Very often when people approach my business for a quote, they ask for “content management”. Content management systems, or CMS, allow the owner of a web site to change the content on each page. Often people have heard that this is a preferred option, but let’s explore the pros and cons

• The benefit is obvious: you can change the pages of your site, or the products that are listed in your store at any time. This is a big advantage and means you do not pay people to do this.
• Also, there are some situations where nothing else will cut it, such as when product prices and availability change very frequently. 

However, there is always a flip side. Here are some things to consider:

• When you bring this function in-house it becomes a cost to your business, and an opportunity cost. While you are finessing your web site, you many be missing orders or sales in your store.
• You will have to learn your way around the “back-end” or the CMS management interface. This can be a steep learning curve for some people.
• You will need to learn to re-size images for the web. This is the single thing that seems to give people the most grief.
• CMS requires a database, and they tend not to be as well understood or “indexed” by search engines. I have seen this demonstrated time and again.

Whether you choose CMS or not, it pays to change the text on your site and add new pages from time to time. When you do this search engines can tell the information has changed or improved and they will reward you for keeping your site up to date with high page rankings.