Website Management – Have you got your Priorities in Order
I’ll come straight out with it, Website management, have you got your priorities in order? You’re busy I get it, you’re fulfilling orders, chatting with suppliers, coming up with great schemes to market, manage and get everything done. And of course, you are in demand, people want you to do things, you’ve an inbox full of stuff you have to do and that’s without taking into account your Brexit discussions with colleagues at the Water fountain!
So what is my grip, we see it here all the time, we charge everything from a couple hundred quid to make a website to a good few thousand and it’s only going to get worse for you and better for us, i.e. we’re going to be charging more as demand continues unabated in good or bad economic times.
But you’re website is your Shop Window and worse – we’re often, for good or bad, the gatekeepers to your Shop Window or Website Management. You cannot afford to neglect us. I don’t say that in any sort of money grabbing way or demand for more work etc. But we often know more about what is happening on your website than you do. Latest Stats, server status, revenue generated, enquiries, chances are we know about it before you do.
Now re-read what I’ve been writing and replace the word Website with Shop Window and you’ll more or less know what I mean.
Shop Window
But you wouldn’t run your Shop like this, even if it were a real shop, or office or home, or business or anything. If it were anything else other than your Website, you’d clean it, polish it, make sure it was up to date, change the Shop Window, add the fresh croissants or change the clothes on the manikin, you’d make sure the loos are clean and that it isn’t about to all cave in. If you’re running a Festival, you’d make sure people knew when the next festival was on, if you’re selling computer software, you’d make sure people knew when the new title or release was out. Flowers – they’d be fresh.
So why oh why is the website neglected to the bottom of the pile on the todo list. Why do marketing manager put their Blog Posts at the bottom of the priority list. That email from the designers suggesting something is out of date… why is it not dealt with.
And before I go on, a) you all know what I am talking about and b) I am just the same. I’m writing this Blog Post 2 weeks late to what I had planned. I wrote nothing in July! I’ve not updated out Client section in 6 months. I am the same as you.
Plan and Planning
Something has to give, in this Blog Posts, I like to present the problem empathise a bit, explain it effects me as well and then present a possible solution. The obvious solution here is that we’re nuts – we have to put the website at the very top of our Priority List – it is the most urgent thing you can do and that fact is only going to get truer as Technology increases in its domination of the modern world, without your website you have no Shop Window and people cannot buy from you.
So ideas:
- Planning – get a Plan and make it happen. You should know what you have to do… so schedule it in, that way your website management is mangable and there is no need for you to put off the job you know you have to do. Make time for it. It’s what will sell your business.
- Think tidy and fresh. You really would put half an hour, or more every week or month into cleaning your workspace, shop, office, home. Do the same for your website. You buy Multi-surface Polish, think of te website with the same attitude, it is a core, but it enbles your clients or customers (and staff) to feel good about you as a business.
- Outsource – I hear you – you get a cleaner in… well think of the website in the same way – if you can’t be bothered to pick up a duster. Get someon in who can write Blog Posts. Frankly, the per hour costs these days are almost the same.
There are sepcific reasons why you put website management at the bottom of your priorities – it’s hard, its big, its time consuming, it means work. Well yes, it is all these things. But it’s also cost you a lot of money. You might have put in a few thousand punds into the original website and then a couple hundred more every now and again. It’s costing you and still, it is bottom of the list.
Our success stories, and a reason we always recommend start small and grow is that the smaller clients tend to want to get as much as they can from their website – they are keen, lean and mean. It works, they can have dozens of enquiries a month or sell good amounts of product. Bigger, deeper pocketed clients, have a real danger of stagnation, things take time, they have to approved, agreed by management etc. the issue here is that it’s easier not to do anything and then say there was no time for it. Often we struggle even to have a phone call about something the client initiated.
So – what is the take home here. Reassess your website, put it at the top of your list of priorities, or success will pass you by. You wouldn’t leave your shop floor dirty or the windows fogged up, same goes for the website. treat your website as you would your shop. It needs you.
And we’re here to help if needed.