Your homepage needs to contain certain elements to be successful in raising your conversion rate. Read the list carefully and check to see if your homepage meets all of the following criteria.

1. Color – The color you choose for your website can have a big effect on your visitors. The type of site you have should be a factor in the colors you choose. There are essentially two types of colors – cool and warm.

Browns, blues and greens are cool colors and can make you feel relaxed, calm and assured. These colors are good for sites pertaining to medicine, relaxation and other sites that have reassuring answers to your problems.

Yellows, reds and oranges are warm colors that bring out feelings of energy, excitement and happiness. These colors work well for exercise sites, sports sites and other energetic type sites.

Purple is a good color for fashion and jewelry sites. It emulates sophistication, royalty, and luxury, but it is also feminine and romantic.

2. Clutter – How does it make you feel when you walk into a business that is messy and full of clutter. It doesn't exactly bring out the confidence in said business. Your website is the same way. You don't want it to look like a junk-filled mess! Keep it simple, clean, consistent and easy to follow. Don't fill your site with flashing banners, junk ads or fancy hard to read font.

3. Header – The header you use for your homepage is very important. You have just a few seconds to "capture" your visitor and the header can be a vital factor in achieving that goal. Make your header professional, short and to the point. You want the header to get the visitor to want to know more about you and your products/services. The header should outline in a few words what the benefits of your site are in a way that will make the visitor stay longer. Color is also a consideration.

4. Ease of Navigation – Another critical point to consider is how easy it is for people to navigate your site. Does your site feel like a maze with doubts on how to get from here to there? Visit your site as a customer and take note on how easy it is to navigate and how well laid out and simple the page is. Is your menu easy to find and follow? Is the font easy to see and read? Does one part of the page flow into another? Are your links prominent and easy to find? Look over every aspect of navigation with an extremely critical eye because people will not stay on a site that makes them feel lost and confused.

5. Use Testimonials – Testimonials are invaluable to your site because they reassure the visitor by increasing your credibility thus allowing them to trust you and your products more easily. Sprinkle a few short testimonials on your landing page where appropriate and have a section saved just for some of your best testimonials. Use detailed testimonials as opposed to more generic ones. For example: "I love your product and will buy more" is not as good as "Your product helped me lose 20 pounds in just 6 weeks!"

6. Contact Information – Nothing makes me leave a site faster than when no contact information or email address is found. This, to me, says the person does not want to be bothered with customers, questions or anything else. I would never do business with a website that does not provide complete and accurate contact info. More than likely, not many people would so it is extremely important to have your contact info prominently displayed on your homepage and every other page of your website.

7. Capture Visitors' Email Addresses – Most of us are familiar with the phrase, "the money is in the list." In a big way, this is true. Capturing your visitors' emails allows you to keep in contact with them so you can build that ever important relationship that will turn them into customers. Most people will not buy anything on a first trip to a website so by capturing their emails you can astronomically increase the chances of converting that person into a customer. You can put a subscription form on every page of your site and be sure to have one on your landing page. Building a mailing list will help you market your sales, specials, etc. and will also help you build a solid customer base.

8. Call to Action - A Call to Action is a specific thing you "order" your visitors to do. This can be done with a text link or graphic. For example: Click here for a free marketing ecourse. You are giving the visitor very clear and concise instructions on what to do. Sometimes your visitors need a little push to complete the call to action so you would use something like this:

Limited Supply Click Here Now, or Sign Up Today for a Free Consultation.

Offer incentives to help your visitor make the decision to complete your call to action. Have just one clear call to action. Do not give you visitors too many choices because it will just result in confusion and indecisiveness.

9. Always Proofread – Always proofread and proofread again to be sure you catch all typos, grammatical errors and so forth. Make sure all your links work and everything on your landing page is in working order and correctly done.

10. Analytics – Be sure to take advantage of your site stats and analytics. This information can be critical to making your page a success. Google Analytics is free and provides a great service for anyone who has a website. You want to see how many people are going from your landing or homepage to other pages of your site. And if they are not, try to find out why, so you can improve your homepage. Monitor your bounce rate, conversion rate and other valued information.

Terri Seymour has over twelve years of online experience and has helped many people start their own business. Visit her site for reprint articles, resources, information, resell ebooks and more. Sign up for the RSS Feed for a free business ebook with MRR. http://www.SeymourProducts.com

Getting in step with the customer's heartbeat will help you stay on track in 2012. In doing so, you'll leave behind planning that has a bogus foundation—one built on specific channels. Considering the popularity of digital and social media platforms, it can be tempting to become a slave to certain channels. But that can be dangerous because it shifts marketers' attention away from how customers regard those channels and how they prefer to get their information.

Here are five ways to first plan for interactions with your customers, and then manage the channels.

1. Research, research and more research: Gaining a complete understanding of the target customer is the only way to turn your marketing in a customer-centric direction. You have more means at your disposal than you might think to create a multi-dimensional customer profile. The profile should include transactional, behavioral, geo-demographic, attitudinal, predictive insights and traditional market research, as well as Voice of Customer (VOC) data acquired from responses to offers, customer service interactions or other touch points with the customer.

Adroit customer segmentation provides predictive insights into your customers and prospective customers, allowing you to map out customers' needs, points of pain, emotional and rational drivers, and channel utilization habits. This helps us keep an open mind to reaching customers in their preferred channels, not ours.

2. Tailor your marketing strategy: Armed with insights from research, it's time to create marketing strategies that address key customer behaviors. The idea here is to tailor marketing campaigns and messages, connecting the brand's value proposition with the precise customer segment. It's all about creating increasing levels of meaning and engagement with customers. With the right tailoring, a customer's preference should guide all marketing communications content, timing, frequency, channel, and other variables.

Showcase your brand's ability to improve that customer's life based on carefully identified segment attributes. And always be sure that customers sees the product in their preferred channels.

Suspects who have a need, but don't know you;
Prospective customers that are engaged in the research stage;
Customers who have done business with you;
Repeat customers who are beginning to like you; or
Advocates who tell your story for you through word of mouth referral, social media posting, etc.

4. Listen: Allow the customer response data to talk to you. Listen to its message. A customer-focused marketer evaluates the customer's experience. Only real-time customer data can assure optimal engagement. Be ready to challenge your marketing assumptions constantly, because customers may be changing their minds about you and your competitors.

A great guideline is that each and every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to collect Voice of Customer data. VOC data confirms existing information or reveals new trends. By listening, you have the opportunity to fine-tune and optimize your communications within channels or to switch channels quickly.

5. Monitor and measure: Everybody measures sales. But not everyone measures marketing ROI, trend data, customer engagement factors, or how customers advocate for your product or company. To assure marketing that's customer-focused, those types of things need to be measured. Data will unlock your marketing strategy for next week, next month and next year. In today's business environment, if you can't measure it you might as well forget it.

I'm a believer in channel integration—but only when the customer is driving the channel.

Andrea Krohnberg is an engagement strategist for Bridgz Marketing Group in Minneapolis, leverages data and market insight to design marketing programs that achieve optimum customer engagement.

The Joomla Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Joomla 2.5.0. This is a security release. Version 2.5.0 is is the next update from version 1.7. (Note that we have skipped from version 1.7.x to 2.5.x.)

Version 2.5.0 is the second release made within the new six-month release cycle that started with the delivery of Joomla 1.6 in January 2011. Version 2.5 is also a long-term-support (LTS) release that will be supported for at least 18 months.

The Production Leadership Team's goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community. Learn more about Joomla! developement at the Developer Site.

Version 1.7 will reach end of life one month from today, on 24 February 2012. All users of version 1.7 should update to version 2.5.0 before that time. The update process is very simple, and complete instructions are available here. Note that there are now easier and better ways of updating than FTPing the files.

Download

New Installations: Click here to download Joomla 2.5.0 (Full package) »

Update Package: Click here to download Joomla 2.5.0 (Update package) »

Note: Please read the update instructions before updating.

Instructions

• New installation and technical requirements
  
• Migration from Joomla! 1.5.x

Want to test drive Joomla? Try the online demo or the Joomla JumpBox. Documentation is available for beginners.

Please note that you should always backup your site before upgrading.

Release Notes

Check the Joomla 2.5.0 Post-Release FAQs to see if there are important items and helpful hints discovered after the release.

Statistics for the 2.5.0 release period (14 November 2011 to 24 January 2012)

• Joomla 2.5.0 contains:
  • 26 new features added
  • 4 security issues fixed
  • 356 tracker issues fixed

Joomla 2.5.0 uses version 11.4 of the Joomlal Platform.

New Features Added

In addition to the new Joomla Platform, the following new features have been added, with links to the Feature tracker issue.

• Add ablility to turn off the email to user when an Admin creates a user (Andrea Tarr)
• Improvements for batch processing (Michael Babker)
• Menu item parameter "Note" (Marcell van Geest)
• No "new user notification" email sent to admin (Kenny Wickstrom)
• Implementing default text per language in syndicate module (Jean-Marie Simonet)
• Implementing image option for the offline.php default page (Jean-Marie Simonet)
• Joomla! update notification button in the quickicons module (Nicholas Dionysopoulos)
• Debug Plugin Reloaded (Nikolai Plath)
• *Option to set Joomla to Site Offline (YES) during installation (fade2grey)
  
• Patch to enable change of newsfeed display direction (Mathieu Cattin)
• Add a true autoloader to the CMS (Rouven Weßling)
• Database Version Check (Mark Dexter)
• "Select a Menu Item Type" in modal box in menu item edit page (Dennis Hermatski)
• Improving SEO: New system plugin: languagecode (Jean-Marie Simonet)
• Manager for Language Overrides (Patrick Alt)
• Easier workflow by linking Menu Manager: Add Menu to Module Manager: Module Menu (Andrew Eddie, Jacques Rentzke)
• Add an option to filter the mod_whosonline by groups of the connected user (Christophe Demko)
• Add a check for native ZIP support to the Installation (Rouven Weßling)
• Add ability to support other databases starting with Microsoft SQL Server / Windows Azure (Hooduku Team)
• mod_status optimization (Kyle Ledbetter)
• Category filtering on content doesn't including sub-categories (Ofer Cohen)
• User Notes (Andrew Eddie)
• Use the images and urls fields to create simple standardized layouts (Elin Waring)
• Custom Black List in Text Filters - Ready to test - Makes it possible to overwrite default blacklist - Joomla 1.7 (Tore B. Krudtaa, Denise McLaurin)
• Captcha in the core (Jonnathan S. Lima, Rouven Weßling, Nicola Galgano)
• Finder Integration (Rob Schley, Michael Babker, Elin Waring, Chris Davenport, Omar Ramos, Viet Hoang Vu, Jean Marie Simonet, Rouven Weßling, Louis Landry, Gabriele Pongelli)

Articles

Let's start with some definitions. In Joomla!, an Article is some written information that you want to display on your site. It normally contains some text and can contain pictures and other types of content. For many Joomla! sites, articles form the majority of the information presented in the website.

It is important to understand that, with Joomla!, the content of the site (for example, Articles) is totally separate from the formatting of the site -- the way it looks on the page. So it is best to think of articles as pure content, independent of the way it might be presented. For example, the same Article might be shown with different fonts, colors, headings, and background, and might be shown in different locations on the page.

Sections and Categories

Sections and categories in Joomla! provide an optional method for organizing your articles. Here's how it works. A Section contains one or more categories, and each Category can have articles assigned to it. One Article can only be in one Category and Section.

For example, you might have a Section called "Pets", and categories called "Dogs" and "Cats". Articles about dogs would be assigned to the "Dogs" Category, ones about cats the "Cats" Category. So an Article about dogs would be in the "Pets" Section and the "Dogs" Category. You could not have one Article that is in both the "Cats" and "Dogs" categories. To work around this, you could either (1) create a new Category called "Cats and Dogs" or (2) create a second Article to put in the second Category.

There are two main reasons you might want to organize your Articles in sections and categories.

List and Blog Layouts

First, there are built-in Menu Item Types in Joomla! that take advantage of this organization. These are the Section Blog, Section List, Category Blog, and Category List. These Menu Item Types (also called "layouts") make it very easy to show articles that belong to sections or categories. As new articles are created and assigned to sections and categories, they will automatically be placed on these pages according to the parameters you set for each page.

For example, say you have a Section Blog layout for the "Pets" section, and say you have it set to order articles starting with the most recent one first. When you add a new Article to the "Pets" Section, it will automatically show on the "Pets" blog page as the first Article. You don't have to do anything other than add the Article and assign it to the "Pets" Section.

Organizing Articles in Article Manager

If you will have a large number of articles on your site, a second reason to use sections and categories is to simply group the articles so you can find them. For example, in the Article Manager, you can filter articles based on Section or Category. So if you have 200 articles in your site, you can more easily find an Article if you know it's Section or Category.

Sections and Categories vs. Menu Organization

It is important to understand that, just because Joomla! uses a 3-tier organization level for articles (Section ? Category ? Article), this has nothing to do with the structure of the menus on your site. For example, your site could have one menu level or six menu levels.

Other Types of Categories

There is also a potential for confusion about categories. Sections are only used for articles. However, categories are also used for other components, including Banners, Contacts, News Feeds, and Weblinks. These categories are completely different from Article categories and are set up in different screens in the back end of Joomla!. So when you see something about categories, it might refer to Article categories or it might refer to categories for these other components.

Neil,

You've heard all the buzz about Facebook.  If you're like most people, you fall in one of two scenarios:

You are already excited and on board with it with a killer Fan Page
-or-
You are confused and don't know how to participate in the action.  

Facebook Fan Pages are a great tool to generate new leads and develop relationships with people to help grow your business.

There is some confusion about a Profile on Facebook, a Group and a Fan Page or Business Page.

Unlike groups in Facebook, Fan pages are visible to unregistered people and are indexed by the engines -  which is another opportunity for you to come up in the engines.

The number of Fans you can have is unlimited (whereas the Friend limit is 5,000).

Pages are generally better for a long-term relationships with your fans, readers or customers.

Pages include links.  Because the pages are public, you can get some link juice (link popularity). 

You can send "updates" to fans whenever you want.  It's a nice way of building a database of interested users.  Send messages about new products, updated website, etc.

When someone joins a Fan Page, it's published in their News feed for all of their Friends to read (unless they have turned this off).  This helps spread the word about your Fan Page.

A Fan or Business Page is designed to promote a business.  It can be used to share simple information like your business hours, contact information and product/service offerings.  It can also be used as a marketing tool.

If you design a fun and graphically appealing Fan Page that is designed to capture leads and promote your business well, it can be a good tool for generating new leads.

You don't have to have a Facebook profile to have a Fan/Business page BUT if you want some of the added features to enhance the page, then you do need a profile.  You don't have to be active and look for old high school or college friends or play any of the games or other things people do on Facebook.  You can use Facebook simply as a business tool.  You just need a simple profile with your name and a link to your website and then the Fan/Business page can be set up with all of the added benefits. 

Anyone can set up a Fan page, but to get the most out of it with the added features, you need to know HTML.

So how exactly do you benefit?
1.    You show customers that you are relevant and current with the times.  Your company is cutting edge and not dated.  How you present your company is how they are going to judge you and if you appear dated in your presentation they may assume what you offer is dated and therefore not as valuable.  So the benefit here is credibility.
2.    You demonstrate to potential customers that you are human and most importantly that you care about them and what they have to say.  (Remember "people don't care what you know until they know you care"   The benefit?  Building trust and relationships (the key to earning new business AND repeat business)
3.    You offer more than a corporate brochure (most websites are little more than a corporate brochure and you need that as part of your strategy but you also need something more to increase interactivity and excitement).  You engage users and get them to participate.  The benefit here is obvious, anyone actively engaged with your brand is going to be more beneficial to you (as a buyer, a repeat buyer and even as an advocate or evangelist for your brand).  
4.    You get the chance to address publically all of the questions and concerns your customers have about your products and services (which is you are honest you know are being asked anyway without your participation).  The benefit: you get your chance to explain and share your side of the story.  A powerful marketing concept is to reveal a flaw or point of contention for your potential consumers and squash it early so it isn't in the back of their mind through the sales process.  What better way to show people that you aren't perfect, there may have been some issues or concerns but how you deal with them can actually win a customer over for life.  I personally have never encountered a company that doesn't have a flaw, a problem, a history of customer complaints.  The key is not to find perfection in a company, the key is to find a company that stands behind their product or service and puts their customer's satisfaction first.  Social media is a great way to see this in action. 
5.    You end up learning what your potential customers want and need from you and that is VITAL information for future marketing and growth.  The benefit here is a goldmine of information to help you better target and market to your audience in the future.  (Real marketers salivate over this one).
6.    You build community.  You build a resource.  Benefit?  Increase the value of your company.  This community becomes a huge asset if you ever look to sell your business and it's something you'll tap into regularly.  Imagine launching a new product or announcing a special sale - won't that launch or sale do better instantly when you have an active community to announce it to?
7.    You connect with thought leaders in your industry and create relationships that potentially bring large opportunity to you.  The benefit?  Connections.  Remember the old saying "it's not what you know, it's who you know"?  Social media offers an unprecedented chance to get to know people you may not have otherwise known.
8.    You build links.  Links boost search engine rankings. 
9.    You reach people that you may not otherwise reach.  More and more people are using social media to get product and service recommendations.  If you aren't on social media sites, you are missing a segment of your audience. 

If you want us to set up your Fan page for you, the following is included:

• Banner design for your page that has a similar look and feel to your website
• Set up of simple profile page, if you don't already have one.
• Creation of Fan Page with SEO and marketing strategies in mind.
• Introduction text for Fan Page - professionally copy written.
• Blueprint for promoting the page.
  
  Some interesting Facebook stats:
• Facebook has 650 Million Global Users (and growing)
• Facebook has 100 Million U.S. Users:  Facebook is strong around-the-world (Canada has the highest penetration rate), but nearly 1/3 of all Facebook users are in the U.S.
• The average Facebook User Spends 55 Minutes Per Day
• Real-time Search Is Important Today: Facebook is now making most content available publicly (unless you adjust your privacy settings). This has tremendous implications for search engine optimization and reputation management.  You need to be on top of real-time search - today.
  
  A recent study (The Sysomos study) found a strong correlation between amount of content (notes, links, photos, videos and custom pages/tabs) and number of fans.
  
  If you are looking to really grow your Fan base, you need something more than a standard Fan page.
• To get more details on Facebook Fan Pages, click here:  http://ecombuffet.com/fbfpSPN110901.htm

 To Your Social Success,
Jennifer Horowitz
Director of Marketing
www.EcomBuffet.com
562-592-5347
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ecombuffet

Facebook Page: http://www.ecombuffet.com/SEO-Fanpage/

Joomla security - one of the most frequent topics of conversation among Joomie's (usability is a close second) - is a complex area and the technicalities of it quickly get ahead of most Joomla users. Often, it's a conversation about the reputation Joomla has about security that starts "Is Joomla secure?" People are often concerned about the seeming high number of hacked Joomla sites, and people defending Joomla pointing at the need to update 3rd party extensions or use good hosts.

There are many specific things you can do to make your site secure. They range from the obvious to making sure folder permissions are correct on the server, to esoteric like changing the jos_ MySQL table prefix that Joomla uses. For 99% of sites, security boils down to:

1. Use a good host, that means paying more than $10 a month.

2. Backup lots. Be like Nike... Just DO it

3. Patch often. Joomla and all your extensions.

Of course, life isn't so simple. The reality of Joomla security is much more complex, as these are very generalized tasks. Other things to think about as you are securing your website.

• If you have a website - someone needs to be keeping it safe.
  If it's not you, make sure you know who it is (btw, its not your hosting company unless its a managed one like Simplweb). Unless you live in Vermont, you probably lock your house and car; do the same for your site!
• You are being hacked all the time.
  All sites are - check your logs! Hacker bots are continually scouring the web trying to find server weaknesses. The troubles start when they find one.
• Just like insurance - Joomla security is only thought of *after* you have a problem.
  You need to consider security a cost of goods. Would you drive with no car insurance? Time and resources for securing your site are an ongoing cost of running your website.
• It's not Joomla security - its web security.
  Your CMS is only the front facing part of your website. There are lots of ways to hack into your site... FTP, apache, or simply poor password management. Make sure you are looking at the big picture.
• Yes, keep extensions up to date!
  Joomla has probably the biggest universe of 3rd party plugins for any open source CMS. Along with that, the quality insurance is difficult. Use only trusted sources and make sure you have the latest version.
• Keep Joomla up to date (duh)
• Have a backup of your site.
  You should be able to get back online from a dead server in 1 day or less. You might be backing up everything with tools provided by your host, using a Joomla-only backup tool like Akeeba, or maybe you are paying for managed hosting for them to it.
• As your site grows, it paints a bigger target on itself for hackers.
  If your site is doing well, then you need to make sure you are taking extra steps with security. This is most often non-Joomla steps like hardening the server, turning off FTP and installing Apache firewalls and security.

Joomla Security Resources

I have tried to gather a range of resources, from official news to useful 3rd party guides. Everything here is based on personal interaction rather than a quick untrusted search through Google.

Joomla Security Strike Team
http://developer.joomla.org/security.html

RSS Feed of Security issues (these appear to be the same feed)
Security RSS Feed - http://feeds.joomla.org/JoomlaSecurityNews
Vulnerability News - http://developer.joomla.org/security/news.html

Official Documentation on Joomla Security
http://docs.joomla.org/Category:Security_Checklist

Official Vulnerable Extensions List
http://docs.joomla.org/Vulnerable_Extensions_List

Useful 3rd Party Security Tutorials
http://www.howtojoomla.net/how-tos/security/joomla-security-primer
http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-blog/review-of-securelive-joomla-security-extension
http://www.joomlashack.com/university/intermediate-course/199-21-techniques-to-secure-a-joomla-website (requires subscription)

Security Extensions
Secure Live - http://www.securelive.net

Fully Managed Joomla Hosting (all patches, backups and security monitored)
Simplweb - http://www.simplweb.com

Many e-tailers are improving their competitive edge by mingling the human elements of the in-store shopping experience with the power of buying online. Here are a few tips to help humanize your website and keep visitors coming back:
See Your Site through the Eyes of Your Visitors

Innovations in a technique called co-browsing enable site visitors to enlist your guidance during their visit. With cobrowsing software, one can see what site visitors are interacting with on the site and walk them through the buying process — similar to interacting with a sales associate at a brick-and-mortar store. Through this process, the associate and customer arrive at the best solution, together. Co-browsing re-creates this experience by giving visitors virtual access to a human on the other end. In fact, co-browsing gives you the power to do everything with visitors from finding that perfect product to filling out forms at checkout.
Get Serious About Your CRM

If you don't have one already, invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) system. With a CRM, you can keep track of everything from sales activities and customer service inquiries to the number of customers living in Boise, Idaho, who purchased bicycle helmets over the last two years

If you already have a CRM, find new ways to maximize your investment. If you are looking to add a new vendorprovided service to your mix, like live chat or email, make sure that you will be able to integrate those products with your CRM. For example, by integrating a CRM with live chat software your reps will have instant access to a visitor's previous purchases, demographics and visit history. Reps can leverage this info during their chat conversations with visitors in the same way that brickand- mortar associates recognize and work with returning customers. Such interactions with visitors help build rapport and trust, further humanizing the experience of your website.

Analyze Results

Consider this: The overwhelming majority of brickand- mortar stores are largely unable to do genuine statistical analysis on what is working best in their shops. With the exception of high-volume big brands, most stores rely largely on anecdotal associate feedback about what works for customers and what doesn't. Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of doing business online is the availability of products that provide data about your website which can be leveraged to improve the overall user experience and positively impact sales and brand loyalty.

Standards like Google Analytics do a great deal of heavy lifting, but there are also many complementary solutions to help you work smarter, not harder. Try testing the waters with options that drill into real-time insight and visitor monitoring. Some solutions even give you the ability to set up custom alerts, like shopping cart dollar amount thresholds or number of pages visited. "Listening" to this kind of individual and trending data gives you the power to further optimize the performance and usability of your sight, keeping visitors coming back.

With technology advancing constantly and competition sprouting up faster than ever, the need to differentiate your site by implementing new ways to transform and improve the buying experience for visitors is critical to continued success. Techniques that blend the best of shopping at a storefront with shopping online are likely to be the next evolution on the path to increasing conversions, boosting sales and strengthening brand loyalty.

About the Author: Michael Teitelbaum is Chief Executive Officer at Velaro, Inc., an award-winning live chat software-as-a-service provider.

A CMS does precisely what we have discussed. It allows you to manage and change content easily on your website in a professional manner. The evolving nature of the web and the advent of Web 2.0 design have made content management indispensable for every professionally meaning website. A CMS thus offers the right way ahead in content management for a wide variety of portals and websites from an extensive range of industries.

One of the best CMS packages available presently is Joomla CMS. In fact, Joomla CMS is extremely easy to use and it has extensively attracted the attention of website developers all around the world. It leads the way in content management and suits the needs of a vast majority of web professionals including designers and managers alike. It is also called a 'dynamic portal engine' because you can use it to build dynamic websites as well.

Joomla is best suited for a variety of B2B and B2C portals and applications and easily meets the specifications for web development set out by companies that require direct access with informative content to their visitors online. Joomla CMS effectually meets the needs of companies and individuals in this information age. With Joomla, companies access vast and limitless possibilities to create open and powerful web applications in amazingly less time. You can easily put video, audio, blogs, and forum on your website. Plus, the availability of templates makes your task of building the website an easy one.

Since Joomla is flexible and adaptive, there are a number of advantages of using this package over several other competing content management systems. The simplicity of Joomla means that it is easy to use even by non-technical users. At the same time, it is an open source content management system and is available free of cost from the Joomla website. Besides being easily maintainable, it allows for faster and better organization of web content.

The open source nature and free-of-cost availability of this package means that the Joomla community comprises of many distinguished entities such as community forums, corporate portals, ecommerce websites, corporate intranets, educational websites, website directories, and many more.

Due to its flexibility and ease of use, Joomla has received a lot of support from large and small companies, businesses, and even entrepreneurs. With the Joomla community growing day-by-day, many web development companies now offer a variety of Joomla related solutions that are proving to be effective and valuable in this competitive business scenario.