Why should I update my website?
Why should you update your website? The short answer is, because your website is the face of your business to the world. During a regular website refresh is a perfect time to find ways to save admin time and improve customer service. For Christmas, I received a jigsaw puzzle as a present. I don’t particularly like jigsaw puzzles, but i hated this one. It had 1,000 p pieces, and just for fun? There was no picture. I had no idea what I was putting together. Needless to say, progress was slow and frustrating must have said a dozen times “We would be done by now if I only had a picture”. After saying that so many times, I thought “This is just like a business. If I don’t know where I’m going. If I don’t have a picture in my head that helps guide my actions, I am waiting for valuable time, effort, money and human resources. All of the time I wasted trying to figure out the big picture, I could have been investing into my company.
To succeed in business, you absolutely have to have a picture. Know where you’re going. The goal is to get customers and make money, but how do you get there? What picture guides your actions?
I strongly encourage you to keep your website up to date. Regularly update information and content on your videos and blogs. I like watching movies, but I am just not that interested in watching a trailer from the 1960’s movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. I don’t want to read a review of “Planet of the Apes” from the 1970’s. What pulls me into the website, and intrigues me about your company, is current, relevant information that I can use right away to help my business grow.
What should I update on my website?
One reason you should regularly update your website is to keep the look and feel of your website contemporary and modern. There are constant improvements in the field of website development, and to be relevant, you just can’t afford to look out of date, or out of place. Have you ever seen old tv commercials, like from the 1970’s? The Mickey Life cereal commercial for example? It looks outdated and the picture quality is bad. It does not want to make me go out and buy Life cereal anytime soon. Keep up with the times.
Another reason you may want to update your website is to integrate all of your systems into one place. Can you do billing and order fulfillment from your website? Is your CRM integrated into the website so you can access customer information with a single login? If not, you may be using multiple systems that could cause errors and eat up precious employee time.
The last reason I’ll suggest is page speed. If your website doesn’t load fast enough, potential customers will just bounce right out of there and not even go to your website. You can check your website page loading speed with free tools such as Google Page Speed. What you find out may surprise you. I like this tool because it gives you concrete suggestions on how to improve your website speed.
Conclusion
Remember, just like the jigsaw puzzle that is still giving me headaches, you must have a big picture in mind of where you want your company to go in the future. Don’t stop there though. Come up with some specific, actionable items that you can implement to chive your vision. One of the most tangible actions you can take, is to regularly update your website. I suggest ongoing updating of content, at least yearly analysis and upgrading for page speed and other items that could affect your SEO, and every 22-5 years, a major overhaul of your website to incorporate the latest design elements and To get the easiest UX and UI possible.
