When you engage a web developer and graphic designer to create a website for you, there is one crucial aspect that left ignored, your business will pay the price for it.
I’m talking about these two questions:
- Will you (or your marketing person) be able to update the content as and when you please?
- Will you (or your marketing person) be able to control social meta settings?
If the answer to these questions is a no, your business might be in trouble.
Updating content
Not having direct access to your website means delay in updating crucial content that could bring in instant revenue. Here are just a few scenarios that are likely to come up in the day to day operation of any SME:
- You notice a mistake in your list of services and want to correct it immediately.
- You need to update your price list urgently.
- You want to publish blog posts and engage with your website visitors by responding to their comments.
- A new staff member has joined and you want their profile up on the website by the end of the day.
Not being able to do these instantly is especially common when buying a custom-built static website with no admin platform. A shiny new, brilliantly looking and unique website that definitely no-one else has. Question is whether your small business really needs a Ferrari when an Audi would be perfect …
On the other hand, not having access to the site is like buying a car with no ignition key.
It can be a costly mistake …
Ask your web developer whether you’ll be able to have direct access to the website, if so then when exactly, and if not then how quickly and how often they’ll be able to update the website for you.
Controlling social meta
Not being able to control social meta settings means that whenever you post something from your website on social media (eg. a blog post or a web page that you want to share), the imagery and text of your link previews will always be the same. Say, you share a recent blog post. Instead of showing a special preview of that post, you just see the same standard preview of your Home page, possibly with your logo in it. Not very exciting and not at all professional.
In all businesses I’m involved in, I now use WordPress – an open-source, versatile platform that is easy to use and provides all the essentials our businesses need. It took us some time and therefore money (both spent and mostly not earned) to get here, but we learnt a lot from these mistakes.
I’m not saying that WordPress is the only go-to website builder – it’s got its own advantages and disadvantages and indeed, there are many different business needs where WordPress will probably not be the best choice. I just hope that by raising the above two questions, you’ll be more aware of an important aspect that may steer you in the right direction.
For more hands-on advice on building a website that’s right for you, I highly recommend you read this article on Social Media Today: 5 Questions to Ask When Building a New Website.
Now, I’d love to hear from you. Are there any valuable lessons you’ve learnt from building your own website that you could share with us? Give us your wisdom please. If you have more to say on this topic (I know it really is a massive one and I’m only touching the surface here …) I’d love to hear that too.
Thank you so much for reading, and I hope to catch you next time.
Love,
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Gabriella Ferenczi 