Your new site launched today, and wow, it’s amazing. You wonder to yourself how your business survived the last five years on the outdated and unorganized site you just replaced. This time you were smart though. You made sure you have a content management system so you can go in and update your content whenever you need – and more importantly, you don’t need to see that pesky web developer anymore. The power is in your hands. However, you might be doing your brand more harm than good by cutting out the middleman between you, and your online audience.
A CMS is a powerful tool that businesses are flocking towards. It promises the ability for the owner of their site to make changes and keep everything up to date. It even allows you to add pages, change fonts, and upload your images! For the first time, the average computer user can maintain and grow their website without learning a single line of code.
This is where the problem lies. The belief that a well-constructed site relies on the ability of someone simply knowing how to code is an inaccurate and dangerous misplacement of judgment. A CMS is simply a crayon sitting in front of a coloring book – if you don’t stay within the lines and the patterns, the end result will not resemble the original image you wanted to portray.
This is not to discredit the power of a CMS. However, a novel cannot be written by simply obtaining a copy of Microsoft Word. Just like in any discipline, the tools will never make up for a lack of understanding in the fundamentals. If you are planning on doing updates to your current site with your CMS, try to remember the following items.
Consistency of Design
Your website is more than a random placement of boxes and text, much like your home is more than a random placement of walls and doors. When your site was designed, the designer made sure that there was a clear sense of hierarchy in its elements. This is used to direct a visitor’s attention in a specific order. Perhaps to draw them to a specific call-to-action, before they move on to see additional details about a product. This is achieved by a variety of methods. Perhaps a higher contrasting color scheme in particular areas, or a bigger font. Sometimes it is as simple as a break in the flow of a design. Subtle effects can weigh heavily on the user experience.
When you start to make changes to content, pay special attention to items such as font (face, color and size) to ensure a consistent presentation. Be mindful of whitespace and padding in both your text, and any non-text elements you add. When you upload images into your body, and attempt to float them inline with text, be sure to keep a consistent image style and spacing. For example, if other images on that page have a border and 25 pixels of padding, make sure your new one follows suit. It goes a long way in the battle to keep your site professional and presentable. Some of these things a designer can assist you with by applying automatic styles to particular elements that you upload. However, when you have a CMS, it isn’t difficult to accidentally circumvent their good intentions.
Consistency of Tone & Voice
Most sites you visit will keep a consistent tone & personality. Be mindful of current content, and attempt to match new content with the pre-existing tone. This issue is more importantly stressed when there are multiple editors of your site (with the exception of multi-author blogs). When there are more contributors to your site, the more diverse, and possibly contrasting, the tone and message. In cases such as this, it may be worthwhile to assign an editor that reviews all content additions and helps negate the contrasting effect of multiple authors.
Information Overflow
When you have the keys to your own site, it’s hard to fight the natural instinct to put all the information on the web. The problem with this ideology is that, unless planned correctly, you can end up with all the information fighting for attention.
Lets imagine you are selling 15 different types of widgets. Your site might have a nice attractive header illustrating the pure sexiness and simplicity of your widgets, and a large contrasting call-to-action that directs you to a nicely laid out catalogue. Below your header, you have a couple testimonials, a sale announcement, and perhaps a small write-up on the latest amazing widget your company just released. Then all of this tucked nicely under a clean navigation. This is a very typical homepage layout.
But then you think to yourself – “But wait! I have 15 awesome widgets, and if people don’t click through to my catalogue, they will never see them!” This isn’t an unrealistic fear. So you decide to put all 15 products and their related information on the homepage. So now, you have 15 products, a header, a few testimonials, a sales announcement, a call-to-action and the navigation all fighting for a visitor’s attention. It is going to be difficult to convert the visitor into a buyer if they are overwhelmed by choices as soon as the web site loads.
In summary, when adding content to your site, first ask yourself “by adding this, am I taking away focus from another important element”. If the answer is yes, be wary of the addition.
Conclusion
I am not trying to demerit the power or usefulness of a CMS – quite the opposite actually. A CMS is such a powerful tool that it can instantly wipe your site of any credibility with a simple text update. Be mindful of the adjustments and additions you are about to make, and if there is every any doubt in your mind, consult your design firm. There may be a charge on your account, but at least it won’t be a charge on your brand.
Grammar is one of my biggest grievances with people having access to update their own website. You give your brand a “I never finished high school” effect when you don’t know the difference between then and than, or saying, “I seen this the other day” (instead of the correct, “I saw this the other day”).