Every business can benefit from having a presence on the internet and for most a corporate website is vital to attract new business and to inform and reassure new customers that your company is professional, established and trusted. Commissioning a web designer or web developer to create a website for you can be a minefield as costs vary from almost nothing to thousands of pounds.
An out-of-date website is worse than not having one at all – your customers will question the way you work and become confused about your services, so it is vital to keep the site content current. It is likely that you will want to make changes to both the text and images in the future – updating prices, changing personnel profiles or simply keeping the content fresh. By ensuring that you have a content management system integrated to the site when it is built you will be able to do this yourself without the help, or fees, of a professional web developer.
There are many content management systems available and your chosen web developer should be able to give you a selection of options, as well as recommending the system that they deem most suitable for your needs. For a simple website there are open source content management systems that are free to use – of course you will still pay to have the system integrated into your site but there is no charge for the software itself or for its ongoing use. If your website will be more complicated than brochure displaying information on a few pages you may require a bespoke content management system to access and change all content. This will be more costly but will make changes easier and give you more control over your site.