You hear the term “solutions provider” tossed around quite often these days. It sounds great, right? A company will study your unique problems and goals and come up with a solution that meets your needs. Sounds great, sign me up.
Not so fast. In reality, typically web development firms will not create a solution that is necessarily best for you, but rather best for them. If you have a meeting to discuss whether to tweak your website or to build a new one, 99% of the time you will receive the recommendation to build a new site. If you tell them you have a $5,000 budget, you will receive an estimate very close to that amount. And if they are a shop that focuses on Microsoft Technologies, they will steer you in that direction, knowing full well that many not be the best for you.
I am always amazed at the short sightedness of companies, going for short term profits rather than taking a longer view. For RooSites, we want you to be a customer for years to come. We know if we do the right thing by you, that you in turn will have us manage your website and refer us to others.
In the past couple of weeks we had examples of “doing the right thing”. I wrote about the first example in a blog post about this on April 2nd, entitled: Sometimes having a client NOT spend money is best. Read Post → It was a perfect example of how we could have pushed the client to build a new site, which would have made us money. BUT he does very well in searches, and his website looks ok and certainly professional. Also he had gained several new patients from his appointment request form in the past few months. So I advised holding off a year or so. Again from a purely profit standpoint, not a great move, but in the long run it should pay off with a happy client and referrals.
The other example was concerning a company’s website where they had a Drupal content management system and a separate WordPress blog hosted elsewhere. One of their biggest issues is that their blog content isn’t being indexed with his main site. As blogging is very important to the company, my first thought was to bring everything into WordPress. (Drupal is a great CMS but if blogging is important I favor WordPress) But after further investigation, the cost seemed too great. So, I came up with a plan to install WordPress directly onto their server, create a custom theme to match his Drupal site, and then import the posts. This would save him 50% or more and achieve everything he wanted to do from an SEO perspective. This was a good example of being a solutions provider, not just shoehorning in a solution that is easy for me or more profitable.
Bottom Line: If you’re dealing with a company that seems to provide solutions which are best for them, and not you, contact us today. We are a true solutions provider.
This quote always reminds me of the scores of companies out there trying to manage their own websites. Many times, a designer has sold them on content management systems like WordPress and Joomla. You can manage yourself and save money. Is this true? Partially. I LOVE WordPress. It is an excellent CMS and fabulous for most small businesses. Blogging doesn’t get any easier and the content is search engine friendly right out of the box. BUT, if you have WordPress then you know each time you log in it seems there is a plugin update, or a theme update, or occasionally a new WordPress version. This can get really confusing. And worse, a plugin update can blow away your site. What do you do then? Can you afford to have your site down, or not displaying properly?
This is why you need professional website management. Unless you are a web professional, your skills are in other areas. Your strengths are what you want, and need to focus on to be successful in the marketplace.
So what do you do? My advice is to hire a company that focuses on website management and maintenance. You can still blog and make edits, but leave the software updates and heavy lifting to professionals.
If you feel like a fish climbing a tree, contact us, we are happy to help.
