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Frustration is working with a content management system! Trust me, I know and so does Steve because we just spent two hours trying to work our way through a content management system for a client.

Now this wasn't just any content management system, this was a custom built management system for an industry that is made up of some very talented small business people. And it wasn't a content management system that came with no instructions; there were written instructions and our client had received about an hour's training in how to enter the products that his business sold ... but what's an hour's training to someone who has only a basic knowledge of computers?

So what was our problem ... why did it take us two hours to make anything happen?

Well to tell you the truth, after two hours we couldn't make anything much happen either. We did manage to enter all his products but they're not yet appearing on the website that the content management system is going to power. So why did we have trouble?

Well the instructions may as well have been written in Swahili because they were fairly unintelligible to ordinary English speakers like me. The interface was far from intuitive too. I'm sure that whoever designed the system knew exactly what every field on each screen was supposed to hold ... and they had even labeled them ... but it seems that the labels didn't quite correspond with the information you were supposed to enter.

Sometimes the field labels and associated information was just plain wrong. We'd prepared the text and the images that we needed before we headed for the client's office based on what we had been told by the client and what we had seen when we visited the test site that was generated when the content management system was installed on our client's computer. But when we got into the backend the label information told us allowable image sizes were different to what appeared on the front end and that was just the start of our problems.

Since that visit this morning we've talked to the company that produced the content management system and even they don't seem to know why the information that we entered isn't appearing. They're going to call us back and hopefully we'll get some resolution to the problem ... but I'm not holding my breath.

It seems that when it comes to content management systems no one stops to think about the people who will be using the systems. Instead the designers all seem to think that every user is going to be on the same level and same wavelength as they are and sadly nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead of realizing that most users are not on the same technical level as a programmer or web developer these guys just go ahead and produce something that works for them. Unfortunately that means that they're producing something that probably won't work for others.

If the designers of this software had done their job right in the first place our client wouldn't have had to call us in at all. Instead the interface would have been intuitive and even a basic computer user ... like our client ... would have been able to use the program. Instead they've designed a piece of software that is so complex it even has us ... and some of their own employees ... stumped.

But you wouldn't do that would you? You apply the KISS principle to every web page you design ... don't you? You Keep It Simple Stupid don't you?

Well I'll be honest ... sometimes we don't; sometimes we fall into the trap of making web pages and websites that work for us but not for other people. Sometimes we forget that not everyone has been working with computers all day, every day for years and years as we have. Sometimes we forget that what may be intuitive for us is anything but intuitive for others.

And that's something that applies to you too. Every web designer makes the same mistake from time to time. Every web designer sometimes produces something that works for them but not for anyone else and in our line of business that can really have an impact on our bottom line.

If we don't build simple sites that anyone can follow then we're not going to be able to sell our product. If we don't incorporate simple navigation that surfers can follow and that will take them to the pages we want them to see then we're just wasting our time.

Sure, we might build the most beautiful sites anyone has ever seen ... and we might even fill those sites with incredible content ... but if people can't find their way to that content then what's the point?

Keep It Simple Stupid is something that every one of us should have engraved in bold letters on our keyboards and on our monitors because it is one of the fundamentals when it comes to making money from selling things online.