Top 5 reasons your business needs a CMS

Your business website plays a key role in your external outreach and digital strategy. It’s what your prospective customers and clients first see when they search for your business and the first interaction they have with your brand.

Aside from being well-designed, the content your business publishes on your website needs to be relevant and up-to-date for customers to stay engaged.

Demand for fresh, dynamic content is higher than ever before and businesses need to respond quickly, which certainly can’t happen if developers need to be involved with each change request or new blog post for publishing. 

If you’ve experienced the growing pains of a static website that no longer fulfils your growing content needs, it might be a sign you need to adopt a scalable and flexible system for your website to continue serving your customers and providing content. 

What happens behind the scenes for administrators and authors is just as important as the final website users interact with on the web. So if you’re struggling with keeping your content up to date, or you have a lot of content to manage, it may be time to take your website to the next level with a CMS.

In this article, you’ll learn what a CMS is, the core functionality of a CMS and the top 5 reasons to use a CMS for your business website. 

CMS stands for content management system, which is a software application that allows users to build and manage digital content without having to know how to code. 

Traditionally, managing content online would require extensive coding and information architecture knowledge. But with the development of CMS platforms and tools, anyone can create and manage website content. 

A CMS allows you to create, edit, manage and publish content within a user-friendly interface.

It simplifies the process by doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the backend.

CMS platforms come in various forms and cater to different needs. From dynamic sites with marketing content to more complex e-commerce tools and advanced SEO capabilities, creating and distributing content through a CMS levels the playing field so anyone can manage a website. 

At Vivo we see clients who initially start their website with template-based, basic administrative tools. Initially this system works well when sites are only required to start with basic functionality and have less content. However, over time, sites grow organically with a greater volume of content, visitors and functionality to accommodate business needs, and so do the challenges of maintaining it. 

In this instance, you may have one person responsible for writing content, and another responsible for implementing changes. You may need new layouts to accommodate new content and evolving business needs, which requires developers to create new layouts and pages. 

In the end, your website contains numerous page templates with countless pages not unified in any way nor any structured way to update content across different pages.

A CMS, as its name suggests, helps you manage and organise your growing website content to ensure you maintain a handle on what you have published on your website and consistency in your content types.

Fundamentally, a CMS has two components: the Content Management Application (CMA) and the Content Delivery Application (CDA). 

The CMA is the interface you interact with to manage and create content without needing to know any code. 

In a great CMS, rather than starting with a blank HTML page, you use a content editor or a predetermined page template to format text, add links and insert images. The CMA makes it easy to customise your site. 

The second component, the CDA, compiles the content and updates the website. 

Once you’re ready to publish your content, the CDA takes the content you’ve created in the CMA and assembles the necessary code to make it visible to your website users. 

This means that when you publish a blog post, for example, you just hit the Publish button, and the CDA handles everything in the backend, ensuring your content appears exactly as intended and consistent with predefined website designs.

These two components leave you with a platform that at its core, facilitates content creation and editing, and integration capabilities. 

Together, the CMA and CDA handle all the technical aspects of running a website, such as coding and database management, so you can focus on creating and managing content. As a marketer or a business owner, you can relax knowing that you can easily update and manage your website content without needing any technical expertise. 

By using a CMS, you avoid the complexities of manual coding and can ensure your website is consistently updated and professional, helping your business stay competitive and engaging for your audience.

Depending on your business needs, a CMS can be a great way to improve your content strategy and web presence. Read our top 5 reasons to use a CMS for your business website. 

1. Easy to use interface

A CMS allows you to easily manage and update your website content without needing technical expertise. You can add, edit, and delete content with a simple, intuitive interface, making it easy to keep your site current and engaging. 

This means you don't need to wait in any development queue to get content approved and published! A great CMS platform should empower you to create and put your content live instantly.
 

2. Customisation and extendable functionality 

Although CMS platforms provide a wide range of functionality by default, the ease of which you can customise the platform provides extendable functionality.

With plugins and extensions, a CMS can be tailored to meet your specific business needs. This means you can integrate various functions, like e-commerce or SEO tools to expand the functionality of your site.

Most platforms also allow you to add custom code for more granular control. Vivo Group is well equipped to customise, maintain and update your CMS in line with your business’ requirements. With expertise in building and managing standard and custom CMS, we ensure that your website is continually optimised through ongoing maintenance and support.

For web applications, we typically build custom solutions with the Symfony framework and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack. For content heavy sites with a greater reliance on resource libraries for public browsing, we often look to WordPress or Drupal to provide an SEO friendly, high performing solution.
 

3. Instant content updates

A CMS enables you to make real-time updates to your website by improving workflows and streamlining the authoring and content creation process. Whether it's a new blog post, product update, or a change in business hours, you can publish content instantly, ensuring your website is always up-to-date.

Having a CMS adds efficiency to your marketing function, providing them with autonomy to publish content. A great example of this is blog posts, as it provides a centralised dashboard of published articles, allows users to work collaboratively on content, and allows your team to stick to pre-approved page templates and designs. 

Ultimately, your business can stay agile with your content strategy. 
 

4. Scalability and flexibility 

As your business grows and evolves, so should your website. Content needs to change and functionality continually updated. A CMS can handle increasing content volume, additional users, and new functionalities without compromising performance. 

Modular development means that every feature and element is extendable, and can be added or removed easily. It is also possible to integrate with other or existing business systems for more streamlined operations. 
 

5. Consistent design and brand compliance

A CMS enforces visual consistency across your site. Style rules for fonts, colours, and layouts ensure that all pages adhere to your brand guidelines, regardless of how many different authors contribute content. 

This uniformity enhances your brand's professional appearance on the site, and makes it easier to manage large volumes of content, especially if your digital marketing strategy is heavily content-led. 

By leveraging these benefits, businesses can enjoy a more efficient, flexible, and professional online presence, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and engagement.
 

Vivo Group’s approach to development is as unique as your business. 

We have extensive experience working across various platforms and technologies to build fit-for-purpose solutions for our clients. We build products and maintain CMS platforms that will serve you and set you up with the right foundation for the future, to ensure scalability and flexibility for your business website. 

We provide excellent support with our team reachable and replying within a single business day to ensure your website is running fully optimised and maintained. Contact Vivo Group today to talk about your next project.