We meet business owners every day struggling with their websites. Often that’s why they are talking to a website consultant to begin with. You would think by 2022 most businesses would have this under control. But no. There are as many misconceptions and problems as 20 years ago when I made my first business website. To save you some website stress, we have identified 4 areas of struggle common to most websites.
Keeping Track of What You Own.
It is very easy for website owners to justify delegating website setup tasks. It’s not something you completely understand, so why not give it to your web developer? This stuff is easy for them. The problem is you may be handing off ownership of the website you paid for. Here is a short list of the items you need to track down:
- Domain name registry
- Hosting account credentials
- Administrative login to your website
- Licenses and logins to licenses for your theme/template
- Licenses and logins to licenses for premium or paid plugins
Once you find these items, here is you need to know:
- Whose name is on the account.
- What credit card gets billed for the registration renewals.
- Who gets the notices to renew the domain.
Sometimes it is not the web developer that is the problem, but a former employee. I could fill these blog pages with stories of owners/executives that left this to an employee. The employee put their personal info as the primary contact. When that employee left, the information was not handed over. The company ended up losing their website. This is important – the name that appears on the domain registry is the legal owner of the domain name. If that name is not yours or your company’s name, you have potential trouble coming.
For more help on website ownership, watch our webinar archive. “Marketing Team Turnover – Potential Costs to your Business Website“. Read more at Risks to Company Website During Job Changes.
Website Performance.
The goal of every business website should be to produce data that improves your business. For some that will be a sale. For others that might be a name and an email address. To get to this point, you need a website that performs. When this doesn’t happen, naturally you will go looking for solutions. The problem is, where to start? There are many factors that impact website performance. Website owners struggle with where to look for solutions. And maybe having the patience to get to the correct solution? Here is a short list of sources for performance problems:
- Website Hosting is under-powered.
- Content does not generate its own traffic.
- Content is not converting users to visitors.
- Site is loading slow.
- Site does not display well on mobile devices.
- Google won’t index your pages.
- Site is old and old code is struggling.
- Getting complaints from clients they can’t find anything on your site.
I could keep going. But you get the point that there are many factors that make a good website. The best way to stay on top of this is regular website maintenance. Tackle one item at a time and keep improving. A lot of this you may need expert help to solve the issue.
Here is a good beginners list to get started on improving performance. Watch our webinar recordings. 4 Quick Projects to Increase Website Leads. Design Details that Impact Website Performance.
Website Content – Creating it and Fixing it.
Updating and adding content to your website is the best thing you can do to improve results. Yet it seems to be the hardest thing for website owners to do. The biggest struggle of all the struggles.
Most of the websites we work with at Cybervise come to us already built. We are seeing the rise again of a disturbing trend in WordPress development. Developers are stripping out or limiting access to the tools for editing content. Making it difficult for non-web developers to make updates to the website.
WordPress software updates are making it easier for a non-coder to update content. Updating your content should be getting better not harder. Are you not working on your website content is because its too difficult to access it? Get another opinion or think about updating your website. I am telling you it will be easy to get ROI on a website update if you use the opportunity to keep your content more up to date.
Still need a little help in organizing content or figuring out what to write about? Check out our webinar recording, “Better Website Content through Storytelling“. Also read, “Google Trends – Free Content Ideas from Google.”
Search Engine Optimization.
A lot of businesses waste money on SEO. Why? Because they don’t understand what they are spending their money on. Even in 2022 I still talk to people who think they paid someone to “SEO” their site. And now don’t understand why they aren’t getting traffic.
The first question you should be asking is does your site need SEO? SEO is a lead generation tactic. If your site is not meant to generate leads from new clients, SEO may not be a great fit for you.
The days of SEO secrecy should be over. If you are working with a consult to improve SEO, you should be able to ask and understand what they are doing. Sometimes website owners think they are paying someone to optimize their website. But what they really are paying for is paid ads to boot traffic numbers.
Remember, as with any online marketing that you do, its not wrong to expect results. More traffic is good, but if you are not getting new business from that traffic, what is the point?
Every website owner should have a basic understanding of how search engines work. It’s easy to education your self on this. Moz.com is a reliable source for SEO info. They have a great beginner’s guide. Check out Google’s resources for website owners. The more you understand how SEO works, the less likely you are to waste money on services that don’t fit what you need.
To help you get started with SEO, download our 2023 Website Strategic Plan.
Help is available if you are struggling. If any of these struggles feel true to you, sign-up for our free Website Consultation. We would be happy to go over your website issues with you.
