Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
Doug Campbell, CEO of athletic training machine manufacturer and retailer Airborne Athletics, remembers the not-too-distant past when he outsourced his Web updates.
Whenever he wanted to tweak the content of his two business Web sites — www.aircatvolleyball.com and www.drdishbasketball.com — Campbell would send text and images to Golden Valley-based Artropolis, where Web designers would make the changes.
But when his requests for updates became too frequent, the Web development company gave him a cost-effective alternative. They suggested he get his sites outfitted with a content-management platform that would allow him to make adjustments on his own.
A year later, Campbell updates content with mere mouse clicks. Artropolis rigged his sites so he can add client testimonials, photos and press releases, and send visually arresting e-mails. To do these tasks, Campbell goes online, pulls up an administrative Web page, and enters a login name and password, which whisks him away to a what-you-see-is-what-you-get, non-live editing page that looks and works like Microsoft Word.
There, he adds and subtracts text, uploads images from the Web or his hard drive, and publishes the changes instantaneously. Most of the time, however, he has a staff member handle such updates.
“It gives us the flexibility, instead of saving the things we want changed and then sending [to Artropolis] and them charging us, because it takes time for them to do it, and then have us proof it,” says Campbell, whose Belle Plaine-based company grossed under $5 million last fiscal year. “Now, we can do it all ourselves.”
Campbell is just one of the latest small-business owners who’ve warmed up to do-it-yourself content management. While the technology is as old as the Internet itself, many small companies had found it too expensive or too intimidating, thus prompting them to shuffle off Web updates to third-party professionals. But prices have gone down and CEOs and marketing directors have become more Web-savvy. Younger generations coming up in the workplace have also helped change attitudes.
“It’s so a part of who they are, they don’t think of it as magic — they think of it as a toaster,” says Tom Salonek, CEO of Eagan-based Web development and training firm Intertech Software.
Knowing the power a good-looking, informative, fresh Web site can have on customers, small-business owners and managers have become more willing to take the reins.
The number of small businesses that handle their own content management is still small — about 20 percent, estimate Web designers. For some, it’s just not a good idea financially and logistically. But those that do, like Campbell, relish the control. And Web designers themselves are happy and willing to hand it over.
“We don’t even actually want to do any of that,” says Troy Venjohn, president of Atomic Playpen, another Golden Valley-based Web design firm. “We’d rather see companies spending their money on having us figure out ways to help them to make money through a variety of other methods.”
Anybody and everybody at a small business can do content management. Sometimes it’s just one person, such as the CEO, who oversees all the Web updates. In other cases, numerous departments, from sales and marketing to human resources, have their own piece of the Web site to access and update.
Sales and marketing staff usually tweak content relating to product sales, while human resources may post job openings. Who does what and when varies from company to company, though Web designers are cautious about giving clients too much access, because “they can really mess things up,” says A.J. Meyer, Artropolis president.
Though it may seem counterintuitive, the one person who rarely gets charged with Web updates is the IT manager. “The IT department just usually does not care at all what the company message sounds like. They don’t think that way,” says Venjohn.
Most software is equipped to record what visitors click on while they peruse a Web site. This data can be used to figure out what marketing tactics worked, and which ones need retooling. It eliminates the guesswork that comes with sales campaigns, says Venjohn, and allows managers to adjust accordingly.
“They can see instant results, so they can make quick changes to their overall plan.”
Sometimes small wording changes can make all the difference. Campbell, for example, is still shaping his marketing strategy for Dr. Dish, a programmable machine he invented with his brother in 2003 that throws basketballs, and captures all made and missed shots with a net.
He’s discovered that many of his customers, mostly high school and college coaches, casually refer to it as a “shooting machine,” and not as a “training machine” as he currently bills it. He says he wants to make that change.
Keeping content fresh is also crucial for search engine optimization. Algorithms in search engines such as Google and Dogpile recognize active Web sites and static ones; priority is given to companies whose Web sites are updated constantly, so they’ll appear higher on search lists, says Meyer.
Content management can be integrated into a company Web site during its creation, or it can be retrofitted after the fact, such as in Campbell’s case.
Web development firms work on projects that carry price tags as low as $2,500, and as high as $250,000 or more. On average, small-business customers can expect to spend between $15,000 and $20,000 on Web development, which covers “soup to nuts,” says Meyer. Artropolis charges an up-front fee for content management; Atompic Playpen charges a monthly fee. A cheap alternative is to build and update a basic Web site through Yahoo for $50 up to $200 a month.
Some small businesses aren’t good candidates for do-it-yourself content management. Salonek, whose firm customizes software packages for mid-sized companies needing complex, multi-transaction applications, says companies with simple Web sites that contain pat information such as directions and hours of operation save money by outsourcing their updates because they’re few and far between.
Other companies — such as small manufacturing shops — have such tight, long-term bonds with their customers that pricing errors and misspellings on their Web sites won’t damage their business relationships, thus neutralizing the need for speedy Web corrections.
But the majority of companies will find it necessary — not just handy — to manage their own content, says Meyer. “For small businesses, it’s innovate or die. If you’re not able to make changes quickly and respond to market demand, you’re going to have a hard time competing.”
[contact] Doug Campbell, Airborne Athletics: 888.887.7453; sp*****@**************ll.com; www.aircatvolleyball.com; www.drdishbasketball.com. A.J. Meyer, Artropolis Inc.: 952.545.8488; aj*****@********is.com; www.artropolis.com. Tom Salonek, Intertech Software: 651.994.8558; ts******@***************re.com; www.intertechsoftware.com. Troy Venjohn, Atomic Playpen: 763.231.3400; in**@***********en.com; www.atomicplaypen.com.
