I spend a lot of time as a Virtual Assistant explaining to businesses how they can benefit from focussing on what they enjoy doing and are skilled at, and outsourcing the rest, and I recently had to take my own advice.
As we all know, if you want your website to be bringing in work then the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation – that’s the stuff that helps people find you on the internet) needs to be good and you need Google to love you. Although I built my website myself, with a little rebranding last October and some improvements by my wonderful website designer, I have always done quite well for leads. I read a year ago about the important of having SSL (Secure Sockets Layer – the security layer!) on your website and although I don’t take payments via my site, I wanted to make sure Google was as happy as it could be, so installed SSL on my site. Great! Everything was hunky dory until ….
About a month or so ago my SSL expired, I went to re-install it and found the hosting company had been sold-off and I could not even access my old account, so then followed a lot of hunting around trying to find out what had happened and why I had not been informed.
Anyway, after a lot of faffing, I managed to reinstall it on the site. Or so I thought. A few weeks later I started getting emails from people saying they could not get into the site as the SSL was unsecured.
“WHAT!?”
Then began a lot of forward-ing and backward-ing between the SSL provider and the website hosting company, both blaming the other.
By this time, I had spent a lot of time trying to resolve the issues and was getting increasingly frustrated as it was taking time away from the work I had scheduled for my clients, meaning I had to work late to ensure deadlines were met. A few days later and assurances from the hosting company that it was ‘OK our end’ – well, it was still down my end, I finally threw in the towel and called for help.
A month or so before, one of my clients had asked me to find a new company to move their hosting to. She wanted someone local and not a faceless person at the end of phone where she would be one small fish in a very big pond of clients. The company that my client chose of those I suggested was Outerbridge. Whilst dealing with the transfer, I had been really impressed with the service from Penny and her husband Mike, so I picked up the phone in a desperate call for help.
“I picked up the phone in a desperate call for help”
All it took was that one call, and it was all taken off my hands. It was like a weight had lifted off my shoulders. Penny assured me she would take a look, see what needed to be done, and assured me that they would be able to deal with all of the issues. And she did. This week, within a week of that initial call, the website hosting is moved over, the SSL issues sorted, the plugs ins and themes updated and as a bonus Mike tells me the speed is now 1 second to load instead of 7!
“focus on what you do best and outsource the rest”
It is so important as a business owner, particularly if you are very involved in your business and trying to grow it, that you focus on what you do best and outsource the rest. If you need any help with your website, I’d recommend calling Penny. If you need help with your admin, whatever that may look like, do get in touch with me and we can help lift the weight of your shoulders too.
For more details on how we can help you to find the space to grow your business, call us on 07814 218142 or email joanne@joannemanville.co.uk
Not sure what to outsource in your business? Our quick quiz or guide can help!