Many of us feel that we want a customized site because that is what will help us be different from the others. But web site selling is not about being unique. It is about how fresh and correct the content is in your web site.
To achieve relatively constant freshness in your web site requires a constant update of information. If you are selling products, you need to constantly update your events, results of events, pricing, promotions and many more. If you are selling a service, you need to constantly update new information of your services, pricing, promotions etc. Even a government web site needs to be updated promptly when regulations changes.
For a customized website, this would mean that you either need to engage someone periodically to do it or have someone in house with knowledge of how to post, edit or maybe even change web pages.
However, many websites we see today have outdated information. Just a few weeks ago, a customer came to me to ask for a change to their customized website on information that was more than 2 years old! This is just one of the many examples of outdated websites.
How many websites have you visited to check for events and find that the only listings are events that occur years ago? How about promotions that are still listed but have actually ended months ago? Or products that are already no longer available for sale because they are outdated?
Many companies do not pay attention to these items because they do not think they are selling via the website. How untrue this is. Our website presence is the very essence of our business today. Even though we may not be actively selling through the website (ie we have no online sales), the information carried on our site carries our image and portrays who we are. If our site is outdated and full of inaccurate information, it goes to show that we do not care about our customer's perception and view of who we are. This carries a wrong selling message to potential and even existing customers.
These problem all boils down to the fact that website administration is difficult and could be expensive for those of us who do not know html, dhtml, php and all those technological terminology used in web site design.
Just imagine that you now have a system that you can update any time and any day you like - without having to hire a web designer or programmer! As long as you know how to use a word processing software, you are able to update your own content and changes to it. Wouldn't this be great?
And this is just the beginning of what Joomla can offer you. Joomla is a Content Management System (CMS). What this means is that it focuses on content and making it easy for you to update your content without being a web designer expert.
Installation of a Joomla site is extremely easy but even though you do not wish to do it yourself, you could hire this out at minimum cost. The main concern you have is how to update the contents for your site without being dependent on a external company or a web designer. With Joomla and the right components installed, all you have to do is just login to your website and add new events, update an existing event, delete an event or posting of your new contents (which is called articles).
You have all your articles written in Word or any other word processing document and then update it to your website when you sign in. Your articles will automatically be shown in the area where you have pre-designated it to.
Joomla has other great possibilities. Being an open source solution, many companies or individuals have written extensions (or new functionalities) that can be hooked onto it without major development costs or time. For example, if you wish to expand the functionalities of your site or change a template, it is much easier to achieve than having to hire a programmer to do it. To read more about Joomla and the possibilities, go to this site.