Winning Online

I had an interesting conversation with a good friend of mine this weekend. He’s a big wig financial advisor at a well-known American bank. He was explaining the headaches his division was experiencing with the content management system (CMS) they use for their corporate website. With the site transferring mission-critical data to and from his customers on a daily basis, the CMS was responsible for overseeing the entire operation making just one glitch a huge problem. His frustration with a flawed CMS integration was magnified by the unresponsiveness from his outsourced web support team. No matter how you look at it, my buddy is about at his breaking point with substandard web solutions. The more he talked the more I frowned and slowly shook my head back and forth… an all too familiar story.

What a headache. Ugggh. I mean, isn’t your website supposed to work for you? Why can’t it just work right? This latest conversation is just one of many recent conversations I’ve had with frustrated business owners and managers, people tired of being taken by the web guy… stupid web guy, stupid stupid internet, sometimes it just makes you want to scream!!

Truth is that my buddies CMS issue is your web form defect or another mans faulty outlook export tool. Let’s be real shall we, web site troubles do not discriminate… large website or small, CMS or no CMS, plugins or no plugins, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. And if there is one thing I have learned from my daily grind in this industry, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong.

If I had a dollar for every web site horror story I heard, well, I would have a lot of dollars… I’d do something pretty cool with those dollars too, guaranteed. But that won’t offer any sort of solution to the people looking for solutions so maybe I shouldn’t spend all that much more time talking, or thinking about it. Point is that, if you have a team in place that doesn’t know what they are doing, or no team at all, well, there’s a good chance you’ll be complaining to someone soon about what your web site does to make your head ache.

So is there a solution you ask? Well, you’ll certainly need a solid team in place with a solid web strategy. A knowledgeable team, one that is experienced and has the ability to adapt… that is all very important and will help minimize those headaches. The most important step though and the very first order of business is to simply take your web site seriously! It can be a formidable marketing tool for you and your team if leveraged correctly. And there is certainly nothing wrong with giving your web site a little TLC… if you put a little time into your site you may be pleasantly surprised by the Return on Investment.

I leave you with this thought- as I write this entry I’m sitting here, like many others, watching the President give the State of the Union address live- not on my TV, but on my PC. Imagine that… internet’s come a long way in short time ey? If ever there was a time to give your web site and web presence your undivided attention, that time is now… the opportunities are truly endless.

Until next time -

nb