It’s no secret that websites are an important part of a business in today’s digital world.
But over the years, we’ve noticed that many business leaders treat their website like the awkward unpaid intern that still costs more than they make for the company.
But this mentality greatly reduces the output of what could be one of the best employees you ever hired—one who could show up on time, work well with others, and always know what’s happening and how to communicate it to customers.
Would you take your most effective employee and make them stand in a corner and face the wall every day?
Your website should be actually working for you
Ever had a sales employee show up late to a meeting? How about a project falling behind because someone is dropping the ball?
Employee inefficiencies and tardiness can have a big effect on a business. In fact, a study shows that employees on average waste 759 hours each year due to workplace distractions. That’s 759 hours per person each year!
But we get it, people are people! They have distractions, emotions, and life in general coming at them at all times and that can make any work difficult. Expecting them to manage every single day with no issues is setting everyone up for failure.
But a website can. Even when you and all of your staff are sleeping, your website can be out there answering questions, generating leads, and gathering intel. It’s as if your storefront or office hours never expire because you finally have someone in your business that is burning the midnight oil.
Your website can be your most punctual, productive and helpful employee.
But the website has to be set up to do all of these things, like an employee needs to be trained so that they can have autonomy and also workflow that fits in with the rest of the team.
Your website should be a team player
You know those employees that don’t work well with others? They may be really self-confident and maybe even really good at what they do, but it brings your whole team down. Bad team dynamics can lead to a whole mess of problems, and I’d guess that you’re probably used to recognizing when those issues come up.
Spotting bad human-to-human relationships tends to be pretty easy because of the inevitable sparks that fly. But when a website is the one that’s not doing its fair share, most often your team doesn’t notice and just tries to pick up the slack.
But there are a lot of ways that your website can act as a bridge between your customers and your staff, and even between your staff themselves. Think about it, when a customer lands on the site, how can they find the information they need as quickly as possible, or get a hold of the most relevant person for their needs?
Sending potential customers to the right place with the right amount of prerequisite information can smooth over your whole operation. By studying your analytics and making educated changes to your site, it can keep up with your ever-changing company and bring clarity to everyone.
Does your team know what is on your site, and does your site know what is going on in the team?
Your website should be aware of changes in your company
If your business starts offering a new product or service, you probably inform and educate all team members, or at least those directly affected by it. The more informed your whole staff is about the changes in your company, the more creative they can be in solving problems, bridging gaps, and accomplishing your overall mission.
But if your website is months or years behind what you and your company are doing, the disconnect will only get bigger—until neither resembles each other.
The solution that many companies go for is the big website overhaul every five years or so. Once enough big changes happen in the company, aesthetics have shifted, and the site is causing your team enough grief, then it’s finally time to shovel out the thousands of dollars on a brand new site.
But is that how your company itself changes? After several years of increasing frustration with your staff and products, you swap out and upgrade everyone and everything all in one fell swoop? I sure hope not. Instead, you probably have individual hires and product updates that incrementally evolve your business year after year.
But that’s what many businesses do for their websites. What about a new model that lets your website truly be an extension of your business itself? Instead of the stressful overhauling sprints every so often, you could be taking a casual stroll forward—waving to the neighbors and smelling the flowers along the way.
We believe in continually improving your site to better serve your customers and your team can improve everyone’s experience but also the bottom line of your business. It can mindfully fill in the gaps that become apparent over time and stop the productivity and revenue leaks that you may be missing.
How do I practically start doing this?
Well, that’s a topic for a whole other blog post. But it starts with having a powerful and flexible website, and having a smooth and easy process for updating it.
We recommend Elementor! It’s an excellent tool that can actually make all of this website employee-of-the-month goodness start to come together.
If you already have Elementor, build a workflow around it to truly integrate it with your business. We can help with that part! A great place to start then is learning about your current web practices.
