Your website is the digital face of your business. Potential customers form impressions of your business based on the quality of your website, just as they’d analyze your brick-and-mortar location when visiting it for the first time. If you want that impression to be positive, you need to update your site regularly.
Broken links and outdated content make a negative impression on customers. Modern customers are savvy, and can quickly spot the telltale signs of a neglected website. When they see those signs, they’re likely to move on to the competition. You don’t have to crank out a new blog post every day, but keeping your site and its content updated will dramatically boost your chances of turning potential customers into converted customers.
The Dangers of an Outdated Website
You walk into an unfamiliar supermarket to pick up a few necessities, and find only three-wheeled carts. As you struggle to push your broken cart down the aisles, you see a sign for a really appealing sale… but it ended three months ago. You just want to find milk, bread, and eggs, but the signs for the aisles are all wrong.
Are you going to push that broken cart to the register, or leave in frustration? It may seem extreme, but the quality of your website can have the same effect. A “dead” website is a major red flag to customers, regardless of the quality of your products or services.
- Given the recent prevalence of hacking and data breaches, customers need to feel confident that their data is safe when they visit your site. An outdated website does not inspire confidence.
- Distraction is always just a click away. When you have broken links or dead pages, you give the customer a prime opportunity to leave your site for greener pastures.
- If you transact business online, it’s doubly important to keep your site updated. If a potential customer doesn’t believe your site is credible, it won’t matter how great your products or prices are.
- Your website is also a reflection of your customer service. If you don’t take the time to update your site, why would the customer think you’ll take the time to handle their questions or concerns?
Tips for Updating Your Website
You don’t have to be a website expert to test the function of your website. In fact, just browsing your own site can give you a lot of insight into what’s working and what’s not. Even if you can’t fix a given problem yourself, you can note it and make sure it’s addressed by your web design expert.
- Simple navigation is the key to an effective website, reducing redundancies and making it easier for customers to stick around and browse. Check your links regularly to ensure that they’re easy to identify, and that they lead to the correct location.
- Visit each page on your site, and check that each loads properly. There are countless small factors that can impact the performance of a page, so review your pages frequently.
- Be sure to review your content, as well. A piece of information that was valuable when the content was published might be outdated now, especially if your content hasn’t been updated in a while.
- Check that your offline marketing matches your website. A print ad that leads customers to a broken page is essentially useless.
- Don’t forget to update your social media pages, too! A dead social page carries the same downside as a dead website.
- If you need help staying on top of your social pages, try scheduling social updates ahead of time. It’s the best way to keep your social efforts running smoothly.
- Finally, create a spreadsheet or similar device to keep track of which pages you check, when you checked them, and whether they were working properly.
This may all seem like a lot of work, but it’s not as time-consuming as it seems. As with any type of maintenance, the real work comes in turning it into a habit. You might run into some challenges at the start, especially if you’ve been lax about updating, but it won’t be long until you have your site running better than ever. Your customers will notice, and your business will be better off for it.
Looking for fresh, regularly updated content? We can help! Let the web design experts at Emphasize Design handle your content development, so you can focus on running the Calgary business you love.
