How CMS Could Trash Your Brand
Friday, December 28th, 2007
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.
