The following is a guest contributed post from James Ramsey, CEO of Fiddlefly.
We all know fresh content is essential if you want your website to be successful. Visitors are pickier than ever and their expectations are high. Visitors today will leave sites that look old or mistrust companies with outdated information. But who has time to keep up with their website? It is all too often a make it and forget about it asset, underutilized with great potential just waiting to be realized.
Yeah, you know all that. So what’s a busy person to do?
There is the one thing you can do today to help to create a more pleasing site for your visitors – and yes you do have time for this. Are you ready? The one thing you can do today to improve your website:
Read it.
Sure you might blog now and again, change a few prices, or add the name of your newest VP of Action Sports (true title and cool job), but have you actually read your website lately? More than likely your site has aged without you even realizing it. How would you know? Read your site, read the whole thing. Don’t skip over parts you think you know, don’t gloss over the boring parts (by the way if there are boring parts think about if they are necessary). While you are reading ask yourself the following things:
1. Has there been a culture change?
Has your message changed? Has the direction of the company done a pivot? Does the nomenclature you are using on the site match what you are saying to your customers? Does your site corroborate your story?
2. Is the content up-to-date?
Are your testimonials new? Are your case studies relevant? Is your pricing correct? Is your blog up to date? Is your twitter feed active? Does the date on the bottom of your site match this year (this is a big one and nearly unforgivable).
3. Are your images current?
Do your images have a modern feel? Are the color schemes correct? Has your logo changed? Are all the pictures necessary? Is something missing?
Once you have answered these questions and had appropriate changes updated either by yourself or your website development team, you need to do one more thing. Go into Outlook and schedule yourself to “Read the Website” again in 6 months, and make it reoccurring!
