Websites 2 | Winch Websites

5 questions you’ll want to ask me about website care plans.

by Tony Phelps | 15 Oct 2021 | Outsourcing, Take Care, Websites

One of the most fundamental things you can do for your website is to prevent it from breaking. Alarmingly, there are still many business owners who don’t take web maintenance seriously enough. It’s natural to think that, since you built it, you can manage it. But having a hands-on approach to your site care simply isn’t sustainable over the long run.

How much do you know about website care plans? What are your questions on professional website care? If you’re seeking answers to these questions, read on.

1. Why are care plans so important?

Your website is powered by software, just the same as your phone and your computer/laptop. And as you are well aware, software needs to be kept up-to-date to keep the bad guys out, to fix bugs and problems that have been discovered, and to add new features and capabilities.

So your website is no different, there are constant modifications and improvements to its software that you are highly recommended to keep up with. While it may not be so important to add all the latest bells & whistles, it is vital to ensure that your website won’t fail when a visitor tries to use it (for example, buy something, send you an enquiry, or sign up for your newsletter). It is equally vital that you don’t let others break in and take control of your website through security faults in the software. Just think, if you found one of your windows at home wasn’t closing any more, you’re more than likely not going to leave it that way or you risk someone burgling the place. So it is with your website, don’t leave those back windows with broken locks.

This is real-world stuff too, and I’ve had a number of clients come to me after being stung. One organisation had recently launched their new website, it was hacked and defaced with less-than-pleasant content, and they lost the whole investment. Website security and maintenance wasn’t their ‘thing’ (and absolutely no reason for it to be) but they paid a hefty price for just assuming everything could be left alone once the site was published.

2. My website isn’t that big or complicated, do I still need a care plan?

No matter how simple your website, as mentioned above, it is powered by software - and someone needs to look after that software to keep it updated. I’m a big fan of continuously making small updates, rather than waiting for long periods and then catching up with everything in one go.

Waiting longer means risking your website getting attention of the wrong sort while a security hole has been discovered, even though there’s a fix which you haven’t got yet. It also means there are more significant software changes which risk incompatibilities or untested jumps from old version to latest version.

Small updates often is the go!

3. Can’t I just run the updates myself?

Of course you can! You can service your own car too. And fix your own plumbing. And a myriad of other DIY tasks, at work or at home.

But here’s the thing - what’s the best use of your time? I know for a fact that you have exactly the same 24 hours in every day that I do. What would be the best way you can spend your work time and avoid losing your leisure/family time?

I would guess that while most updates are quick and easy, sorting things out when there’s a hiccup is not going to be a favourite activity of yours.

Outsourcing your website care to a professional who has the tools, the knowledge and the experience to keep your website humming is an investment in your business, freeing you to spend that time on growing and building your business.

4. It doesn’t seem that complicated, so what’s included in a care plan?

Website care from Winch Websites is more than simply ensuring that the website software is updated every so often. Those updates are an essential element, but on top of that, all websites under our website care have a range of additional “add-ons” activated to make sure the website is all good.

For example, daily backups that are independent of webhosting. What if there’s a fire at the data-centre where your website (and its webserver backups) are housed? That was an event that took out thousands of websites in March 2021. Eek! 😱

Website security is another benefit of website care by Winch Websites - if your site is hosted with us, you already get excellent security protections, this is stepped up for website care clients.

Higher website care plans include blocking spammers from using your website forms, and 24/7/365 monitoring with auto-alerts (to us) if your website disappears for any reason.

One thing may particularly appeal to busy people is that all plans include some time to make changes to your website - update that paragraph, amend that pricing, replace that photo etc. Send an email and it’s taken care of for you.

5. Doesn’t my hosting company do that?

Horses for courses. Your dentist is good at teeth, but I don’t know that you want to be buying home-made toothpaste and/or toothbrushes from her/him. Hosting companies may provide some elements of website care - you should certainly expect them to be maintaining the underlying webserver that powers your website software, for example.

Hosting is not a high-profit-margin business though, so one way or another you’d need to be paying for additional attention given to your site. Your site is unique, with its combination of words, images, functions and tools. It’s not an environment that works particularly well for highly automated mass-scale operations.

So while you could expect site backups, good security, and reasonable performance, investing in someone who is familiar with your site, can give it one-on-one attention, and who can help you make sure your website is doing positive things, is an investment that will pay dividends.

For more info about website care by Winch Websites, take a look at the range of plans available and what they include. These are structured to help you as the owner of a website be confident that it is doing what it should and that there’s someone on hand for when it isn’t, and to assist in keeping it accurate, correct and fresh. Get in touch if you’d like to chat about website care for your website.

I would especially love to hear from you if you have ideas and advice on what else a website care plan needs to be of value to you.

5 Tips For Working With A Website Creator

by Tony Phelps | 6 Aug 2021 | Outsourcing, Websites

Investing your time, energy and money into a website project offers big benefits but comes with significant risks. Even if you’ve had a website created before, it can be difficult to know how to ensure it is successful, with different people, processes and technologies involved every time.

So what do you need to have in place, for a website project to run smoothly?

Know what YOU want - One of the most important things you can do is be clear on what you are trying to achieve with your website. Best advice is to choose SMART goals, that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. For example, a 50% increase in sales within 12 months of publishing the new website. Having a clear brief lets you and your website creator stay on the same page and move you towards your goals.
Find a web professional you can trust - While it is very important to find someone with the skills, experience, tools and ability to create the website you have in mind, it is also important to see if their personality is a good fit for you and yours for them. It is so much easier to communicate effectively and work together if you get on with each other. Are they happy to answer questions, and are the answers put in terms you understand? Are they interested in you and what you’re trying to achieve? Are there examples of previous work with their name on it? Is that the sort of thing you want them to do for you?
Follow a process - Having a timeline in place is crucial for a project to run smoothly. Be clear with yourself and with the website creator on how long the project is expected to take, and that appropriate time & resources will be allocated. Map out how you and the website creator expect the project to run, and what communication and collaboration tools will be used. Will that suit you?
Have a clear budget - Decide on the level of investment you are prepared to make for your website. Obviously, a $300 website is very different to a $30,000 website. Both are common! Agree your budget with your web creator before you start any work, and what that is going to provide - a formal signed proposal is a good way to proceed. Expect any additional features or changes that are outside the initial scope of work to require additional investment. Don’t be tempted to go for the cheapest option, it is cheap for a reason.
Be prepared to get involved -You are unlikely to get what you want unless you are able to give constructive feedback, it is the lifeblood of a good web design project. Try to ensure that you provide feedback on each step of the process and especially when asked. It helps you and your website creator to stay on the same page. Provide feedback in a way that moves the project forward - so not “I don’t like the background colour”, but rather “I prefer a light blue for the background colour”.

Hopefully these quick tips are useful when you next look for a website creator to assist with your next website project. If you’d like to learn how to make your next website project a winner in more detail, why not download our free guide to learn the secrets to a successful website project, featuring tips that you can implement straight away.

Why your website is a caravan

by Tony Phelps | 25 May 2021 | Websites

Let’s say you are the proud owner of a website. You may have done all the grunt-work yourself, or you may have asked someone else to do all the necessaries. One way or another, you’re online and the world can see your website.

Do you even need to know what underpins the website in terms of hosting and domain name and other stuff? It’s there and working, right? Well, like handing over responsibility for anything important, it’s always wise to have an idea of what’s going on. Then if there’s some change that impacts on your website, you’ll be a step ahead and ready to deal with it and keep things rolling along.

There are 3 pillars to any website - the website itself, its hosting, and its domain name. Let’s see how these equate to a caravan, to help understand how they relate to each other.

Your new caravan has finally arrived at the dealer, and you’ve rocked up to collect it. After a quick run-through of how to hitch and unhitch it, how to get it ready on-site for you to use, and how to find & use its various features, you’re ready to head out to the wide blue yonder.

Caravan = Website

Well, the look of the caravan (its design and paint-job), what it has inside (bunk beds, shower, TV), the extras that it includes (eg. slide-out barbeque)... these are all equivalent to your website.

A website may have one or more forms, perhaps an online store, it may ask for people to sign up for a newsletter, it will more than likely present information to visitors in an easy-to-absorb way with user-friendly navigation around the pages. In the same way as there is a wide variety of caravan designs, so there is a wide variety of website designs.

Caravan Park = Hosting

The caravan park that you’ve stopped at, that’s equivalent to your hosting. You are free to hitch up and move to another caravan park if you like, but while you’re settled in at one, you’re going to have to pay a fee for the privilege. Some parks provide more for your money eg. kitchen facilities, showers, bouncy castle, pool, where some provide less for your money eg. a stony bit of ground. But which park you choose is up to you, and if you don’t like one, you can move on to another.

RV caravan camping at the caravan park on a peaceful lake with mountains on the horizon. Camping vacation family travel concept — A beautiful caravan park

In just the same way, your website has to ‘live’ somewhere. Essentially, there is a computer out there (the webserver) which stores the data and processes the requests for webpages when visitors arrive. Fortunately these days, we don’t need to be concerned with the technology itself, we just need to know whether it’s a good neighbourhood and if the facilities are up to scratch.

Choosing hosting for your website may not be necessary. For many websites, it comes as a package deal. For some websites, it actually isn’t possible to separate your own website out from the underlying system. But for most websites, it is certainly possible to relocate a website to different hosting if you don’t like the performance or are being charged too much. Just like caravan parks, fees vary hugely, and you tend to get what you pay for.

Rego = Domain Name

Every caravan has to have its own vehicle registration. While providing States with a great income stream, it does also have practical uses such as allowing the tracing of a tow vehicle whose own registration is obscured by the caravan, and also of course the tracing of the caravan itself if it gets stolen. Just like a car, every caravan has a unique serial number which is linked to its registration plate.

Victoria The Place To Be Australian number plate to scale — Victorian number plate

Every year, the rego has to be renewed with the appropriate State authority. Pay a fee, and the caravan is legally allowed on the road.

So it is with your domain name. You register a domain name with a ‘Registrar’ (there are hundreds to choose from) and pay an initial fee. Then you renew your domain name registration every now and then, usually once a year. The registration fee and the renewal fee are set by your registrar, and can vary widely. There may be add-on services attached to a domain, but usually it’s an extremely simple and limited service, just the same as the caravan rego.

As with hosting, domain registration/renewal may be a package deal, so you may not see a separate fee. Unlike hosting, it is nearly always possible to relocate the domain registration to another registrar - in caravan terms, this would be like dropping the rego in New South Wales and re-registering in Victoria as your new base State. Why would you change registrar? Maybe it’s cheaper. Maybe it’s more convenient eg. so you get one invoice for hosting + domain renewal. Maybe the registrar provides better tools to manage the domain (although you’re rarely going to need them, it must be said).

So be sure you are aware of your own ‘caravan’ setup. Are you paying for the website itself? Who is your hosting with, and how much is it? Who is the domain name registered with, and how much is the renewal?

If you know these things, then if you become dissatisfied for any reason with one of them, you’ll be able to look into fixing that - move to a better caravan park, upgrade your caravan, or register the plate with another State!

Knowing your why and how powerful it can be in your business

by Tony Phelps | 5 Feb 2021 | Marketing, Website Design, Websites

Fake Dictionary, Dictionary definition of the word why.

Why do I create and manage websites? Because many years ago I fell in love with the playing-field-levelling technology of the internet. I do it for small/micro businesses and for small non-profits to easily compete successfully on the internet with multi-million-dollar budgets from the big organisations.

I’m not interested in the large corporate projects with committees, lo-o-o-o-ong project timelines, hidden agendas, impact assessments, stakeholder engagement studies etc etc. They are high value but high aggro.

So my ‘Why’ leads straight to my Purpose - which is to help small businesses, small non-profits to succeed via the internet. As a great book has it, “Small is beautiful”.

Having a clear purpose in your business is invaluable.

If you have a why, you have a purpose- and with a purpose, you know what you’re out to achieve. It focusses what you do, how you do it, what you do it with. And means you do it better.
It keeps you authentic - if you care about what you do (ie. it’s more than just simply earning money to survive), your actual and potential customers will feel and recognise that. They’ll be more confident when buying from you.
It keeps you on track - knowing why you do what you do will help you ‘stick to the plan’. It’s easy to add options, and say ‘Yes’ every time a customers asks for something slightly related, but if you keep your why in mind, you’ll know what will serve your aims and objectives and what won’t. You’ll make better business decisions, run more effectively, build a better business. Your why gives you direction.

How to find your why:

1: What drives you? - you get out of bed every day (give or take a Covid lockdown) and do your do. Is it simply what you know how to do, or is there more to it? What inspires you to keep going and want to stay in your industry other than money?

2: What about your business do you love? - when you talk to others about your business, what is it that you are most passionate about? It won’t be the hard description of what you actually do (eg. excavate ditches) but what’s behind doing that (eg. the satisfaction of protecting a town from flooding).

3: What problems do you want to solve for your customers? - whatever it is that you do, it’s going to be solving a problem. Maybe it’s as straightforward as offering a great place to eat. Maybe it’s stroking an ego. Maybe it’s a comfortable retirement. Identify the problem that people come to you to get fixed.

4: Follow your gut - your why is an emotional thing, not a dispassionate factual thing. This isn’t the same as your mission or your vision. It’s what leads to a mission, a vision. See if you can catch or recall those moments that make you happy to be doing what you do. What was that actually made you feel happy?

Review: Uptime360 monitoring service

by Tony Phelps | 24 Jul 2020 | Websites

Winch Websites recently started using Uptime360 to keep tabs on a diverse range of servers, websites and related aspects for clients. Essentially, one place to check on how things are, with automatic alerts sent out when there are issues that might need attending to.

With an increasing array of online tools and services, the prospect of having one dashboard to look at is very appealing. See how busy things are, if anything is failing, or if a client has fallen afoul of antispam or website blocks. Plus, set customised alerts to notify appropriate people to pay attention to something.

Uptime360 aims to fill that need, and has become a part of the Winch Websites stable. It’s relatively new, but then, so are many online services really! I’m expecting the service to improve over the next few months as the developers add new features and facilities, and tweak what’s there in response to feedback.

What does Uptime360 do?

Creating an account and getting things going was straightforward, and the initial dashboard makes it quite clear what goes where. The available options are split into;

Server - for the underlying webservers (up/down, disk space, memory/process usage, network activity)
Website - for individual websites (up/down, response times,
Check - for particular services eg. is a mailserver accepting emails?
Blacklist - is a website blacklisted or blocked on any of 200+ providers?

These cover critical aspects for a client’s digital shopfront. Is the website up and running? Is it suffering slow responses for some reason? Has it been blacklisted by anti-spammers or internet security services? Are emails getting through OK?

At Winch Websites, we are on the lookout for any of these issues for client websites covered by a Website Care plan. We aim to avoid the scenario of a customer finally telling the website owner that they have a serious problem - probably after multiple other potential or actual customers simply gave up and moved on.

For client sites that we host and manage, it means we can jump on an issue quickly, find out what’s going on, and get it fixed. Right now, we have other monitoring services in place. Add a sophisticated infrastructure that aims to self-heal for serious problems (such a webserver crashing, or a website experiencing the White Screen Of Death!). Uptime360 builds on that infrastructure and provides greater insight into activity and performance. It has turned out to be a great addition to our arsenal - pulling into one place an overview of a dozen webservers run by several providers with differing technical architectures.

What’s Not So Good About Uptime360?

The Dashboard

There are some weak areas. The main ‘Dashboard’ is fairly meaningless - showing a large surface-chart of overall server uptime offers no value. It’s always going to be very near 100% (you’d hope!). Likewise, mini-charts for each major monitoring service (Servers, Websites, Checks, Blacklists) have an overall average with a vertical axis based on the recent lowest to recent highest. This means a large dip if one of them has even a slight variation. It can give a bit of a heart-start when seeing Servers drop from a steady 100% down to the bottom of the chart, and it turns out to be down to 99% (the difference between a quick hiccup and complete failure ????).

Snapshot of the Uptime360 dashboard — *The Uptime360 Dashboard could provide more value*

Personally, I’d like to see the Uptime360 Dashboard reflect what I as administrator need to know or see as an overview - and that’s who’s having an issue I might need to look into. For example, fix the vertical axis so that it is always 0% up to 100%, and if I see any line dipping then I can be concerned. Or better, only show anything that hasn’t been perfect in the last day or week, with a link to that item for more detail.

Lists on Summary Pages

A minor annoyance is the selector for how many items to show in a list. For example, when I go to the Server page, it always shows the first 5. I change to 10, 15 or All. Then I refresh the page (which should be automatic, by the way, just as it is on the server detail page). And I’m back to 5 again. I’d like that to stick on whatever number I ask to be listed.

Summary Page Chart Scaling

Detail pages suffer the same scaling issue; on the Server page, I can view the CPU (processor) busy-ness as a percentage and as a chart. If I see a chart with a spike, I need to read and interpret the percentage to assess if the server is actually ‘busy’ or if it’s just ‘busier’. Not a big deal, but it would be great to know I can speedily scan down and if I see a spike, know immediately it’s worth investigating. It’s how the brain works, we’re good at scanning images.

Snapshot of the Uptime360 Server summary page — *Spikes may look large but are usually not*

So What Do We Think About Uptime360?

These are user-interface niggles, though. Uptime360 is a welcome new addition to Winch Websites and is now a standard part of the Website Care toolbox. It gives us greater clarity into what’s going on with critical aspects of what we do - providing effective websites that positively contribute to their owners. Overall I’m happy to give this a browser tab of its own!

Oh, and one nice touch is the ability to create a Status Page with a dedicated and branded URL (webpage). Clients can check and see how well our servers and/or their own sites have behaved over the last week. This page needs a bit more sophistication, but it has potential as a place to refer clients to look at first if they think something is wrong. The page can include details of any incidents, which can be updated with our comments/explanations etc. It could be a way to deflect multiple helpdesk calls when there’s a major outage. It’s not ready for prime time as yet, in my opinion (there’s an issue with hooking up the custom URL with an SSL certificate, for example).

Pros

Nice layout - clean
Easy to learn & use
Quick
Nice charts & numbers

Cons

Main dashboard of no practical use
Chart scaling inconsistent
No auto-refresh or sticky how-many on summary pages

Yes or No?

Would I recommend this to anyone running multiple servers and websites? Yes.

Find Out More

Go to uptime360.net - this is not an affiliate link.

How low are YOUR barriers to entry?

by Winch Websites | 2 Sep 2019 | Outsourcing, Take Care, Web services, Webhosting, Website Building, Website Care, Website Design, Websites

Let's focus on my business for a bit. Usually, I'm all about my client's business (the "if they do well, I do well" perspective), but we'll flip it around for a change.

The websites/web-marketing industry is undergoing huge changes. Has been for years, of course, along with technology in general. Ask a website designer/builder to go back 5 years and recall how websites were built, and compare to today's tools and techniques. It's chalk and cheese.

faster
easier
slicker
more effective.

And cheaper. Like most technology (except iPhones, it seems...!).

In the last couple of years, there have been 2 major developments that have led to a massive surge in the number of people who say they are available to build you a fabulous website. "Page builders" which greatly reduce or even eliminate the technical knowledge needed. And "Software as a Service" which lets you subscribe to functions & tools & facilities that you need, when you need them, without having any hassles with installation, maintenance, upgrades or backups.

You may have seen the Wix ads, or Squarespace, or GoDaddy. Yes, you can DIY - build a website right now, and it will indeed look good, at low cost (to start with). Get up and running in an hour or two. They don't lie.

So we have a huge number of 'experts' out there now. The web industry has such low barriers to entry that it has become an enticing side-gig, a part-time activity that fits in with the full-time job or study. All you need is a reasonable internet connection.

The result is apparently a reverse hourglass effect. Squeeze at the bottom of the market (lots and lots of competition for low-priced projects), squeeze at the top of the market (high-ticket projects attracting increased attention from mid-range players who can easily access more advanced capabilities).

In the middle, though, there seems to be a more positive effect for business such as Winch Websites. A project can now include functions and facilities that would have been financially out of reach to small and micro businesses or non-profits. It's here that clients typically already have experience with owning a website, and recognise the skills, expertise and benefits that a professional brings to play. Websites are no longer about the technology - it's about what they are there to achieve for the organisation. More sales? More signups? More donations? More enquiries or leads? The focus is on the outcome, not the tool. Find out what the outcome is first, then find the best tool to make that happen. Then fine-tune and optimise, forever. Something worth investing in, in other words.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that although the website and web-marketing industries have very low barriers to entry (and therefore many, many participants), it doesn't mean that getting something good is easy and cheap as chips. A decent investment really should pay dividends.

However, riding shotgun with the low barriers to entry is the lack of regulation and control. If you haven't come across outrageous claims already, you won't have to go far to find some. Think "website in a day", "Google page 1", "10x your sales".

How about your own industry? How easy is it for a newcomer to come along and think "Hmm, that looks like an easy way to earn money. I'll say I can do it and then work it out from there!"?

If you too have low barriers to entry, you'll be familiar with all of the above. And like as not, you too will have had customers who've tried the cheap and the quick, been burned, and are now looking for experience and knowledge.

When you go looking for website and web-marketing services, please bear in mind that there's little to stop people saying what they like in internet-land. Take claims with a small pinch of cynicism and maybe do a bit of due diligence. Ask or look for evidence that your chosen service provider has done this sort of thing, and that it's worked. Be ever-so-slightly distrustful of reviews and testimonials unless there's evidence to back them up as genuine customers.

At Winch Websites, I'm well aware that the competition for your web-marketing dollars is global, huge, and a minefield of options, technicalities, capabilities and playing with the truth. I aim to provide honest and accurate advice, and if we aren't a good fit for each other in terms of outcomes and objectives, I'll happily refer you to services or businesses that are.

I want to take care of your website so that you can take care of your business - over the long term, ongoing. That's not going to happen unless you get great value from Winch Websites. So next time you're looking for website design & build, website care or email automation services, please get in touch. At the very least, you'll get something to compare against. And I'd love to hear what you think when you do compare, business feedback is so hard to come by!

Good luck in your business, and may low barriers to entry be no barriers to your success!!

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