmaster. Updating your meeting calendar? Call the Webmaster. July sale now an August sale? Call the Webmaster.

What do you mean I can’t use the Comic Sans font on my website!

The industry understood the frustration of their clients but the quality of the web editing software that was available to the average layperson was poor. It was unreliable, hard to learn, and more often than not ended up with, yes, calling the Webmaster after the fact to clean up the mess. Working with html is not word processing and it always seemed to surprise folks that Word Art did not translate nicely onto their website!

Enter, Content Management Systems (CMS)

This all changed with the advent of good, affordable, CMS (content management system) software and website hosting. A CMS is basically just software that lets you store, manage and organize your data. All of the coding is done in the background. Awareness of CMS systems burst into the mainstream consciousness in the past few years and has enjoyed great popularity. Suddenly (supposedly) everyone had the capability to design and maintain his or her own website. Of course it soon became very clear that there was more to this “design your own website” process than was originally thought. But still, it did give business owners the freedom of choice. And having options is always a good thing.

So, what are the pros and cons of switching to a content management system for your website?

PROS

• Shorter turn-around time for changes
• Choice of pre-made themes and templates
• No coding knowledge required
• Easy to add modules such as photo galleries and email marketing
• Total control of your website
• Increased staff participation

CONS

• You are spending time away from your regular business activities
• Emergency support may be forum-based rather than real-time assistance
• Your CMS vendor may not keep up with the latest advances
• Your website may have a cookie-cutter look
• Your website may be invisible to the search engines!
• Software may not offer website marketing tools

Only the first step

Deciding whether to hire someone to build and manage your website or to do it yourself is really only the first step towards your goal of increasing your bottom line. Driving traffic to your site, identifying relevant prospects, and capturing leads to turn into sales is where the rubber meets the road. Without a methodology to convert those leads all you have is a CMS website, not a marketing machine.

Have you had a good experience managing your own website?

By Gayle Davies