How to choose the most suitable CMS for your business

The question in everyone’s minds when asking about content management open source solutions is which one is the best.

Now when we define best we really need to know what we are asking. Let’s take what is the most user-friendly content management relevant CMS out there and see how it stacks up.

A couple things need to be spoken about, firstly, there are about 3 content management solutions worth considering. Joomla! CMS, WordPress, & Drupal. Understanding what makes each of these systems great is key to unlocking what is desired in a CMS from a business perspective.

Web solutions have changed drastically over the years and award winning web designers have built corporate website infrastructures around what these most capable content management solutions are capable of delivering. Of these, the ability to manage text content of a website is vital.

How the CMS manages videos, pictures, and text is crucial to the streamlined environment so many businesses now seek to stay competitive. Website companies will most likely plan on building out one of the three content management solutions.

Corporate web site design has taken a turn for the better in these coming years. There has been a gradual increase in the demand for a well performing CMS and any webdeveloper will tell you that the more time they have under one or another CMS the better.

Also as time goes on, companies will want a full scalable solution that will allow the ability to edit text and graphics on the fly and to fully actualize the capabilities of the system both from a remote location and in the office.

A company web design project has many stages and at the first stage is the ability for companies to create their own brand behind their products and services and further build out that brand online. A good team of designers and coders have the ability to deliver exactly what is called for in this regard.

There are a couple systems that utilize the technology already. These systems have been put in place a long time ago. One just has to spend the time necessary to get to know intimately the systems and how they work to leverage them so they can benefit their businesses. It is more important however to know the battlefield from which to fight the war first before committing resources.

Hopefully we’ve helped in this regard : )

Here is a quick video on Joomla 1.6 and its new backend environment:

Joomla 1.5 was released in 2006.  It was an exciting news for many developers and DIY web designers around the globe.

In recent years, Joomla has released sub versions within 1.5, basic bug fixes, beta upgrades, and so on, were implemented.

Joomla 1.6 is an improved CMS platform with the newly added Access Control Level (ACL).  The basic look and feel is quite different as well.  We have had great experience with 1.6 and are mostly impressed with the flexibility in creating user access levels without the needs of coding.

Skygate Media can never stop stressing the importance of having a CMS for your corporate web site.  Here are some of great benefits of content management solutions:

1. Minimize monthly maintenance cost

2. Create fresh content at anytime, anywhere

3. Content creation is key to SEO success

4. Stay in touch with your target audience

5. Easy and quick updates on site content and product details

2012 is almost here, request a web design facelift – a highly necessary corporate website redesign package that includes any CMS of your choice.  Start creating useful content for the search engines, you will see results in 2012.

You may ask, “Category? Why category first?  Shouldn’t we add content right the way?”.

Many people have asked this question.

To take a look at how Joomla manages content, we first need to understand how Joomla structures content.

A very basic idea to start: every website has different sections.  Most of the sections can be identified by the layout of main navigation bar.

A common layout of the website navigation menu is: Home, About Us, Services, Products, Contact.

Adding a category in Joomla CMS means creating an item in such navigation menu.

It’s common practice that we start with the site map of the web design project.  Once the skeleton of the website is built, content can be inserted.  Stay tuned for the next video on how to manage content in Joomla.

A Drop in Inbound Phone Calls as a Result of Dropping SEO Ranking

The reason to design and build a website is to explore the www horizon and target your market on a national and international level, in an efficient “per request” manner.

Search engines legitimize this reason and make it highly possible.

Dropping in inbound calls has recently been regarded as a result of changing in search engine traffic.

SEO, search engine optimization, is one of the most targeted online marketing methods.

Reasons Your Corporate Web Site’s Search Engine Ranking Dropped:

Malware

Your website could have been receiving malware attacks. Search engines can usually detect if there is obscene material on your homepage that can be harmful to normal web surfing activities. When that happens, they will automatically post a warning site and ask visitors to reconsider whether they really want to take the risk and visit your site.

Pandalization

Panda penalty is the most common reason, recently, why you are receiving less inbound calls and request for quotes emails from your website.  Stay in touch with Google Panda, use legit link building techniques to avoid being pandalized.

Robot.txt File

This might sound confusing and somewhat intimidating.  Yet, this is a pretty simple concept and very important in terms of whether Google crawls your website.  It can go so much deeper, however, the basic difference in a robot.txt file is “index” and “no index”.

“Index” is a command to Google that you want your site to be indexed by search engines.  “No Index” means “don’t index my site,  I don’t want the public to be able to find the content on my website.”

For whatever reason, the robot.txt file that belongs to your website could be changed/updated, from “index” to “no index”.  If this is the case, it is an easy step to correct the problem, however it may take longer than you wish for search engines to index your site again.

Wrong Phone Number

Last but not least, it might sound silly but it happens!  Some might say “something really wrong is going on with my website, it is like driving people away, I am not getting one single phone call/ email.”  Duh – sometimes it is because it’s a wrong number listed on  your site.

Another Brilliant Consumer-Centric Example driven by the Power of Social Media

Every big corporation out there spends years and even decades to build a brand.

The return? Customer loyalty.

According to the statistics on www.wikipedia.com, American Express was ranked the 22nd most valuable “brand” worldwide and has been regarded as one of the top 20 most admired companies in the world.

They basically have the same functions, what is the difference between American Express and, for example, Capital One?

Many AmEx card holders would say “it’s a membership, it’s the feeling of being special and pampered”. As a American Express card holder, you receive outstanding reward program benefits.

Branding is built upon brand recognition and customer loyalty. American Express excels in this area.

To build and own a successful brand, companies don’t just make customers “buy” their products, they convince them to “join” to be a part of the brand through allowing a kind of superior social status.

Recently, AmEx launched “Link, Like, Love”. Taking advantage of the social networking power of Facebook, the worshiped company further extended the reward programs, benefiting both consumers and merchants.

They know what you like, now they are giving you what you love.

Isn’t this powerful and smart?

Find out and learn more about this new American Express Rewards Program here.

Facebook is popular. Yet many think it’s saturated and it’s starting to get boring – posting and getting likes.

Look at what American Express has done. They took social media to a complete new horizon.

How to build a Facebook Welcome Page yourself

Facebook was launched as a social networking service in 2004. Since then, it created what we call “social media”.

To take advantage of its full social networking power, many businesses dove right into this brand new tool and started leveraging social media technology to promote their business ideas, products and services.

Facebook is a tool to turn friends (or fans) into sales pitchmen.

It is much more likely to have a friend of your fans to read the special promotion and click on the link to download a coupon you posted for your fans, than an online ad (even the online ads on Facebook with geographic and demographic control).

“I have only 1 fan, how do I get more?” – this is no longer valid.

Facebook is so popular among different age groups that businesses don’t complain about troubles in signing up fans anymore. There are various promotion-based ways to attract new Facebook sign ups, and proven to be very effective.

The concern, nowadays, is what (is the right thing) to post and how often (is right) to post.

Especially for non-consumer based industries such as B2B businesses, there are often times not enough “worthy” posts because specials and coupons don’t exist. Many businesses have finally attracted some new sign ups and one day due to a boring post at a “wrong” time, the fan decided to “unlike”.

Building an interactive landing page for your business facebook account is vital to avoid this issue.

Instead of driving traffic to a dull lack of activity fan page, now you can embed an interesting full of content with company information page as a welcome page.

If you have coding experience, you can easily create a welcome page by editing the static FBML settings within your Facebook account.

If you don’t have any idea what FBML is, here is a list of commonly used, free, user friendly apps that you can download and modify the look and style of the interactive landing page.

- WixYourPage
- iFrame App
- Pagemodo

Take a look at the Kraft page. Beside the Facebook logo in the upper left hand corner, you almost can’t tell that this is a Facebook page (well I know you can).

The Kraft welcome page is filled with Kraft branding elements – recipes and tips which are highly relevant to their products, as a result to stimulate sales.

User Friendly Facebook URL Good for Branding

So, we know Facebook is vital.

Some people believe that they can’t live without Facebook due to its social networking power.

Some businesses believe that they don’t need a Facebook Fan Page because their industry is not consumer based.

Whichever one you are, many have encountered issues in remembering and promoting their business page because their Facebook page URL isn’t user friendly.

Before Skygate Media updated the Facebook page URL, it was as complicated as this http://www.facebook.com/pages/Skygate-Media/115533867540.

Who could remember that string of numbers?

Now, it is as easy as www.facebook.com/skygatemedia. Look at the branding power and the convenience when using Facebook to promote your business.

Here is how you can manage to change your business Facebook page URL for easier marketing effort:

1. Login to your personal Facebook account that is linked to your business page
2. Select your business page in the navigation menu on the left
3. At the very top, select “Edit Info”
4. You will see the second item as “Username”, type in your preference and check availability

Currently, Facebook does not allow change of username if you have less than 25 fans/likes.

If you have requested a username for an updated Facebook page URL, you might see the 404 image above that says “This content is currently unavailable”.

Then you know it’s time to get more “likes” before the new URL can be used.

Groupon and Google Offers Comparison

Groupon has definitely a head start and been going strong. The only big difference between the two is Google’s gigantic network which allows Google to integrate any other Google products together with Google Offers to make it a powerful deal finder.

Here, I did a brief comparison between Groupon and Google Offers, to take a deeper and surgical look into these services.

Launch date:
November 2008, featuring daily deals on what to do, buy and eat in 43 countries.

June 2011, featuring a deal per day in 3 cities.

Deal Frequency:

Multiple Per Day, various categories
Once a Day, limited categories

Accessibility:

Via Web, Email, Mobile App – customers are able to login to Groupon web portal, use their mobile device and most recently receive travel deals
Via Web, Email – customers mainly receive daily emails featuring one special offer

Service Areas:

National & International – most towns in the United States plus international countries
National only in multiple cities – Portland OR, NYC, San Fransisco
Features:

Groupon Getaways – Special travel section (partnered with Expedia)
Regular daily deals

A while back in 2010, Google offered $5.3 billion dollars to buy out Groupon. It looks like the rejection has given Google the fumes to start from ground up and compete.

Groupon is a great success as you might have noticed how many coupon websites have been created and failed over time. One thing not to forget is, Google IS a search engine gorilla and who really knows what Google Offers will turn into with the help of Google Maps, Google Wallet, Google+, Google Talk, Google Earth, and not to mention YouTube.

A New Way to Organize Reading Materials?

As a way to reward readers, Google is launching Google News Badges.

This is how it works.

If you see any articles or videos on Google News that are interesting to you, well written to you, news worthy to you, you can share them with others by using Google+.

Your Google+ account will serve as a mini library of your favorites. This is a way to go back to enjoy the reading materials again while suggest them to your friends. In return, the more relevant articles you read, the more “stars” you receive on the Google News Badge. Like a student, who enters university and wants to get good grades.

We think the new launch of Google New Badges is, yet, another Panda related product.

Google Panda came out of the forest and shouted “I am all about high quality content.”

News materials are often times regarded as good quality, interesting and popular web content.

Without a doubt, Google Panda has improved web surfing. We are seeing less spammy sites out there. Though, many legit businesses have suffered also because somehow someway they are related to these spammy sites via link building on low quality link farms. These angry business owners are saying “Panda, you have slaughtered the wrong guy” and many are upset with search engine algorithm changes that puts the world’s commerce in an unfair scale.

“FTC begins review of search and advertising practices” – an antitrust investigation on Google from the US Federal Trade Commission.

To turn it down a notch, without using the machine to rank all businesses, Google wants your human brain’s participation in differentiate good and bad.

Good luck in winning the first released Bronze Google Badge.

Do you think the new badge system will help you organize your reading routine, or do you think this is another way the web takes control over privacy and collects personal lifestyle data that’s worth a lot of money?