Website Management Protecting Your Hardest Working Sales Tool

Averting Disaster With Website Management

Your website is your hardest working sales tool. It works 24/7, 365 days a year. The mega-powered website is a customer service representative, sales agent and support staff. Are you devoting sufficient resources to ensure the continuing success of your highly profitable online real estate? Too often business owners are so busy that they neglect their online presence – and it shows.

Now, imagine that your website suddenly goes offline. There goes your 24/7 support staff, sales agents and customer service reps on an indefinite vacation. Who do you turn to? You hired a cheap website design company for the initial design but the number is no longer in service and emails go unanswered. This goes beyond regular website maintenance which is often accessed through a content management system like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. Who hosts your website? Who is your domain registrar? You remember seeing a credit card charge to Go Daddy, Network Solutions or some other Internet company. Knowing the name of the company is important but without the login information the name of the company may not help much. You spend several hours sifting through credit card statements to find the name of the company charging your credit card, then locating them online you visit their website and try entering your email address and guess at a password – login failed. A few failed login attempts and you have to put the problem aside for now -you have a business to run.

A day or two passes, your hardest working sales tool, your website, remains unavailable and you are no closer to a solution. Now what? You find that your site is indeed hosted with the company listed on your credit card statement and the fees are paid up through the end of the year. So, what’s the problem? The domain name registered through a third company has expired. A few more hours pass as you research the company, locate their website and find a login page but without knowing the customer account number and password you cannot access the account. You submit a form that tells you to expect an email with the necessary information.

It’s been a week now and your website is still down and you haven’t received a response to the form submitted to the domain registrar. New business has slowed significantly. You and your staff are overwhelmed with phone calls requesting information that normally is easily accessible by visiting your website.

Finally, you are at wits end and you decide to register a new domain name at the suggestion of the hosting company. You register the domain name, and after spending an hour on the phone you manage to direct the new domain to your website files on the hosts’ server, but now you have to start networking and promoting your business from scratch. Your stationary, business cards, brochures and billboards reference the old domain name. You begin the daunting process of rebuilding with the new domain, reprinting stationary, business cards and brochures and hire someone to repair the broken links and graphics caused by the domain name change.

Three months later your original domain name now shows a Korean website filled with spammy content. Returning customers are confused thinking you’re no longer in business. Business associates have links from their business websites to your old domain and are now calling upset that the link on their website is reporting as a bad link to spam content. The damage is done – business reputation tarnished.

This is a common scenario business owners experience and can cripple your business. A good website management company will prevent this from happening and keep your site maintained, up-to-date and well-marketed. Your website is your hardest working sales tool and far too often neglected until it is broken. Ensure that you provide adequate resources to your online real estate so that it continues to sell 24/7, 365 days a year.

Businesses have a lot of options when it comes to website management. Internet Market Consulting website management will take care of website maintenance, website repairs and promotion. We’ll manage every aspect of your website including complicated upgrades, repairs and security. We don’t stop there; we take care of getting the word out about your website by effectively marketing your site to search engines, directories and social media.