This guest post was written by Larry Easto who is a
best-selling business writer, and publisher of Real Estate Marketing Link

I am not a big fan of one spouse working in a small business operated by the other spouse.

My Own Experience

This attitude is founded on my own experience in starting my first post-marriage business. At the time, my wife who is a bright, highly-educated person was taking a break from her professional career to raise two small children. Feeling totally fulfilled as a mother but under-stimulated intellectually, she was looking for something to keep the thinking part of her brain engaged and challenged.

At my suggestion she agreed to look after the bookkeeping of my small two-person business.  This turned out to be really bad decision. While she loves math and arithmetic puzzles, she was and remains totally undone by any numbers with dollar signs in front of them. It was as if the dollar sign transformed each number into some kind of a weird unintelligible symbol, loaded with psychological and philosophical significance.

After one very frustrating month, we all agreed that life would be better for everyone if my secretary looked after the bookkeeping and my wife looked for intellectual stimulation somewhere away from my business.

Over the years, I have seen many small businesses encounter difficulties as a result of the involvement of the owner’s spouse. Not surprisingly, many domestic situations have also been negatively impacted as a result of business issues carried home by one or other of the spouses.  Recently I experienced another example that reinforced my dislike of one spouse working in the business of the other.

A Website Design Debacle

A couple of years ago, I worked with a very good graphic designer on a client project. I liked her and respected her design talents. We worked well together and produced a book that delighted my client.

Since the designer also offered website design, I chose her to help me with my first website. In website design projects, she looked after graphic design…the look of the site… and her husband, a full-time IT professional, designed the technical elements of the site, after his normal working hours.

At the first meeting with my design team, the graphic designer behaved as she had in all of our other meetings. Her husband acted like a know-it-all, answering questions that I directed at his wife and generally running the meeting.  Because I had faith in his wife, I ignored his behavior and we proceeded with the site development.  With minimal fuss, we came up with a design and appearance that was exactly what I wanted.

However, when I started to research issues as search engine optimization and driving traffic to my site, I realized that there was not much behind the attractive façade. Missing were such elements as page titles and descriptions and key words that feed search engines. Also missing was the ability for me to monitor traffic, pages visited, referral sources and similar features.  

When I raised these issues with the graphic designer, her response was simply to tell me that they had done what they were contracted to do.  This being the case, it would seem that all of the problems with my original site were my fault. Apparently I failed to specify everything I required…even though I was relying on an IT professional to provide the technical elements I needed but didn’t know I needed.

Issues of responsibility aside, my experience with this website design team reinforces my no owner’s spouse rule.  I will continue to avoid dealing with small businesses, including real estate agents, that are operated by one spouse and include the other spouse in some capacity.   

Experience is indeed a great teacher.         

Note from Kathleen:

Larry’s experience points out a great lesson in website design.  There are many elements that need to be addressed to create a useful website.  If you’re planning to have a custom site designed, make sure that the vendor you choose can address all of the critical issues.

• Website design needs to start with SEO (search engine optimization).  You need to work with someone who understands SEO and can assist you in selecting the right keywords to target, then make sure the on-page elements of the site supports that strategy.  An SEO expert does not necessarily know anything about design or coding.
• The web site needs to have a professional look and design,  A designer does not necessarily know anything about SEO or coding.
• The code for the site needs to be clean, and all functions need to work properly.  An IT or code expert does not necesarily know anything about SEO or design.

If your website vendor can’t address all three of those issues, you’ve got the wrong web builder!