One of the most important branding opportunities for any business is their website. Properly designed, it projects a professional image, and clearly defines the products and services your company offers.

As the “look” of the web evolves, progressive companies are upgrading the look of their website every 12-18 months. Framed websites have given way to Flash websites, and Flash websites have been upgraded to CSS and XHTML. The clean design principles of “Web 2.0” are now taking over.

There is one piece missing to this upgrade schedule: the minor changes and updates that keep your content accurate and timely, and keep visitors returning to your site.

Imagine this scenario:

You are about to get your first or upgrade an existing website built for your business. Having found a good web design house, you are looking forward to seeing the results of their creative efforts. So far so good.
Once the website is setup, and the customers start rolling in, you will want to make ongoing changes. These could be very small, such as changing a phone number, or adding a news item. New products, or shifts in business direction, will necessitate larger updates to the site. Chances are, though, you will still be happy with the design, and it’s just the text that needs to be changed.
While the web design house did a great job, you don’t want to have to go back to them for every change. A hundred small changes in a year will leave you both frustrated, and is not economic for either party.  

This all-to-common problem has a simple and elegant solution, and is where 101 Group can help your company. We specialize in converting existing websites to use a content management system (CMS). Sitting behind the scenes, it gives you the ability to maintain your own site, without knowing a single line of HTML code.
No website larger than a few pages should be without a CMS to manage it, and 101 Group can help you in the transition.
What is a CMS?
A content management system is a software package specifically designed to manage a website. We install it on a web server, but it is used by you.
The CMS provides you with a simple, non-technical way of updating your content. This is done via a password protected web page that works much like Word does.
Just point-and-click, type in the new words, and hit save. Your site is instantly updated.
Equally easy is adding new pages, deleting old ones, or restructuring the site to match your new business model.
The CMS also automates menial tasks, such as applying the same page layout and appearance across the site. Menus and other navigation are also automatically produced.
Along with the many other administrative tools, this leaves you to concentrate on the words, and not on the technology.
What are the benefits of a CMS?
A content management system makes your life much easier in many ways:
• You are no longer dependent on the web designers making changes for you.
• Changes can be made any time they are needed, day or night. This is increasingly important as your business comes to rely on the website as a communications channel.
• All the technical details are simply handled by the CMS, allowing anyone to manage and update the site.
• Multiple staff can keep the site up to date, instead of being restricted to just one person. The CMS will track who is doing what, avoiding potential confusion.
• You can even ensure that each staff person can only update the sections of the site they are responsible for.
• The CMS ensures that all the pages are consistent in design, and will build all the menus and other navigation for you.
• The many other powerful features of the CMS allows the site to grow in sync with your business.
The Final Product
After your site has been converted to a CMS-based application, the look and feel will generally not change for visitors. There may be some small exceptions, but they are rare and generally minor.
You will have a password-protected administration page, where you will be able to make as many changes as you need.
Most importantly, you will receive ample training on how to add, change, and remove pages, menus, and images. Your reliance on the web design firm will be greatly reduced, and only major changes will require outside assistance.
One important, yet often overlooked benefit of using a CMS is that your content is separated from the design of the website. So, if you want to update the design a year from now, you can do so easily, without having to go through the costly endeavor of reentering the text of every page.
And the cost?
Since 101 Group specializes in converting existing websites to use Content Management, our services are efficient, and therefore not expensive. Every project is different, so an individual consultation is necessary.

The technical requirements for hosting a CMS website may be different than your existing hosting company offers. We can work with your web host to get the application working, or recommend another hosting company for less than US$10/mo which fully supports CMS website hosting.
Next steps
Talk with your stakeholders, and look at your web design expenses over the last year. Your website is a prime candidate for upgrading to a CMS if:
- you are using your web designers for more than 2 hours a month
- you are not updating your website as often as you would like because of the time and/or expense
- you need to update your website more quickly than your web designers’ turnaround allows
- or you would like the flexibility of keeping your content separate from the design, allowing you to completely change your design without the time and expense of reentering your content.
Do you think a CMS right for you? Please contact 101 Group for a complementary evaluation.