Be a better webmaster by delegating to others
Of all the thankless jobs in the American workplace, one stands above the rest: webmaster for a small business.
It's not because the Web guy works any harder than, say, the bookkeeper or the sales manager. Nor is it because the technology keeps changing fast enough to make your head spin (don't believe me? Try taking a crash course in CSS).
No, the reason the webmaster's job is so unappreciated is that for most small businesses, the webmaster wears another hat — or two. He or she may also be the bookkeeper or the sales manager — or even the business owner. If that's you, raise your hand.
You already know how important having a Web site is to your business (a 2004 IDC Research study suggested it's especially important for small businesses). But do you also know how important it might be to share that workload with your fellow employees?
Numerous technologies and tools are now available to help you make building and maintaining a Web site a more collaborative effort. At the very least, you should know about these tools — including those that allow you and others to maintain a Web site from outside the workplace.
Delegating responsibilities
If you're the business's owner, there's no time like the present to consider sharing the webmaster load, because the faster you delegate responsibilities for your site, the easier it may be to manage your company's growth. (In fact, it's possible that by not letting go of at least some of the load, you're stunting your company's growth.)
"You don't want to be dependent on a [sole] webmaster," says content guru Sally Falkow, who publishes a newsletter on Web usability (www.falkoweb.com). "In enterprises where there is more than one person who has to contribute content, collaboration [among two or more people] works very well."
It also can potentially reduce the cost of maintaining your site, says Louis Giagrande, new media director for HWH Public Relations/New Media in New York. "If there's [a lot of] use of the tools created to update the Web pages, you can save money," he says.
How do you best enable collaboration of your webmaster duties? Here are five useful tips.
1. Simplify your process, and make it work for more than one person. Pay attention to the structure of the site and have an idea of who is going to be in charge of updating which section. Common sense, right? Common, yes — it's the most common mistake small businesses make when it comes to collaboration. "Too much workflow [is often the problem]," says Seth Miller, president of Miller Systems, an IT consulting firm in Boston. "The more steps there are in the chain, the less likely you are to publish. If you really only need one contributor and one approver, don't make more work for yourself. Keep it simple. Also, don't put someone who's rarely available — like an often-traveling CEO — at the end of the chain."
2. Get your employees trained! Yes, an effective system that allows employees to publish to your Web site — remotely — ought to be intuitive. It should be simple. But don't skip out on the training sessions, urges Erik Ievins, vice president at Jacksonville, Fla.-based Stretched Out Software, which develops custom productivity tools. "You should at least grasp the concepts of why the code should be streamlined. Without that, it's not uncommon to watch someone provide a huge GIF file and wonder why a page takes so long to load." They also have to be taught how to collaborate with each other, says Jordan Frank, vice president of marketing at Traction Software in Providence, R.I. "Collaboration is too often considered to be as simple as sharing documents or having a meeting room," he says. It isn't.
3. Take advantage of collaboration features in the software you may have. Do you own a copy of Microsoft Office FrontPage? You'd be surprised at what it can do when you team it up with a product such as Windows Small Business Server 2003. That's the experience of Bruce Fenton, president of Atlantic Financial, an independent investment firm based in Westborough, Mass. "It would be hard for a company of our size to have this much information if we didn't enable multiple people to post [Web site pages]," he says. "The key is, we have to make sure that people are not able to alter critical folders, change any navigational features and that they comply with all our industry regulations — in short, have some good quality control measures." Solution: Small Business Server 2003 allows Fenton to set up permissions for employees to access certain areas of the site. "It's very simple to set up," he says.
4. Check out applications that let you update from afar. A number of applications today allow mobile employees to update a site from a remote location. Remote Web Site View, a new feature in FrontPage 2003, for example, allows you to change and publish new pages, when traveling, from any Internet connection (for more info and a demo, see this page). Likewise, Macromedia's Contribute (www.macromedia.com) enables someone to publish content to the Web as easily as working in a word processor. I've been evaluating the latest version of the application, and have found that unlike various Internet protocols that are incomprehensible, Contribute is easy. Falkow, the Web usability consultant, recommends DVCO Technology's Web Site Manager, (www.dvcotechnology.com) which allows you to edit and update a Web page directly through a Web browser.
5. Using dynamic pages? Build a good admin tool — and use it. Dynamic pages are pages that do not sit on a server but are "built to order" — in other words, served up dynamically, usually from a database — when requested by a user. "Using dynamic pages with a database back-end is a great way to publish pages remotely," says Joey Groh, lead designer for Superstar Media in Bremerton, Wash. (His company handles Christina Aguilera's site, among others.) It may take some technical expertise, he says, but it's well worth the effort.
One other thing: Make sure you tell you employees how to use your admin tool for dynamic pages. Otherwise you'll just end up with a fancy program but the same amount of work. Worried about safety? Set up a virtual private network (VPN) to create a secure link to the office, which will allow you to access the site from anywhere. (Setting up a VPN in Small Business Server 2003 is remarkably easy. For more on VPNs, see this article.)
Before you buy, know what you're buying
It's possible to have a well-organized Web site being updated by well-trained employees with the latest tools and applications, but to still fall short in your efforts to create a more collaborative site. Wally Bock, a small-business consultant in Greensboro, N.C., says that's because small-business managers tend to fall into a technology trap: They "buy fancy functionality for its own sake."
"Just because a bit of technology is 'new' or 'advanced' or 'sophisticated' doesn't mean it will make your site better for your ideal visitors or your business," Bock adds. He says he has personally witnessed his clients have productivity meltdowns when they try to use development software or databases that they don't understand.
Perhaps the most important strategy when you're collaborating is that you keep your eye on the ball and continue to look forward. "Your site is like your best employee, and like that employee it needs to be mentored, managed and reviewed fairly," says Thomas Obrey, chief operating officer of PixelMEDIA in Portsmouth, N.H. "You hope to constantly grow, improve, and get the most value from that employee."
And if that means investing a bit more to get the process right, and get the technology and tools that you can use and understand, do so, advises Jay Schwartz, president of IdeaWork Studios, a Santa Barbara, Calif., creative services agency. "Oftentimes, as with anything else," he says, "it is better to spend a little more money upfront than to be tied to a solution that will not ultimately fit your needs."