Managing Your Website: Part 1
Posted: August 12, 2009
By: Joe Schaefer
If your website is an extension of your business or acts as the sole portal to your business, effective management of your website is crucial to your overall success. As more and more people seek to find information and pre-qualify their decisions based on Internet interactions with a website, wouldn’t it make most sense that your website is as optimized (not solely in the SEO frame of mind) as possible for best possible outcomes?
Not to sound repetitive, but if your website is an integral part of your business it is necessary to manage it like you would a brick and mortar establishment. Consider your website a close representation to your brick and mortar as well as an extension of your payroll. Surely you’d aspire to a well-oiled, motivated, productive team when it comes to actual, breathing employees, so why not from your digital employee—your website?
Let’s take some lessons from the cardinal rules of effective management from within the traditional brick and mortar and learn how they can be applied to your website for a more productive, successful performance.
Setting Realistic Goals & Plan Success
In your place of business, if goals are lofty, undefined, unrealistic or seem forced, failure is easier to achieve and is more likely than success. When it comes to your website, realistic goals must be defined and massaged in order to reach closer to the next step of your predefined success. For example, if your business is selling tennis balls and the goal is to sell “a lot” of tennis balls or “be the best tennis ball merchant in the world” — realize that goal #1 is too vague and goal #2 has an undefined path to get there. Set realistic, measurable goals for your website and create a thoughtful business plan for highly competitive placement in the market so perhaps one day you can “be the best tennis ball merchant in town.” Just having a website and a stock room full of dusty tennis balls won’t do the trick.
Motivate Regularly
Being consistently motivating, positively, draws the best out of your business. As an extension of your business, your website needs constant motivation. How so? Fresh content, constant attention, technological updates, actively drive traffic to the website. Making these changes keeps things fresh on your site, and when done correctly, they can motivate more search engine attention. More healthy inclusion in the search engines can equal increased traffic. And, more traffic can equal business success. The positive attention also encourages your visitors to remain on your site or seek further information. It makes for motivation on many angles and from many audiences.
Be Humble
A good trait of a successful business leader is one who doesn’t give off a cocky vibe or belittle. Translate this to your website by remaining an authority. Trying to flaunt and exercise your expertise and power in order to dominate leads to dissension all around. You, as a person, are an extension of your brand. There is more consumer-convincing power in being an authority, but not an authoritarian. Prove your authority while being a human being – you’ll most likely see more positive brand awareness, brand loyalty and the human element might actually help you sell your products and/or deliver your intended message much easier than being a rusty cog in the machine.
Managing your website, while still new to people, has many similarities to the old brick and mortar. You wouldn’t hide your business and expect your customers to somehow find you. You wouldn’t let it fall into disrepair and then wonder why fewer customers frequent it. There are a great many classic traits of running a successful business that can be weaved into your website—just because websites are an advancing technology doesn’t mean all the old rules fall by the wayside. In the coming months we’ll explore more of these management and leadership processes that have stood the test of time in successful brick and mortars and see how they can apply to your website for your continued success.
Hi, great post and very interesting subject.
An additional point I thought of which, coming from the corporate world means a lot to me, is simplicity; a point frequently overlooked. But in support of your points about continually updating and adapting one’s website to customer and market needs, it is essential to maintain simplicity throughout the timeline. If the flow is too ’snazzy’ then the website becomes too confusing if not frustrating to use and then the value of it and the products/services being supported becomes blurred. In my own view and from experience I like to see things bulletized in a website and pointers/headings established based upon being in touch with actual customers and what’s important to them as well as what information they really want to get at about one’s business. Many websites do this effectively but far too many are bent on dazzling customers that the real value they should be projecting is diminished.
Also, relative to groups of text many websites don’t pay enough attention to proper paragraph and sentence structure so that a large group of text is easy to read. A large group of text can be intimidating as it is and if proper syntax is not used by the publisher of an article then this can be a turn-off as well. Thanks again for your post….very interesting subject! By the way, Overit’s website is great!!
Comment By: Daniel Goldman | August 12th, 2009
Hi, one other point I wish to share in support of my post above:…this one being very brief.
Testing is key/crucial to websites. While an obvious statement, I believe that not enough websites are tested (both functionally as well from a content perspective), from the customer’s point of view before being released into ‘production’. Too often, functions don’t work or else the content (or content layout) is less than fulfilling. Just wanted to append that point which is far too overlooked in industry. Thanks again for making this blog available!
Comment By: Daniel Goldman | August 12th, 2009
I agree with you on simplicity, Daniel. So, I suppose I could relate it to a negative side of some brick and mortar attitudes in business — such as: “We won / They Lost”. In other words, some business leaders might say “we won their business” when a team secures a new account or takes on a client or however you look at it. Then, on the flip side, when a business deal doesn’t pan out, you might hear about the team, “they lost that deal” — essentially including themselves in the credit during the first example and distancing themselves in the second. How does that relate to website simplicity? Perhaps poor planning and execution can lead to confusing and frustrating content delivery and thus, an ineffectual model. When it works, the website owner can say, “we won them over” or if it does not work you may hear, “they just don’t get it.” The idea is to be sticky, not only sort of tacky. It’s key to think more globally while still focusing on your target audience and appeal to the whole spectrum who more than likely want easy-to-read, quick, to the point information (with the option for more). You know what they say about a ’satisfied customer’! Thanks for the comment, thanks for reading and thanks for the compliment on our website — we truly appreciate that.
Comment By: Joe Schaefer | August 12th, 2009