“Hey remember me? We haven’t talked in months. Domain Tools says I haven’t been updated in 7 months. People are visiting me and apparently my content isn’t as relevant as it was when I was first built.” Well I could go on about what most websites scream when visiting them. From the ones with missing or incomplete addresses, web forms that error when you hit the submit button, to the prices that are out of date or don’t match what was quoted on the phone or in the store, misspellings and grammatical errors. If I’m hitting a soft spot, don’t feel too bad, it’s quite common.
One of the main things I stress to our clients at Design Theory, is that your website should never lay stagnant. We should be updating it regularly with fresh content. If you have a promotion going on, it should be on your website in a predominant way to attract your visitor’s attention. If you lowered or raised the prices for your products, that information needs to updated immediately or else you could cause some trouble. You have a professional website, don’t make it look cheap with misspellings and small errors. You could be losing valuable business. Web forms are the silent killers too because unless you go in and check regularly, you may not know that it isn’t working properly.
So in the spirit of love, we compiled a list of resources for you to use with your website for FREE!
Vector Icons: Icons can dramatically improve some graphic elements on your website. Especially when you don’t have the budget for a graphic designer to create a bunch of small graphics for you.
Facebook and Twitter Plug-ins: If your website isn’t “social” it needs to be ASAP.
Analytics: If you don’t know how many people are visiting your website, which pages are most popular for their content, your bounce rate, and referral links, I’m here to tell you to put some love into your site tonight and check out Google Analytics.
Call to Action: Normally you’d find a good call to action on a strategically typed and keyword-filled landing page, but you can also have these on your website’s home page. However you use them, use them. Encourage your visitors to give you their contact information in exchange for something of use to them.
Have any other Website Valentine’s Date night items you can “talk” about with your website? Share them in the comments field below.
Love it!!! Great blog and perfect timing 😉
Thanks for reading and commenting Daphne!
Excellent post.
One thing I’d like to point out too is that allowing your site to stagnate can drop its ranking on some popular search engines. Just keywording for Search Engine Optimization and leaving your site to fend for itself isn’t enough anymore.
Great point Peter, I totally agree. I actually spoke to someone about two weeks or so ago where that very same thing happened. Organically they were #5 for a string of keywords in a search, and now they’re like on page 5. Mainly because nothing had been updated on that site for months.
That’s great to know Peter, updates and optimization is the key after having your site up and running.