A website is a 24/7 sales force. It will always speak of your business in a positive way, day in day out. There is no such employee in this world. Many small businesses reluctantly develop or get developed their first website. But once they do get a good website up and running they are soon converted. A website is one of the most effective and yet cheapest promotional tools.
Building a website is a great first step, but just like a store front it needs to maintained, and once in a while it needs a fresh coat of paint. Building a website is not enough. You need to maintain it and update it now and then.
Many ask that why should you update your website? Well to make it sufficiently clear we shall break the reasons down.
Design
What looks good, Appeals!
A website is the first impression of your business for many. If your website has a banner saying “Summer Sale 2008”, it does not bring back fond memories of time travel and the movie “Back to the Future” but look plain unprofessional. This is an extreme case.
Designs do become outdated no matter how good. One example is flash. It was all the rage a few years ago, now you never see it. Also if your website has had no recent blogs etc, it becomes apparently clear that it is not something that the business spends its time on and as we said it is the first impression of your business for many. Do you really want customers to see that the last update was last year and give the feel of a shop that is full of cobwebs?
Technique and Coding
New browsers and operating systems used to be a huge event. Nowadays the speed of progress is so fast that it is hard to keep track of what changes come when. You have to ensure that your website is compatible with these changes. It is important that your website’s code (HTML and CSS) is still valid.
Also with each new update comes greater efficiency. For example if your website was built a few years back and has not been updated since then, there are good chances it has a lot of unnecessary HTML code which is making it load slower, and in turn possibly affecting its Google ranking.
Marketing
New marketing techniques
Call to action techniques often change over time. Those vibrating Windows 97 style dialogue boxes no longer work. Actually, they were plain irritating even back in the day and still are!
If your website is not updated then you are missing out on the new effective techniques that are being used.
Also with each new update comes a greater focus on effective information collection. Sales information is very important in creating effective sales campaign. Recent updates in the years have really focused on this. Some of the best features you get these days include conversion tracking, user recordings and heat mapping. If you are using an old website you might not have all of these.
Many small businesses get their first website developed via freelancers or do it on their own, thus regular update is a challenge. But in this day and age, regular updates are a necessity. The best bet would be to get a digital marketing agency that works in close collaboration with you and updates the website whenever necessary. This will of course cost you, but the benefits are worth it; no one likes a derelict shop and that’s what an ignored website is.
