Moving away from TELSTRA Online Essentials Website Builder

There are dozens of different website builders available from TELSTRA Online Essentials to Wix and they all promise ease of use, powerful features and the promise of more traffic, more conversions and more MONEY. One problem with these website builders is that most website designers don’t take them seriously but what I don’t like about them is they tie you to Telstra, Wix or the website builders owner.

I started using a website builder when I worked on our very first website and I loved it so much I couldn’t change – until the developer decided to stop supporting it and my hosting company stopped offering it. That was a scary time because I was starting to rely on my website. It’s even scarier to depend on average website design software these days! See how we helped an electrician migrate away from Telstra Online Essentials and onto a WordPress website hosted with Crazy Domains.

I recently began helping a local electrician get serious about his digital marketing so he could drum up more business by getting discovered locally when people search Google for an electrician. I recorded several training video about the experience of migrating away from Telstra Online Essentials and using a professional website builder called WordPress. In fact I recorded a series of training videos about domain names, website hosting and WordPress as part of our Minimal Viable Website course which goes through many of the aspects of creating your own website.

Working from home? Starting an Online Business? Need a website.

Some people underestimate the value of a website because they don’t get to see what is possible with one. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some small to medium businesses who’s website attract hundreds to thousands of visitors PER DAY and when you see that number of visitors you start to understand the value of your digital assets.

A website is a digital asset much like a business street address is a physical asset for a shop and if you set it up properly, even with just a simple website, you’ll have a place where potential customers will visit if they are looking for the products or services you provide.

I’ve created websites in the past for a specific purpose and even after 3-4 years they attract visitors because they are valuable and useful so Google sends traffic to them for FREE!

You can learn about the past websites I’ve created in the free digital marketing training presentation.

Learn about Online Customer Service from your website

Website owners will look at their Google Analytics once a month or so and even then they don’t understand a lot of what they are looking at and why it’s important.This historical website traffic information is valuable because it shows you what visitors are doing at your website and why they went there, but nothing is more fascinating to see real people at your website and monitor what they are doing.

That’s when you wish you could reach out and help – and you can. When you start to see visitors at your website you start to realise that it’s just like seeing a bunch of strangers in your shop – browsing through your merchandise. Do you go up to them and ask “are you OK”, just to have them say that they’re “just looking”?

Customer service has so many different applications in a business including

• initial contact with a potential customer,
• helping a new customer understand how to interact with your business,
• getting support if they have a problem using your products, and all the way to
• how your accounts staff speak with a customer who is late in paying their bill and stretching your credit terms.

When you break down how your staff communicate it usually happens via telephone, email, SMS and for some businesses (like ours) website chat.

Customer Service by office administration staff

When you install a website chat system any of your staff can easily monitor it in the background while they are doing their office administration tasks. The great thing about website chat systems is your staff don’t need to get up from their chair and they can actually help more than one person at a time. They do however need to have good data entry and typing skills and most students learn these skills by typing documents in Microsoft Office Word.

I’ll leave this blog here for today but hope you can see that having a website is just one part of a digital business strategy that businesses will start to rely on more and more as we move through this century. If you’re stuck with something like a sitebuilder from Telstra Online Essentials (or even Wix in my opinion) you could end up reaching a technical block as your business grows and changes.

If you are an office admin staff member, doing accounts payable or accounts receivable or even an office manager you’re going to start seeing digital marketing and customer service skills start appearing more and more in job ad descriptions – particularly now that we are all working remotely from home.

Online Business Course for Affiliates

Anyone who completes a training course with us is eligible to become an online course affiliate. This means you can easily start your own online business sharing information about your experiences and what you learnt in completing the course. If some of your friends or people you are connected to enrol you can earn an affiliate commission.

Learn more about the Online Business Course here.