Full Transcript
[0:00]
Welcome to the 805 WebBinnet. And today we're talking about why waiting until your website breaks is costing you customers, time, and potentially your entire business. That really is the big fears in it. It's something every small business owner, especially here in Esolo County, just kind of pushes to the back of their mind. Right. Yeah. Hope it never happens. But the thing is, something will go wrong eventually. We're not talking about a printed flyer. This is living code. Exactly. A plug-in update goes sideways. Your hosting has an outage or worse, you get that dreaded email from a customer saying your site is showing weird ads. And the numbers are, frankly, a little scary. Over 500 WordPress sites get hacked every single day. Every day. And most local businesses on the central coast are running on WordPress. So today, our deep dive is really about framing the right question. It's not if your site will have a problem, but who is going to pick up the phone when it does? And how do you stop that from derailing your actual business? That's the core of it, because that time is everything. So let's start with the biggest myth we hear all the time. I think I know this one. It's the, I'm too small to be a target idea, right? My plumbing company, my little cafe, who would bother? That's the one. And it's not just wrong. It's completely backward. The data shows small businesses are targeted almost four times more often than big corporations. Four times. How is that possible? You'd think hackers would go for the big prize. Well, it's because it's not personal. They aren't sitting there thinking about your business in a Royal Grande. They run these automated scripts. Think of them like bots that just scan millions of websites at once. So they're not looking for a name. They're looking for a weakness. Exactly. They're looking for a digital window that's been left unlocked. An old plug-in, outdated software. It's a numbers game. And small business sites, frankly, have fewer defenses than a giant company with a whole IT department. And when they find that unlocked window, it's more than just a little technical glitch.
[2:00]
Yeah, it's a business survival issue. 43% of all data breaches happen to small businesses. But here's the number that should really get your attention. 60% of small businesses that suffer a cyber attack are forced to close their doors for good within six months. Wow. They just, they can't recover. The cost, the lost trust from customers. It's all of it. You're trying to make payroll. And suddenly you have this massive unexpected expense. And your reputation is shot. It's a killer. Okay, so that really sets the stage. When that day comes, the way you built your website, basically to determine the kind of nightmare you're in for. Yeah. Let's break down the options most business owners here in the SLO area half. The broken options, as we call them. Right. Starting with what seems like the easiest one. DIY. Do it yourself. Ah, yes. The moment you realize your side hustle is now being an IT manager. Totally. You built it on square space or a basic WordPress host. And suddenly it breaks. Now you're the one on Google at midnight, typing in error codes, watching YouTube tutorials. And this is the trap. The big platforms. Their support is great until it isn't. If the problem is something you did like installing a plugin that conflicts with another one, they just tell you it's outside their scope. It's the not our problem clause. Mm-hmm. And we know that over half of WordPress vulnerabilities come from plugins. So if you install a new contact form and it crashes your site. You're on your own. The host company just shrugs. And meanwhile every minute your site is down, you're losing potential customers. Okay. So what's the opposite of that? The big professional agency. Right. The agency model. They build you a beautiful, amazing website. They do great work. But the relationship changes after launch. The projects over. They've moved on to the next big client. Exactly. Their business model is the big build. Not the little fixes six months later. So when you call because something's broken, you're suddenly a low priority. And you end up paying a lot for that low priority. I'm guessing. You do. They'll often require a monthly retainer anywhere from
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$50 to $500 a month. But here's the catch. Uh-oh. That retainer is often just for monitoring. The actual fix. That costs extra at a very high hourly rate. So you're paying them just for the right to call them. And then you pay again for them to actually do the work. You got it. Your small problem just isn't as profitable as their next $30,000 project, which leads that middle ground. Option three. The freelancer. More personal. Maybe more affordable. Initially, yes. But the risk is that they are just one person. A single point of failure. Meaning if they go on vacation. You're out of luck. If your site crashes while they're on a cruise, you wait. If they get sick, you wait. Or and this happens all the time, they just get overwhelmed with other work. And disappear. They ghost you. It's incredibly common. Poor communication is behind more than half of all failed web projects. You can be left totally locked out of your own website. So it really doesn't matter which path you take. DIY, agency, freelancer. At the end of the day, the stress and the responsibility land right back on your shoulders as the business owner. That's it. You're left worrying about all this hidden work, the stuff that needs to happen, even when the site looks fine. Right. A website is not as set it and forget it thing. It's more like a car. You have to do the maintenance or you're just waiting for a breakdown. Perfect analogy. Let's talk about that maintenance list. Okay, first up, software updates. This seems basic, but it's so critical. It's the foundation of security. WordPress itself, your theme, all those little plugins, they're constantly releasing security patches. They're like, app updates on your phone. And if you ignore them, you are literally running vulnerable code. You're leaving the door unlocked for those automated bots we talked about. And the data is pretty bad on this. Only about 38% of WordPress sites are actually running the latest version. So most sites are running with a known risk. Nicks. Okay, what's number two? Number two is your SSL renewal. The little padlock icon in the browser. Yep.
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Nothing expires. And if you don't renew it, browsers like Chrome and Safari will throw a huge, scary red warning page. Not secure watch. Exactly. A customer sees that and they are gone. They think you've been hacked or your site is dangerous. You lose all that trust instantly over something that takes five minutes to fix. Okay, number three, backups. The thing you don't think about until it's way too late. It's your insurance policy. If something catastrophic happens, you need a clean, recent copy of your site ready to go. And by recent, I mean from yesterday. Not from last month. Definitely not. You could lose a whole month of orders or contacts. You need daily backups period. Makes sense. Fourth on the list is performance monitoring. Basically, site speed. Right. A slow website doesn't just frustrate people. It actively costs you money. Google ranks you lower. And customers will leave if a page takes more than, say, three seconds to load. You can't wait for someone to complain. And finally, number five, which is just the day-to-day stuff. Content updates. Changing your hours, adding a new special, updating your team page. All those little things that force a business owner to stop running their business and become a web designer for an hour. When you lay it all out like that, it's a lot. It's a full-time job. It really is. And that's why we need to redefine what having your website handled really means. So what does that ideal scenario look like? It means that when your site has a problem, any problem at all, you make one phone call. Or you send one email. A single point of contact. No run around. None. You send the email. You get a response saying we're on it. And by the end of the day, it's fixed. You never Googled an error code. You never negotiated an hourly rate. You just handed it off. That's peace of mind. That lets you get back to, you know, actually running your business here in SLO. Precisely. It turns website management from something you dread into something you don't even think about. It's just handled by a local team right here in Aroio Grande that has your back. That's the quick tip for today. If you want a professional website without the agency price tag or the DIY headache,
[8:01]
here is the better way. At UGRO.Pro, we build it, we manage it, and we handle every update forever, all for just $79 a month. There is zero setup fee, no contract, and it is strictly month to month, so there is zero risk. We're local here in AG, and we can have you live in days, not months. Want to see what your site could look like? Go to UGRO.Pro right now, and we'll design three custom mock-ups for your business, completely free, no strings attached. If you're tired of being the IT department for your local business, that's the simplest local solution. Thanks for listening. And keep growing.