UK small business website design, website maintenance by Dave Wilkinson

While some website owners host their website on their own servers, most will outsource hosting either directly to an ISP (Internet Service Provider) or to their web designer.

Now, if you’re not one of those people who makes a habit of filing information, you probably don’t have a clue about the information you need to access, download or modify your website. So I’ve prepared a short list of the info you’ll need:

• Your domain name - If someone else owns your domain you really should transfer ownership to yourself or your company. You need to take responsibility for annual renewals of your domain yourself to ensure you don’t end up inadvertently letting someone buy your domain name from under you.
• Your hosting company’s name, phone number and email address. The phone number is especially important if your ISP also provides your email hosting.
• Your website’s hosting server.
• Your FTP username and password.
• If you’re running a database, you’ll also need to know the name of the database as well as your database username and password.
• Lastly, I’d highly recommend downloading a copy of your website for backup purposes, because you never know what could happen.

Now you may ask why you need to know this stuff.

1. Web designers have a nasty habit of disappearing/going out of business/getting run over by a bus, so you want to know that if anything goes wrong, you haven’t lost all access to your website. Likewise, you may want to hire a new designer or transfer your hosting to another company.
2. It’s just good practice.

Imagine a world where clients tell you exactly what they’re thinking. In this world, your clients don’t hold back. They give you hell when you let them down. And they praise you (sometimes) when you do things right. If you’re at all interested in building a great company, this should sound like a great idea?

Now imagine that this supplier/client interaction takes place online, where anyone can see it. A quick search on Google will show exactly what people think of your company and your products. Not so keen any more, are you? Traditionally business people haven’t seen any point in airing dirty laundry. They try to fix problems with clients quietly, making sure nobody else hears about it. But things have changed since the birth of blogging. People who feel like ranting just rant. And if you’re not around to fix their problem as soon as they hit the ‘publish’ button, you’re probably going to take some serious flack.

If you’re a small business owner or manager, I recommend this approach. Instead of hiding from your clients online, give them an outlet. Start a company blog and ask your clients to give you feedback. You’ll need to be on your toes to keep things under control but it’s actually quite enjoyable once you get started. And your new blog will help your company in a number of ways. For example:

• As the company blogger, you can become a bit of a personality with your clients and suppliers. People like to hear a human voice.
• Sure your blog will attract some negative feedback from clients. But negative feedback can be harnessed and turned around into great PR if you deal with problems quickly.
• Publishing blog posts helps you get information out to your marketplace faster than your sales reps can.
• Building a community of clients online gives you instant permission to market to them (just don’t overdo it).
• Most blogging software has built-in systems to help you spread information, monitor feedback and gather the thoughts of your readers.

A good place to start is to research your competitors. Some of them may already be blogging. If they are, watch how they interact with their audience. You’ll soon see patterns emerging, like the number of RSS subscribers they have, the average number of comments each blog post attracts, the topics they write about and the tone of the writing.

If your competitors are blogging, join them. If they aren’t, start now before they do and get the advantage of being the first person in your industry with the guts to grow your business through public interaction.

Many business owners believe that their website is doing all it can. It attracts some visitors each month and generates one or two sales leads, but nothing much else happens.

I can’t help but agree with them. Unless website owners actually believe their site is a useful (and very cost-effective) marketing tool they’ll never truly hear what people are saying about them online.

If you’re one of these website owners, I’ve got some really bad news for you. The old way of marketing online is very dead. If you build it, people will not come. They’ll be far too busy looking at the 5000 websites competing with yours (these are the websites with owners who do actually get the new Web and invest time to make it work for them).

So before you spend a bunch of money on your annual redesign, you might want to consider how these 4 changes can help you get more from your online marketing effort:

1. Start a blog. Blogs are great tools for website owners. Not only can they function as content management systems, they are great ways to start a conversation. And believe it or not, people want to start conversations with companies ready to listen.
2. Get involved with social media. If you thought only your kids were using Facebook, you’d be wrong. Corporate social networking is growing fast. CEO’s are all over Facebook, Linkedin, Ning, Myspace and countless others. They don’t do it for fun. They do it because they know that they’re giving people more opportunities to speak their mind.
3. Have your content rewritten. When was the last time you actually read your website content? Do you think potential customers care about mission statements and bland product descriptions? They don’t. People want to see into the heart of your organization. They want to know exactly how you can help them. And they don’t have time to fish for information. When customers ask for information on your website and it doesn’t exist, ask why? If it could be useful, write about it.
4. Design in accordance with web standards. Web standards are great. You don’t need to know how HTML and CSS interact, but you do need to know that your website will perform more effectively if it’s accessible to all users on all platforms, and that search engines are happy to index it. The more people who can hear you, the more feedback you’ll get.

Other than time and a bit of money, these aren’t really monumental tasks. Commit to these ideas and you’ll be able to speak to people who care. And if you listen carefully you’ll hear plenty.