'Why is updating content so hard?' - overcoming cms usability challenges

Your CMS is meant to be the engine that powers your website content, allowing your team to create, edit, and publish with ease. But what happens when that engine is clunky, overly complex, or simply not fit for purpose? For many, the answer is daily frustration and a significant drag on efficiency. If you've ever heard (or said!) "Why is updating content so hard?", this post is for you.

The bottleneck: when your CMS holds your team back

A very common complaint from businesses is that their chosen CMS is simply too difficult for non-technical staff to use effectively.

• Technical hurdles for simple tasks: Marketing teams, content editors, and other business users often find themselves needing technical knowledge, sometimes even coding skills, just for basic content management tasks. This presents a huge barrier if they lack development skills.

• Unintuitive interfaces: Some systems are notoriously unintuitive, with the research citing platforms like Salesforce's interface as an example that can require extensive training for users to get comfortable.

• The result: Frustration, inefficiency, and significant delays in getting timely content updates, news, or campaign materials published.

Locked in: the trouble with inflexible and rigid systems

Beyond just being hard to use, many businesses report being hampered by CMS platforms that impose rigid structures and workflows. This is particularly true for older, monolithic systems or some custom-built solutions.

• Creativity stifled: These limitations can severely stifle creativity, making it difficult to implement desired content models or innovative page layouts.

• Content silos: Adapting and reusing content across multiple channels (like your main website, a mobile app, or social media feeds) can become a complex chore rather than a simple process.

• Template tyranny: Editors often feel restricted by predefined templates, finding that the system inhibits their ability to present content effectively rather than enabling it.

Death by a thousand clicks: complex administrative interfaces & workflows

Even if a CMS doesn't require coding for every action, the administrative interface itself can be a major source of frustration.

• Cluttered and confusing: Overly complicated features, cluttered dashboards, or perplexing internal workflows are common issues.

• Time-wasting tasks: Simple actions like finding specific content types, managing website categories or tags (taxonomies), or navigating through content approval processes can become incredibly cumbersome and time-consuming.

The developer dependency trap

A direct and costly consequence of poor CMS usability or inflexible systems is an over-reliance on web developers for tasks that should ideally be handled by your content creators or marketing teams.

• Bottlenecks galore: Having to request developer assistance for minor text changes, image uploads, or small layout adjustments creates significant bottlenecks in your content pipeline.

• Slowed publishing cycles: This dependency slows down your entire content publishing cycle, from idea to live page.

• Inflated operational costs: The more you rely on developers for routine content tasks, the higher your operational costs climb.

Beyond inconvenience: the real business cost of a poor CMS

It's crucial to understand that a frustrating CMS is far more than just an internal inconvenience. As the research highlights, its usability is a critical determinant of your company's operational efficiency and marketing agility.

A difficult CMS directly translates to:

• Higher operational costs: Primarily due to the increased need for expensive developer intervention and the inherent inefficiencies of cumbersome workflows.

• Delayed time-to-market: The resulting bottlenecks slow down the entire content lifecycle. This delay for new content, campaign landing pages, or product updates can significantly impact your ability to respond quickly to market changes or capitalize on timely opportunities, ultimately affecting your competitiveness.

Conversely, a user-friendly and efficient CMS empowers your content teams, reduces reliance on developers, and accelerates content deployment, thereby improving overall operational agility.

Choosing wisely: avoiding the "feature checklist" fallacy

A common pitfall in the CMS selection process is relying too heavily on extensive feature checklists without adequately evaluating the practical usability for the primary users—your content creators. While features like advanced personalization or complex workflow management might look impressive on paper, their value is lost if they are too difficult for your team to actually use, or if your company lacks the resources and processes to leverage them properly.

The research underscores the importance of thorough usability testing with actual content staff, focusing on realistic usage scenarios, rather than just ticking boxes on a feature matrix. This helps avoid selecting a system that is powerful in theory but frustrating and inefficient in practice.

Empowering your content team is the goal

Your CMS should be a tool that empowers your team to create and manage compelling content efficiently. It should make their lives easier, not harder. If your current system is a source of daily frustration, it might be time to explore alternatives. Is your CMS a source of daily frustration for your team? It doesn't have to be.

Contact us to discuss how the right CMS can transform your content operations and boost your marketing agility.

Next time, we'll broaden our focus from the CMS to look at the wider challenges of ongoing website maintenance and updates.

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