Quite a few business owners try to manage their websites on their own, and it’s great! Even though we are quite biased, we think that a business owner can market their business through the website better than anyone. So, it’s true, not everyone has the time or the professional knowledge to do this (that’s what we’re here for…) but for those who do, here are 10 tips for managing the website.
10 tips for managing a website
You have just a small amount of time to manage the website, but your desk is overflowing with tasks. It is very useful to prioritize your time in a smart way so that you get the best out of your time. Here are the tips that will help you with this:
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- Keep the website system and its plugins up to date.
- Always remember who the website is for and what does it offers.
- The website is not just for beauty; it has business goals to achieve.
- Maintain the website with quality, current and relevant content.
- Make sure that it is convenient to move around on the website and reach different contents.
- Make sure that your messages are understood by your customers.
- Maintain a “dialogue” with the search engines using various tools.
- Advertise the website by using cheap but effective campaigns.
- Make sure that the contact forms on the website work properly.
- Perform ongoing optimization in your free time.
Making sure to follow all ten of these tips will ensure that your website produces the optimal results and that you won’t lose any customer!
Since these tips are like Greek for some of our readers, we will go over each tip and try to explain it in a simple and understandable way for everyone.
1. Keep the website system and its plugins up to date.
About 80% of websites are based on open-source code (public code). This has many advantages but also a certain risk since the code of your website is known not only to the website owners but also to hostile parties. Therefore, every time a new security breach is discovered, an updated version is released that shuts it. Constant updating of the system and its plugins ensures that you will not be at a high risk for hacking.
2. Think about the target audience of your business:
Quite a few business owners tend to think that their customers think just like them. This is a big mistake. Often, customers think completely differently from professionals. Therefore, they will look for answers to questions that the business owner hasn’t even thought to themselves that someone would ask. We must check what interests them and write about that.
We mean it, ask us anything!
For example, a website building business owner can write about the construction planning of the website or about the design of the website, but he is not allowed to write about the functionality of the website or about work strategies. His customers are simply not interested.
3. Websites have a goal to fulfill, and this should be remembered:
Quite a few business owners forget that they set up their website to fulfill a specific purpose. Most of the time, the purpose of the website is to generate new customers for the business. It is important to remember this and to measure each action in the way that it brings us closer to achieving more of the website’s goals and thus actually realizing the full potential embodied in a managed website.
4. Make sure there is quality, relevant and up-to-date content on the website:
Many tend to build a website, input initial content, and then assume that the users will come naturally. It doesn’t work that way. For your website to bring in customers, you must constantly produce new, high-quality content that is relevant to the business’s customers and that meets current needs in real time. That way, both Google and the users will be satisfied with your website.
5. Check if your website can be navigated easily:
Creating quality and relevant content is excellent. But you must make sure that a user can navigate the website successfully and reach these contents, both through a desktop computer and on mobile devices, easily and quickly. It is often difficult to reach the company’s service pages and then the website users are not even exposed to the very business you’re promoting by reaching them through the articles you wrote on the blog.
6. Make sure that your messages are understood by your customers.
Every business offers several main services, but in many cases, we go to a website and do not understand what is offered at all. This is a common case on the websites of lawyers, accountants, and other freelancers. First, it is important to make sure that the visitor understands what you offer and why you are better than all of your competitors, and you can do that by refining the messages, and through calls to action.
7. Communicate with the environment (the various search engines):
You are not in a vacuum. There are various ways to talk to the search engines, and to Google in particular, and inform them your existence and your priorities. With the help of Google’s webmaster tool, for example, you can communicate with Google’s algorithm and learn a lot of information, but also how to try to explain to Google who you are and what you are worth. This is, of course, a slightly more complex tip, but try it yourself, maybe you’ll get it right ;).
8. Promote the website, it doesn’t have to be expensive:
There is a tendency to think that advertising on Google is a rather expensive matter. It is, but it’s also not that much. There are a variety of effective but fairly cheap campaign types, and it would be a shame not to use them. Here are some examples of effective and cheap types of campaigns:
- Brand maintenance campaign.
- Remarketing campaign to the user audience.
- Dynamic campaign for website pages.
These three campaigns cost a few hundred shekels a month, and have tremendous power in pushing your website forward, and doing so quickly.
9. Check that you are available to receive inquiries from the website:
You’d be surprised, but it happens quite a lot. The website works great, many users log in and are impressed by the business, then leave and you just don’t know anything about it. Faulty contact forms cause double damage, on your side losing the customer and on the customer’s side, losing their trust in you. Therefore, this is a very important emphasis, and it is recommended to add a periodic check once every two weeks to prevent any unpleasant surprises.
10. Constant optimization:
A website is built from code. This does not mean that it is completely static. It has quite a few components that are active behind the scenes and it is possible, in various ways, to make the website much faster to use. To do this, cache components (cache memory) must be used which “take pictures” of the site and present an image of the site to users and not the site itself. However, these tools must be cleaned and optimized occasionally, otherwise, updates on the website will not be displayed.
That’s it. These are our ten tips for the independent webmaster. If you have any further questions about this, feel free to contact us for advice.
