Consider a Website Facelift to Smooth out its Wrinkles
We can all easily agree that your business website has a big responsibility. Today many people turn to the internet to engage with others, compare prices, and purchase products and services. If your business does not have a website, you are missing out on a lot of exposure and these days it is almost impossible to find a business without an online presence. Due to the high number of businesses on the internet, your website must be competitive to be efficient and effective.
When someone is browsing on the internet, they give a website 30 seconds, maximum, of viewing time. Having a professional and creative site is important in capturing the interest of your audience. Take some time and think about when your website was last updated. If it’s been over a few months, now is the time for some web maintenance.
Back in the day if you didn’t know how to design a website, you had to hire a professional to manage the content on the site. Nowadays with user-friendly content management systems, such as WordPress, you have the ability to update your content on your own. Your business is constantly changing and keeping your website aligned with these changes is important.
Some other areas of your website you want to keep updated include…
Check your links
Another task that must be performed on a regular basis is checking for “link rot”. This is the tendency for broken links to appear all over a site. It is most common with external links (sites move, are abandoned or are modified all of the time) but can occur occasionally with internal links.
Change Your Site
People expect sites on the web to be constantly changing. If your site is static and unchanging there is no reason for someone to come back again – after all, they’ve already seen it so why return? One major way to get them to come back is to change the content constantly and to be sure that your visitors know it is changing.
Monitor Your Site
Subscribe to a service which checks your site on a regular basis. This is important, as if your site is constantly “bouncing” you will find it being removed from search engines and your visitor levels will drop.
Review Your Statistics
A task you should be performing on a regular basis is to review your statistics. At a minimum, you should check your page counts to be sure that your site is being viewed. At best, you need to know where people are coming from, which browsers they are using and what they visited while they were at your site. It lets you know how effectively your website is performing.
Stay Up-to-Date
All webmasters need to stay up-to-date on new technologies which they can use to improve their web site. In addition, getting certified, joining organizations, continuing their education and attending conventions is essential to staying current and active.
Review Your Site
Occasionally review your site. When you look over a page, check your grammar, spelling and accuracy. Remember that as time progresses your articles may become stale, so be sure and recheck your conclusions and facts. What may have been true when you wrote the article last year is not necessarily true or important anymore.
Check Your Site’s Security
Learn as much as you can about web site security, and ensure that, to the best of your abilities and knowledge, that your site is secure. This ensures that your customers and visitors information remains confidential and safe. It also protects you and your web host from harm.
Protect Your Visitor’s Privacy
Post a privacy policy and adhere to it without exception. Review your practices occasionally against your policy to ensure you are following it to the letter.
It is important that your business keeps up within its industry and it is properly translated on its website.
Source: MSM DesignZ, Inc. is a Westchester based NY web design firm specializing in SEO, social media, web and graphic design and much more.