Time to Update

Does your website make you feel sad? One of the ways you can tell it’s time to update your website, is that you avoid looking at it.  Don’t you want to feel proud when prospective clients (or current clients) go to check out your website? In today’s world this is one of, if not the most, important ways to market your product or service. It needs to look as exuberant and proud as you feel about your business.

Maybe you loved your website when it was first created… 4 or 5 years ago.  Yikes!  That’s practically antique in Internet years.  Here are some clues that you may need to redo that site:

• If you have any spinning icons or blinking text
• If your page looks like a tiny box on today’s much larger and higher resolution monitors
• If your entire site or any important parts of it were built in Flash
• If you still have an “Under Construction” icon anywhere on your site
• If there is a hit counter on your home page
• If it has any clip art

Complete Redesign or Just Freshen Up?

If you have had the same web design for 4 or 5 years (or more) you really should get a newly designed and developed website.  Much has changed in technology and trends in that amount of time. However, if it’s just a couple years old, you may just need to freshen it up.  Perhaps keeping the basic layout but changing the colors, photos, or content.  Consider adding a blog.

Another way to keep your site fresh is to update your content; add new articles and pages.  Having a blog is a great way to keep your site fresh.  Of course you have to commit to updating it on a regular basis, but this doesn’t have to be such a chore.  Updating it even once a month with just a few sentences about your business or even a photo or a helpful tip will still let viewers know there is life behind that website.  If a viewer comes to a website for a second or third time and sees nothing has changed, they probably won’t be back.  And you don’t want that.

Add a sliding or fading photo show on the home page to give it life.  This could be stock images with headlines added, or it could be photos of your latest products or people at work in your store or office.  Just make sure they are good quality photos!

Regardless of whether you completely remake your site or just change some elements, it is very important that you keep you site alive and changing.  The search engines will notice this and so will your viewers!