The following article is by Ian Lackie of Azzurro Blu, based in Aberdeen, Scotland,. They specialise in business management consultancy and Shrepoint development. Please take some time to visit their website for more information. Today, Ian is going to be discussing the options when it comes to developing a business class website.
Most business owners understand the value of a good business website. However, as you plan and start developing a world class business website, your process needs to be a little more involved than just finding a local web designer, and then letting them do their job. Of course, its always a good idea to hire a competent web design team but you need to give them guidance and, like most thing business you really should try and have a backup plan. Knowing what kind of content management system you would like for your business would be one way to start. In fact, you shoudl look at this even if your business already has a website.
If your current website is difficult to manage, then I recommend that you consider a free, open-source content management system likeWordPress.
Lets look at a quick example of how things pan out for businesses that get stuck with an inflexible content management system that everyone in the company finds difficult to use. Axis Bank, a major bank in India, used a CMS that was developed in-house and was deeply featured, but was almost impossible to use. When the bank needed to make a simple change – say to amend a product – in one case they decided to withdraw a credit card that they offered – then the employees found it very complicated to actually go in and simply delete the card. Eventually, the bank’s IT staff were able to go in and make a brief note on how the product was currently withdrawn – bit it was hardly an elegant solution to a simple problem. And from a customer usability standpoint it was, shall we say, less than ideal. Wiht a vast range of cards on offer, customers had look carefully at the card they were selecting in case thery went through the application process only to discover the card had been withdrawn. Ouch!.
Difficulties of this kind are all too commonplace when using content management systems that are not designed to be user-friendly. If you really want the best business website for your needs, then you should aim for something that really easy to go in and make edits to.
Luckily, there are a number of amazing and free web publishing platforms out there that you can use to build a world class business website. There’s WordPress of course. But there is also Tumbler, Blogger, Movable Type and TypePad, among many others. In fact, with recent advances in the platform you could even consider Facebook to be a blogging platform worth considering.
Other than WordPress though, these options don’t really work well for business. They all have some limitation or another – such as being proprietary and expensive, or having limited feature sets. WordPress, on the other hand, is free, and it doesn’t hold yoou back with a a limited feature set. It can be easily used to help you build the business website that you dream of, and also the best business blog.
The WordPress platform is perfect for business for a number of reasons. The platform is very well set up for easy SEO. There’s built-in commenting, everything is easy to update, there are plug-ins by the hundred to help you achieve nearly anything you want, and you can find support all around in a very WordPress robust community.
