Web Design

Why and How to Back Up Your Website

Your website is often the first place that potential customers learn about your company. It’s an essential component of your marketing and sales.

However, many entrepreneurs need to pay more attention to a critical aspect of website management: backups.

What is a website backup? It’s a copy of all your website’s files, from images to text to source codes, stored in a safe place. Think of it as an insurance policy for your website.

If you have a recent backup of your site, you don’t have to worry about losing everything if there are problems. Sometimes, sites are hacked, things get messed up when you’re updating, or human error causes problems.

It’s also possible that you will stop working with your current web designer or web hosting company. If so, you want to ensure you can still access your site files.

I’m working with two business owners who want to restore a previous version of their site from over a year ago. (They suspected something wasn’t going very well with their websites, but didn’t know what exactly was wrong, or why it was happening, until they asked me to do a site review.)

One changed their business model and wanted to restore a previous version of their site that was larger and got more website traffic.

The other hired an employee who made a website revision that caused their site to almost completely disappear from Google. They want their old website back!

Neither, unfortunately, have a backup of their previous website.

How Backups Protect Your Online Presence

Imagine waking up one day to find your website down or inaccessible. All of the content you worked so hard to write, the lead gen forms, the customer info, the project photo gallery—gone.

This nightmare scenario highlights why backups are an absolute necessity and a safety net for businesses. Not only do they secure your online assets, but they also:

Preserve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Your website’s hard-earned rankings and online visibility may have taken you years to achieve.
Minimize downtime, which may cause you to lose potential customers and your reputation.
Enable smooth website migration, redesign, or rebranding processes by providing previous versions and information.
Protect your investment in creating, maintaining, and continually improving your online presence.

If you have spent a lot of time, energy, and money on your website, you want to keep the results of those efforts.

How Your Site Was Built Can Impact Backup Capabilities

Most small business websites are built on popular site-building platforms such as WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace. It’s wise to understand how these platforms approach backups. Ask your web designer about backup capabilities before you hire them.

WordPress (WP) is the most popular site-building option, and many tools (free and paid “plugins”) make it easy to back up your site. WordPress is the site builder I prefer. I have often used the All-in-One WP Migration plugin to clone and restore websites. It’s quick, easy, and complete.

Wix is a popular platform that provides built-in backup and restoration capabilities. You can create and restore backups of your website directly within the platform’s interface.

Squarespace is also popular but much more limited in terms of backups. You cannot export your site or keep anything for more than a month or so. Frankly, for this reason alone, I can’t recommend Squarespace as a site builder (though I’ve seen some gorgeous Squarespace sites!).

The Role of Web Hosting Companies and Their Backup Policies

A web hosting company is like a digital landlord—it stores your website files and makes them visible online. You should understand their backup policies and procedures. Some hosting providers perform regular website backups as part of their services; some do not.

However, they differ in how often they back up your data, how dependable these backups are, and how long they keep them. Also, if you decide to switch hosting companies someday, you may be unable to access your files. Their backup formats and restoration processes may differ, too.

It’s important to understand the backup procedures and limitations your hosting company offers. Even if they’re an excellent company, make sure to send backup files to yourself regularly. Back up your site before and after making significant changes. Store them on your computer or cloud drive.

Best Practices for Backup Management and Seamless Restoration

Backup frequency: This depends on how big and complicated your website is and how often content is updated. You may want daily backups for sites that are updated often, are used for e-commerce, or get a lot of traffic.

Weekly or monthly backups may be enough for static sites with few changes.

Your web hosting company should be your first call if your site goes down.

Off-site storage: Whether you or the hosting company backs up the site, have a copy stored externally. Keep them on your computer, external hard drive, or cloud storage. Emailing a backup copy of your site to yourself and saving it to your Google Drive or local computer makes it easy to find if you need it later.

Other information to back up: Keep updated logins and passwords for your email accounts, analytics data, website, email providers, etc. Ensure you can log in directly to your domain name registrar and hosting company.

If it’s essential to your online presence and business operations, protect your access to it.

Ease of Restoration and Alternative Recovery Methods

You’ll want to quickly and accurately restore your backups when you have problems or need to restore a previous version.

Sometimes, this can be done with just a few clicks, especially with the plugins available to WordPress users. (I recently restored a three-year-old backup file with the All-in-One WP Migration plugin.) Other times, it’s not so easy and may involve manual file transfers or database imports.

It’s smart to familiarize yourself with your chosen restoration method—document where to go and what to do for easy reference.

What to Do If You Don’t Have a Backup

If you don’t have a backup, you may be able to get information from the Wayback Machine (also known as the Web Archive) at web.archive.org.

This digital archive site allows you to search for historical snapshots of websites, so you may be able to find an old version of your site there. You can see the pages you had before and what you said on them.

However, the Wayback Machine has limitations. It may have incomplete archives of your site or every page on it. It may be missing forms, images, and interactive features.

While there are services that can retrieve files from the Wayback Machine, it still takes manual effort to rebuild your website to hold that content. Older versions of your site may not be compatible with newer technologies. Also, you’ll need to make the updates that have occurred in your business since you last used that site.

This manual retrieve-and-rebuilt process can be time-consuming and labor-intensive.

Conclusion: Be Proactive and Safeguard Your Online Investment

It’s just smart business to safeguard your online investment, maintain your online visibility, and protect your brand’s reputation.

Consider web hosting companies that offer reliable backup options as part of their services but don’t solely rely on them.

Maintain your external backups by adopting regular backup routines. Make sure you can get to the files, tools, and sites you need if trouble should occur.

Doing so can save you from headaches, significant losses, and costly downtime. Make thorough, regular backups an essential part of your website management strategy.

Why I Stopped Calling Myself a “Web Designer”

I’ve been a “web designer” for years – but no more. Even though building websites is still part of what I do. That term has come to be more of a liability than an asset to my business, and here’s why.

First – the label limits me. Designing websites is only part of what I do. A website is typically the hub of a company’s online presence, but it is not the only part. Nor is “building” the website the only, or the most important, aspect of that online presence.

In order to make a profit from your website, you need three things:

A great product or service. By that I mean one that is unique (you are clearly different or better) and for which there exists a hungry market that you can reach.
A user-friendly website; which is part technology, part design, and part web usability.
A solid marketing plan. You need to get people to your site, and convince them to do something when they get there. (“If you build it they will come” is NOT true. Nor is “If they come they will buy.”)

I help companies with all of that, from strategy to execution to analysis. “Web design” doesn’t begin to cover it.

Second – web design has become a commodity. Technology has made it relatively easy and cheap to set up a website today. Many business owners do not understand why I charge thousands for a website that a company like Web.com says they’ll do for free.

Those business owners don’t know what they don’t know – and just owning a tool doesn’t make you good at using it – but that perception is there. Why pay a “web designer” at all?

Third – too many people have had bad experiences with web designers, and want no part of dealing with one. I find this personally distressing, and it is one reason I started offering web design services to others.

I’ve heard of web designers who copy their clients’ sites and sell them to competitors. I know of “control freaks” who threaten to shut a site down if their client wants to go to another design firm. I know of web design firms who take a client’s money, knowing full well that what the client is asking for will never work.

So if I’m not a web designer, what am I instead? I’m still working that out. “Digital Marketing Strategist” could work. So could “Online Marketing Implementer.” Or I could simply say “I turn your web presence into web profits” and avoid using a label at all.

Should You Develop Your Site in Phases?

31779705_S “Kathy” has big plans for an in-demand online service that will require sophisticated programming and a private login/dashboard for each of her clients. She knows what she wants, has mapped out the work flow, identified existing programs and services that might integrate with what she wants to do, has a pretty good feel for what will need to be developed to automate her processes, and is fairly comfortable with creating websites.

She wants her “innovative technology” to be front-and-center when she launches because it will give her a distinct advantage over her competitors.

It’s an ambitious project, she’s very excited, she wants it done yesterday – but budget is an issue. Also she’s not quite sure how she’ll market her new service, outside of a few Facebook groups where her target audience hangs out.

I just got off a conference call with her and my tech partner. Yes, we can do what she wants. Our advice?

Crawl. Walk. Run.

We see a distinct advantage for her to develop her site and roll-out her new service in two phases.

Phase 1: Get the front-end built. Figure out the sales, conversion, and marketing funnels. Build a basic back-end interface for her clients.

Phase 2: Automate! Based on feedback from customers, build and integrate the “innovations” she’s itching to deliver.

Why did we suggest these two phases? What are the advantages to her?

It enables her to get up and running – getting clients and making money! – more quickly.
Doing so allows her to spread the costs over time; there’s less initial financial outlay. The more time-consuming and expensive work will be done in Phase 2; hopefully she’ll have made some money by then.
We can test the basic service, make sure it’s solid and working properly, before introducing it to the world. There are inevitably problems with a site launch, no matter how good the developers are. Even if it’s easily fixed, we’d rather fix sooner than later.
She can get feedback from her early clients – find out what they like, what they don’t, and learn what features are important to them for the future. The latter is especially valuable; she can save a lot of time and money if she builds what they really do want instead of what she thinks they want.
She can give people an incentive to join – give them a deal for being early users and promote future upgrades.
A phased-in system makes it easier for her and her employees as well to learn how everything works, from the business perspective.

A related benefit – which I think is just as important – is that it relieved some of the pressure to figure out everything, right now. At its basic level, it’s still a useful service. At its fully-developed level, it will be amazing!

Where I don’t want her to skimp right now is the sales/marketing angle. She’s tempted to put up a “good enough” site because she’s focused on getting the back-end working correctly.

However – if no one tries her service in the first place, the back-end development won’t matter. She needs to clearly articulate her service’s unique features and benefits and persuade people to give an unknown quantity a try. That means a professional-looking site, with good copywriting and a strategy in mind to market it too.

Launching her new service in stages is not what she originally had in mind, but doing so offers distinct advantages.

Might such an approach work for you?

Is It Okay to Have a Website Built Cheap at Odesk or Fiverr.com?

I just saw a post about this just a few minutes ago on a Facebook group. One of the respondents commented that she found WordPress easy to learn, and that you sometimes pay hundreds if not thousands for someone to build a WordPress site for you.

As you can imagine, I feel strongly about this.

No, I don’t think everyone needs to pay a ton of money for a website.

Yes, I’m one of those people who charges thousands to build a WP site.

I agree that technically it is rather simple to build a site these days. I think that WP works a lot like Microsoft Word in a way – if you can figure out Word it’s not hard to figure out WordPress. So if you don’t have technical skills or are uncomfortable setting up web hosting et cetera then outsourcing to Odesk or Fiverr may be fine.

When a business DOES need to hire an expert like me is when they need more than technical skills – it’s when they need marketing skills. Someone who’s studied web usability and online copywriting and SEO and conversion optimization and who knows about Adwords and media buying etc etc.

Most web designers are techies or graphics people – they’re not marketers.

A profitable website is about putting the right message in front of the right people. If your livelihood depends on that you need an expert and it is entirely appropriate to spend thousands of dollars.

I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Simple Site Redesign, Significant Improvements

The previous website for Kilgore’s Respiratory Center did not match the quality of the service they provide.

It was dated, unattractive, and full of errors (such as the overlapping text seen below.)

They asked me to redo their website. They wanted a simple and affordable site, with a much fresher look, that explained clearly what they do and who they do it for.

Here it is:

Design: We lightened up the site, switched to their current colors and made the site easier to read. A couple of well-chosen stock photos convey the problem they solve very clearly. The navigation is simple. Since the site was created in WordPress, they can add a blog to it at any time and make their own site updates (add pages, change text.)

Message: The new website more clearly describes what they do, both in text and in visuals.

A website redesign does not have to be a huge, expensive, complicated ordeal – but it can massively improve your business’s image and appeal.

Tips For Quickly Creating Your Website

If you are interested in creating a website that does not solely look good, but also moves fast enough to keep your visitors content and constantly coming back, read on. You will learn how to boost the loading speed of your web pages and make sure you are using the right approach to reach the success you are aiming for.

Does Your Site Take More Than 3 Seconds To Load?

If your website requires more than 3 seconds to load, 4 out of 10 visitors will most likely abandon their quest and search for a different site. Does it take 4 or 5 seconds? Add an extra 7 or 14 percent to that same conversion rate drop and you should receive the wakeup call you need. The solution? Focus on diminishing the front-end loading time for your pages. Mainly, focus on HTTO requests and minimize them as much as possible. You can do it by creating a website design that is simple, but at the same time appealing enough. You might only need a couple of images and text to get started, and a few CSS elements which you can cleverly reunite with the help of just one stylesheet. Do the same with all the scripts on your website and combine them using just one script. Bring together your CSS sprites with your site images and use a specialized service that can help you reduce the request overloads and also the total page download bytes number. If you are also looking for ways to reduce your analytic call tracking costs, check out the addsource.com site. You can achieve similar results by enabling resource compression processes while using deflate or gzip options. Keep in mind your website content also needs to go through an optimization process in order for the compression to be ideal. Use CSS and HTML codes in order to do this and eliminate all line breaks and additional spaces that are not needed to get started.