Have you ever visited a website only to find that the links don’t work, the pages load too slow or not at all and the ‘contact us’ form doesn’t work? If you have then you know how annoying it is. Even when sites like Twitter put up ‘cute graphics’ saying they are broken it is still annoying. But behind the technical issues there is actually someone more annoyed than you are and that’s the entrepreneur whose website is ‘acting up’. You see the vast majority of thinkers, inventors and idea people aren’t actually the ones who do the computer programming, rather the inventors dreams the idea and those tech savvy enough to implement are hired or outsourced for work. So when the site has ‘broken features’ the entrepreneur can only hope that he/she hired intelligent people for the job. If they did, a fix is often easy…. if they didn’t the hours turn to days and the site errors can become agonizing.
It happens to the best entrepreneurs… and my message to those inventors and entrepreneurs anxious that their website is not functioning as it should … DON’T BE A HOSTAGE!!
Thankfully for those entrepreneurs just getting into needing a website and working with computer programmers I, myself have dealt with internal IT employees, several outsourced companies and in general more IT people than I can count. Does the talented IT person exist? I am sure they do, the problem is that the profession is a bit of a cloak and dagger. What I mean is that with technical issues it is very easy to pass the buck. I have yet to meet an IT professional that came out and said something didn’t work because of their poor coding or lack of attention to detail. Often they will blame the end users or the hosting company or connection speeds. For those entrepreneurs that aren’t technical, what should you believe? Since your computer programming skills are limited you are at the mercy of the IT person. Do you believe them and save the relationship? Or do you question them and create a rift?
The Answer: Do what will make your business succeed. Most IT people will try to scare you into thinking that no one is as good as them…. and each time I’ve heard it I laugh a little louder. The truth is if you are having tech issues then there are a lot of IT people that are better, so don’t believe the scare tactics. Often what appears at first to be solid functioning programming is often nothing more than a mask. Like a home if the foundation of your website is strong it will not break or have issues later (or at least limited issues), but if the overall architecture of your site is off or is not created optimally your site will run into problems.
The obvious goal is to avoid these issues, but if that is not possible and your website still has errors/issues here is what you can do:
- Find a third party you can trust. Call a friend, hire a company or just someone with technical knowledge. It will cost you in the short run, but have them review your site’s errors and openly discuss the reasons for the errors.
- Bring the errors up to your current company armed with the facts you learned from your consulting hire. Give your current tech company a chance to solve the issues. After all they should be fixing all the problems because you paid for a working website. If they try to charge you for fixing errors their poor programming created you shouldn’t pay a nickel and in fact that’s a sign of them trying to take advantage (greed) of your lack of technical knowledge and you need to move on to #3.
- GET OUT! If your tech company/person doesn’t fix the problems, can’t fix the problems or more issues keep happening that is when you have to pull out. Get all you ducks in a row, have a back-up copy of your website, locate a more qualified source and FIRE your IT person or firm. Your business is at stake!
Remember with websites and technical stuff it is not if you will have tech issues, but more often when. Determine what’s normal and what’s not (consult w/ an expert or friend), fix the problems and if you need a new tech team to do it then GET OUT fast and HIRE SMART. And if you don’t hire smart, remember that you can always try again. Whatever you do don’t allow yourself to be a Tech Hostage!!
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