How CMS Could Trash Your Brand
The phone rings and a small business prospect enquires how much it costs for a website. Its usually that simple because they really don’t know at this stage what they need or the technologies involved in the process. They might not even particularly need a website at all. What they need instead is a consultant to guide them toward answers.
A lazy developer might assure them that what they need is a CMS (Content Management System).
The CMS Sales Pitch
The sales pitch for the CMS goes along these lines. The CMS is what every small business needs so they can update content at their convenience without paying copywriters. They can upload photographs and fine tune their advertising whenever they feel like it. While the CMS costs a little bit more in the initial outlay the small business is assured their long term savings of going the CMS route will retain in their pockets untold dollars saved by not using web developers to do meaningless trivial updating tasks.
The CMS Reality
Most small business are extremely time poor so my question is who will write this content? Who will proof read and put in place an editorial process to ensure there aren’t small typos or factual inconsistencies throughout the site? What about photography, image optimisation and the inevitable hand-holding when things go pear shaped. The reality is that updating a CMS first requires the small business to learn how to use the software and then to find precious time to update content as required. Don’t tell me it only takes an hour to learn to do all these things because showing them isn’t retention. In most cases they will forget how to upload and optimise an image as their instructor drives out of the car park.
Time and Skills
The reality is that small business don’t have the time and most don’t have the skills to generate high quality content.
My own experience of clients has been that the first photographs supplied have nearly always been sent back with advice or an offer of assistance. Images tend to be off centre or somehow askew, overly pixelated and / or extremely large file sizes. How do they know that the JPG algorithm, for example, takes information out of the image every single time you resave it? Or even which image format is better for different situations. And what are the chances they happen to be great content writers? You tend to see two styles of cudgel used in the slaughter - marketing spiel and blunt force trauma. These small businesses are expected to produce results they aren’t necessariliy qualified or capable of achieving.
Trashing the Brand With CMS
From a site users perspective I arrive at a business site to fulfil a function (people stopped just surfing long ago). Let’s use the example of an e-commerce transaction. In this scenario I have money to spend on an item and within a very short space of time I will be ascertaining the professionalism, reliability and integrity of that business. The trust factor at this junction is critical as to whether or not I give you my money.
What about the typos? As a blogger I know all too well how easy it is to miss typos and have to re-edit articles so how would a time poor small business handle that responsibility? They could leave reading their own site for months in which time the typo has cost significantly. What about the askew and pixelated images? Don’t underestimate the sophisticated tastes of the website user to judge your competency and professionalism against the quality of your web images and accuracy of your content.
What does all that potential incompetency do to your brand? It trashes it. As a user I not only don’t buy from you today its a permanent lost opportunity. You can’t spell cat (spelled cta) and I’m not filled with confidence in your other abilities. Its a fact of life.
The Anecdotal Truth
Recently someone mentioned this to me and it reflected my own experiences. They said about 1 per cent of their CMS customers updated their content after their site was launched and 99 per cent never wrote or added a single thing in years. My experience has been almost identical although my client list is significantly smaller. My experience is that training only works if the client is interested, motivated and goes straight home to write content. Otherwise they simply and humanly forget.
One Size Does NOT Fit All
In web development one size does not fit all. What people come to us for is to solve web problems - how to sell or otherwise improve their business goals and objectives. We provide web solutions to their particular web problems. Sometimes its a CMS and others its a static website or a weblog or an e-commerce package. We have to look at the whole picture of the organisation and have some context of the problem space before we put forward our solution.
My general advice to businesses who ring web development firms is that if you hear “What you need is a Content Management System” before you’ve even explained your situation then just hang up and go elsewhere. The business might just be trying to sell what they make - the selling concept of marketing. What you should be looking for are relationship marketers who want to sell you what you need.
December 30th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Good article Steven - I know this is one of those topics that you feel strongly about (the uninformed being pushed to have a CMS when it is probably not right for them). You should keep this one bookmarked for immediate use with anyone who is barking up the wrong tree!
December 30th, 2007 at 10:26 am
maybe the answer to the phone call should be - do you have any free time to write, take photos, edit, proofread, learn stuff etc?
… if they are a small business and answer no to that question they probably most surely don’t need a CMS.