She and the car had a very happy six months together. Until the engine failed. 

Now, imagine this scenario: my friend is complaining to a coworker about her car troubles. The well-intentioned coworker says something like, “Your car engine died? Gee, that’s too bad. I’ve heard that’s a really expensive fix. Why not do it yourself and save some money?”

I mean, what would you do in that situation? Laugh? Cry? Mumble a cuss word or two? My friend is very smart, but that specific problem requires a level of knowledge, skill and experience she simply doesn’t have.

Unfortunately, too many businesses approach their websites with this ill-fated “do-it-yourself” mentality. To be fair, build-your-own website companies make a mint convincing people it’s never been easier to create a bonafide site, without ever needing to upgrade or update or any of that new-fangled uppity stuff. 

A small business owner may crunch the numbers and think they’re saving themselves some money by making their own website. They spend ten hours or so building a simple, workable site that looks halfway decent. They get the word out there, maybe start inviting people to come check it out. 

The owner and the site have a very happy six months together. Until the site gets hacked.

Now, if the business owner has an undergraduate degree in computer science, that might not be a big deal. But I’d wager most business owners don’t have that specific know-how. And even if that were the case, chances are there are plenty of other things the owner would rather spend his or her time on. 

Here’s what all this boils down to: investing in a website is a lot like investing in a car. Your website is going to put in a lot of miles. We’re talking about the virtual storefront of your business. You want that space to be spick and span, safe and secure, and completely reliable. 

And if something does go wrong, you don’t want to get stuck spinning your wheels. You want a team of web experts on the job, saving you time, money, and screen-induced headaches.

So put down the wrench, back away from the vehicle, and call the real mechanics. It’s always worth it.

You get the picture. When panic-driven urgency is solely determining what gets done, it feels like you’re never on top of anything — because you’re not.

This is where your website comes in.

Remember the monster metaphor we used earlier? Turns out your website is a lot like Clark Kent: a little nerdy, seemingly inconsequential, and definitely no one’s idea of a superhero. But given the chance, your website could be the Superman your business has been waiting for all along.

You see, used effectively, your website has the power to keep those metaphorical monsters from ever spawning. How? It all comes down to integration. Consider the logistics and operations of your business: if someone wants to buy your product, your site should play a role in the process; if you have ads out in the world, your site should be used to measure their effectiveness; if you need to follow-up with customers after a purchase, your site should be the one doing the work.

Don’t get caught in the trap of living ASAP to ASAP. Your website is one of the most effective tools you can use to delete that acronym once and for all. 

Here are some super practical tips for getting started:

• Get familiar with your website. Make sure you and your team know what’s on your site. It’ll make adding and/or removing content a lot easier.
• Invite your website to your meetings. Having a meeting about a new service or product or event?  Make time to discuss how you’ll incorporate your website.
• Give your website a champion. Got someone slightly techy on your team? Give them permission to bother you about ways the site could be used more effectively.
• Consider web maintenance. Work with someone (or a team of someones) who can implement the changes and strategies that your site’s champion may develop.
• Process, process, process. Outline the update process. It may look something like this:
  • Write content
  • Take photos
  • Track the change
  • Implement the update

We all remember how the story goes, the local townspeople cheered on Max Hare to win a race against Toby the Tortoise.  Toby gets jeered for being slow and clumsy, and the athletic but cocky Max Hare is the heavy favorite in this lopsided sporting event. In the end, Toby the Tortoise crosses the finish line first with his determination and steady pace, while Max Hare finds himself lost on the track, more concerned about being crowned a winner than getting through the race itself. 

It’s a great story! It’s inspired children to slow down and make thoughtful decisions before jumping into uncharted territory.  As a former child myself, the translation of this story still pertains to designing and developing websites, but finds a new meaning in this technology-driven speed-oriented day and age. 

Websites are continuously scrutinized by Search Engine Optimization, demanding faster-loading pages, smaller asset sizes such as images and files, all the while having a steady flow of fresh and current content on your page. In the 21st century, small businesses feel the pressure of taking on the role of both Toby and Max in their online presence and our users take on the role of the townspeople, initially attracted to the fast loading speed, and then driven back to our website by the steady flow of current content. Instead of either-or, the best way to win the race now is both-and, finding the happy medium between both qualities, steadiness and speed. 

Bring the speed

Speed influences how a consumer interacts with your site, and if not optimized correctly it can be the first way you lose a user’s attention. Townspeople have a need for speed!

What is it that makes a website speedy? Several factors can affect a website’s performance.  Compressing image and animation file sizes,  reducing server response times, browser caching, prioritizing important content and minimizing url redirects are all concepts that contribute to a faster experience for our users.  When performance becomes an issue with a website, oftentimes one or more of these concepts are addressed, but if several are missed, it can actually compound the issue. 

With the right performance, your website will appear at the top of search results, helping connect more users to your products or services. In a study done by  Google, 47% of consumers expect a website to load in two seconds or less, and that 33% expect load times on a mobile-device to be equal to or faster than that of a desktop site (Google).

Whether the user is searching for the website on desktop or mobile view, it’s important to optimize performance for both use cases. Having a responsive web design along with compressed assets allows consumers to surf the site at a faster pace.

Uploading a heavy image, with an original image size at 5000px width, and unoptimized for web, slows down the site and negatively impacts SEO.  Nowadays, there are plenty of resources online to determine optimal image size for the web, but with a continually-changing environment, the expected file sizes are getting smaller.  

Implementing a compression software and CDN, or Content Delivery Network, allow small-business websites to keep their content fast without having to manually update file sizes.  By running the assets on your website through compression software, the content size is minimized, thus reducing the length of a server request to download images in the browser. 

In addition to compressing, images and assets should be run through a CDN. To make your website more accessible to a broader audience, a CDN takes the files on a page of your website, and stores them in server locations nearest to the user’s device.  For example, if a user in Greenland wants to access your site that’s hosted in Duluth, Minnesota, the heaviest assets (images, links, videos) are stored in a CDN nearest to their location. You can consider this like using a walkie talkie.  The further you are from the other device, the harder it is to connect, but the closer you are, the better the signal. 

Maintaining wins the race

Making the right decision for maintaining your website can bring great rewards, driving organic search visibility, conversion, engagement and reducing bounce rates, and driving traffic to your website. 

Google indexes roughly 55 billion websites, and to connect users with the content most relevant to what they are looking for, Google goes through a process of crawling and indexing to search for relevancy and thoughtful content.  Google’s mission for content is as follows:

“Our company mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Today, there are 547,200 new websites created on the World Wide Web every day. (Huck)  Many of these sites are irrelevant, redundant and slow, adding to the lengthy list of websites a user must click through to find the content they are looking for. 

Our mission as website designers and business-owners, should be to provide Google with only the most relevant, up to date and thorough content. For that reason, we encourage you to not only keep current on your website, but delete old, unmaintained content that won’t improve your user’s experience. It not only affects the performance of your site, but leads to poor user satisfaction.

So who wins?

Although Toby the Tortoise won in the end of this centuries old fable, leaving Max Hare in the dust, today it’s impossible to compete with billions of rabbits and turtles on the internet without having strategized for both types of competitors. 

Keep your eye on the prize, and put the leap of faith into optimizing your online presence, but keep a level head when adding and removing content from your page.  Be conscious about how your content is perceived, and have the courage to show up to the starting line every day against your competition. 

Today, you are both the Tortoise and the Hare.  We’ll leave the imagery of the two animals mashed together as nightmare fuel, but instead try to picture your website as the answer to your user’s problem. Find the solution for them and put it in front of their face faster than your competition can. 

Want to know how your website and workflow currently match up?
Try our free website checklist

But over the years, we’ve noticed that many business leaders treat their website like the awkward unpaid intern that still costs more than they make for the company.

But this mentality greatly reduces the output of what could be one of the best employees you ever hired—one who could show up on time, work well with others, and always know what’s happening and how to communicate it to customers.

Would you take your most effective employee and make them stand in a corner and face the wall every day?

Your website should be actually working for you

Ever had a sales employee show up late to a meeting? How about a project falling behind because someone is dropping the ball?

Employee inefficiencies and tardiness can have a big effect on a business. In fact, a study shows that employees on average waste 759 hours each year due to workplace distractions. That’s 759 hours per person each year!

But we get it, people are people! They have distractions, emotions, and life in general coming at them at all times and that can make any work difficult. Expecting them to manage every single day with no issues is setting everyone up for failure.

But a website can. Even when you and all of your staff are sleeping, your website can be out there answering questions, generating leads, and gathering intel. It’s as if your storefront or office hours never expire because you finally have someone in your business that is burning the midnight oil.

But the website has to be set up to do all of these things, like an employee needs to be trained so that they can have autonomy and also workflow that fits in with the rest of the team.

Your website should be a team player

You know those employees that don’t work well with others? They may be really self-confident and maybe even really good at what they do, but it brings your whole team down. Bad team dynamics can lead to a whole mess of problems, and I’d guess that you’re probably used to recognizing when those issues come up.

Spotting bad human-to-human relationships tends to be pretty easy because of the inevitable sparks that fly. But when a website is the one that’s not doing its fair share, most often your team doesn’t notice and just tries to pick up the slack.

But there are a lot of ways that your website can act as a bridge between your customers and your staff, and even between your staff themselves. Think about it, when a customer lands on the site, how can they find the information they need as quickly as possible, or get a hold of the most relevant person for their needs?

Sending potential customers to the right place with the right amount of prerequisite information can smooth over your whole operation. By studying your analytics and making educated changes to your site, it can keep up with your ever-changing company and bring clarity to everyone.

Does your team know what is on your site, and does your site know what is going on in the team?

Your website should be aware of changes in your company

If your business starts offering a new product or service, you probably inform and educate all team members, or at least those directly affected by it. The more informed your whole staff is about the changes in your company, the more creative they can be in solving problems, bridging gaps, and accomplishing your overall mission.

But if your website is months or years behind what you and your company are doing, the disconnect will only get bigger—until neither resembles each other.

The solution that many companies go for is the big website overhaul every five years or so. Once enough big changes happen in the company, aesthetics have shifted, and the site is causing your team enough grief, then it’s finally time to shovel out the thousands of dollars on a brand new site.

But is that how your company itself changes? After several years of increasing frustration with your staff and products, you swap out and upgrade everyone and everything all in one fell swoop? I sure hope not. Instead, you probably have individual hires and product updates that incrementally evolve your business year after year.

But that’s what many businesses do for their websites. What about a new model that lets your website truly be an extension of your business itself? Instead of the stressful overhauling sprints every so often, you could be taking a casual stroll forward—waving to the neighbors and smelling the flowers along the way.

We believe in continually improving your site to better serve your customers and your team can improve everyone’s experience but also the bottom line of your business. It can mindfully fill in the gaps that become apparent over time and stop the productivity and revenue leaks that you may be missing.

How do I practically start doing this?

Well, that’s a topic for a whole other blog post. But it starts with having a powerful and flexible website, and having a smooth and easy process for updating it.

We recommend Elementor! It’s an excellent tool that can actually make all of this website employee-of-the-month goodness start to come together.

If you already have Elementor, build a workflow around it to truly integrate it with your business. We can help with that part! A great place to start then is learning about your current web practices.

Click here to fill out our free checklist that can give you an initial idea on what could be missing in your web maintenance approach.