Who really owns your online business?
Worse case scenarios, I think Im getting a reputation now for being the dooms day prophet amongst the circle of people I work with. I always work on worse case scenarios and anything else from there on in is a bonus. The “what ifs” is an area in ecommerce that some seem not to be looking at and when the worse case scenario happens, seldom do companies seem to have any kind of back up procedures in place.
Disaster recovery seems like such an alarmist phrase, yet how many merchants and affiliates have that all important plan B? Putting all your faith and eggs into one basket you are taking a huge risk with your company and Im not just talking about google.
We have come across a few companies in recent years where by we have gone in to trouble shoot and were not surprised that back up plans were not in place. The following is really directed at merchants where by they use third parties but could be applicable to that one person in the company who has access to data, website maintenance. I have listed a few examples so that you get the idea, the following is not meant to cause worry or anxiety but to get you thinking and implementing back up plans if you don’t have them already.
Who can shut your online business down?
Scenario, you have a third party ecommerce platform provider, they designed your website and are hosting it, all is going well. For most people all will be fine and that relationship will continue and be a positive experience for many years. What happens if you were to fall out one day with your third party ecommerce/website provider? Or the company you are using goes bust? Becomes unresponsive to requests? Or the one man band company… chap/ess gets hit by bus and dies? Do you have a complete up to date back up of your website that you can give to some one else to ensure continuity in a worse case scenario situation?
Domain name
Who owns your domain name and versions of? Lots and lots of people wont be able to tell you and in some cases if they do know, would it surprise you to know it can be people like, their mates or that person they employed who left the company six months ago or longer, or that third party domain registration company that went bust or got taken over or are brokers (these are true cases by the way). This has got to be one of the most common worse case scenarios that people just make this mistake time and time again. Find out who has your domain name and who hosts your website.
Your wing man/woman
I love the way we are so trusting with our businesses, its good to have trust in the work place and Ill not criticise that at all. Scenario, we employ people with skills, they do the jobs that either we cant do for time reasons or often is the case, for example the technical stuff that we cant fathom how it works, or accounts or any job that if you just removed it tomorrow, the company would grind to a halt. Often is the case where by the left and right hand don’t know what they are doing. In other words if you have one person who is an island within your company knows all the passwords and usernames to your business and lets face it, your life and that person quits, drops dead or decides he/she hates the boss or a fellow colleague or has a bit of a break down (happens) who can take over at a moments notice?
Contracts
How many of you read those contracts? How many of you read them, don’t understand but sign them anyway? How many of your employees are signing contracts that they don’t know what it is they are signing? Ask them.. what does that contract mean? Scenario, you are high profile brand and you employ a third party consultant to go off an source a distribution/logistics company, contracts exchange between the brand, the logistics and the third party consultant. Logistics work with your competitors, smart move? I’ll let you think about the pros and cons and you can draw your own conclusions.
You need us
It’s staggering the number of businesses out there that profess to be the ‘experts’ “We can get you ranking on google No1 spot for XYZ” “Who is stealing your traffic… AFFILIATES!!!!” Evil Evil BRAND BIDDING Affiliates (ok they did not say the evil bit, that’s just me being over the top, very passionate about affiliates knowing their space more then ‘the experts’.
The number of people who have to part with of extortionate amounts of money where by the ‘you need us’ card is played or as I like to say it “capitalising on peoples ignorance”
Scenario, you have a third party who knows jack about how the internet works and requirements of a fast loading website, the third party has more influence over the decision maker and you end up with a website that 45% of the traffic will have to wait 35 seconds for the page to load.
Conclusion
Worse case scenarios, no one likes to think about them in the same way no one likes to think about things like pensions, or writing a will or forward planning in the event something should happen. It’s in most people’s nature to prefer to burry ones head in the sand and adopt the attitude “well Ill cross that bridge when I get there”. Some times its about not having enough knowledge and know how to protect a business from a worse case scenario.
Go and look at all the contracts you have signed or your employee/partner/third party consultants/third parties period, read them and if you don’t understand them pay some one to translate them, it could just save your business. Contracts are around for a reason, it offers both parties protection, they are the paper condom for safe business practice.
Finally, peace of mind is priceless.
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