Does your website need a redesign? Yes. Or no. Either way, don’t pay for unnecessary work or give away the keys to your digital kingdom.
Some salespeople have the word “sales” in their job title. Most don’t. To be clear, being in sales doesn’t mean you’re a shamster. Instead, it simply means you have a product or service that you want people to buy. (After all, your customers aren’t going to learn about your offerings through osmosis.)
The problem comes in when salespeople don’t care about whether their offerings meet your needs and instead care only about separating you from your wallet through any means necessary.
Some salespeople have the word “sales” in their job title. Most don’t. To be clear, being in sales doesn’t mean you’re a shamster. Instead, it simply means you have a product or service that you want people to buy. (After all, your customers aren’t going to learn about your offerings through osmosis.)
Don’t Give Away the Keys to Your Digital Kingdom
The problem comes in when salespeople don’t care about whether their offerings meet your needs and instead care only about separating you from your wallet through any means necessary.
Let’s say you have a responsive, on-brand website. The content’s solid, and you’ve built an SEO strategy that’s starting to pay off. You’re ready to take your business to the next level, so you talk to an agency.
Q: What’s the first thing the agency wants to do?
A: Rebuild your website.
Let’s talk about why that is.
For starters, site design is a cash cow, and agency contracts are designed to keep the money flowing. In fact, whoever builds your site may actually own it.
So does your website need a redesign? Maybe, maybe not. Ask the hard questions.
The day you realize your agency owns your site is one you’ll always remember. It starts like this …
An agency rep highlights 432 issues with your existing site and says you need a new one. They may offer a discount for hosting that new site on their proprietary platform. Or they may weave a sky-high site cost into a comprehensive monthly marketing package.
There you were, naïve as the day is long, thinking your site was halfway decent. But, hey, they’re the experts. So you sign on the dotted line.
Then one day you decide to break up. You ask the agency to hand over your site. In response, they point to the contract’s heart attack clause. Unless your contract says otherwise, the creator of your website’s design and content legally owns those assets. Agency contracts are often designed to protect agency rights, not yours, leaving you beholden.
If you can’t take your website source code with you upon parting ways, you may have to rebuild your site from scratch. It’s the kind of ugly, expensive problem you never, ever want to have. If you stop paying the agency your monthly fee, you risk having your website disappear—poof—into thin air. The data and analytics you’ve been collecting may disappear as well.
I’ve personally seen it happen at least a dozen times. I’ve also heard hundreds of horror stories. (Yeah. I said hundreds. And I meant hundreds.) It’s a common problem.
Does Your Website Need a Redesign? YOU Decide.
Before you agree to have a new site built or an existing site rebuilt, ask your developer or agency what’s working, what’s not, and why. Have them show you examples of sites they’ve built that hit the mark. Hear them out. But if they can’t tell you in clear English what problems they’re fixing and why modifications to your current site design and content aren’t possible, wave goodbye.
If you decide the (re)build is warranted, pause before you sign that contract. Ask if you’ll own your domain name, website, source code, and any content or images created on your dime. If the agency rep answers in marketing speak and urges you to “trust us,” wave goodbye.
Read the contract under a microscope. Better yet, hire a lawyer who will make sure a fully functioning site is yours to have and to hold from the day you sign the contract forth.
Whatever you do, never, ever give away the keys to your digital kingdom.
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