When Should You Update Your Website?

08 Sep When Should You Update Your Website?

By Paul Barrs

That’s a good question, and it’s one that every single website owner should know and be aware of. The problem is however, that for most businesses, their website isn’t their primary source of income, which is why it gets left out in the cold.

Here’s some another questions – how often should you update your Yellow Pages advertising? How often should you update your newspaper classified ads? What about the content of your monthly newsletter or your fortnightly specials list?

The answer to these questions seem plainly obvious, don’t they? Then why is it that the answer to your website isn’t quite so simple.

Here’s my suggestion… because you don’t think that anybody is reading it on a regular basis.

Problem is (and there’s always another problem), is that if you aren’t updating your website on a regular basis, then most likely no on *is* reading it on a regular basis.

Let me explain…

Recently I was looking to order some new stationary; across the space of a week I must have looked at over 2 dozen websites on the topic at hand. Of those two dozen I actually noticed one that *had* changed within the space of time that I looked at it and then went back to it. You see, I, like most ‘web browsers’ don’t buy off the first business that I come across. I like to make a few notes and then narrow down my search till I find what I’m looking for, coming back to my bookmarked sites 2, even 3 times as I make my comparisons.

So what was it that had changed in the time that was doing my research. It was their “specials” brightly lit on the right hand side. That caught my eye.

On the other side of the coin, another site that caught my eye did so for the exact opposite reason: this website obviously hadn’t been updated for many, many years. In fact it looked as though it were at least 7- 8 years old, which was easily established by it’s tied and well outdated design style (not to mention that very little of the information was relevant).

So, yes, even in a business like printing, where prices, products and service do not change on a regular basis, it’s still important to make regular changes to your website in order to interact with your customers.

Just because you may not look at your website every day doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t!

Paul Barrs

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