Impacts of EXA Liquidation

Ever since news broke down yesterday about EXA Liquidation, the web has been buzzing with questions about what a company should do if they are in the situation and how they can protect themselves moving forward.

We put a quick checklist yesterday on what you need to do immediately if you are a client of EXA, please click on the link below to view it. In the page there is information on how to make sure your website, your domain and your emails get minimally impacted by EXA’s liquidation or if you have an issue with your Digital Agency and you would like to change Agencies.
http://www.neton.com.au/2016/02/checklist-for-moving-agencies/

How to future proof yourself

While EXA liquidation came out of nowhere and is a very isolated incident, these things happen all the time in a smaller level. Sometimes you have to part ways with your Digital Agency and sometimes it becomes a sore affair. We at NetON have moved a number of clients to ours after a falling out with their Digital Agency. Most of the time, the previous agency is helpful but every now and then they are not and it’s harder to get all the assets to rebuild the site quickly.

So the second question is how to future proof yourself for the future. Here are some tips to make sure that you can react quickly if this happens again in the future.

1. Keep a backup of all your assets

This gets thrown around a lot but doesn’t get implemented much. As a company you use a lot of imagery, videos etc on your site. Making sure that you have a copy of all the images locally means that you can rebuild a site really fast.

2. Make sure your provider has off site backup of your site

This is a very crucial step. Ensuring that you provider has a off site backup means that you can rebuild the site from the backup if there is a crisis. For example, with EXA Liquidation, most of the site information is in their servers which are now pretty much locked.

3. Use Open Source where possible

Try and use Open source platforms for your websites. WordPress and Drupal are great CMS’s that you can use and in case you need to find another agency, it will be easier to find an agency who can work with Open Source platforms.

4. Don’t get locked into proprietary CMS platforms

Same point as above but worth mentioning, don’t use a proprietary CMS that only your Digital Agency can work with. This never ends well in our experience.

5. Manage your own domain

This is a no brainer but time and time again, we see clients letting their agency register the domain. Registering a domain is easy, gives you more control and is way cheaper.  Manage it.

6. Use Google Apps or Office 365 for emails

Again another no-brainer, please use an email provider that is not your Digital Agency for your emails. This way changing providers is not a pain.

7. Use an Agency that doesn’t try to lock you in

Try and use a Digital Agency that doesn’t try and lock you into hefty contracts. If you are not an enterprise, boutique agencies work just as well as a high profile agency. They will be faster, cheaper and more attentive to your needs.