Here is a good lesson for people to understand that doing things yourself is normally not a good idea when you have no idea what you want to achieve, where you are and what you want.
[Website Owners] We have taken a young lad to do our SEO and social media and a bit of marketing for us. I want him to get involved in our SEO and our ‘Google My Business’ accounts etc so would be obliged if you would let us have the following:
Google Analytics Ownership (or logins)
Domain Control Panel Logins
I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible
[Website Design Company] Sure we can help but regarding the Google Analytics we created that account for you when we first built the site over 10 years ago now in 2008 and see the site has had over 91,000 visitors in that time but the visitor numbers are reducing year on year slightly (due to lack of new content, marketing, SEO and the fact the site doesn’t have a SSL certificate / Isn’t Mobile – touch friendly – not responsive). This was noted quite a while ago and prompted conversations about updating / redesigning the site, something we think is definitely in your interest. We have given you lots of reminders about adding new content, upgrading the site and believe this is an essential task for us to complete.
Regarding Analytics we see that there is still scheduled the monthly reports, happy to give the ability to read and analyse the data if you give me a Google Account (email address).
Cpanel access isnt granted normally to clients as there is a security risk there that we have to mitigate, what exactly do you want to do? Perhaps I can help? Happy to make updates / tweaks as you request them.
I would say doing a full SEO review and redesign project on the existing site is a good idea but the site is very very overdue these updates and have mentioned the fact the site hasn’t been updated a few times now, in our opinion a full redesign that would naturally improve SEO would be the best way forward long term. Previously sent you info regarding a redesign project, we can resend this to you.
Here are some recent website redesign examples for you to review, they are all responsive (mobile / touch friendly) and content managed (you can update them). [list given of Responsive, modern, fresh websites]
[Website Owners]
As well as taking on our own lad to do social media etc we are about to commission a company who are experts in our sector / market to build a new retail and trade site for us. I have looked at some of the sites you have provided links for and appreciate they are well built and designed, I am also sure you would be able to improve our rankings and traffic but we have made a decision to go with a company who, as I said previously, are experts in our industry. We have paid them quite a big deposit so even though it seems strange to move away from yourselves who have been great for us and given our website lots of love and made it rank well we have committed to our new lad to do SEO and another website design company now.
We appreciate everything you have done for us over the past ten years or so and would further appreciate your co-operation in this transitional period. We will be only too happy to recommend you to anyone who is looking for a website designer, if I am honest I am not regretting paying a deposit to another company otherwise we would have gone with you almost certainly.
I would be obliged if you would confirm you are happy to release the domain to our new web designers and supply them with access to Google analytics etc as requested.
[Website Design Company]
Sure we can help you do whatever you need but can I ask have you considered using your long unused .com domain for the redesign?
I ask as I see you are using that account for emails and see the website that has been sitting there for a few years unfinished. I assume that it’s totally under your control / hosting and easily / cleanly passed to any new company you employ.
We would like to continue our business relationship and perhaps update / redesign the .co.uk website for you at a later date as believe having worked with you for 10 years that ‘trust’ and dependability needs to be recognised. Hopefully you appreciate our work and have the knowledge that we deliver great service, we even helped your admin team out two days running at 8am with an email problem last week.
The .co.uk website has been build and optimised for you nearly 10 years ago and in that time its held up on visitor numbers pretty well considering the modest amount of work gone into it since the initial design. We, as a company, are nearly 11 years old and have built / promoted hundreds of websites in that time and you are only the second business to suggest getting another website design company to work with you so hopefully you will consider my idea about using the .com domain and continue working with us.
If you really want us to release the domain and hand over all digital accounts (Google analytics and Google search console) / assets (code / database) to the new company we can do that but this will incur admin charges depending on exactly what you want.
Happy to discuss further or to take your instruction about exactly what you want
[Website Owners] Thank you for coming back to me so promptly, I fully understand that your agency is very capable of producing quality and well ranked sites and we haven’t worked with you or asked you to upgrade our site over the years. We have however committed to using an agency which is a specialist and has a proven track record, both in retail and trade within our industry.
We would very much appreciate it if you would release the information required and let us know what your admin fee would be.
Update – The Client’s Website ‘Manager’ has now been dismissed and the SEO has been a disaster, the client has now moved back to us after recording a massive fall in business and website visitors. The Google Stats graph shown below shows the improvement in website visitors once we regained control of the website and removed the many problems / mistakes the ‘SEO Lad’ had introduced.
