What is the best way to manage your web content editing in 2017?

When you're working on your small-business website, It will require many separate pieces to work together. Not only do you need great design, but also a quick and simple means of adding in content to reach your customers and search engines alike.

One of the key areas that too many solopreneurs and small-business owners miss is choosing the right tools to allow them to create new content that is on brand, easy to manage and supports company growth.

When it comes to editing, there are typically two choices. Form-based editing and WYSIWYG/Word-Style editing. Let's take a look under the hood at both styles and get an understanding of what may be the best approach for your business.

You're probably most used to editing your website with the WYSIWYG editor common to platforms like WordPress (in the fashion of a large space to input text and buttons to format the text as bold or italic, bullet point etc).

The age-old saying is if you can use Word, you'll be able to edit using a WYSIWYG editor. The truth - this works perfectly fine for simple pages (as would be the case in Word) but starts going downhill for advanced content. Think of it this way, could you build a website yourself using just Word?

The likelihood is that the answer is no, and it typically requires some degree of tech or design savvy to get outstanding results from a WYSIWYG editor alone.

WYSIWYG editors do work well however if you're sticking to simple content formatting - in fact we make use of these in smaller areas of the builder in Sites Done Right (like this very content block).

Most importantly, the concern from WYSIWYG editing is the fact that it does not separate your content from your design. Take the example that you'd like to change your content from one format to another, it would require you adjusting lots of content to get there.

Not only is the bad practice from a technical perspective, but means your site will be less scalable and harder to update when needed.

If you're a small business owner, then three things are probably true for you:

1. You are not designer
2. You're not a developer
3. No one should know your business better than you

What this means is that you should focus on creating great content, And the platform you choose should enable you to do this without having to worry about design or code.

So, if you are ready to start treating your website in the same way that many large businesses and enterprise companies do, then you should certainly consider form based editing. It promotes good website building practice by separating the concerns of data and design.

There is sometimes a short learning curve for form-based editing, but once you've got your head around it building blog posts, pages and other rich content is a breeze!

Most form-based editor setups will give you access to specific field types that you can use to create advanced content in just a few clicks. An example? Let's say you're running a campaign with an expiry date - why not include a countdown timer on your web page to the event date. This should be as simple as picking a date and time from a calendar and maybe choosing some formatting options for the timer.

The small business web design world is made up of a vast mix of needs, so choosing the right content editing solution for you should take into account:

• where you are today
• where you'd like your site to be
• how you're going to get there

We hope you enjoy what you've read. We'd love to hear about how you're currently managing your content - why not reach out in the comments section below?