How future-proof is your website?

It’s now some time since I wrote my first Internet Secrets blog piece.

After several attempts at coming up with something vaguely appealing to smaller business readers, I finally came up with something worth publishing – at least according to the then editor of SmartCompany.

The topic of the piece was how (with all due respect to them) graphic designers were finding it difficult to keep up with the skills to not only build, but advise their clients on the gamut of web marketing techniques and technologies.

While the website they were creating might have looked good, in the main they failed in the equally important areas of self editing, technology features, integration, usability and scalability.

And it’s this question of scalability which can lead to the most heart and pocket ache for their smaller business clients.

Good scalability = massive savings

As we discussed here recently, scalability refers to just how “future-proof” your website and website management platform is.

A good and fair web professional will establish your website so as to allow you to make future improvements easily and affordably.

Unfortunately, the majority didn’t, putting out their hands to be paid handsomely when you wanted to add a feature or improvement – many of which came standard with alternative website management platforms.

Web industry protests

I’ve been howled down by many in the web industry on this point. Their argument is that it’s impossible to know the direction the client is going to want to take with their web presence.

But I disagree.

Websites within the different industry categories tend to follow a similar development path.

Your future can be predicted

If they don’t specify it initially, within months most will need to edit their own content by way of a Content Management System. Then they will want to send their eNewsletters from the system while publishing that content on their website.

Those who sell products will then want to move from simply displaying what they have for sale to actually selling it online, and so on.

The better web professionals will understand these development trends and set you up with a platform that will enable you to “grow into” these capabilities.

The rest might “play dumb” and allow you to stumble into what can amount to significant unforeseen costs. Or alternatively they simply don’t have the experience to recognise these business trends.

You don’t know what you don’t know

This represents one of the bigger frustrations in my working life. Those who haven’t been down the path of creating a website before have no idea how much we are saving them in future costs.

While the business heads would argue that this approach may imperil our future revenue streams, at least I can sleep at night in the knowledge that we have put our clients’ priorities ahead of our own.

So how do you sort the wheat from the chaff when choosing a suitably impartial web professional?

Impartiality the critical factor

Admittedly this is not an easy question to answer as many don’t promote their impartiality.

But a great place to start is by asking how many website platforms or technologies they work with. And within that number, how many are proprietary (fully company owned) in addition to the “open source” platforms they will undoubtedly promote.

In turn, how many websites have they built in these technologies and how demonstrably happy are the clients they have built them for?

And if they only work in one technology, that is a good cue to take your business elsewhere.

Every business is different, as is its strategy, skill levels, budgets and so on. So the notion of a single turnkey technology solution is impossible.

Has your website proven to be future-proof? Tell us about it by commenting below.

In addition to being a leading eBusiness educator to the smaller business sector, Craig Reardon is the founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team which was established to address the special website and web marketing needs of SMEs in Melbourne and beyond.