You Should Be Using A Content Management System
To Power Your Small Business Website

When ORP.ca started out in 2003, websites were designed quite a bit differently than they are today. Not only were they much less dynamic than they are now, but updating a website took a lot of time.

It was almost impossible for the average small business owner to do it themselves, and because of the time involved (changing a phone number one page at a time for example) it could get expensive to have even basic updates done for you.

Many business owners did not understand the value of having a website, and so the extra costs of keeping content updated seemed like a ridiculous expense to many of them.

Much has changed since then. Google and other search engines still rank your site based on three primary criteria: 

1. Does your site work on mobile, tablet and desktop devices? If you think it's a given that all websites are mobile friendly these days, you'd be surprised at how many that are not. Also, many site owners have not kept up with the technical maintenance. More on that below.

2. Does your site load quickly and is the technology running it up-to-date? An out of date website is a security risk. Google regularly puts warnings on websites, and even tells people that the website they are about to visit may not be secure. Most commonly, this is because of hacks, but often it is out of date technology giving false positives when Google scans the website.

3. Is your content updated frequently? Regularly updated content not only gives website visitors a reason to come back, but it gives Google something new to scan and keep coming back for.

Running your site on a Content Management System (CMS) is a major step towards accomplishing these goals.

There are many open source (i.e. free) Content Management Systems available today. We’ve worked with Joomla since 2008, and have also worked in WordPress. Drupal is another common CMS, although it’s more labour intensive and less popular than the other two.

Each of them have their strengths and weaknesses, but basically they each have multi-device functionality built in.

Your website’s load speed is largely a part of the website design and development process, so it falls outside of this article.

That leaves us with content. Content can include anything from web text to photos, audio and video and PDF's.

It also includes interactive features, questionnaires and contact forms and links to other sites including your social media accounts.

Over the past few years, it has become much easier for people to update their website themselves. Because the technologies are more streamlined it is also much more cost and time effective to hire a firm to do it for you.

Regardless of what system you use, there is no excuse for not keeping your website up to date these days.

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