So your business was ahead of the curve and had a web site created from the very beginning. The only problem is that shortly after your site went online your company’s interest in the site went offline. Now your business has grown, moved, changed phone numbers, added new products or services, and you find yourself having to alert your customers to these changes every time they call. Even worse than that, your online clients are leaving you for your competitor because your competitor appears to offer products and services that you don’t. Without further adieu, here are the top ten reasons why your business needs to maintain its web site:
REASON 10: MONEY WELL SPENT.
The most obvious reason to keep your site maintained is that you paid for the site initially. The reasons in which you decided to have a web site in the beginning are more than likely still prevalent today. Maintaining your web site is merely a way to continually capitalize on your initial investment.
REASON 9: STAY UP WITH YOUR COMPETITION.
Even the most seasoned and successful businesses face new competitors in their market. Keeping your web site up-to-date and well maintained gives you the ability to make sure that your site offers all of the components that are current to today’s end-users. Maintaining your site allows you to confidently know that your site offers any new conveniences, available through web design, to make your customer’s experience on your site easy and enjoyable.
REASON 8: SAVES YOU TIME.
The ability to be able to post any new changes to your business web site allows you tell all of your clients, new and old, vital information at one time. By being able to refer people to your web site it saves you time from having to repeat the same sales speech on a person-to-person basis.
REASON 7: KEEPS YOU AND YOUR CUSTOMERS INTERACTIVE.
Maintaining your web site allows you to have an indirect conversation with your customers. You can address client feedback through your web site. Letting your customers know that their opinions and suggestions are being acknowledged makes them feel as if they are valuable to you and your business. Maintaining healthy, business relationships is important to the growth of all businesses.
REASON 6: IT HAS TO DO MORE THAN LOOK PRETTY.
Most people assume that because their web site looks flashy, modern, and pretty that the backend development is up to date and modern. Validated code and proper development can make a different with the visibility, usability, and functionality of your website for search engines.
REASON 5: INCREASED PERFORMANCE.
Updating your web site will give you the chance to increase its performance. You can address issues that will make the web site load faster, maintain page consistency and transition seamlessly. Broken links and slow loading pages often frustrate visitors and turn them away from your site.
REASON 4: BROWSER COMPLIANCE.
New browsers and browser versions come out all the time. Making sure that your site is visually appealing and functional on all browsers is very important. Along with backing up your web site, checking its compliance against the current browsers should at least be done annually.
REASON 3: CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS.
Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Joomla have arrived. CMS allows you to update and maintain your own web site without having to outsource to a designer every time you need a small site fix or edit. CMS allows smaller businesses, which have no practical reason for an in-house web person, to handle web updates that may occur often (price changes, photo edits, etc.).
REASON 2: SEARCH ENGINES LOVE FRESH CONTENT.
All of the major search engines consider the “freshness” of your site to be a major contributing factor in your ranking position. Long gone are the days where sites could go stale and still dominate top pages and being on the top pages is very important (but that are a completely different subject entirely).
REASON 1: YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE, NOT WHO YOU WERE.
Your web site is an online representation of your business. Clients browse through your web site with the confidence that your site states who your company is, not who it once was. Clients believe that the information on your web pages lets them know who you are, what services you provide and how you can be reached…currently! They don’t want to deal with the frustration of having to find out that your web site does not accurately depict your company today.
