As powerful a tool as a CMS is, you can’t just “build and forget” your website even if it you have one. Like every investment and asset that you expect to continue to produce results, your CMS-supported website must be monitored, adjusted and improved over time. An appropriately designed and implemented CMS facilitates the process, helping to ensure that your website continues to be productive, rather than falling into neglect.

Our web designers will help you in the following key aspects of CMS implementation:

Choose a User Interface that works for you. We select a CMS that fits your operation and tailor it to the needs of your users. It is important to understand and agree on exactly how they will go about creating, editing and managing the content they control, and to ensure that they will be comfortable with the methodology chosen.

Engage your Subject Matter Experts. The purpose of a CMS is to distribute the workload of managing a website down to your Subject Matter Experts, the individual or individuals within your organization who know the content. By making it easy for them to add and edit website content without having to know the technology or get involved in the technical hassles, a CMS frees your Subject Matter Experts up to focus on their own jobs. It’s vital to discuss the CMS with them, understand what methods will work for them, and get their buy-in upfront.

Dissect the Display Templates. CMS users need to understand how the templates for each kind of page work, especially which specific parts of the pages they are allowed to modify and control, and which elements are automatically generated based on content entered elsewhere in the system.

Demonstrate the Efficiency. Show users upfront how and where content will be reused, and how that will benefit them. You don’t want to spend months implementing a new system and importing all of your content, only to find out the marketing group does not want to manage their press releases the way you set it up. Sharing your vision and getting their feedback upfront builds a sense of ownership that will make adoption and ongoing maintenance so much smoother later on.