Website support! When you own a website or a website business, most people want some sort of website support and the ability to chat with someone. Maintaining a website is hard. When picking a website designer, you want to pick a website development company that offers support. In this video we discuss some of the questions you can ask to determine if their support is right for your business.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Hello, and welcome to our website support video. I'm Chad Hill and I have Adam Stetzer here with me as well.
Hey, good afternoon, Chad. And website support is a pretty complex topic because maintaining a website is a lot more effort than you might think. And many people the launch is really the big activity, and after that, there's really nothing to do. But the reality is, there's lots of follow on activity. Websites need to be maintained. They evolve over time.
So when people are out shopping for reliable website support chat, what gems can we give them, what advice can we give them to not end up being out of luck like when their website's core business disappears on them.
Yeah, great. All those are great points. And I think the first one is I really that you want to work with a company that's going to be there when you need the support. And so what that means is that if your nephew builds your website, or your neighbor down the street, that may be great for getting a website out the door, but a year from now, when you need to make updates, is your nephew going to be-- is he going to have a different job, or going to be off at school. And are you really going to be able to get the changes you need. So the first one is working with a company that's going to be there when you need them.
I love that. I hear about all the time. Oh, my nephew can do this cheaper. My cousin does websites. Like, great, OK, maybe they do. And it probably is cheaper. But what you're paying for with using a reliable free website support chat company is just what you said, Chad. They're going to be there. And what your underestimating, again, is that you'll need them later. And you will. If you think it's on the launch, the reality is, support is really important to keeping website working for you.
Right, and on that point of just the idea that launching the website is certainly a big effort but, in the long run, is probably the smaller of launching versus supporting over time-- I had a great example of that. I was on a website today. And when I was looking on the contact or specials page, and I saw some interesting coupons. But the coupons expired in 2003. So that's nine years ago. And this company has a website that has content that expired nine years ago. If they had someone who I better support, or they could get support, my guess is, they would have asked someone to update that website.
Right, so that's probably repelling customers, having a big impact on their business-- not good, right. There's costs there. So they saved a couple hundred bucks by having their nephew do the website watch, but now, when it comes to website support, they've got a real problem. So let's say people are buying this. They're watching this video. And like, OK, I get it. I've got to go into an established firm.
What are some of the markers and signals they should be looking for to say, this firm's really going to be good. They're going to be responsive. They're going to be reasonable price. What should they be shopping for?
The first thing you want to ask is whether or not they have a process, a document in process, for website support. And the best indicator to know whether that they truly have a process is whether they have a work order system where, when you have a request, you get a ticket number so that you can call and follow up. Now, of course, we all think it's easier just to call your free website support person on the phone, have a free website support chat and say, hey, make this change to this page.
But for anyone who's done that, knows that the downside to that approach of just sort of pick up the phone and call is that, something's lost in translation. The change doesn't go as you'd expect. Or that the person forgets to do it, and you have no follow up to say, hey, I called you on this date. And you said it was going to be done on this date. So look for a process for website support and make sure that the ticket system.
Right, and I hear that all the time. Well, I want something that's a little more user friendly. That sounds rigid and sounds cold and impersonal. But your point is, week you may feel that way, but getting things done, that's really how it works. Because after you've made 10 or 20 request for changes on your website, if someone doesn't have a rigid process and tracking, they'll lose some of them.
Yeah, exactly. And I think the final point of that is, even if you do want a rigid process, you also want a process that get things done quickly and gets it done at a reasonable cost. No one wants to pay half the cost of what they originally paid to build their website to have something updated. They want it to be reasonable. And when you ask for a small text change or a small graphic change, that it's within the budget that you would expect and that it actually gets done very quickly.
A lot of companies are very good at building great websites up front, but a lot of people don't like the website support chat side of it because it's a lot a little things that need to be done. And it's just not as fun. So they neglect it. So you want to make sure that there's a company that can get it done at the right price, and they're not trying to drive you away with having really high prices, and get it done inexpensively.