I often get asked why I am sharing all the things I’ve learned over the past two decades with business owners. The reason is simple: webstore owners MUST be able to run various aspects of their websites. They are simply more successful when they can do many of these things themselves.

Here then are the things I believe every business owner should be able to do on their own without waiting for a webmaster to get to it for them.

10 things every business owner should be able to do in their WordPress website

The content of a website should be the responsibility of you, the business owner. While you might hire a copywriter, photographer, or marketer, you will want to manage your website just like you do other aspects of your business. Here then are the top 10 things that a business owner should be able to do on their own website without hiring someone else:

1. Add / Edit a new page or post
2. Upload new photos to the media library
3. Add / edit users (especially if you have any employees)
4. Moderate or delete comments
5. Add new testimonials to the site as you get them
6. View form entries and respond to contact us forms
7. Send email blasts to newsletter signups
8. Keep themes and plugins up to date
9. Create new Lead Magnets and capture emails from them
10. Update what appears on the navigation menu

10 things every business owner should be able to do in their WooCommerce Store

You wouldn’t let your landlord decide what products or services your business is going to offer, and the same goes for your online store. You should have the ability to run your online business just as you would your offline business. Here then are the minimum things that the owner of an online store should be able to do for themselves:

1. Write both short and long descriptions that appeal to your ideal customer
2. Edit product images for a consistent size to be displayed on your website
3. Add/Edit both simple and variable products
4. Add images for individual product variations
5. Designate and display featured products
6. Create a new product category
7. Put products on sale and create coupons
8. Update shipping amounts
9. Process/ fulfill orders and manage inventory
10. Run Sales Reports

10 Reasons you may still need a webmaster

A webmaster will provide the expertise to make sure that your site is up-to-date, functioning properly, and performing optimally from a technical and graphic design standpoint. The webmaster’s responsibility is to make sure that you can run your business effectively, not run your business for you. As such, you should hire a webmaster to handle the following details on your behalf:

1. Setup: Install and configure software and database
2. Security: Keep your website secure and cleanup if the site gets hacked or infected with malware
3. Appearance: Select and install the overall theme
4. Design: Design the look and feel of the website
5. Features: Select and install appropriate plugins
6. Integrations: Configure the API’s such as Facebook, payments, shipping, email, google maps
7. Backup & restore: Ensure that your site is up and running
8. Customization: add css and functions to child theme as required
9. Functionality: ensure the site works with the latest releases of browsers, server software, operating systems, databases, WordPress, theme and plugin updates
10. SEO / Analytics / Speed: Make sure the site meets Google guidelines and can be found

You will learn all these things in my upcoming online course that starts on September 9th (even the technical stuff, although that is meant to give you background knowledge so you know how to work with a webmaster, not so you can do it yourself unless you want to).

Find out more about the course here.

And of course if you really don’t want to do any of this yourself, we are still available to work with you on updating or creating a new site for you. Just give us a call at 303-688-6560.

GregJameson

Greg Jameson has been writing blog articles on ecommerce and internet marketing for over 10 years. Learn more about Greg at https://webstoresltd.com/about/