What to Know Before You Hand Over the Keys to Your Website

I’ve seen it too many times: 

A business owner hires someone cheap to fix their site or “just update a plugin,” and everything breaks. 

Or worse? 

They get hacked—because the person they trusted didn’t follow secure practices. 

In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on what really happens when you hand your website over to the wrong support. 

I’ll share stories from over 20 years in the industry—plus the red flags to watch for, and how to find support that won’t just fix problems but prevent them in the first place. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Cost Of Cheap Tech Help
• 2:11 Show Welcome And Focus On Conversion
• 2:43 Access Equals Risk
• 3:57 The $20 Hire That Led To A Hack
• 5:03 Red Flags When Hiring Support
• 6:52 Secure Access And Backups Explained
• 8:52 Communication, Pricing, And Trust
• 10:31 What Great Tech Support Looks Like
• 12:47 Proactive Security And Partnership
• 14:58 Focus On Growth, Not Fixes

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:42

I've seen it too many times. A business owner hires someone cheap to fix their website or to just update something small and everything breaks. Or worse, they get hacked because the person they trusted didn't actually follow proper procedures with their sense of information. In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on what really happens when you hand over your website to the wrong support. And I'll share stories from over 20 years of experience in the industry, plus red flags to watch for and how to find support that won't just fix your problems but will prevent them in the first place. And one of the most expensive cleanups we've ever had happen started with a $20 an hour overseas hire. I'll share what unfolded and what we had to do to repair the damage coming up. So let's dive in. Struggling to turn website traffic into real sales, you're not alone and you don't have to figure it out all yourself. Welcome to Smarter Online Business, the podcast for course creators, coaches, and e-commerce entrepreneurs who want their websites to convert visitors into buyers without the tech overwhelm. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders, a website strategist and conversion expert with over 20 years of experience. Each episode delivers simple, proven strategies to help you generate more revenue and make your website your smartest sales tool. Welcome back to the show. Today we're talking about why tech help isn't just super straightforward. We need to make sure we're finding the right person to help us with our website. So tech support isn't just a task, it's access. It's access to your systems. So I want to get this clear. Giving someone access to your website is like giving them a key to your home or to your office. You're trusting them with your customer data. You're trusting them with product delivery system, whether that's a service or a physical product. You're trusting them with your brand's reputation. It's not something that you should take lightly. And I see people taking this lightly way more lightly than they should. So many people treat tech support like it's no big deal until it is. Think about it. You wouldn't let somebody, a stranger, walk into your house without knowing them first, right? Or without vetting them first. So that's what we need to be thinking about with our websites. We need to be vetting, we need to be making sure that they're a trustworthy person as much as we possibly can. Obviously, we're, you know, there's no perfect test for that other than long-term reputation, but we need to make sure that we are finding somebody that is trustworthy to work on our websites. So that $20 an hour hire, they didn't use secure login protocols. I want to give you a little bit of clue what's going to happen here. They left an old admin user active and the site got hacked. The client came back to us months later. And after thousands of dollars in lost sales and reputation damage, they had to pay us thousands of dollars to fix their website and get it unhacked. So, not to really scare you there, but I do want to say that just to make sure that it's very clear and serious to you, because this obviously can happen. We've seen it happen multiple times. It's definitely not the norm. But we have seen also more minor versions of this where they just completely like mess up the site. They or they have left back doors, is what it's called, for other hackers to get back in later. One time they basically were passing along the password in an insecure manner, and so some hacker just got direct access to everything very easily, without any effort at all. So, to help you prevent this, I want to give you some red flags on what to look for when you're looking to hire somebody to help you with your website. So, one thing I want you to look for is they ask for full access right away without a clear scope, without a clear idea of what they're going to be doing. This can many times show immaturity. Whenever we are, say, let's say we're quoting a website. Sometimes we need to look at the files and look underneath the hood, is what I like to call it, when we're quoting a site. I will ask and say, hey, is it okay if you give me, you know, FTP access so that I can look under the hood, see what's going on. This would be in particular with e-commerce stores. And I said, you know, we won't be changing anything. Is it okay if I take a look? You know, I am asking permission. I'm not demanding it. That is also kind of a clue here is when they're asking for certain access and permissions for it, rather than, you know, I have to have this or I can't do, you know, you gotta look at underneath the lines of the attitudes as well. Another thing is if they say they don't make backups or they don't make sure that you are giving them uh your passwords and your access in a secure manner. So, what do I mean by a secure manner? And we'll go back to the backups in a second. A secure manner is not emailing it. Do not, if at all at all possible, email any passwords to somebody that's gonna be working on your website. Email is very insecure. Anybody watching your email on the internet can read it. It who knows where it's going to go into their computer and system. What if they had some sort of virus on their system and it can read their password, you know, whatever you sent to them. So we want to have a secure encrypted way to send passwords. So make sure you're using something that is secure and encrypted. And then let's go back to the backups. I kind of put backups and security in here at the same time. So when somebody's working on your website, they should be backing up when possible before they make the changes. It's something we always do is back up any files that we are changing. So ask, do you back up my site before you make changes? It's a great question to ask and see what their reaction is. And then if they can't explain what they want to do or are going to be doing in plain English, and then what I mean by plain English is not literally the language English, but in a clear manner to you as to what they're doing, then that can be a bit of a red flag because that might mean that they don't understand what you want, or their communication, there's a bit of a breakdown there. So make sure the communication is very, very good. Another red flag is that they ghost you after fixing something. That's a huge red flag and a great way to know that you shouldn't be using them again. And sometimes their prices feel too good to be true. Now, you can find good inexpensive labor out there, but I also want you to be follow your gut and be cautious. You know, if it is too good to be true, there might be a reason. Many times the people who charge more for their work, it they charge more because of the experience behind it. And the user can do the job almost all the time faster, and i.e., either cheaper or the same price as those who charge less per hour. So just go with your gut on how whether something feels too good to be true here. And there is no shame here. We all want to save money, and it's very important that we are very money conscious in our business. But with the wrong tech support, it doesn't save you money. It actually costs you more to clean up any chaos or any mess that happens. And just to be clear here, I work with some great, amazing overseas developers. It's not really where they're from. And so I'm not talking about overseas developers in particular. And Matt currently has something about this too. It's really about how the person works because I have also found, you know, local developers that also are not kosher and are not somebody you would want to work with. So really look at who you feel like they are. Do they do secure protocols for getting passwords and sharing information? Do they communicate well? Do you feel comfortable with them? Use your gut here. Many times your gut will really tell you. It's really how they work. Communicate and protect your business that ideally really, really, really matters. So then let's flip the coin and talk about what the right tech support looks like. Great tech support should feel like a partnership, not a gamble. It should feel like somebody walking side by side with you, helping you along the way, and really guiding you in your business from a tech perspective and having your back. Kind of like a little tech best friend is what I kind of like to think of it. They are there for you and with you. You want someone who explains things clearly, not in jargon. Or might use jargon and say, hey, if this doesn't make sense, let me know and I'll explain it a little bit more. Somebody who really does a good job of communicating. They have a track wrap, Gurta, of secure and stable work. They have doing been doing this work in industry for a while now. They also document what they do. They let you know exactly what they've done and how they've done it and what's going on behind the scenes if you need to know that. And they're also proactive, not just reactive. So many times when we're working on a site, we might see a security issue as we're working on a site. We will make sure that we tell our client, hey, we found this potential security issue over here. We just want you to know if he wants to clean it up, we can add that on. But we want to make sure that you know that because many times we would come behind another developer, another programmer, and find that they left some insecure files on the server that could give clues as to a little bit more details about the server than should be, which can cause hackers to have an easier way to get into the server. That would be just like kind of a simple way to say it. They kind of know a little bit more under the covers so that it's easier to attack, basically. So somebody that's proactive and not just reactive, and somebody that cares about their work and how their work impacts your business. So again, this is like a partnership. They care about your work, they care about not just this one transaction, they care about it being a partnership. So when you find that right person or team, you'll stop worrying about break fix tasks. You'll start focusing on growth, you'll start moving forward again. And if that business who spent $20 an hour with somebody had vetted it, and if they had spent a bit more, a little bit more money with somebody else who is a bit more trusted, they could have saved them several thousands of dollars in repair and downtime. It was quite the frustrating from us um situation to see them go through that. We never want to have to clean up somebody else's stuff. We never want to have to unhack a site. It just shouldn't be something we need to do. It just hopefully should be preventable, but nothing's ever perfect. So, yes, we do have to do those things. And it's frustrating for us to see a business have to put the time, money, and effort into fixing something that shouldn't have happened to begin with, especially in this situation I'm talking about. So if you've been burned by tech support before or if you're feeling unsure about who's touching your website, I want you to know this. You don't have to figure this out yourself. Inside our converting website course, we help you build not just a better website, but a smarter approach to managing it. We talk about the tech tools, conversion structure, and even how to protect what you're building. So if you're ever interested in that, you can find it on our website at smarteronlinebusiness.com forward slash TCW. And as a bonus, if you want to have a safe place to ask tech questions and find vetted help, find help that you are comfortable with, join a free Facebook group. You can get to it easily by going to smarteronlinebusiness.com forward slash Facebook, and that will redirect you to our group. So let's jump into that bonus tip, that vetting checklist. So before you hire anyone to work on your website, ask yourself these questions. Do they explain their process clearly on how they work? Do they provide a backup plan or security protocol? Do they provide a secure way for you to give them access they need? Can they show you, you know, past clients or reviews on their work to show you know other people have trust of them? If the answer to any of these is no, I would encourage you to keep looking. Your business deserves support that protects it, not just patches it up. That's all we have for this week's episode of the Smarter Online Business Podcast. I hope this encourages you to find that right tech support. I hope it doesn't scare you. My whole point is to hope you see those red flags, hope you see what potentially could happen so that you are more diligent about finding that right tech support so that you can have a partner in your business guiding you along the way every single day. And if you love this episode, please be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you are following our podcast. And we will see you next week.