3 Common Mistakes Startup Businesses Make With IT

 

Starting up a business can be a daunting experience. It’s not easy, but with the right amount of passion and commitment, it can really pay off. Business owners just starting out can often get caught up in the excitement and make mistakes, which can be potentially catastrophic for the company. Many businesses overlook their IT system, but it’s a big deal! Here are 3 common mistakes startup businesses make with IT, and how you can avoid them!

1) Having a non-SEO-focused website

Many startup owners build their websites like a business card – they give the basic details and a little overview of the company, but not much else. Although minimalism can often be desirable for a website’s design, if you don’t mention searchable keywords or locations, you simply won’t be found. Be sure to include various pages detailing where you’re based and what you do. Be aware of search engine results, too. You want to rank highly in the results of the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Search for keywords that are relevant to your business and try to pinpoint the least popular ones. The fewer results, the more chance you have of getting that Google top-spot.

2) Using POP3 Email

Pop3 email usually comes free with any domain sale, but it isn’t particularly good. Its basic function is to send any emails you receive directly to your PC/Mac. It won’t mark your emails as ‘read’ or ‘unread’ and it doesn’t allow you to move files around while you’re on the go – something that is vital when travelling to and from business-related activity. Instead, try Office 365 or Google Apps – they provide Gmail for business email accounts and stellar synchronisation.

3) Not backing up your files

You should always prepare for the worst. You can never be certain that your files are completely safe unless you back them up. This is especially important for businesses. A whopping 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within 6 months of the disaster.  Make sure you backup all of your data and test that it works.

If you’re a Windows user, it comes with a handy feature called Backup and Restore which can be found in the Control Panel. It’s an easy-to-use application that allows you to decide whether you want to backup individual files or the entire computer. We recommend backing up the entire computer for your first backup.

The best backup system for Mac users is Time Machine. It comes as part of the standard installation of the Mac OS X (Mac’s operating system), and offers incremental backup and recovery of files. You’re in charge of when you want your system to be backed up – you can set it up to backup every hour, day, week or you can pre-set which days you want.

Don’t forget, you can also manually back up your files on an external hard drive or other external storage devices. We recommend having one or two backup hard drives that are equal to or better than your current backup system in terms of storage size – remember to be safe, not sorry!

 

Although these may seem like small, obvious factors, it’s important that you don’t forget them – they are essential to your business. You want your company to run as smoothly and successfully as possible, so bear these easy solutions to common IT problems in mind when starting up your business.