Imagine your new website as a car. It looks amazing, it runs smoothly, it’s got a cool name—in other words, it’s a powerful machine that’s going to take you places. But, as any experienced car owner knows, you need the proper setup and maintenance for your vehicle to remain reliable down the road. Oh, and if you think you might ever want to modify the engine or give it a new look, better to own than lease. After all, it’s your car and you should be able to do what you want with it when you want to. All the same principles hold true when establishing your company’s new website. With that in mind, we’ve got a few tips for setting up your website to capably take your business from point A to B and beyond. 

PURCHASE YOUR DOMAIN NAME DIRECTLY

Full disclosure: an agency can make extra money if it encourages you to lease a domain name bought by the agency. So why don’t we do that? Because having made the original domain name purchase, we’d technically own your AmazingCompany.com web address. Put another way, we’d have the keys to the car. So that creative refresh you might eventually decide to do with another team? Well, you’d have to get consent from the agency that owns your domain, and they might not be inclined to give it. Not only that, but an agency that owns your domain name could, at any time, even shut down your website. Bottom line: don’t put your website at the mercy of another company.  

BE WARY OF HOSTING WITH AN AGENCY

We’re pros at setting up websites, but we’re not packing secured servers that rival specialized hosting companies—and likely neither is any other agency that might offer you such services. It’s simply not our business. That’s why we recommend buying directly from a reputable, professional hosting company to ensure that:

• The website is registered in your company’s name and not your agency’s

• Your website is running on secured servers with backup protection, not on a vulnerable homebrew setup

• You’ve got 24/7 support for when your website runs into issues

• Your website is hosted with a company that’s able to handle additional traffic as your business grows

ENSURE YOU HAVE ANALYTICS ACCESS

Like a car’s instrument panel, your website’s analytics and reporting are going to keep you informed about what adjustments you should make so that your website stays cruising at full capacity. We’re here to help you set all that up properly, but we’ll make sure that your Google Analytics access is established under an account that you control and that we only have manager access to for as long as you decide. The alternative is an agency that offers to set up your analytics under an account that they own and give you access to. The trouble is, they’d ultimately be in control of your website’s data, and how long you have access to it—a risky proposition that could eventually see you locked out of crucial reporting for your business.

SO HOW CAN WE HELP?

Beyond putting together a killer website for your business, our goal is to make sure that you have command of all your website’s navigation and controls. We’re here to provide support with how to set up your domain name, hosting, analytics, security and other website needs—like an easy-to-use content management system (CMS) so that you can update content as you see fit—tapping into our industry knowledge to guide you toward professional services that ensure access and ownership is all yours. It’s your business, and it’s our philosophy that you should always be in the driver’s seat. 

Get in touch to see how we can help set up your new website.