Do I Need an Enterprise Website?

Years ago, businesses had to put their best foot forward by dressing up their storefronts and creating one-of-a-kind window displays to attract customers. People would walk up and down the street and make judgements about the businesses they wanted to visit based on what the ‘face’ of those companies looked like. Now, our world is all digital and people look at websites instead of window displays to decide whether or not to give a company their business.

So, what does your website say about your company? What do you want it to say about your company to potential customers? Is your current website capable of achieving your goals? These are important questions to consider on an ongoing basis to make sure that you are not only talking directly to the customers you want to talk to, but you also want to make sure that you are still using the right tool for your website.

You may have heard the term 'CMS' thrown around before. CMS stands for 'Content Management System.' According to w3techs.com, more than 60% of all websites use a CMS. Content Management Systems are powerful tools that can help to streamline your website content creation because they allow users to build that content without having to work with code. A CMS is what differentiates a 'standard' website from Enterprise Websites. Enterprise Websites are designed to work for an organization or a group by relating a group of web pages. Some of the elements of a successful enterprise website include clear navigation, a conversion-centric, responsive design, strong information architecture, and, of course, content management.

So, do you need an Enterprise Website? To make that decision, consider the following questions.

1. Do you have more than one business unit? For example, if you work with a university with several different departments and schools that have their own website needs -that would classify as a 'business unit'.
2. How large is your company? The larger a company, the more complex the online needs might be.
3. Do you have a need for hosting documents internally and securely?
4. Does your company have workflows and processes that are shared organization-wide?
5. Does your organization need to wait on IT to make changes to your website for the Marketing Department?

If you answered yes to any of these, you might need an Enterprise Website solution.

Now, while it's true that you can use a CMS to build a 'normal' website, an Enterprise CMS-based website is much more complex due to the organization-wide relationships that have to be built into the infrastructure. The platform, or system on which the website is built, is an essential part of the equation and it is usually part of an effort to update what a given business is attempting to do with their digital ecosystem. There are many different CMS platforms that can be used. Each one has it's own set of pluses and minuses. So, it's important to do your research on what CMS is right for you and your needs.

Enterprise website development is one of the many services InGen offers its clients. Our goal as a creative software company is to collaborate with our clients and create a holistic website strategy that will see lasting, measurable results. We enable clients to have the tools they need to be successful.

We'd love to discuss your needs and provide a personalized assessment of your current site. Contact Joe to let us know how we can help.