When building a website, most of us have a pretty good idea of what we want it to look like and the type of content that it will contain. But then what? Any business website needs to “do something.” From lead capture to sales to personalized content, your website will need some software to make it all happen. When it comes to your website software, should you do it yourself? Anyone starting a small business has faced this question.
Whichever path you choose, there are some key points you need to consider. The life of your website is divided into main stages, each with its own needs:
- Getting your website tech up and running
- Keeping your website safe, updated, and online
Getting your website software up and running
- Is it current?
- Are there any known issues?
- Is it still supported? Software, even if it was once popular, often gets abandoned. You can still use it, but the code is old, there will be no support and if something goes wrong, it is all up to you to have it fixed.
- When a software is ‘open source,’ that means coders and developers can look at and alter the code. Hackers can also see the same code and identify ways to hack the code.
- Related article: 10 things you need to know about hacking
- Does it play well with others? One piece of software can affect other, completely non-related software in your site.
- Does it communicate with other software? For example, does your email marketing talk to your eCommerce so that you can easily email someone who made a certain purchase or who has not purchased for a period of time?
- Do you have the expertise available to connect it? Often times, custom coding is required to get the various software to speak with each other and collaborate.
- You will need to test it before putting it to use, for which you will need staging servers that create safe and contained testing environments.
- Once tested, you will need to figure out the cause of any issues and find or create fixes for them and then retest. Depending on the issues, this can take anywhere from hours to weeks, or longer.
- Is the software easy to use?
- Does it work across devices and browsers? Just because it works in Chrome does not mean it works in Safari or on a mobile device.
- How will you protect your site and customer data?
- Hackers
- Acts of God
- How often will you backup your website?
- Where will those backups be stored and how long will they be kept?
- Does any of your software cause any concern for privacy laws? Privacy laws govern how customer data is shared. Sending emails to your contact list requires that you share their email address with the delivery software and companies (Amazon, Google, etc.) and are subject to privacy law adherence.
Keeping your website safe and online
- How often does the software get updated? For popular or widely used software, it can get update once a month or even more frequently.
- Will you let the updates run automatically? Doing so means that every update will immediately happen on your site, regardless of any issues it may cause.
- The update will need to be tested to see how it impacts everything. Even the smallest update can have big repercussions.
- Staging environment to protect the website while testing.
- Who will search for or create and implement the necessary fixes?
- Converting back to the older version of the software
- Creating custom code to fix or work around the issue
- Who will maintain your custom code? All code needs to be maintained regularly. Custom code is no exception. Not doing so will negatively impact site performance and may lead to it crashing.
- Who will monitor and protect your site from hackers, malware, viruses, and other threats?
- Who will clean up and fix any issues with your site?
- Do you have recent backups to restore your site if needed?
- Who monitors and takes care of error logs?
- Who will manage the database? Along with your products and customer information, all content on your website is actually stored in a database.
- Your site will need to be continually monitored and maintained for speed and performance.
- Slower speeds can lower your Google ranking
- Do you have the financial cushion to handle any surprises in hacking your website crashing?
Let Red OnX handle it for you
With Red OnX, you don’t need to worry about those things. We do that for you. Everyday. All software and updates are rigorously tested. We use staging servers, so you get all the updates after we know it’s all safe, virus free, and working. Our constant security and performance monitoring, means we can keep your site safe and running smooth. If something goes wrong, we fix it. Our regular backups make it easier to recover in case something major does happen. And if you have questions, the Red OnX team is always ready to help.
