The Five Biggest
Mistakes My New
Clients Are Making
Interacting with new clients is one of the most rewarding parts of doing my job.
I enjoy getting to know people, their business, their clients, and the daily challenges that they face. It is gratifying to solve serious problems with a clients infrastructure and seeing them succeed. Most prospective client are doing the best that they can running their businesses and are just overwhelmed. They don’t have the time to fully research all of their IT decisions. A lack of knowledge or decisions made out of convenience often end up causing significant future problems costing time, money or both.
Here are the top five mistakes that I regularly see prospective clients making. Why they happen, and how to best avoid them.
Clients don't have control over their domains
The number one issue that I run into with new clients involves domain registrations. A web domain is the single most important component of an electronic presence; it controls access to websites and e-mail among other things. It is as important as a phone number, mailing address or bank account but it often gets neglected.
Clients are often sold all in one e-mail, domain and website packages where the service provider controls everything. This may seem cheaper and convenient in the beginning, but it can turn into a major problem when a client wants to switch services or make changes. Transferring a domain from one provider to another can often result in complete outages of a website and e-mail lasting from a day to several weeks depending on the parties involved. In extreme situations, service providers use domain control as leverage to hold a client hostage.
I always educate my clients on the importance obtaining and maintaining their domains using reputable domain providers and only turning over credentials to vendors for specific tasks. I never mark-up domains that I create for my clients. I bill for the actual cost of the domain plus administrative labor and turn the credentials over for safe keeping. Independent control of domains, e-mail services and web hosting might be slightly more expensive at first but it allows the greater flexibility in shopping for the best services available in each area.
Clients don't claim their locations online
It is important for businesses that have physical locations to claim all of the locations on the major search or social media platforms. Registering with Google My Business, Bing Places for Business , Facebook, Apple Business Register, and Yelp is a good start. New locations or offices should be registered as soon as they open to the public.
Each of the business registrars have a slightly different validation process and it can seem daunting at first but the benefits are worth the effort. Correcting inaccurate crowd-sourced information afterwards can be a slow and frustrating process. Once a listings has been claimed, it is important to check on it regularly and add special hours for holidays or any closing due to vacations or other events. Take the time to add pictures and write a “From the owner” statement if the platform allows it. I’d never turn down an opportunity to improve my search engine ranking when it is offered.
As with many things in life, there are often no quick fixes.
Listing a business with all of the above mentioned platforms is free, but expect to be solicited for services such as purchasing advertising space. There are vendors and online tools that claim to be a “one-stop” shop for updating of business listings. I have tried a few of them and have come to the conclusion that they are expensive and only are only moderately effective.
Clients don't maintain their websites
Creating a website consumes time, takes energy, and costs real money. It is completely understandable to want to take a break after a project has been completed. Many website design firms operate using a fixed price model and want to complete a project and move on to the next one. Often very little discussion occurs about regular maintenance. Most vendors complete a project and leave the website to the client to service with for rest of the website’s useful life.
Websites require both technical and content maintenance
All websites requires regular technical maintenance. All hosting providers will regularly update the underlying support infrastructure as part of their commitment to their clients. Website owners are usually responsible for updates to the technology used to build their specific sites. Sites built with WordPress or Joomla require regular patching to the base as well as any extensions or plug-ins that are used to build the site. I often find that sites have gone months or even years without any maintenance leaving them vulnerable to security problems. Self service vendors such as Wix or Squarespace tend to be much better about maintenance.
All websites require regular maintenance of the content. Google, Bing and other search engines use programs called “bots” to regularly scan websites for content. These scans look at written text, images and website layout and build a map which is used as part of the website ranking process. Search engines recognize websites that change frequently and scan them more often. The global pandemic of 2020 has proven that the world can change very quickly, and content that was created a year ago can look be very outdated.
Clients don't look at web traffic data
Most hosting providers offer some basic level of website traffic data. This one is easy to fall into the cracks as there are only so many hours in a week that can be devoted infrastructure and still get business done. Google Analytics is the best tool to track website activity and is often not enabled by website developers. Some firms charge more for it or won’t enable it unless the client specifically requests it. Having analytics data from the moment that a website goes live is a good historical record to track progress. Many of my new clients have missed this opportunity but it is never too late to start.
Measure - Make Changes - Measure
Actively looking at web traffic data will provide a picture of how customers are using a website and what attracts and keeps their interest. It can also provide an image of where they are and what type of devices are being used to view content. Using this data can inform decisions on creating new content and when to retire content. Correlating website traffic to business metrics such as in-store or online sales is critical.
All websites have a finite life expectancy. Chances are that a website built four to five years ago won’t work very well for users on mobile devices. Using traffic data can help a business recognize that a website needs to be replaced as their users switch from desktops and laptops to phones and tablets. I often find that clients wait until business growth suffers before replacing a site. Regular review of traffic data can usually spot these trends well before business is impacted.
Clients under-utilize Social Media
There are numerous ways that clients can drive traffic to their websites. These include referrals from search engines, other, and social media. Clients often ignore or under-utilize social media for many of the same reasons as mentioned about; a lack of time or knowledge. Small business often don’t have the staffing available to work on keeping up with posting and updates. It can be daunting.
Choose one or two platforms and become proficient
The advice that I give all my clients is not to spread themselves too thin. This can often lead to posting the exact same content to several platforms which dilutes the message and comes across as laziness. I am not against the use of automation or services to schedule posts and improve efficiency. I strongly encourage the posting of as much original content as possible. Purchasing content that was written for a specific industry and sold across the country to various business tends to be a bad idea. It will be noted by search engines and might impact SEO scores.
I recommend developing a social media plan that sets a theme for a specific platform. Serious news or current events items for Twitter. A softer or light hearted behind the scenes look at a client’s business for Instragram, YouTube, Snapchat or TikTok depending on the target audience.
Why do these mistakes happen?
I must confess that I have made some of these mistakes myself in the course of developing my business. My mistakes happened most often as a result of time pressure. This pressure lead to short term thinking and decisions made out of convenience. I can empathize with clients that feel that they don’t have the time to stop and plan things out. This is totally understandable. Developing a web presence plan is key to charting a direction and understanding what resource will be required.
The second most common cause for costly mistakes are bad or occasionally unscrupulous vendors. There are a number of places where prospective clients are at an information disadvantage when selecting vendors. Domain Registrars, Hosting Providers, Website Developers, Advertising Agencies, Search Engine Optimization or Web Analytics Firms make it extremely challenging to determine what services are absolutely necessary. There are many great vendors out there, but there are also some that lure clients in with low initial offers and then lock clients into long term contracts with unfavorable terms. Others keep their initial rates low and price the “add-on” features uncompetitively to make up the difference.
I will explore all of the above topics in more detail in upcoming posts.
The important thing to remember is to take the time and do the research into the companies offering the services and the offers being advertised.
-R