Business Imperatives
The three main factors driving businesses towards reviewing their website maintenance processes are:
- Sheer size of the site being managed and the volume of content being published.
- Diversity in the sources of information - departments, suppliers, business partners. This may be compounded by merger and acquisition activity
- Targeting and personalisation needs. Web sites with an international dimension must take account of local language, culture and legal requirements and constraints
Issues to Address
The most common website maintenance issues are:
- Demands on time and costs, as well as being a drain on managers’ valuable time.
- Keeping sites up-to-date, particularly where up-to-the-minute information is critical. In many cases, the Webmaster is the bottleneck in the process
- Poor quality. Often characterised by a lack of consistency where information is updated / duplicated and page links not working following site changes.
- Changing the look and style of the site or making changes to keep pace with new web technology. Typically, a total re-build exercise is required.
How Web Content Management Can Help
Web content management addresses these problems by opening up and automating the entire process. Business users are able to directly submit content online without technical intervention and authorisation ensures that managers are firmly in control of what gets published.
Efficient Use of Resources
Through the wider involvement of non-technical business users:
- The bottleneck on the Web Master is removed
- Efficient workflows are established for distributing tasks
Assured Quality
The quality of the company’s website is assured through:
- Preset templates promoting consistency
- Automatic page linking and validation of links
Firm Management Control
Control of ongoing changes to the organisation’s sites is achieved by:
- Enforcing authorisation at appropriate stages
- Change control of versions and releases
Improve Productivity
In addition to automating manual tasks, productivity benefits include:
- Maximising the re-use of content and other resources
- Automated page construction where appropriate e.g. product bulletins
- Fast rebuilding and redesign of the site without technical skills
