The current economy has caused companies to reduce their advertising and marketing budgets, which is causing a decline in the quality of the advertising results. Many companies have had to decrease or completley cut out certain mediums of advertising. One medium that companies can’t afford to cut back on is the website. A company’s website is a 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year marketing piece. It’s a salesperson that you don’t have to pay for. If optimized properly, a website is a money making machine.

In order to stay optimized for search engines, your website must be updated fairly frequently. Many companies do this by adding a blog to their site, or by creating articles at least once a week. Another option is to put up an online newsletter. However, getting visitors to your site isn’t enough if the website is poorly designed, or hard to navigate. These visitors will leave your website very quickly if they aren’t engaged with what they see. A poorly designed website can also leave a bad impression to your potential new customers and they will not do business with you.

So how do you decide whether or not your website is up to par? Look at the following questions and if the answer to any of them is “yes”, then it’s time to update your website.

If your website was current two or three years ago, but hasn’t been updated since then, it’s probably technically out of date. For example, if your customers can order products or services online, your storefront probably doesn’t work as well as more modern interfaces, which is frustrating for both web-savvy and newbie users. The width of your website probably needs to be updated to fit current monitor sizes. The structure and coding of your site should also be updated to make it more attractive to search engines.

Many small businesses start out with a website created by a friend of a friend or by using a template, then neglect to have their sites professionally revised as the business grows. While this is understandable, the website that worked for a start-up won’t inspire confidence in an established business. Setting aside one hour to look at your competitors’ websites is the best way to understand what you’re up against in terms of what your customers see. It will be an invaluable eye-opener and also provide inspiration as to what you need to do for your site. Be sure to take notes and pass them on to your web developer!

This is the most important question, but too often, websites that aren’t generating a sufficient number of conversions are neglected. If you aren’t getting conversions (sales) from your website and you know that it’s attracting visitors, contact us to find out how you can engage your visitors and make them want to learn more about your products or services.