Making changes on your website – not as easy as you think
Lately we have received calls from several business owners who need a new website though they want to be able to make changes themselves and one of my first questions is “Why?”
I don’t ask this question to be difficult, I ask because I know from experience that this isn’t usually a good idea (for many reasons). Most of these people have little or no experience in website design and don’t realize making changes on a website is not like making changes in a Word document.
It doesn’t work how you think it does
They don’t know anything about html code (nor should they) and therefore, don’t know what it entails. Some have set up a LinkedIn or Facebook page and probably think making changes on their website will be that easy. Well, it’s not. Those systems have been designed to be easy and extremely user-friendly to use. Of course, that’s also why there are limitations on what you can do and why all pages basically look the same.
It’s great they are able to do that, however, making changes on your website is a much different process-even if you have a CMS (content management system). Once I start explaining how things work, I usually don’t get very far before the business owner says “It’s more complicated than what I thought.”
Do you have extra time?
The other reason I start asking questions is that most business owners do not have time to manage their website. The owners I talk with are usually working 10 hours a day (plus weekends) so they really don’t have time to add 1 more job to their already overloaded schedule. They could delegate the work to another employee though that has its drawbacks.
While the employee is working on the website, it means time away from doing their actual job. That’s time they should be spending making sales, taking care of customers and other daily tasks important to running a business.
It’s all about being productive with their time and a business owner should focus their energy on running their business (making sales and more money) as opposed to stressing about remembering how to change text on their website. Make the right choice.
