Not long ago, in an office not far away, a young man named Billy launched his new business. To make his business successful, Billy knew he had to be online – but, how to get there?
Billy thought that websites were expensive, so he went about the task of finding a website builder instead. “I’ll show those super expensive website developers a thing or two!” he thought. He didn’t need their skills or expertise, no way, not Billy.
Billy found many website builders to choose from, but could not decide which was right for him. One was too easy, another one was too hard – how to choose?
And then, after many hours of frustrating searches, Billy found a builder that promised him that he could make a beautiful site in no time at all with no previous experience or knowhow.
“This one,” he thought, “is just right!”
Billy then went about his work. He spent many hours of his own billable time, trying things and changing them, making many mistakes, having to watch video tutorials or read instructions, calling technical support, even though sometimes he got the wrong answers to his questions.
But Billy kept at it, he didn’t care that he already had clients waiting for his products that needed to be shipped out, they could wait a little longer – as far as he was concerned, there were way more clients to be had once he got his amazing website finished!
Much time went by, and finally Billy was ready to launch his new site. He sent out an email announcing his launch to all his clients and contacts, and waited.
And at first, everything seemed OK. Billy got compliments, he got noticed, and he even got some traffic.
Over the next several months, Billy experienced the other side of maintaining his own website. He got an email from a prospect who said she could not see the site very well on her phone. Then one of his clients informed Billy that he tried to make a purchase on the site and it did not go through. Another prospect let him know that she had searched for his site and the Google listing said it may have been hacked.
Each time there was a problem, Billy handled it. And each problem required more video tutorials, online research and calls to technical support. Sometimes the people behind the website builder could help, but other times they couldn’t – or wouldn’t.
You see, Billy did not have a premium account, so his support was limited. If he wanted stronger support, he would have to upgrade. Billy did not like that idea, so he soldiered on as he was, somehow managing to keep the site going without having to upgrade his account.
Then, one day Billy got an email from his website builder company, telling him that they were upgrading their platform. “That’s great!” Billy thought. But, as he soon found out, in this case the upgrade would not support Billy’s website as it was, and he would have to rebuild it.
After all the time, effort, frustration and anxiety Billy had gone through by using this company’s “easy solution”, he soon realized that he did not want to go through all of that again. Not to mention the countless hours spent trying to maintain the site and deal with issues that seemed to constantly arise.
But Billy was also worried about having to pay a skilled website developer to build and maintain a new site. He decided to analyze how much time and effort he was putting into maintaining his website, time and effort he was taking away from the process of running, improving and growing his business.
To his surprise, Billy found that the overall cost to him in billable hours was much higher than he had realized. On top of that was the effort needed to deal with issues and unhappy clients, plus the stress of always thinking about his site and if it was working right.
All of this led Billy to hire a professional website company to redo his site. He knew that what he would pay them would end up being far less than all the trouble he had gone to for his old site.
When they were done, Billy got a website with which he was thrilled; it was far better looking, worked efficiently, was easy to navigate and overall was a great user experience – in fact, his clients were extremely happy and let him know that it was a wise decision.
Now, Billy spends all his time, effort and stress working on and improving his business, while his client list grows. And, he doesn’t worry about his website, because he has a team of web experts manage and maintain it. And that’s the way it should be.
Billy is not a real person, he is based on anecdotal accounts from several clients. Billy was fortunate enough to learn from his mistakes before he lost his business, some other entrepreneurs weren’t so lucky.
Don’t be like Billy, who wasted valuable time trying to build a website instead of using that time wisely to build his business. Put your expertise to work on what you know and love to do, the returns will far outweigh any costs associated with having someone else do for you what they love to do: build and maintain your website.
