The care, feeding and maintenance of a website should be the responsibility of marketing. 

When it comes to budgeting for web sites, you’re doing it wrong.

When it comes to budgeting for web sites, you’re doing it wrong. Here’s why:

Your website is more visible than your branches.

Your website gets 10 times more traffic in a month than any branch, with members logging in multiple times to pay bills, check balances, and transfer between accounts. Even non-members check your site before coming in your branches. It’s your 24-hour connection with the rest of the world. It’s your most consistent tool to communicate news, launch special promotions, and cross-sell products. It’s critical to your future growth, and it needs to be treated as such. And updating your web site is a lot cheaper than renovating your branch.

Your website should be included in Marketing’s budget.

A website is a marketing medium, and the care, feeding and maintenance of a web site should be the responsibility of those that are in charge of all other aspects of marketing. Let IT focus on keeping your systems up and running, and let Marketing do their job. Build all the costs of web site content, hosting and upgrades into Marketing’s annual budget, so that they can continue to invest their time and resources into their biggest asset.

Having to justify a website redesign is unjustifiable.

Every CU we know has to do a song and dance routine every few years to convince everyone that your website needs to be updated. Sure, CEOs and Board Members are supposed to be cautious in spending the members’ money, but putting it off into the future is an odd way to approach something that is such an important part of your infrastructure. Build it into your future plans and budget so that it becomes part of your growth strategy.

A website needs to be updated every 3-4 years.

As we have stated before, a great website is a process, not a project. If you are waiting more than 4 years to update your site, you are getting left behind. Technology advances quickly, and an out of date website is no way to attract new members (or keep current members).

 

Kent Dicken
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