There’s a lot of pressure on choosing the right content management system (CMS). Select the right one, and it can take a lot of the stress out of managing your website. It allows your team to make dynamic changes without the hassle of having to write code. In fact, with a properly implemented CMS, these changes can often be made without having a grasp on coding at all.
Why is this so important? A CMS has a lot of influence over the task and outcome of building your website, including:
- The design
- The analytics
- Data portability
- Extensions and add-ons
- Support
- Costs
Because of this, it can feel like a daunting responsibility to choose a CMS platform to power your website. It might seem like the overall success of your website build is dependent on choosing the right platform. You need a support system to help you find the right fit, then ensure your website serves your organization the way it should once it’s been built.
What is CMS Success? Choosing the Right CMS for You
Any first step in building something great is laying a strong foundation. Implementing a new CMS platform when creating or redesigning a website is no different.
To successfully select and implement a CMS that serves you takes work—but it’s not work you have to do alone. Picking the right CMS platform for your organization all depends on finding a solution that fits your needs and expectations.
How can you know what CMS platform is right for your organization?
- What are your operational business and digital needs?
- What features and content are available on the platform today?
- How will users interact with the site and what are their expectations?
- What are the steps to build and maintain a website on each potential platform?
- What do you need your website to do for your team and your users?
- What information can we learn from other organizations in your field or outside?
Our team at Engine Room works closely with you throughout this journey. We’ll conduct research and take an in-depth analysis of your current and desired processes to gain a full understanding of what your technical and operational requirements are to help you evaluate which CMS platform is the right fit for you and your team.
Elements included in this selection will include inspection points and necessities like:
- Site features and functionality
- Content administration and workflow
- Technical and non-functional requirements
- Performance, reliability, and maintainability
- Costs based on your needs
The Benefit of Partnering with Engine Room Tech for CMS Selection
Why not hit the ground running? There’s a lot of discovery that happens when you choose a CMS platform to power your website—not just about what you need from your website, but about who you are as an organization as well.
When Engine Room Tech is part of your CMS platform selection, we’re also part of the discovery process as well. All the insights and requirements we glean during the selection phase inform our next stage of work.
This means we’ll understand your unique needs and wants ahead of time, so when it’s time to start building your website, we know exactly why you chose the CMS platform you did, and we can get to work on creating the website you envisioned when you selected that specific platform during our CMS Success Services.
Maintaining Your Website After It’s Been Created
Building your organization’s website on a new CMS platform is the straightforward part. But what comes next? In all the focus on building the website, sometimes the maintenance aspect gets forgotten.
Think of your website as a garden. Like a garden, this maintenance doesn’t start when plants start to brown up or in this case, when content grows stale. It starts from Day 1. While garden maintenance involves watering, pruning, weeding, and fertilizing, your website needs a different kind of upkeep, which includes taking steps like:
- Proper planning beforehand
- Adherence to best practices
- Routine maintenance
- Defensive measures
When you’re building a new website, that’s the perfect opportunity to create your website maintenance plan— including a website governance plan. The goal of a website governance plan is to ensure that the right people are in charge of executing the right kinds of website upkeep.
What sorts of things should you consider as you build your website governance plan?
- Who is part of your team to determine and develop what changes should be made to your website as it evolves?
- What is the change control process for making adjustments to your website? Your organization’s change control process should have some regulations in place to determine when the time is right to make changes. Factors to consider may include:
- The justifications for your adjustments
- Security and risk reviews
- What to do in the event of issues
- Roles and responsibilities
- What is your approval process for implementing changes? By defining a good approval process early, you’ll build solid operational habits when things are urgent.
Updating and Sunsetting Content and Mechanics
Do you have outdated content on your website? Your content is outdated if it’s inaccurate, lacks value, or doesn’t reflect who you currently are as an organization. Examples of outdated content include:
- Discontinued products or service pages
- Outdated, irrelevant advice
- Expired, time-sensitive content
- Content that no longer fits who you are as an organization
- Former employee profiles
Does this sound like a lot? Any website that’s been around for a while will have outdated content. But culling and sunsetting this content is important. Not only is it confusing and sometimes frustrating for website visitors, but it could impact your search rankings too. Essentially, this outdated content dilutes the potency of your website.
But keeping your website carefully maintained isn’t just about ensuring your content is updated. It’s also taking precautions to see that your website is secure, with the proper patches and defenses to keep your data shielded from hackers. Site and application monitoring tools, as well as digital asset management tools and digital growth tools, can aid in this process.
Now is the time to create an action plan for website maintenance, before your “virtual garden” becomes overrun with weeds. Our eBook, “Think About: Website Maintenance Before You Start Building Your Site” details the intricacies of building a website governance plan to make the process of keeping your website up-to-date a smooth one.
How Engine Room Tech Can Help
Your new website deserves the very best launch and should have a solid maintenance plan as well to see all the precise work of building your website come to fruition season after season.
At Engine Room Tech, we offer CMS Success services and website maintenance solutions to care for your website at every stage of its journey. It’s possible that no two other services so exemplify what we’re about. At the core of what we do, we are detail-oriented technologists with decades of experience building complex, high-quality solutions. The other essential part of who we are is a team dedicated to security.
We’re here to help you choose the right platform and build the best website to represent your organization, then keep it in motion through website maintenance. No matter where you are in the process of building your website: Selecting a platform, building a website, or maintaining your site, learn more about what we can do for you by consulting with our experts today!
