Choosing a Website Management System

Choosing the right website management system for you can be a little daunting. This is especially true if you are not very “techie” in the first place. Most likely, the web design companies giving you quotes will offer you a website management system that they are comfortable working with. But is the system they choose going to be the best one for you or your staff?

We’ll start off by assuming that you are going to have your website built by a professional web designer. The designer will set everything up and then turn the website over to you to manage yourself. At that point, in theory at least, you should be able to login to your control panel and start working on your website right away. The learning curve required to do this will be determined by which type of website management system you choose.

Here are some of the key things you need to look at when choosing a website management system.

First, is it easy to use? How easy is it for a your average office worker, that does not know anything about web design, to add pages, remove pages, add photos and links. Do you need to read a 100 page instruction manual to figure how  to edit text or is the system designed to be user friendly.

The problem with most of the systems like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal is that they were designed for web designers and not the average person. They are bloated and have so many unnecessary features that performing simple tasks like adding and removing pages can be a nightmare for someone who is intimidated by computers in the first place. In the hands of an experienced web designer these systems are great but in the hands of your average business owner they are considered too intimidating and the business owner usually ends up hiring the web designer to make their updates for them anyway.

The second thing you should consider is your budget. If you have the money, consider having a website management system custom built for your business. If you only require simple functions like editing, adding and removing pages with the ability to upload photos then you could probably have a management system built for less than it would cost to have one the more popular website management systems customized for your business.

By having a system build specifically for your needs you can avoid ending up with a bloated system that is confusing to use. Everything can be scaled down to the essentials of what you need making the system much easier to use for you. Additional functionality can always be added in.

The third thing you need to consider is search engine optimization. Will your website’s placement in the search engine rankings be important to it’s success? If so, then be careful choosing your system. The 3 major free systems out there WordPress, Joomla and Drupal do a fairly poor job creating search engine friendly websites. All three require additional plug-ins and programming to get them to create SEO friendly websites. Well this additional programming will cost you during the design phase. And even with these plugins the websites created with these systems still have issues with validating. Validating is basically checking to see if the website is put together right on a technical level. This is a small factor that is taken into consideration for search engine placement.

There are plenty of website management systems out there. Some are more popular than others. Some are free and and some you have to pay for. Make sure you choose the one that’s right for you and not your website designer because in the long run, hopefully, you will be the one working with it.