Businesses need to be willing to invest in their website if they want to achieve their online goals — and this doesn’t just mean investing money.
After building and launching over 100 websites over the past decade I’ve come to find that there are a wide variety of clients. Some clients are willing to invest in their website. Some clients are not.
Don’t get me wrong, every client for every project I work on is putting out a monetary investment, but the real investment is more than just money.
It is time.
Yes, having an adequate budget for a project is major factor, but let’s dive a little deeper in to the investment as a whole.
Time Investment in Your Website is Key
Time is a valuable commodity these days. In order for your website to live up to its potential you must be willing to invest time in it. Whether you are building a new site, or looking to take your current site to the next level, you need to be willing to invest time, or pay someone to invest time in making that happen.
Time Investment in Website Development
While money is a driving factor for any website developer, I can tell you first-hand that my best clients are the ones who are willing to invest their time in communication.
Communication comes in different forms for different parts of a website development project. All forms of communication require time. A commitment to open communication is a vital aspect of a development project. Communication during a website build can encompass a variety of things including:
- Initial Conversations, Project Planning & Scoping
- Open communication to learn about business and website goals
- Feedback and guidance on website design and functionality
- Feedback and guidance during the development process
- Clear and open budget and contract dialog
- Open communication to provide access to needed accounts (hosting, registrar, email services, google business, payment processors)
Being open and having timely communication throughout the development process is vital to ensure the project is complete on-time, on-budget and all parties are satisfied.
Without open communication website development projects can quickly turn in to background noise. They will sputter along at a snail’s pace and it is bad for all parties. You will be frustrated that your site isn’t done on time. I will be frustrated that I am not receiving what I need to deliver your project in a timely manner.
Needless to say, a commitment to communication during a website development project is very important.
Time Investment in SEO
If you want your site to rank well in Google, and continue ranking well, you need to be willing to invest time in SEO. SEO comes in many forms, so there is plenty to do and keep up with. A few things to make sure to keep an eye on include:
- Curating relevant, unique content
- Ensuring you are using keywords relevant to your business
- Proper use of title tags and meta descriptions
- Proper use of Google Business pages
- Focus on curating reviews
- Ensure you have no broken links
- Building quality back-links
All of these items take a time commitment. Whether you are willing to invest the time, or you need to hire someone to do so, these are important things to help your site rank well and drive more qualified leads.
Time Investment in Learning, Tracking & Moving Forward
Online trends are constantly changing.
What is popular today may not be tomorrow. What Google considers important today, could shift next month. It is important to invest time in keeping up with trends and continuing to learn about what is on the horizon.
I try to keep all of my website care plan clients up-to-date with all things web-related so I can take as much of that burden off of them as possible. Since I am involved deeply in the web world, it is much easier for me to keep up with trends to ensure my clients stay on or ahead of the curve.
It is also important to keep an eye on your website statistics. Learning the basics of how to use Google Analytics is important. Being able to see your traffic increasing (or decreasing…), seeing what pages are most popular, seeing how people are finding your site, tracking if your campaigns are successful and much more can be done pretty easily with Google Analytics.
This information can be extremely helpful when making business decisions when it comes to your website. As a simple example, if you know what pages are your most popular pages, it may be worth adding a call to action, or a link to a profitable product on those pages since they are already getting the most traffic. You could also see what you may be doing on those pages that is causing them to perform better.
Taking the time to learn, track and progress is another important investment you can make.
These are just a few of the time-related investments you can make in your website. Whether you are doing them yourself, working with your team, or working with an outside contractor, the investment is well worth it. Sometimes it is hard to quantify the value of your website, but putting in the time to make sure it is easily accessible to a large targeted audience is a great starting point.