Small Business Week and the One Website Job to Finish

A week for small businesses

This is Small Business Week in Canada, running from Sunday to Saturday. It is a good week for an owner to do something for the business rather than in it.

Every small business website has a list of jobs waiting, some written down, most not. One of them has been waiting longer than the rest.

The quote form nobody has tested since the site launched. The services page that still lists work the business stopped doing. The photographs of the new premises that were going to be taken in the spring.

This week, pick that one and finish it. Not the whole list. One job, done by Friday.

The jobs that wait longest

• The contact form nobody has tested since launch.
• The services page describing what the business did three years ago.
• The photographs of the new premises, the van or the team.
• The team page still showing people who have left.
• Prices and hours that changed everywhere except the website.
• The page that says coming soon, and has since 2017.

The first deserves a check before anything else is chosen. A form that has stopped delivering fails silently: the site looks fine, visitors think they have made contact, and the business never hears from them.

Why one job, not five

Lists of website jobs stall in a particular way. Five things get started, none get finished, and each half-done job makes the next one feel bigger.

One job, finished, changes something a customer sees. Five jobs, half done, change nothing at all.

A week is the right size for one. Long enough to gather what it needs and get help if it needs help, short enough that it cannot drift into next month.

Choosing which one

Pick the job a customer would notice. Internal tidying, such as sorting the media library, can wait; a wrong price on the services page cannot.

Ask whoever answers the phone. They know which questions the website should be answering and is not, and which page customers mention when something is wrong.

If two jobs tie, take the one that has waited longer. It has had the most time to become wrong in ways nobody has spotted.

Testing the forms first

Whatever job you pick, spend ten minutes on the forms before you start.

Send a real enquiry through each one from a phone, using mobile data instead of the office Wi-Fi. Then check that it arrived, where it arrived, and how long it took.

Look in the spam folder too, and at the address the notifications go to. Forms often send to an inbox set up for the launch, or to someone who has since left.

Read the automatic reply the visitor receives as well. If it promises a call back within the hour, make sure somebody can still keep that promise.

If a form is broken, that is this week's job, and the choice has been made for you.

A worked example

A tailoring and alterations shop moved two blocks along the same street two years ago. The address on its website was changed the week it moved.

The photograph on the contact page was not. It still showed the old storefront, with its green awning, directly above the new address.

Customers arriving for the first time walked past the new shop looking for the green awning. Some phoned from the sidewalk, and the staff had a routine answer ready.

The owner chose it as the job for the week. On Tuesday morning, in good light, a staff member photographed the new storefront from across the street, the counter, and the fitting area.

On Wednesday the photographs went to the shop's web company with a note saying which went where. By Thursday, the contact page showed the shop people would actually be looking for.

The same old storefront turned out to be the main photograph on the shop's Google listing, uploaded years before. It was replaced the same afternoon.

It took a couple of hours of the shop's time across the week. It had waited two years.

Fitting it into the week

Monday: choose the job and write down what finished looks like, in one sentence.

Tuesday: gather what the job needs, whether that is photographs, new wording, current prices or a login.

Wednesday: send it to whoever looks after the site, with everything they need in one message. Small, clearly described jobs are usually the quickest kind to turn around.

Thursday: check the result on a phone, as a customer would. Friday: tell the staff it is done, so they can stop apologising for it.

The rest of the list

Write the other jobs down before Friday, while they are fresh, with a date beside each. A list with dates is a plan; a list without them is a worry.

Then pick the next one for November, and leave the rest until January, when there is time to ask whether several of them are really one larger job.

Do not start a second job this week. Finishing one is the whole exercise.

The counter-case

Some jobs do not fit in a week. A site that needs rebuilding will not be fixed one page at a time, and a week spent patching it is better spent writing down what the new one needs.

Some jobs depend on other people: a photographer's calendar, a supplier's new price list, a partner's approval. Start those this week and finish them when the pieces arrive.

And if this is the busiest week of your year, pick something smaller, such as testing the forms.

Otherwise, one job finished this week is worth more than a long list carried into December.

This week

1. Test every form from a phone.
2. List the jobs that have waited.
3. Pick the one customers would notice.
4. Write down what finished looks like.
5. Send it to whoever looks after the site.
6. Check the result on a phone.
7. Date the next job on the list.

Step four is the one that makes the week work. A job described as fix the services page can last a month; one described as list the six services we offer now, with prices, is done by Thursday.

Which jobs belong before December and which can wait for January is covered in back to business after the summer.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.