How to simplify website management? Customization, Part 1

How often did you have to add or change information on a website? What emotions did it evoke? Unfortunately, confusion, anxiety, and uncertainty arise far more often than joy and satisfaction. This is especially noticeable with new or complex interfaces. As website functionality increases, so does the complexity of content management.

In the past, adding content to a corporate website only required copying text from MS Word and adding images. Breaking the text into blocks with headings, lists, and tables made the site look better than most competitors.

However, progress does not stand still, particularly in marketing and IT. To gain a competitive advantage, it’s essential to outpace rivals online. Launching new features on a website is often more accessible and affordable than innovations in other areas of business.

Modern websites solve much more complex tasks:

• Fast information search
• Interactive and user-friendly content presentation
• Interconnection of various elements
• Perception of information and saving visitors’ time
• Automating everything that can be automated

But this has led to more complex systems. Standard CMS platforms—whether universal or specialized—always offer a vast array of features, most of which may not be needed. However, each situation is unique: while some functions are unnecessary, others may be critical but absent. As a result, the admin interface may start to resemble a spaceship control panel.

In this situation, there are two extremes:

1. Development on a framework — a long and costly process that leads to fully custom admin panel all requirements.
2. Site-builder or website constructor — a fast and cheap solution used for short-term projects or tests, but inconvenient for long-term use.

Of course, it’s possible to find resources for framework development or learn to work with site-builders. However, it’s crucial to assess the cost-effectiveness of each solution.

What do we offer?

For most projects, the optimal solution is using WordPress + ACF Advanced Custom Fields This allows you to create a user-friendly website on familiar CMS as of October 2024, WordPress powers 62.5% of all websites Using ACF and other customizations allows for a high degree of flexibility with minimal costs.

How to measure the convenience of your admin panel?

Let’s look at an example of a tour company’s website:

1. Time. How long does it take to add or update tour information: 30 minutes or 1.5 hours? Saving 1 hour per tour means saving an entire workday for every 8 tours.
2. Mental health. A user-friendly admin panel reduces stress and helps prevent employee burnout. If tasks are inconvenient, dissatisfaction builds up quickly. That leads to loosing productivity.
3. Standardization. When each type of content is placed in its own field, it can easily be:
   • Styled with new UI/UX solutions
   • Displayed in different sections of the site
   • Calculated (if numeric fields are used)
   • Sorted and filtered by parameters
4. Risks. Errors often arise due to the large volume of data. For example, a tour card can contain 12-20 pages of text. To minimize mistakes, we took the following steps:
   • Divided the tour card into several tabs
   • Automated the process: we use templates with variable placeholders.

For example:

Payment terms (per person):
Within 7 days after signing up for the tour, a deposit of $700 must be paid. The remaining amount is due 65 days before departure. Payment confirms participation and agreement to the cancellation terms.

The variables “7 days“, “$700” and “65 days” are automatically filled in but can be manually adjusted. This reduces the risk of errors and speeds up the process.

This is just one of the methods we use to simplify website management. Customizing the admin panel will make your work easier and more comfortable. Other important tasks include product import, data synchronization, and documentation preparation. Which we explore in our articles too.