Customers in the Middle East are very conscious of the quality and uniqueness of the content they get on their respective websites. Customers keep hopping from one web page to another in search of the content that they want from the webpage.
Not only the content, but the webpage ambiance, how interactive and user friendly is the webpage/site? It also matters a lot to the customer to decide to stay or to switch the webpage.
To satisfy and make the hopping customer land and stay on one webpage, designing and building an interactive, content-rich, and user-friendly webpage is essential.
When it comes to creating or modifying a webpage/site, many think of different coding languages like JAVA, HTML etc., and believe that a lot of coding knowledge and effort will be required for the same. This code writing may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but what if a dashboard and a few tools replace all this coding part?
What if companies could create a user-friendly, content-rich, ambient webpage using a dashboard and some tools? Then won’t it be possible for anyone to create and modify the webpage easily? Here comes the content management system in the picture.
What is a Content Management System (CMS)?
A Content Management System (CMS) is a software application that enables a user to create, format and publish web content. Users can add media, images, videos, audio, and any other content to make the webpage creative and interactive.
• CMS helps content creators to create, edit and publish the content, enabling them to focus on ensuring quality rich content.
• CMS is Digital. A content management system is an online software application that creates or changes webpages over the internet.
• CMS stores the provided data in a database. This database and its hosting may differ from CMS to CMS.
• CMS, as per the access provided, may have one or more than one users that can create or make changes to the content on the webpage.
The user does not need to have coding knowledge, just hands on the dashboard, and some tools provided by the CMS help to add, modify or publish the content and do a number of things on the back end of the webpage.
A Content Management System has two components that work together to maintain a website.
1. Content Management Application (CMA): CMA allows the user to plan, create, edit and remove the content from the webpage using the dashboard and the tools.
2. Content Delivery Application (CDA): CDA provides back-end support. It performs processing and presenting the content uploaded by the user on the website in the desired format.
Usage of Content Management System
Easy Content Management
CMS provides a platform for managing and displaying the user’s content on the webpage. With CMS, users can create, edit, and remove content using the dashboard and tools without having much technical knowledge.
Adaptability
The web page’s web interface will change according to the device used by the end user. The device may be a laptop or smartphone, or tablet. Changes in the interface can cause changes in the alignment and presentation of content that can affect end-user ambiance. CMS automatically adjusts the web interface of the webpage according to the user’s device, ensuring the site’s instructiveness and user-friendliness.
Easy to Access
Since the CMS are digital, the content creator and the team having access to the webpage can easily make the required changes in the webpage from any system connected to the internet. Using CMS, users need not go to the physical center and can be accessed from anywhere.
Access to Analytical Tools
CMS provides analytical tools to answer a few questions. Questions like,
How many users visited the webpage?
Out of visits, how many made a purchase?
How long, on average, a user stays on the webpage? And a few others.
Answering such questions helps the content and marketing team prepare strategies and execution plans.
Advanced SEO Tools
The content management system provides many plugins and SEO (search engine optimization) tools that help the site’s better ranking on the search engine result page (SERP).
A better ranking in SERP increases the chances for the website to get noticed by the end user. Once the user enters the site, quality, rich and relevant content provided through CMS can ensure the user’s conversion.
Multilingual Support
The language of the content used in the webpage can be a barrier for many users and create a chance of switching the webpage to some other.
So it’s essential to provide the content in the prospect’s language for the user’s better understanding and make the user stay more on the webpage, ensuring conversion. CMS provides multilingual support to a webpage so the content can be made available in the prospect’s language.
Security
The customer/user personnel data stored in the database is always at risk of getting hacked by hackers. Customer/user data must be secured to maintain trust among the end users.
Content management systems are continuously tested on the back end by a team of developers and computer specialists to prevent users’ data from getting hacked.
Why Small Businesses and Enterprises Should Use CMS?
With the evolution of technology, the majority of customers, both from the B2B and B2C markets, moved to e-commerce and online platforms for products and services. In this scenario, it became essential for small businesses and enterprises to move online.
Going online and using their website will help small enterprises and businesses capture customers from different regions and segments and create awareness and campaigns about the product and services.
Such small enterprises and businesses can create a website and update content using CMS. Hence they will not require the technical support of software developers and computer engineers, which will save the cost of the business and enterprise.
When only the fundamental functions of a CMS are being used, less time is required to teach teams how to use and administer a small business website and digital content. As a result, a small firm with little money or time to invest in digital marketing can compete with active online competitors and reach a worldwide audience without spending a lot of money.
Top 5 CMS Platform / Software:
Following are the top 5 CMS software used in the Middle East
1. WordPress CMS
2. Drupal CMS
3. Joomla CMS
4. Wix
5. Weebly
Let’s have a look at each one of them.
1. WordPress CMS
WordPress, one of the top free headless CMS solutions, runs 43% of all websites on the internet.
WordPress is a free CMS that can be downloaded and used. It is also simple to learn, adaptable, and search engine friendly. Furthermore, with thousands of themes and plugins, it is one of the most adaptable platforms. That certainly fits WordPress’s fundamental CMS definition and more.
Furthermore, it is simple for newbies while allowing developers considerable freedom to experiment with the codes. Beginners can start from a basic level and progress as they learn. If users ever run into problems with WordPress, they may rely on the large WordPress community to assist users with troubleshooting.
Overall, it is appropriate for practically any style of the website. WordPress is the best free Content Management System for general website development, e-commerce features, and blogging.
2. Drupal CMS
Another open-source CMS platform is Drupal. It powers several prominent websites, including The Economist and many university websites.
Drupal is an excellent choice for developers or those who can afford to employ a developer. It’s especially useful if users want to create a fully customized site that must handle a large amount of data.
Though Drupal is a free CMS for website creation, the user will require their own hosting. It provides comprehensive control over content presentation and user and permission management through an advanced administrative interface. It is quick loading, secure, and supports over 100 languages out of the box. It is one of the greatest headless CMS solutions for building a website due to its ready-made themes for various industries, such as tourism and eCommerce.
3. Joomla CMS
Joomla is one of the top free CMS solutions, as it comes with an excellent range of features and supports 70+ languages. It’s an excellent open-source CMS for any website that requires extensive content administration, particularly educational sites or complicated websites like social networks.There are several front-end and back-end templates available to assist a user in laying a solid foundation. The vast user groups, user administration capabilities, and many built-in features, such as search management and free CMS marketing tools, distinguish Joomla. Users will be able to acquire and manage user consent as well.
Joomla is user-friendly for developers. At the same time, it has a user-friendly interface, which fits our CMS description.
4. Wix
Wix offers a free CMS plan. It also offers a wide range of templates to get started with the website.
Wix’s step-by-step wizard makes website creation a pleasant experience. The Wix setup walks through the template selection process, ensuring users receive the right template for their website. It also incorporates social networking and has blogging capabilities.
Wix has a plethora of pre-made templates from which to choose. These are entirely responsive and look excellent on mobile devices and desktop PCs.
From the Wix App Market, users may add a variety of apps to the site. These function, similarly to WordPress plugins, provides additional capabilities to the site.
5. Weebly
Weebly runs more than 30 million websites, which is about 2% of all the websites on the internet.
Weebly is easy to use and lets the user move things around with a drag-and-drop feature.
It has templates that work on mobile devices, so business owners don’t have to worry about their mobile rankings going down because of Mobilegeddon and the growing importance of mobile SEO. There are some SEO features on Weebly, but not as many as on WordPress.
Weebly’s Help Center has a lot of detailed information about important SEO factors like building citations, getting help from Google Search Console, and building links.
Conclusion
In the Middle East, Content is becoming one of the primary means by which businesses engage with customers. Content has become a critical component of businesses, affecting practically every function, including sales, merchandising, and development.
Despite this, 42% of businesses in the Middle East stated that they lack the necessary technologies to manage their content.
This is where a CMS comes into the picture. Without having much technical and coding knowledge, CMS enables a business to create and operate a website for its users. Users can use WordPress CMS, Drupal CMS, Joomla CMS, Wix, and Weebly software applications for the content management of their business.
CMS brings businesses closer to the customer, helping them in customer relationship management and capturing customers from various market segments at optimal cost.
