Top 3 Website Worries and How To Overcome Them
Are your website worries thwarting you?
There are three distinctive phases to website ownership, each with it’s own set of worries and challenges. Below I share my Top Tips to help you through each stage.
The Beginner
You’re a beginner if you’re asking “What do I put on online?” and “How do I get it online?”. When starting out, overwhelm sets in quite easily and you don’t know where to start.
Your worry is how to find information you can rely on to see you through the set-up process without it costing the earth.
My Top Tip for you is to start small, and build your web presence in stages.
To start, identify your no. 1 priority, and what your website needs to do to support that. You may decide you need a single page with a professional branded design to provide contact details and other essential information, plus brochure or fact-sheet your visitors can download.
You might want a blog, a shop, a newsletter, and seamless Facebook integration as well. But you will get better results if you put these into a step-by-step action plan, and focus on the most important, and necessary elements first.
Of course the beginner is also thinking ahead, and will soon be a website owner:
The Website Owner
Your worry is how to control and manage your website presence with little, or no prior knowledge, and a very small budget.
If you have inadequate or non-existent support for your website, website updates are impossible. This usually happens when you have been offered the cheapest possible set-up solution. As a provider of ongoing website support, I am constantly surprised by how many businesses are left in the lurch with a shiny new website they can’t use.
There are a number of ways to avoid or resolve this problem, and I want to address this issue in full, in a later post.
Meanwhile, my Top Tip for Website Owners is to find out your FTP details. Without this information, you are locked out of your website. But once you have them, you have control of your account and can team up with anyone you like to update your website. A little how-to advice is all you need, and you’re flying! To get your FTP details, simply contact your website hosting supplier.
The Website Owner with an Idea
If you’ve had a website for a year or more, your NO.1 website worry is how to attract more sales and enquiries through your website. Am I right?
By this stage of website ownership, you may have some knowledge of the internet, marketing, or websites generally. You may have learnt from earlier mistakes, and formed a clear idea of what you need to be doing next.
My Top Tip: Beware impulsive action! If your website isn’t working how you think it should, it’s tempting to make changes based on your latest idea, or the latest trends and advice. But you could keep doing that over and over again and still not achieve the results you want.
A step-by-step action plan will help you here as well. So before you make changes to your website, brainstorm some ideas on paper. Find someone to bounce ideas off and ask yourself what you need your website to achieve. Questions might include: “Does my website support my business goals?”, “What do I need my website to do? What is it’s purpose?”.
What next?
These “top 3 worries” were identified during a focus group I held on 3rd April in Andover, Hampshire. But what issues are ‘top of mind’ for you. Please tell us in the comments below what you are struggling with, or maybe you have some tips of your own?
About the author
Maija enjoys helping her clients achieve their business goals by setting up the necessary online tools. She is a website designer and website host who provides ongoing support to her clients through every stage of website set-up and website development.
Categorised as: Teach Me Useful Things