Hiring in house for the website

Is there actually a full role

Ask what they would do in the second month. Building a site is a project; running one is a few hours a week for most small businesses, and the gap between those is where the role becomes vague.

Vague roles drift. The website person becomes the person who does advertising, social media, the newsletter, the customer database and the printer, none of it especially well.

That is not a reason not to hire. It is a reason to define the job around what the business needs rather than around a title.

Count the hours honestly for a month before advertising. Most small businesses find the website work is a day a week, which points at a part-time role or a retained provider rather than a hire.

What the work actually covers

Content, which never stops, and which is all a search engine or an answer engine ever sees. New pages, updates, prices, photographs, seasonal changes and the review routine that stops a site going stale.

Technical upkeep, which is periodic. Updates, backups, broken links, forms that stopped delivering, and whatever breaks after a platform change.

And measurement, which most businesses skip. Our page on auditing a site covers what somebody should actually be looking at rather than reporting.

And the writing, which is the part that produces enquiries. Somebody who can turn a conversation with a technician into a page is worth more than somebody who can build an elaborate layout.

The single point of knowledge

This is the real exposure and it is larger than the salary. One person who knows where everything lives, holds every password, and has written nothing down is a genuine business risk.

It happens by default rather than by intent. Nobody sets out to hoard knowledge; documentation simply never rises above whatever is urgent this week.

Require it from the first week. A single file naming every account, every supplier and every routine task is enough, and it has to be kept somewhere the owner can reach.

What to require from day one

The list below costs a few hours and removes almost all of the risk in employing somebody for this. Every item is also useful the first time they take a holiday.

• Every account in the business name, not a personal one
• A written list of accounts, suppliers and renewal dates
• A note of routine tasks and how often they happen
• Access shared with at least one other person
• A record of what changed and when
• Nothing running from a personal email address
• Documentation kept where the owner can reach it

Employee, contractor or agency

An employee suits continuous work and a business that wants the knowledge inside. A contractor suits a project with an end. An agency suits a business that wants a team rather than a person.

The cost comparison misleads. An employee costs salary plus everything around it; an agency costs more per hour and less in total for intermittent work.

Our page on agencies and our page on freelancers cover the alternatives. The decision is about continuity rather than about rate.

Hiring for the right skills

The valuable skill in a small business is usually writing rather than building. A site that is technically fine and says nothing generic will be outperformed by the reverse every time.

Someone who can write clearly about your trade, keep things accurate and measure what happens is worth more than somebody who can build an elaborate page.

Our page on recruiting pages covers describing the role honestly, which matters because this job is frequently advertised as something it will not be.

What happens when they leave

Assume it and prepare for it. Everything in the list above exists for this moment, and a business that skipped it discovers what it cost within a week.

Change access rather than trusting the handover. Accounts, passwords and any personal address involved in the site or its forms.

Then check what was actually running. Scheduled tasks, automatic messages and integrations tend to surface only when they stop, which is usually a month after somebody has gone.

Ask them to record a short walkthrough before they go. Ten minutes of somebody explaining where things are beats any document, and it costs nothing while they are still employed.