A content management system (CMS)
is a ready-made website outline, a blank page, and one that is cheap for you to create yourself - rather than using a professional. This webpage is a CMS, and cost less than £50. Such services are signed up to for a year at a time, and go hand in hand with the choosing of a domain url, such as www.cardiff-seo-services.co.uk. You become the owner of that domain, you can sit your website on it, and then hope that people will find it.
This website was thrown together using a cheap CMS from www.1and1.co.uk, the domain costing £2.49, the package around £60 - which allows for several websites to be created, not just the one. I use this CMS as an example and a training tool.
When you sign up to such a service, the CMS will allow you to quickly and easily choose a domain name (hopefully a meaningful one - see beginners guide to SEO) and then the CMS will submit that domain to the internet for you. That can take a few days, typically 2-3 in my experience. You can then start to design a website by choosing from a list of ready-made sites known as templates. They vary in colour, size, layout and key images. When you have found one that suits your business, and one that you like the look of, you can type in the detail, add photographs, and then add extras like a guestbook facility or an enquiry form. You can even use it for eCommerce.
Having typed in your text, you can SAVE and then PUBLISH, and a minute later you are on the web. If your domain has been submitted, you will be able to find your website by typing in the url, and after a day or two you should be able to find it by searching on Google (and trawling through many pages to start with).
Above you will see the 1and1.co.uk interface for adjusting your website. You can add or remove pages, alter the design later on, publish it to the web, or click on CONTENT to edit the page detail - as below.
The great benefit of a CMS is that you can change the detail yourself, and change it every day if you like, you don't need to pay to have your website altered. If you have a new product or service, special offer or announcement, you can do it all youself. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can use a CMS. Even people who remember ABBA could use one.
Drawbacks
With a CMS like this one, a site can be purchased for a few pounds, thrown together in a matter of just a few hours, and be visible on the web in a day or two. Using basic SEO, it could be attracting customers within 4-5 days, and by using Google Adwords PPC it could be attracting customers inside an hour.
Websites need not cost a fortune. But it will never look quite as professional as a properly designed website, that is the drawback. They can look very nice, clean and presentable, but will be limited in what they can do. The next step up, a CMS for £250, would tick all of those boxes.
Analytics
1and1.co.uk provides a very comprehensive analysis suite, as good as Google Analytics. It will tell you how many people are visting your website each day, where referals are coming from - other people's websites (backlinks), which country your visitors are coming from, how long people stay on your various website pages (stickiness). This is all essential stuff if you are to improve your SEO and page ranking, and get the right customers visiting your website. It will even tell you which pages are most popular, and which pages people are LANDING on, which may mean that they are finding your second page, not your front page.