We come across outdated sites all the time. And while dated design can be forgiven and overlooked, dated content is often a deal breaker. When a customer is looking for a product or service and your website comes up in search, part of the work is done – you were found! After that it’s up to your website to convince that your business is a good fit for the customer.
How to Update Your Website!
Your website should work for you, not against you.
One of the things visitors are looking for in a website is indication that you are still in business. Some of these signs include recent news, current copyright notice, new blog posts, fresh reviews, etc. When your website looks like it has been abandoned for years, the natural conclusion is that you ran out of business (and sometimes that’s true). Of course, the truth is only a phone call away, but that’s an extra effort many people are not willing to make.
If you noticed high bounce rate or someone actually asked you if you are still in business, don’t just brush it off as a misunderstanding. Your outdated website could be the culprit.
And let’s not forget that your site’s rankings may also suffer from the lack of website maintenance. As Matt Cutts recently pointed out in one of his videos, Google is all about user experience. So, if you haven’t done anything in the past few years to improve user experience on your site, it may get outranked by newer, more agile websites. And content is a big part of keeping visitors engaged with your website and creating a positive browsing experience.
If your business is alive and well, make sure your website shows it.
We’ve put together this infographic to help you identify the content on your website that could use refreshing. We took a basic business website as an example, but every site is different, and yours might have other content and widgets that we didn’t cover.
Besides giving an impression of a closed business, an outdated website also communicates that you, as a business owner, don’t care about your image. This is not the vibe you want to be sending. Add the frustration from a broken contact form and your relationship with your potential customer is over before it even started.
This is why updating your site is important. Not sure how to update your website’s content? Contact us and we’ll be happy to do it for you.
