If you’re a solopreneur or micro-business owner, there are basic website essentials you need to know how to handle on your own. Your webmaster may not always be around. They may not want to do the “small stuff” and want you to wait to make changes until there’s enough to make it worth doing. Or you may be charged a minimum fee each time changes need to be made—even if that change takes less than ten minutes.
Why I Wrote This Post
In my work as a small business marketing consultant, I have met with entrepreneurs who have a website and no idea how to do anything with it. If that’s you, don’t feel bad—this is more the rule than the exception. My clients all had a website, usually very professional looking. They had one to three blog posts on their blog page—because their web designer had uploaded them when the site was first published. Some had changed the emphasis of their business and their home page was no longer relevant to what they were doing. (That would be very bad.) Some didn’t know how to access their dashboard, never mind make changes on the site.
Basically, once the site was up, they didn’t touch it again.
This is not uncommon. Click on the tab labeled “Blog” on most small business websites and you will see a smattering of posts. Being consistent with a blog is not easy; it’s even harder when you don’t know how or aren’t yet comfortable putting up posts. Many people’s “Events” or “Appearances” pages haven’t been updated in months.
You don’t have to be a web designer or IT specialist, but you do need to know some website essentials—the bare minimums to keep your website current and healthy.
What to Know on Your Website
How to log in to the back office or dashboard of your site. Know your user name and password or be able to find them within a minute of looking for them.
How to put up a blog post that looks reasonably decent (meaning with an image or graphic of some sort, headings, perhaps even a link.
You should also know how to put in the short metadata description for the search engines. You don’t need to be an expert in SEO. You just need to know what keywords are best for your post and site and how to work them into a description of your post.
Handling Comments. Know how to go into the comment section and take care of any comments. Some are obvious spam—just mark them as spam, block them, and delete. Some are people who just want a little attention from you—give them a thanks and an appropriate response. Some of the people who leave comments are going to become clients. Their question might need more information than can be covered in a reply comment. You can give a general answer and then tell them that you are sending an email.
I have my site set so that all comments need to be personally approved by me. Once someone has commented, they can usually comment from then on without being approved every time. But turning on approval keeps your comments sections from getting spammed to death.
How to add a page. Most websites start out pretty basic: the Home page, About/Contact, a Services page, perhaps a store of some sort, and a blog. But you may want to add a page for something specific. Maybe you’ve started doing podcasts or speaking and need a speaker’s page or a media page. Maybe you’re offering a new service and you’d like a page that describes that service in full. You want to be able to not only add a page, but make it look professional. Some websites allow you to “clone” a page, so if there’s a page on your site already that looks the way you want your new page to look, you can duplicate it and just change out the text and images.
How to update plugins and your theme. Most of the time, this is a matter of clicking on the Plugin tab on your dashboard menu and then pushing a button that says “Update.” The not-so-hard trick is knowing where to find that button. For WordPress plugins, you click on the menu item “Plugins.” You can choose “Installed Plugins” or just wait another second or two while the Plugins page opens up. There will be a notice on each plugin that needs an update. If your website is really fancy-pants, the plugins that need updating might be a different color.
Updating your theme may be just as simple. Go to “Appearance” or “Themes” and click the update button. If you bought a custom theme, you may need to go the site where you bought it, download the new theme, then upload it to your site. For built-from-the-ground-up custom themes, you’re going to need your webmaster.
Opt-Ins and Email Platforms
How to create an opt-in form or landing page. This usually means understanding how your email platform works. I have worked with business owners who had an opt-in form on their website (usually for a newsletter) and no idea where the addresses were stored or how to contact people.
Most of these clients had a free email platform, usually Mailchimp or MailerLite. Just so you know, most email platforms now have a free component. I use ConvertKit and recommend it. My paid version has all the bells and whistles but they have a no-frills, free version for up to 10,000 subscribers. That’s huge. But I recommend ConvertKit because it’s what the big kids use. As your business grows and you get more comfortable sending out broadcast emails and setting up sequences, you will eventually move into a paid platform. That’s when you find out the free service you’ve been using doesn’t do all the fancy things you need. And you end up moving your list to ConvertKit or an equivalent. Easier to start with it and know it will have what you need when you are ready for it.
Whether you are contacting people directly from your website hosting platform (not recommended), manually copying and pasting a list of emails into the cc or bcc section of any emails you send (again, not recommended) or using an email service (highly recommend), you need to know how to send a broadcast message, set up an email sequence, and how to add and delete individual subscribers manually.
You also need to know how the whole opt-in, freebie, mailing list thing works. “Sign up for my newsletter” is not the flex you think it is. (And hasn’t been for quite a while.) You need to offer something that is attractive to your target market as your freebie opt in. People see your offer, fill their name and email address in the form, and they receive whatever it is—an eBook, access to a video, a quiz, whatever.
I made a short video for my clients to explain the process: Connecting the Internet Pieces
Backing Up Your Website is one of the most important things you can do. Many site hosting platforms do this automatically at certain intervals. Make sure that is happening. If not, you need to know how to back up your website to make sure that you have the information you need to get back up and running if you are hacked.
These are the BARE Minimum Website Essentials
Small business owners pay good money for their website. (Sometimes too much good money.) When you start with a professional looking site, you are that far ahead of your competition. But you need to know how to maintain your site, not only to keep it looking good (you don’t want someone clicking a link and hitting a “404 Not Found” page), but to make sure the information on it is up to date and still valid—especially pricing!
Not keeping tabs on what is going on inside your website is a recipe for disaster. If you have a broken link checker (it’s a plugin) on your site, you will be notified when a link isn’t working. If you’re not responding to comments or posting new content—even if it’s once a month—your site is going to start looking neglected.
Start with a few basics. If you have a blog, put up a new post on a regular basis. A short post will do. Get comfortable checking to see which plugins need updating every time you go into your back office. Send out a broadcast message once or twice a month (again, minimum).
As you gain confidence, start poking around in other sections of your site. You may not be ready to touch anything, but you can go in and sneak a peek just to see what is there. The good news is that learning is cumulative. The more you do on your website, the more comfortable you’re going to be.
What other things should entrepreneurs know about accessing and using their own websites? Let me know in the comments below.
