Making the most of your CMS
By Adam Griffith, in Web Strategy, Web Design, Web Development
Content management should be on every website owners list. This is because it gives you - the website owner - the power to run, manage and update your site yourself. This means that your website will always be up-to-date, always evolving and always fresh. It also gives you the ability to administer your website from anywhere that you have an Internet connection.
The key to utilising a content management system correctly for your website is by being aware of the impact it can have on your online presence. In saying this, although you retain control of your website after your designer creates it, a big mistake people make often is changing the content on their site and disregarding common web rules.
Fortunately, the most common web mistakes are easy to fix. Here's 5 tips to ensure you make the most of your content management system (CMS):
- Always use a spell checker. Spelling mistakes make you look silly. Use Microsoft Word, or similar, to draft your text. Or if you're using our new CMS, Sitefinity, you can do it from within the Rich Text Editor.
- Only underline words that are links. Users generally see underlined words as links so use bold/strong tags and larger text to highlight words or headings.
- Use exclamation marks sparingly. Both search engines and website readers get suspicious of BS when exclamation marks are over-used.
- Steer clear of red text, flashing text, dark backgrounds and non-contrasting colour elements. These are distracting, make things difficult to read and annoy the user.
- Use lots of paragraphs and headings. Website users scan, they don't read.
Remember, content is king! Keep these tips in mind and keep your website fresh with new content. If your content is good, then users will feel compelled to revisit your site.