Look, we know that all relationships go through a honeymoon period. You love them and they love you. Flowers bloom, angelic music plays, and you are going to have the most amazing, breathtaking site on the entire internet.
Then they start not answering emails very fast, you leave messages and they do not respond, and you start to panic. They have been hit by a bus, called back to the mothership and/or disappeared. This happens all the time. It’s crazy. Not sure why this is such a problem for the website industry, but it’s a very common problem and very few biz owners know what to do when it happens.
What you do is this:
DO NOT PANIC. STAY CALM. HAVE A PLAN.
- Make sure you have all your logins for your site and your host at hand. Keep a list and make sure you update it when there’s a change.
- Make sure your have an agreement in writing that the site is yours, and your intellectual property. Make sure to have your designer sign a confidentiality agreement and non-disparagement agreement that protects you if they say anything bad about you, or if they steal your design. Have them sign this upfront, including your content writers and any contractors involved in the web site design process.
- Immediately go in and change the passwords on your site and your site hosting company.
- Make sure you have a backup web person. Someone you trust and probably should have hired in the first place. You’ll want to have one ready, so interview now.
- Now, work with your new designer to make sure you own all access, images are all royalty free or purchased licenses and hosting is not in their basement server.
Moving forward, you are now prepared. You have your logins (insert link to Executive Logins Sheet), you know the players, and you can protect yourself by preparing for the worst.
It’s in times of peace that you prepare for war. Just make sure to prepare, and you can breathe easy. If you want to be fully prepared, give me a call today!