What to consider before evaluating if a CMS is right for your business

A CMS makes content more findable by addressing six key areas in content management.

Content governance

Are there enforced policies and procedures in place for creating and managing content?

Information architecture for tagging

Is current and new content categorized and tagged in a way that everyone understands?

Business process for content management

Are workflows standardized and automated?

User experience for content

How are key stakeholders—from employees to customers—finding the information they need?

Technology and applications

Is the existing technology being used properly? What improvements or new systems would streamline information flow with optimal security? Do you have a cloud-based content management system?

Business value of a CMS

Can your data and content be managed more efficiently and securely? Are applicable regulatory guidelines being adhered to?

Using a content management system for your website

A content management system helps you create, manage, and publish content on the web. It also helps keep content organized and accessible so it can be used and repurposed effectively. There are various kinds of content management systems available—from cloud-based to a headless CMS—to meet every audience need.

Not only does it give you a way to store and manage all your information in a single, easily accessible database, but it also does the following:

• Supports inner- and cross-team collaboration
• Provides an easy and accessible way to update content
• Increases content visibility
• Improves productivity
• Reduces costs
• Enables you to maintain content consistency
• Scales as your needs grow

How does a CMS help to build websites?

Basically, a CMS platform takes care of all the technical details around building and managing a website. For example, to post content on the web, such as a blog post, you need to start with an HTML file. HTML allows you to structure your written content so that a web browser can read it. It also allows you to embed images and videos into your content and link to other HTML documents.

Once the content is created and structured, you can change the look and feel of it by using cascading style sheets (CSS). With CSS, you can change the font, color, and size of every element on your page to achieve the desired styling. Once completed, you upload the HTML and CSS files—along with any image and video files—to a web server where your new website is accessible to anyone.

While this process may not seem terribly difficult, it’s not a very efficient way to create documents and share them online. And most organizations don’t have the IT resources to devote to this task.

Advanced CMS technologies

HTML and CSS are OK for creating simple, readable documents, but they are limited when building websites that offer extensive capabilities and functionality—the kind of modern website most companies need to be successful.

For example, to add interactive features and more nuanced functionality to your website, you need to use JavaScript—the programming language of the web. HTML and CSS are relatively straightforward codebases used to create simple documents. JavaScript is a dedicated programming language not dissimilar from the languages used to develop smartphone or desktop applications.

Suppose you plan to migrate your blog site into a media website that serves thousands of visitors per month and posts several pieces of content per day. In that case, you need to start incorporating database technologies to house and access all your content. You need a database with its own programming language as well as another programming language to pass information between the database and the part of the website that users access and navigate. Just like that, things got complicated rather quickly. And that’s where a CMS comes in.

The demand for digital marketing experiences is growing, and shows no signs of letting up. Today’s modern consumers are demanding omnichannel solutions and frictionless experiences. Digital technology provides endless ways for companies to engage with their customers and stay connected. So it’s no wonder that CMS market is expected to grow from $36 billion in 2018 to $123.5 billion by 2026.

Companies recognize how a content management system can help them leverage the full value of their content by streamlining the content creation and distribution process. Marketing and sales teams who invest in a CMS can expect to gain four key benefits as they work to get their message into the market and improve customer experiences.

1

Stronger collaboration and organization

With a CMS, multiple content marketing team members can contribute and help publish content. With its workflow management, content storage, and scheduling capabilities, the system helps them keep everything organized. Browser-based CMSs can be accessed from anywhere, and teammates in different locations can collaborate on content projects in the same system and on the most current version. Team members can all access the same content since it’s stored in the same place. There’s no need to send multiple files to multiple people—and no headaches from trying to control multiple versions.

2

User friendly

With a CMS, users don’t have to learn HTML or CSS. No matter their skill level, users across the organization can create and publish content. A content management system makes it easy to upload content onto web pages and update it through a content editor.

3

SEO and content optimization tools and plug-ins

Want to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and drive traffic to your site? With a CMS, you can add plug-ins and tools to increase your search ranking. These tools can include options within the front-end interface to add web page titles, meta descriptions, and alt tags.

4

More time to spend on content

With a straightforward CMS system, better organization, and tools and plug-ins to help SEO, Content creators can concentrate on producing quality content. Marketing teams don’t have to work with multiple files or code. They can share their work with colleagues easily, even if those colleagues are miles away. They have time to refine copy, tweak imagery, produce more video content, or conduct A/B testing on different subject lines, offers, CTAs, and formats.

Web design best practices start with putting the customer first and making their experience as easy and intuitive as possible. 

Our list covers 13 key areas of web design, with actionable tips you need to apply before, during, and after the design phase for continuous improvement. 

1. User-centric design 

“Good web design is about more than just aesthetics,” says Kristopher Tabaie, a web developer at Lesar UK. “It involves a user-friendly layout, clear navigation, and a clean interface that clearly communicates the content. This makes your website accessible (internally and externally to search engines) by creating an easy-to-navigate experience.” 

So, how can you make your design customer-centric? 

• Start from the end goals of your website. Get clear on who it’s for—whether that be potential clients, investors, or employees. Ask yourself: what are my users trying to accomplish? Are they looking to find product information, compare prices, or apply for a job? How familiar are they with your products, services, or brand? 

For ecommerce businesses, for example, the primary goal is usually making sales, while a secondary goal might be to increase newsletter signups. That means your design should focus on making the browsing and buying experience clear and compelling for your customer. 

• Use a 4 pillar framework to identify: 

1. What customers want to find out

2. Where they want to go

3. What they want to do

4. What they want to buy

• Create buyer personas based on real user demographics and job roles. Do research to understand your users’ problems and how your website solves them.
• Get cross-functional teams—UX and design teams, SEO specialists, content writers, CSM, and sales—together so they can offer different perspectives on your customers and their needs
• Create a panel of test users for continual feedback: it’s much easier to identify user pain points when you understand who they are and how they behave

Mailchimp’s intuitive, user-friendly website guides customers to quickly get up and running

2. Design conventions 

It’s tempting to make your site stand out with a fully original design, but if you don’t stick to certain design conventions it can confuse users and cause them to bounce.  

During the design phase, create customer delight and help users feel ‘at home’ with these best practices:  

• Have a clear ‘hero’ area with a headline that effectively describes the problems your business solves. Users decide to stay or bounce in seconds, so getting your message across fast can boost time-on-page and conversions.
• Place main navigation menus at the top or left corner of your webpage where users expect to find them
• Use buttons that change color when users hover over them, so they get feedback that clicking will result in an action
• Use recognizable icons like a shopping cart on an e-commerce site
• Place the logo at the top left or center of your website, and have it link back to the homepage to help users always return there
• Use standardized layouts for pages common to all websites such as ‘help’ pages
• Place a large phone number at the top and bottom of the page, and make it clickable so it’s easily visible and usable on a mobile device
• Use conventional page layouts for your industry. For example, if you’re an ecommerce company, users will expect your site to look similar to the ones they’ve navigated before.

Macy’s uses an e-commerce-standard grid showcasing product categories so users know what to expect

3. Navigability 

Users won’t convert unless they can quickly and easily find the information they need to make a decision, so your site needs to be well organized. 

“Make sure the navigation menu is easy to find on desktop and mobile, not overly detailed, and clean. A clear, concise navigation menu helps users quickly locate their area of interest and follow it. And it helps the designer create a design that guides users along a desired journey.”

Will Manuel

President, Core Mobile App

Use these seven best practices for great navigability:

• Use menu categories, and simple, descriptive menu names that are relevant to your website 
• Use menu conventions like About, Services, Contact, etc., so users know what to expect
• Include a search bar so users can find what they’re looking for anywhere on your site  
• Include a navigation footer so they don’t need to scroll up to the top of the page
• Use ‘breadcrumbs’ to track user journeys, so they easily retrace their steps 
• Include links in copy, with descriptive anchor text
• Make pricing clearly visible, so customers don’t have to contact you to ask 

Sephora’s website has a clean layout with breadcrumbs under the main navigation menu

4. Information hierarchy 

On-page hierarchy involves arranging website elements so visitors naturally gravitate to the most important information first. This helps guide users take action in a way that feels natural and enjoyable. 

Use the right position, color, and size to draw attention to important elements first. 

The webpage for Spotify’s Premium offer is a great example of brilliant visual hierarchy: the headline grabs your attention before your eye naturally moves to the benefits and CTA. 

Spotify’s large white headline stands out well against the purple background

5. Readability  

An easy-to-read website makes for a pleasant user experience and creates loyal and satisfied customers.

Find the right balance between content, style, and functionality. Avoid clutter, let the content breathe a little, and use images or videos as support for your content.

Vlad Stoica

Head of Design, STOICA.CO

Here’s how to make your content easy to read: 

• Use consistent fonts during the wireframing stage to create a sense of cohesion across your site 
• Choose a clear font like Open Sans (not cursive) in at least 12-point 
• Stick to just two or three font sizes in total 
• Use different font styles to separate content from menu items and navigation buttons 
• Use different fonts for different content types, and be consistent 
• Chunk text into short paragraphs to make it easier to read and scan—large blocks of text are visually unappealing on a screen
• Start each paragraph with new information, so users can quickly see whether they need to read it
• Use bullet points to make text scannable  
• Contrast text color with backgrounds, and avoid combinations like red and black, which are hard to read
• Leave plenty of space between copy, main headings, and margins to create a balanced, uncluttered effect 

Uber uses plenty of white space between content blocks for a straightforward look

6. Branding 

Using consistent branding throughout your site helps customers recognize your business and establishes trust. 

Make sure your branding is industry-appropriate—for example, users looking for an accountant will probably bounce from a site with bright colors and Comic Sans font.

Stick to three colors, and keep a consistent look and feel across all your pages. Choose colors that evoke the right emotions in customers. See how Buzzfeed’s yellow and red grab users’ attention and gets them excited about the content.

Buzzfeed styles itself like a tabloid newspaper to grab and hold visitors’ attention

7. Visuals

Strong visual elements get users’ attention and break up text to make your site scannable. Plus, they help customers imagine themselves using your products in their everyday lives. 

So what are the best practices for website visuals?

• Choose images at the wireframe stage of your web design process. If possible, avoid generic pictures and use high-quality photos of your products, employees, or premises to create a more authentic impression and build trust.
• Make sure images are responsive—so they look good across different devices—and compressed to avoid slowing down your site, with alt text for SEO and accessibility
• Animations are great for instructions, but keep large files to a minimum to avoid hurting load speed
• If your business is seasonal, be sure to rotate images as your offering changes so users always see the most up-to-date products

DIY chain Homebase uses seasonally rotated images to appeal to customers

8. CTAs  

Your site’s ultimate goal is to persuade users to take an action, whether that’s downloading a lead magnet, signing up for your newsletter, or buying a product. Strategically placed calls to action (CTAs) help convert users into paying customers. 

Follow these best practices for standout CTAs: 

• Make CTAs clearly visible: don’t bury them in text, and use white space around them to help the eye zoom in 
• Route incoming leads in the right direction by including a relevant CTA on each page. Don’t make users navigate back to your home page to convert.
• Include CTAs on internal pages like your ‘About’ page, as well as product pages
• Use consistent CTAs for the same actions to avoid confusing and frustrating users

Hubspot’s large CTA button stands out well on a white background

9. Responsive across devices

Over 50% of website traffic comes from mobile devices, so your site must perform well on smartphones and tablets as well as desktops and laptops. If it’s hard to navigate, or elements aren’t correctly displayed on a small screen, users will get frustrated and bounce. 

During the final stage of design, once the layout is approved, apply these best practices for responsive websites:  

• Keep menus simple, and include a search bar so you can limit menu items
• Make CTAs clearly visible, with buttons large enough to be tapped with a thumb, which is less precise than a cursor
• Use a simple design to prioritize load speed
• Avoid large blocks of text, and use a font that can easily be read on a small screen 
• Test on different browsers

Mobile responsiveness also helps with SEO. “There’s the added issue of Google’s mobile-first attitude,” says Shane McEvoy of Flycast Media, “meaning non-mobile ready websites are unlikely to rank well and, therefore, sacrifice valuable traffic.”

Always run your site through Google’s mobile friendly test to check responsiveness. Source: Google.com

10. Accessibility 

Everyone, regardless of device, special needs, or location, should be able to use your site. 

Ask yourself: is your website design compatible with assistive technologies? How can you make the site easily navigable for all users? What tools will you use to develop the site, and do they have any inbuilt accessibility issues? 

Then, apply these accessibility best practices: 

• Early in the design phase, think about color contrast
• Remember never to use color alone for instructions to avoid confusing color-blind users
• Use resources from the Design and Develop Overview | Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) | W3C and Accessibility Insights to make your design accessible
• Get user feedback and run research to improve design iterations

11. SEO 

Few people click beyond the first page of search engine results, so you need to make sure your website ranks high to ensure your users can find it and start browsing. And that means thinking about what makes a good website for users as well as ticking optimization boxes for search engines like Google, Bing, and Yandex. 

Use these best practices for search engine optimization (SEO):

• Create useful, shareable, keyword-optimized content
• Include internal links to other pages on your site
• Use headings and subheadings, and include a site map to make it easy for web crawlers (and users) to understand
• Get backlinks from other reputable sites
• Use alt text for images 

12. Security 

Whether users are making payments through your site or just browsing, good security establishes user trust and boosts your brand reputation. 

Use these best practices to maintain high security levels: 

• Use a secure web host with server-side firewalls, encryption, antivirus and anti-malware software, on-site security systems, SSL certificate, and CDN availability
• Prevent unauthorized access by limiting login attempts with plugins like Login LockDown
• Mandate secure passwords with letters, numbers, and special symbols, and use two-factor authentication

13. Test, test, test 

Test as early as possible to validate your design ideas, and continue to run user tests right up to launch. Once you’ve launched, test on an ongoing basis—especially after adding new features or updates—to spot bugs that disrupt UX and increase customer churn.

User experience (UX) focuses on having a deep understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities, and also their limitations.  It also takes into account the business goals and objectives of the group managing the project. UX best practices promote improving the quality of the user’s interaction with and perceptions of your product and any related services.

Factors that Influence UX

At the core of UX is ensuring that users find value in what you are providing to them.  Peter Morville represents this through his User Experience Honeycomb .

He notes that in order for there to be a meaningful and valuable user experience, information must be:

• Useful: Your content should be original and fulfill a need
• Usable: Site must be easy to use
• Desirable: Image, identity, brand, and other design elements are used to evoke emotion and appreciation
• Findable: Content needs to be navigable and locatable onsite and offsite
• Accessible: Content needs to be accessible to people with disabilities
• Credible: Users must trust and believe what you tell them

Areas Related to Building the User Experience

UX is a growing field that is very much still being defined. Creating a successful user-centered design encompasses the principles of human-computer interaction (HCI) and goes further to include the following disciplines:

• Project Management focuses on planning and organizing a project and its resources. This includes identifying and managing the lifecycle to be used, applying it to the user-centered design process, formulating the project team, and efficiently guiding the team through all phases until project completion.
• User Research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.
• Usability Evaluation focuses on how well users can learn and use a product to achieve their goals. It also refers to how satisfied users are with that process.
• Information Architecture (IA) focuses on how information is organized, structured, and presented to users.
• User Interface Design focuses on anticipating what users might need to do and ensuring that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use to facilitate those actions. 
• Interaction Design (IxD) focuses on creating engaging interactive systems with well thought out behaviors.
• Visual Design focuses on ensuring an aesthetically pleasing interface that is in line with brand goals.
• Content Strategy focuses on writing and curating useful content by planning the creation, delivery and governance behind it.
• Accessibility focuses on how a disabled individual accesses or benefits from a site, system or application. Section 508 is the governing principal for accessibility.
• Web Analytics focuses on the collection, reporting, and analysis of website data.

Filler content refers to basically all kinds of posts that you write and publish just to fill in a gap, posts that don’t provide much practical information and that aren’t really worthy of people’s shares.

“Content is king” is what many bloggers preach. And although the word “king” might be an exaggeration, you will hardly be getting any traffic if you are low on content.

So looking from that perspective, there comes a question – should you publish filler content just to keep the posting frequency high?

Although answering that question might seem like a no-brainer, in reality the issue goes deeper. If you strictly follow one or some of the big blogs in your niche, you will have probably noticed filler content being published every now and then.

The below paragraphs take a closer look at this filler content issue and more specifically whether or not publishing that kind of lower quality content is actually worth it:

Posting Frequency and Filler Content

I am a firm believer that content frequency is directly related to the amount of traffic that you can get. It’s simple really – whenever you publish something new, your RSS subscribers are first to get notified. A new blog post is also a reason to promote on blogging networks like BizSugar. New posts can also be a great source of traffic from Quuu or Triberr (a great service for bloggers, allowing them to get more social media exposure).

All in all there are lots of reasons why a frequent posting schedule is good for the health of your blog.

And although some studies have shown that the most well trafficked blogs do publish every day, or even a couple of times a day, when it comes to those, there’s an issue.

It’s kind of like the egg and the chicken paradox – the question is did posting that often gave them key positions or do they post so frequently, because they are the biggest and have enough writers in their team?

That in turn leads to another question – is posting frequency a good enough excuse for putting up filler content?After all, one such additional post every week should in theory mean more visits, isn’t that true?

Quality and its Importance

Lots can be said, and lots is already said on the quality content topic. To be quite honest with you, I am not a huge fan of the content is king theory that I mentioned above.

Obviously content is the backbone to every blog, but then again it’s just a backbone. You have to build on top of it in order to make something out of your online presence. You need to do SEO, you need to get on social media, you need to build relationships, you need to do all kinds of other things if you want to get the wheel spinning.

And there’s the thing…

Let’s look at Mashable. Mashable is a blog that covers lifestyle, business, marketing and social media-related topics. It is one of the most “authoritive” social media/marketing blogs out there and pretty much every post that they  publish receives over a thousand retweets and hundreds of shares on other networks.

On Mashable you can come across a good number of well-written, in-depth articles, which are well worth the read. However once you take the time to dig below the surface, you start noticing more and more posts, that aren’t as sophisticated. You come across articles that seem to fit the description for filler content very well.

All in all it turns out that the more popular a blog becomes, the less importance quality content seems to hold. I mean you already got the audience, there are more than enough subscribers to buy on your offers. Then why waste time and money producing more quality content than you need?

But then again, you probably wouldn’t be reading this post if you had like a hundred thousand readers…

So at least for us (although that should be the case for all blogs), ordinary bloggers, quality matters and here is why exactly:

Building Trust and Authority

When I mentioned Mashable, I used the word “authoritative”. What I mean is there are dozens of blogs out there that with the help of link building and the right SEO strategies in general are able to generate tens of thousands of monthly visitors. And although that is something we all strive to achieve, simply having the traffic is not all that counts.

The problem with some of those blogs is that they lack authority. They are like passage ways – the traffic just moves through them, but it doesn’t stick. You check their Facebook page and you see less than 300 likes. You check their Twitter account and there are under a thousand followers. You check their comments and there are a couple at most.

See where I am going?

Having the traffic is great but that is just part of the story. Good content is one of the factors that “motivates” folks like you to go there and engage. That is not how you get people to visit in the first place, but how you get them to come back for more. So if you lack quality content right now that you are starting, you can’t expect ever coming close to the success that huge blogs such as Mashable, The Huffington Post or The Forbes are seeing.

And yes, there’s really no way to always provide great content and nothing less. Sometimes you will be happy with the result, other times you won’t. In the end however you should always keep trying to share useful and practical information that people will appreciate. If you started blogging a couple of months ago and would like to build an audience, you have to produce content that is actually useful. It’s a different story when that same blog grows big time, big enough to compete with Mashable, which I’ve been giving as an example.

In Conclusion

So what do we end up with? Is using not-that-good content an idea that’s worth taking on? I’d say no. As long as you are not running one of the most popular blogs in the world and as long as traffic is not the only metric you care for. What are your thoughts? Have you happened to publish those kinds of posts on your blog?

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