Removing Bottlenecks from your Website Content Development
Written by Smartt Team on July 20, 2009
Managing and maintaining a website for a large corporation or business can be a huge challenge. There are so many people involved and so many pieces to the puzzle, it can be hard to get everyone on the same page.
First you have the tech guy, who writes the code and does the programming for the site. Then you have the designer who works on the artistic side of making the site look good and easy to navigate. Next come the marketers who write the content and the sales pages. But the marketers can’t upload the content without the help of the tech guy. And neither the designer nor the marketers can add images, music or videos without the tech guy.
This creates a huge problem with workflow when everyone is dependent on one person in order to do their job. If the tech guy is busy, no content gets uploaded and no images get added. This endless cycle and complete dependence on one person creates a bottleneck in the workflow and slows everyone down.
But, the good news is, there is a solution to this problem. Your company doesn’t have to be dependent on one person in order to do critical updates and revisions. In fact, there’s a way for anyone, no matter how little they know about technology and computers to update and maintain the company website.
The solution comes in the form of a content management system (CMS). A CMS is an application that allows you to control, create, edit and manage pages on your website without any technical knowledge at all. The interface is similar to today’s popular word processing programs like Microsoft Word. It allows you to format, add bullets and numbering and even add images, music and video. All with the click of a button.
No longer will the marketing and sales department have to submit their content to the web development department to be uploaded. They’ll be able to take control of their own workflow and publish content as soon as it’s ready. Not only does this eliminate a step in the process, but it also frees up the tech guy to work on other projects.
Using a CMS will save you time, hands down. That’s the purpose of having the visual text editor. Everyone can use it, even without any technical knowledge. And since it can be edited anywhere, from any computer with an internet connection, everyone can update their own material. This, again, eliminates the need for one person to be the middleman between writing and uploading content.
Another major time-saving feature of a CMS is that it allows you auto-schedule your posts. With this feature you can write your content whenever you have time and schedule it to be published at a later date.
A CMS encourages cooperation amongst departments rather than encumbrance. Each person can work on their own part of the project and when it’s ready, they can upload it. A CMS also creates accountability between team members by using logs to keep track of who is updating the site.
In short, a CMS is the answer to a host of web development problems. It removes the middleman and allows everyone to update their own content without having any technical knowledge at all. It also holds each person responsible for his or her own work and encourages cooperation between authors.
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