I am not sure I would know how to go about starting a flag business today. 50 years ago (yes, next year we celebrate 50 years), business was simpler. You identified a need, then filled the need by either door-to-door sales or a store front. And advertising was simpler, too, with only 3 mediums to choose from: radio, tv, or newspaper. All that seems archaic by today’s standards.
Keeping Up
Remember the myth in the late 20th century that computers were going to eliminate jobs, paper, and reduce business expenses? On the contrary, it is just the opposite. We now have expensive equipment with skilled laborers who maintain our dedicated servers, desktops, software, and more.
Recently, we were practically forced by Google to upgrade our website or get out of the online business, and I understand why. Hackers and innovative algorithms keep software companies ever changing as they protect the consumer and play defensive against the barrage of daily robotic attacks.
For us, it has been about 10 years since the last forced upgrade and, believe it or not, we should have done it sooner. That is easy to say but is much harder to execute. For a custom website as robust as FlagandBanner.com, it requires a year of planning, a new outlay of expenditures and, after the launch (which is never perfect), a loss in sales while you work out the unforeseen bugs.
To the user, the new website looks the same. Though we did consider changing its look and navigation, we just couldn’t settle on anything better. You know what they say, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, so we kept the homepage and updated the blue color to a more modern blue. It is the back end -the unseen computer codes- that are modernized, thus being safer for the consumer and bringing FAB back into favor with Mother Google, who holds the keys to the castle for all online retailers.
It’s Done
It’s been three weeks since the launch and I am proud to say the site is up and running well. It is still a little buggy, but we are working through each glitch as they arise. Overall, we are very happy and even more happy to have it behind us.
Thinking back, if I were to start a company today, I would buy a website platform from Shopify or another well-established service company that has user-friendly applications. The good thing about those developers is they keep up with technology and the ever-changing online world of hackers at no expense to you.
It is too late for FAB to take my advice. In 1995, when we launched our first website, all sites had to be built from scratch. To change providers now would be a costly divorce because of lost history, SEO, URLs, and the restructuring of SEM. So, choose your website platform wisely; once you start with one company, you are married to them, forever.
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