Should You Manage Your Website?

Many business owners and possible web clients asks “Should I maintain my business’s website myself or hire The Marketing Beast to do the work for me?”.

How do we answer these questions? With two other questions:

1. Is building and maintaining websites yours or your business’s the key focus?
2. Could you find enough time to expand and improve your website to make it more profitable and efficient?

The answers we get in return tend to come as “no” and “yes” respectively, to which we say “that is why you should leave the building and design to The Marketing Beast”.

Many business owners believe hiring a professional web designer goes out of their budget, and that is not true. Having a professional web designer do the work for you is money well spent because you need to remember, a well-designed website can bring you a positive return on your investment.

It is pointless to have a website if it lacks the content required to interest customers in the products you sell or the services you provide and that is why it is best to leave website design and maintenance to the experts, and it is your responsibility to provide the designer with the content (text and photographs) that best convey your company’s message to your customers.

Below are a few questions that, once answered, will help The Marketing Beast ensure that your website’s message goes to the right people with the right message:

• What is the purpose of your website?
  Is it to educate the consumer about your product and why they should get it, or to sell your products or services convincing the possible clients why they should get your service and not your competition. Doing this will help define the purpose of your website and give the designers and developers enough information to create a website that best conveys that purpose to your target audience.
• Who is your target audience?
  Your target audience consists of potential and current customers, future and current employees, possible investors and so on. Anyone who might be interested in your company and its products or services is a member of your target audience. Identifying your target audience is extremely important for your online business, and you can practice this by putting yourself on your client’s shoes. Just think of yourself as a new online guest visiting your website and think: what would you expect when you surf this website? How easy or user friendly it is when you try to figure out what your website offers and how to get it. Remember to always fulfill their needs and surpass their expectations.
• What content should my website present to the viewer?
  You website should be drive by the nature of your business and what you are offering to the client/guests. Keep it based on what you do. Do you sell houses? Feature photographs of homes you have for sale and information. Own a record studio? Feature bands you have worked with with photographs and details… possibly even notes from those you worked with. keep it simple and clean and it will dictate the purpose of your site.
• Who is your competition and what are they doing to keep it afloat?
  What is your competition doing on the web? Use different search engines like Google or Bing and search for similar businesses and click around their websites as doing a legal/limited business espionage. Do their website’s design attract your attention? Does the message get carried out easily and understandable fast enough? What do you like about their websites? What don’t you like? Take notes of all these useful questions together with your answers and share it with The Marketing Beast to achieve your goals sooner and more efficiently.

Remember, you’re not stealing trade secrets here. You’re just borrowing ideas from the public media!

Can you teach me how to manage my own website?

Many site owners like to ask this questions because they and usually unhappy when thinking on allowing themselves to depend on a web developer to keep their sites updated need and running save (and it is completely understandable). you need to remember that your website now carries platforms which require continuous updating to feed current information to hungry customers and keep it safe from hackers and any problems you might encounter on the online world.

Once I said this, “Yes”. The Marketing Beast offers a FREE One-Hour-Training session to show you how to add or replace articles, update photo galleries, and probable on how to work on basic updated for security updates.

BUT REMEMBER, unless you’re not concerned with the site maintaining a professional appearance across all browsers, the ability to change the layout and most graphical elements is something that requires a professional.

The Marketing Beast does not offer training beyond basic content management to those who aren’t interested in investing the necessary time to take regular lessons for a period of time. Changing the graphics/layout/theme of your website is a skill that requires extensive training (and practice) to properly do.

Contact Us for more information and to request a 100% FREE Quote.