Managing Your Website: 7 Issues You Don’t Want To Experience
Whether you’re selling goods or services online or you have a personal brand, website management is a skill to develop. But with learning come mistakes and issues.
With the wide variety of “website makers” and “website in a few clicks” solutions, it’s becoming difficult to cover all the website management essentials. So, let’s address and resolve the 7 most common issues you’ll stumble upon while working on your website.
1. CMS Malfunctions
A Content Management System (CMS) is there to help you update your site with fresh content in a broader sense. Platforms like WordPress give you a wide range of customization options to choose from.
But, in search of better solutions, people often change, update, or modify their CMS, making it unstable. Site migrations also contribute to CMS mishaps. The point is – you should choose a CMS that suits your business and stick with it. You can always make it better with additional software. This brings us to another widespread issue.
2. Suspicious 3rd Party Integrations
There’s plenty of super-useful software out there, with the most significant feature they bring being automation. It’s ok to automate as much as possible, but this will almost certainly require you to install a suspicious app at some point.
The safest option is to do some research and forum-reading on the apps you don’t know much about. There’s malware out there that can grab your credentials and lock you out of your business. Try not to go overboard with the 3rd party apps.
3. Plug-in and Add-on Stuffing
Another standard website issue is plug-in overload. The market for website add-ons is enormous. Try not to fall into the trap of thinking that you need a plug-in for everything. Cramming plug-ins into your website will only slow it down if you’re lucky.
But, the truth is, plug-ins often don’t work that well together. And, if you do decide to go down this path, make sure to study how the plug-ins interact with your website AND with each other.
4. Uploading “Heavy” Images
Speaking of website speed, you need to make sure that the media you upload to your site isn’t too heavy in terms of their size.
You will have to sacrifice some image quality for website speed. But nowadays, compression algorithms do wonders! Almost every image editing tool out there can help you compress photos and images without losing too much quality.
5. Unsafe Password Management
Your website credentials are the key to your online store. And it would help if you had strong password hygiene to keep that key from hackers and scammers of the internet.
If you use more than a few passwords on a regular basis (which is more than likely for website managers), you should consider a password manager app. This way, you can create, store, and use complex and unique passwords for each one of your accounts. A password manager is extra handy if you also manage social media accounts.
6. Confusing UX
Be careful not to confuse your website visitors while you pitch your product/service. It’s important not to overwhelm your future clients. Make them feel invited. Here are a few pointers for an excellent UX start:
- Make distinct visual elements with a purpose
- Use white spaces to declutter wherever possible
- Direct your visitors’ attention to what matters
- Make your website mobile-friendly
The UX approach depends on the type of clients you work with. If you’re providing a service or a commodity, you should make sure to convey the idea fully through content. On the other hand, if you’re into e-commerce, you need to streamline and optimize the customer journey as much as possible.
7. Shady Payment Methods
As an online business, you should aim to get as many different payment methods as possible. After all, you probably don’t want to turn your customers away at checkout.
Casting a wide net like this attracts many different customers, but it also pulls in scammers and “refund fraudsters.” So, while adding payment methods to your website, don’t rush to bring the numbers up only. Do a little research and try to avoid methods with the highest number of fraud reports.
Create a Solid Foundation And Take It Slow
Managing a website sounds more complicated than it actually is. Not going overboard with automation is the real challenge. As you can see, most issues occur when people forget that less is more.
So – settle on a CMS and stick to it, don’t overstuff your website with plug-ins, compress images before uploading them, protect your credentials with a password manager, and be wary of the payment methods you’re using.