Ok, you have your brand new website to showcase the services you offer or the products you sell. Your website will act as a lead generation tool for your business or as a further platform to sell your products.
So, now it’d time to manage your website. But…………..
Do you know how to manage a website?
Have you got the time to manage a website?
How much time do you need to set aside every month to manage your website?
If you are managing your website, will your offline business suffer as a result?
Are there any financial costs involved,to managing your website?
The above questions are very rarely considered when a website is commissioned. Once you have a website for your company, it isn’t the end……..it’s only the beginning! Just as you manage your offline business you will need to apply management skills to your online business too.
How do you manage a website?
Most websites run off a CMS (content management system) that means you can easily update, add to and delete the copy or products on the site. Hopefully the company you commissioned to project manage and build your website will have provided you will a full training document with step by step instructions of how this CMS works. You need to make sure you fully understand this before making any tweaks to your site. If you tweak it wrong, you are likely to break the site and will have to pay to get it fixed.
A service site is much easier to manage than an e-commerce site or online shop due the volume of pages this type of site generates and the need to change homepage content regularly.
You also need to understand the importance of on-page SEO and use these tactics when you alter anything. Failure to do so will only result in the search engines not viewing your site as important enough to rank highly in the search engine result pages (SERPS) of a users search. Make sure when you are adding copy or products that you use unique copy (see post on unique web copy for the importance of this )
Have you got the time to manage a website?
Different websites need different levels of time to manage effectively. As mentioned above e-commerce websites need more management thus will require more time.
Online shops need constant alteration. Your suppliers may change their pricing structure; you need to alter your selling prices to reflect that change. Your supplier may discontinue a product; you need to remove from the website. Your supplier may bring out a new range that you know will sell; you need to get these products on the site as soon as possible. You may need to amend your delivery charge on items due to fuel or postal increases. The list could be endless is you have a larger e-commerce site (above 700 products or product variants.)
Everything you need to do and manage for an offline shop you need to apply to manage an online shop. Do you have the time to manage all these changes? Typically, the answer will be no.
Do not under estimate the time needed to manage a service based site though. Most service sites today have a news or blog section. (If yours hasn’t you need to have one added) This type of area is important to give service websites a way of adding pages to their sites that can be indexed by the search engines, offer linking opportunities from other websites, capture what is known as long tail key phrases and give the visitors to your site more in-depth information. It gives you the opportunity to add unique content that is related to the services you offer. Very much like this news item is relevant to the services MagnifyB offer. The news or blog area needs to be updated as least twice a month with a decent post (not Twitter or Facebook feeds)
How much time do you need to set aside every month to manage your website?
The answer to this question is likely to be the same as the answer to “How long is a piece of string?” A defined answer is impossible to give. It all very much depends on the size, functionality and business aims of your website.
A service site could be anything from ½ a day to a week per month
An online shop could be anything from 1 day to a full months work.(This can vary also depending on the time of the year and your selling patterns)
You also need to consider that the analytic data of your website needs to be regularly looked at and checked for patterns, problems and peaks so you can take in to consideration for marketing purposes. Also customer queries or requests for more information generated off the website need to be address in a timely manner. For online shops, you also need to think about customer care after an order is placed.
Where are going to find that spare time to do all this management? For many small to medium size businesses, there is no spare time.
If you are managing your website, will your offline business suffer as a result?
The short answer to this question is….. POSSIBLY!
You will no doubt have worked very hard and continue to work hard to establish your offline business in both reputation and branding. You need to apply this same hard work to your website. The answer to this question very much comes back to – Do you have the time to manage your website?
Are there any financial costs involved managing your website?
There will be direct costs and indirect costs to managing your site.
Many companies do not consider having a maintenance budget for when something goes wrong with the site. Websites can get bugs, these bugs need fixing and to get them fixed you need to pay a designer or programmer. You may also decide that you need to make amendments to the structure of your website based on customer requirements or problems you have found from your analytic data.
Indirect costs are mainly attributed to your time. You know what your time is worth and if you have to use that time to manage your website, this is an indirect cost.
With indirect costs it is better to evaluate if your time can be better spent elsewhere and actually pay some-one or a reputable website management company to actually manage the website for you. These costs then become direct costs. You will most probably find that outsourcing the management of your site is far more cost effective than if you manage this yourself.
Why more cost effective? Because website management companies have the skill, knowledge and knowhow to manage websites quickly and effectively, saving you money!
The website management and web content management services offered by are totally tailored to the needs of the site. Drop an email, info@magnifyb.co.uk give MagnifyB a call on 0114 2580088 or fill in the contact us form if you would like a free, totally no obligation estimate of cost for outsourcing your website management.
On a final note, what do you gain by outsourcing the management of your website? This is a simple 3 word answer – YOUR TIME BACK! Remember, your time is precious to you on so many levels, both professionally and personally.