We all like to do things ourselves. A lot of companies want to manage their own websites. But this is not advised in this day and age. Here are 5 reasons why you need Professional Website Management.
Security – Sadly with all the hackers and people with ill intent in the world, you need to have secure hosting and management. There are literally millions of attempts every single day. To protect your website you have to be constantly looking for threats and have a plan should your website be attacked. As a Professional Website Management company, we backup sites every day of the year and even if the worst happens we can your site back up very quickly.
SEO – Having a website that no one finds is like being invisible. You need to make sure, all your content is done in such a way to help your search engine rankings. You can write your own content but having a professional review will be quite helpful in the long run and increase your visibility. SEO it’s something that needs to be worked on constantly. Regardless of what unscrupulous SEO companies tell you with their constant spam emails, there is no magic bullet. SEO takes work.
Updates – If you are using a content management like WordPress, there are tons of updates to wordpress core, plugins and themes. While many of these updates are simple, once in a while an update can completely blow away your website. So you need to make sure you know how to get the site back up an running. As an example, we recently took over managing a website for a company. They had a problem with a plugin and the company that was hosting it just disabled all plugins. So the site was a total mess! We figured out the issue and the site was back up and running. Unfortunately this company had thought Managed WordPress would take care of any issues that arose. But as they found out, this wasn’t the case and then they moved to roosites for professional website management services,
Posting New Content – One thing we have run into over the years is that companies who want to be able to take care of their own postings, but run into a lack of time to get things done. Say your business is doing super, you need to be spending your time on what makes your company successful. If you then have to take time out of your day to work on your website, you’re not putting the time into what helps you to succeed. I can’t tell you how many times people run into this issue and then decide to have someone manage their website.
Bottom line: having professional website management and hosting will get rid of one big headache that most companies deal with when attempting to manage their own website.
I was talking to a client today and reviewing a few design concepts. We discussed what he liked best, and what needed tweaking. I steered him away from a few changes which would muddy the call to action.
Over and above everything we do in web design and web development, the call to action is by far the most important. Others would point to search engine optimization. This of course is important, as you need to get them to your website. BUT, if f they get to your site and you have no clear call to action, your site will flounder.
So what is a call to action? Dictionary.com defines it as: “the implicit or explicit suggestion contained in a marketer’s content in an advertising banner or Web site copy”. In the early day of the internet, this was usually, a “Click Here” link. We have gotten away from that a bit, though click here is still pretty common and clients often still like to use the phrase. Now good call to actions can be in the form of a graphical element, (button, banner, graphic), a link, or other ways to get visitors to take the desired next step. This could be to make a purchase (if this is a product) , call you (as with service providers), or click on a link to be contacted or to get you to the page they need you to see.
Now, in this particular case, the call to action is designed to get visitors to fill out a form for a free review. The program which is guaranteed to save restaurants money is a good one, but if no one signs up, no one reaps the benefit and the company fails. My design team came up with a great strategy, where your eye is drawn to the call to action. The main graphical element, which will be a jquey fade between 4 slides will end with a powerful message urging them to fill out the form and pointing them below to the form. Below the image fade is a quick explanation of the program, which is actually a “challenge”. To the right of that is the actual form. Now even the header image background in the explanation is actually an arrow pointing you to the form. So all the elements work in concert to get the visitor to the call to action. (When this launches, I will add a link here to illustrate my point).
Bottom Line: If you review a design with your developer/designer and see no clear call to action, ask them to turn back and start again. Communicate to them what the call to action needs to be. They should ask you in the requirements phase, but don’t always.
