Keep These Eggs in One Basket.

The old adage goes “don’t keep all your eggs in one basket” however whoever said that never worked web consulting services. Any web business, regardless of size, usually has the following internet tools:

• web hosting
• email addresses
• website development
• customer ordering/inquiry forms
• website maintenance

Now most small businesses do not have (nor need) a full IT department dedicated to maintaining and developing these solutions. In all honesty, in many small businesses, the job may usually just fall into the lap of the  employee most comfortable with a computer . Without a dedicated IT department, building web solutions from scratch (which can be incredibly costly), businesses must seek the help of third party providers to obtain their desired web presence.

Like any open market for products and services, the web development industry is very competitive. Lacking experience in this field, just like being a first time car buyer, is  to your disadvantage. At least when buying a car, you can see your purchase. Often, the untrained eye does not fully understand what they are buying for their web presence.

I cannot tell you how many times we come across this issue at Dreamscape Marketing. We often discover issues with customers because their web situation is extremely complicated, and often completely unknown to them. I will give you an example of a recent project we worked on in our Maryland office:

A customer requested a new form be developed for his website. This seemed like a relatively simple request until we peeked into the IT environment. This customer had all five services listed above performed by different organizations. In fact, when using multiple web developers, the customer also began hosting their website in TWO places! We estimated that the customer had utilized ten businesses to develop their web presence over about four years. After centralizing this customer’s IT solutions, we were able to save them over TWO TIMES the cost of the order form we built for them. In addition, by canceling their unnecessary hosting and focusing everything else they had in a single location, we also significantly reduced the time it would take for this customer to solve future issues with their website.

Centralizing your web services can save you time and money. Understanding what you are actually using may sound rudimentary, but is often overlooked and could cost you when a problem occurs.