5 Benefits of CMS Web Design for Businesses

Choosing a content management system for your small business web design offers many advantages, including built-in SEO and an intuitive system that's easy for beginners to learn.

Rather than sticking with a static website, many small business owners are now using a content management system (CMS) based website for dynamic design. Static websites require technical knowledge to edit because you must actually change the webpage itself, while CMS means you simply log in and update everything on your website through a dashboard. Content management systems offer a host of benefits to small business website owners, including ease of use and good SEO. Here's a more in-depth look at these benefits.

Image: Adriano Gasparri at Flickr

1. Keep your website updated and fresh

With a CMS in place, it's simple to update your small business web design by logging into your dashboard and adding new pages or blog posts. You can also add new videos, audio, photos and content to your website to keep the content fresh. There are few things that turn customers off faster than a website that hasn't been updated in years! With a content management system like WordPress in place, keep your customers updated with new events, sales, press releases, company news, blog posts and more, all with minimal effort.

Image: Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.Net

2. Site search function

Does your website have hundreds or thousands of pages that are nearly impossible to search through manually? A CMS website stores all of your pages in a simple database with a built-in search function that makes it easy for visitors to find what they're looking for.

3. Intuitive and great for beginners to web design

Content management systems are also very intuitive and easy to use, which is great if you don't have a lot of experience with web design. If you've chosen a web development company to handle your web design, you'll appreciate a CMS platform when it's time for you to take over control of your website to manage content. You don't need any technical knowledge to maintain your website so you won't need to pay someone to make changes on a regular basis.

Maintenance Mode Plugin for Wordpress

4. Huge variety of plug-ins and features

There are literally hundreds of content management platforms out there, although only a handful are very popular. With all of the options you'll find a huge range of available plug-ins and features to customize the CMS for your business. Some plug-ins are designed for personal bloggers but a growing number are made with small businesses in mind, such as eCommerce, statistics, shopping carts, payment options and more.

5. Good SEO practices

Finally, CMS platforms often offer built-in SEO to help your small business web design rank better on search engines. Most content management systems automatically create a search engine friendly URL (such as mywebsite.com/best-reasons-to-choose-CMS rather than mywebsite.com/page23) You'll find plug-ins to further customize this with RSS feeds, social media and more.

Most Popular CMS Platforms for Small Businesses

While the most well-known CMS platform is WordPress, there are plenty of others with a range of features designed for small businesses. Before you pick one at random to build your website, you may want to consult with a web development company like Absolute Web Services to select the one that has the features you need. Some CMS platforms have an edge over others, whether they have a more intuitive design or more advanced features for running an online business. Here are some other popular platforms used for small business web design:

Drupal - A huge range of optional modules to customize the features of the CMS.
Joomla! - Great functionality for businesses with a good interface and plenty of extensions.
ExpressionEngine - This platform requires a commercial license of $249.99 for businesses but it's great for running multiple websites with one installation
Light CMS - This is another popular platform for small business web design that has a free version as well as paid. This platform offers great tools for businesses, including eCommerce, statistics and blogs.

Updated: 10/14/2012, AbsoluteWebServices

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Rose on 01/05/2014

I use wordpress too - it's hands down one of the most flexible CMS available

jan111 on 04/26/2013

We use Wordpress to build CMS websites for our clients and - after the initial learning curve for developing sites - have been fairly happy with it. As well as the points you've menitonned above, it also gives clients the ability to have a blog - and, with extra plugins, they can have engagement calendars, basic booking systems, basic ecommerce etc as well.

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