I’m a reasonably smart guy. I reserved the name “publicity.com” for our PR firm when all domain names were still available. I also reserved “checkerboard.com” for our website company because I thought it would be easy to remember. In addition, I reserved a business friend’s company name because he didn’t think much of the “World Wide Web” at first. He didn’t want to spend $150 on a domain name even though his sales to that point were in the billions. Go figure.
But I can also be dumb as a post. For years, I complained that publicity.com was dead from the neck up. I kept thinking I had to pay closer attention to it. Yet month after month, I would check on the site and always be disappointed. Links didn’t work. Copy was outdated. The social media “stream” looked more like a polluted creek. I was always a little embarrassed by it.
And it wasn’t just that site. Our website company was experiencing the same frustration with most of the sites they built for our clients.
That’s when it hit me. None of the sites, including ours, had a full-time manager to look out for them. For years, we relied on a loosely knit team made up mostly of technical experts to check on sites periodically and update the owners on what they found.
Our web company’s business model had two steps:
1. Build the site
2. Offer support as needed.
It should have been, and now is, a three-step model:
1. Build the site
2. Bring on a website manager
3. Offer ongoing support
Like a brick-and-mortar business, your website needs a full-time manager.
As soon as I started considering how a website would be managed compared to a brick-and-mortar store, the light went on. I knew I’d been making a mistake. No one in their right mind would open up a brick-and-mortar store without hiring a good full-time manager. And you certainly wouldn’t rely on the people who built the store to run it. An architect doesn’t monitor store traffic to determine aisle displays.
I cringe when I think of all the leads and sales I lost over the years by not having a website property manager for our website. Just like in a brick-and-mortar store, digital marketing assistants should be decorating for the season, promoting special offers, giving out samples and marketing to drive and direct traffic. That’s not to mention fixing and freshening the site as needed.
Having experienced the need myself for a dedicated website property manager, I knew that other organizations needed this too. I decided to make web property management services available to others, and it’s going well. You can learn about how a website property manager can keep your website well-oiled and driving business forward by contacting Alison Cromie, our program manager. Send her a note at Alison@checkerboard.com, or give her a call at 952-697-5211.
