To DIY or not to DIY your web presence

The noughties would have to go down as the decade of DIY.

It seems that no matter what you want to do, be that in your personal or business life, there are enough tools and self-help guides to create or build anything from a paper plane to a pretty destructive bomb.

This trend to DIY your life has only been accelerated by the ability of the internet to provide pretty much any information at all on demand.

Of course, the demands of smaller business have always meant that their operators require a fair degree of DIY just to survive.

And the fact that every operator has a different set of skills dictates which tasks are outsourced and which they do themselves.

Working in the business or on it
For some, everything but the actual chargeable hourly work is delegated to an employee or outsourced to a supplier or contractor.

The economics of others means that some business operators do everything themselves, from cleaning the office and bookkeeping to doing their own search engine optimisation.

But most appear to be somewhere in the middle – delegating some work to staff, contractors or suppliers and doing some tasks themselves.

At the end of the day, the business operator will make a financial (and sometimes purely emotional) judgement as to who is going to do what is in the best interests of the business.

The internet has brought a whole new quandary to the notion of DIY.

As much as we hear about easy websites and easy eMarketing, for most operators of smaller organisations, the field is about as perplexing as a business discipline can get.

In only a few years, the ramifications of new concepts like web presence, online sales conversion, search engine optimisation, social networking, content management, email marketing et al on their business have all had to be digested and understood.

And sometimes it’s just as difficult identifying a reliable source of information or service as it is to find time to bone up on the discipline yourself.

Take web design for example.

It seems that every man and his dog can create a spiffy web design for you. It’s not until you find that you want to add some basic functionality, or that the site is nowhere to be found on Google, that you realise that there’s more to it than taking a course in Dreamweaver.

To help identify the main tasks involved in operating a professional web presence, here’s a list of standard skill requirements and some prerequisites to operating them yourself.

Website Design
These days there are really two levels of web design – the overall “look and feel” of your website and the “page level” design – how a page within a website appears and navigates.

Unless you have a graphic design qualification I would forget designing the overall site – particularly when that is quite affordable these days. However, with some guidance and adherence to a style-guide it doesn’t take that long for someone with reasonable computer skills to pick up good page layout.

If you already use MS Word or equivalent proficiently, with a good Content Management System, you can learn how to layout a serviceable web page within a few hours.

Content Management
Unlike a few years back when professional Content Management (website editing) Systems cost well into six figures, good CMS are now available for well under $100 a month as part of a hosting plan. Some basic ones are free.

Like “page-level” design, if you have had good exposure to word processing softwares, you can pick up the skills of professional Content Management in a few hours.

However, when it comes to building an entire website using CMS tools, I’ve found that most smaller business operators can be a little overwhelmed by the various skills required to build a professional and search engine optimised website, preferring the initial website to be built for them and then gradually taking over its maintenance once it’s up and running.

This can work quite well, though some will prefer only to do minor website editing and leaving more ambitious tasks to a professional.

Email Marketing
Almost without fail, the biggest issue small business operators have with embarking on an email news campaign is not the technology or the design, it’s finding the time to come up with enough content to make the piece compelling and “clickable”.

I’ve espoused the virtues of email marketing in this blog plenty of times, but most operators just aren’t able to come up with the all important content.

The most cost-effective way to get started with email marketing is to work with a professional to get you started, then gradually pick up the skills to do it yourself over time.

In the meantime, keep an accessible list handy so that you can add content ideas whenever they occur to you. I have been doing this for some time, which is why I found I had about 12 topics to choose from when sitting down to write this week’s blog.

ECommerce
The notion of selling online is really designed to be hands on. It’s simply too expensive for the smaller business operator to get a professional to continually add and manage your product range with the frequency a true online shop needs.

But like Content Management, many prefer an initial range to be established by a professional before taking over the management themselves.

Many traditional retailers who lack the skills or confidence to DIY eCommerce can benefit from hiring a shop assistant who has good computer and internet skills. These assistants can take on the role of eCommerce or Website Sales Manager – something many young people would leap at.

Social Networking
Of all web capabilities, nothing is more DIY than social networking. The very personal and immediate nature of the discipline make having a third party manage it next to impossible.

What’s more, if the fact that you’ve outsourced your SN is detected by the very switched on user population, it could even have the reverse effect – as many organisations and public figures have painfully discovered.

But there are now a number of professionals who can help you with an SN strategy and get you started, allowing you or your staff to maintain it over time.

Search Engine Optimisation
Like designing a website, to get a truly first class result from search engine optimisation, I’ve found it most cost-effective to leave it to professionals.

This is particularly true of those of you who have a very competitive category. If you want to compete for your more generic terms (eg. furniture, architecture, building, etc) it will take considerable learning to be able to pick up the skills to compete among these cut-throat terms.

However, if you have a good CMS, there are a number of SEO tasks you can do yourself without a great deal of training.

I’ve found the best results are achieved by getting a professional to do the initial optimisation when your website is being created. Then you can learn to manage many of the ongoing SEO tasks yourself – unless in a highly competitive category.

Adwords and other Pay Per Click Advertising
Adwords is similar to Social Networking in that the highly fluid nature of keywords and bids means that the operational console is designed to be managed by a staff member rather than an agency.

If you are generally familiar with using the web it’s not that difficult to pick up the fundamentals of Adwords and its ilk.

Again, how effective you are at doing this comes down to how competitive your category is and how much time you are prepared to invest in making your Adwords presence competitive.

The great news for business operators is that there is now a growing range of web “generalists” who can provide affordable assistance with the gamut of their online requirements when they require it. This flexible approach offers the ultimate in DIY – your choice of hands on and affordable help when you want to be hands off.

For more Internet Secrets, click here.

Craig Reardon is a leading eBusiness educator and founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team which provide the gamut of ‘pre-built’ website solutions, technologies and services to SMEs in Melbourne and beyond. www.theeteam.com.au