Maintain It and They Will Return
By Diego Norte
Have you ever visited a website and reviewed the entire home page only to see at the bottom “Last Revised May, 1997″. Isn’t it frustrating to think that you are looking at something innovative and useful and it’s really ancient history?
Being current directly affects the usability of a site. In this day and age of split second decisions, easy access to information, and the many, many choices available to people out there, you have to be sure you have a usable, relevant site.
Think of the money you’ve invested on designing, creating and publishing your site. Doesn’t it only make sense that you would also maintain it?
What exactly does maintain mean? Maintain means keeping something in existence and in the appropriate condition or operation. So, applying this to your website/business only makes sense, right?
Depending on your business type some of this maintenance can be as simple as the following.
- Change the color or theme to reflect the time of year that it is - snowflakes in the winter, baseballs in the summer, etc.
- Highlight new things in your site with catchy words or phrases.
- If you keep news items on your site, make sure that the news is current and relevant.
- If you are a shopping site, make sure to rotate featured items to bring a freshness to your site.
Perhaps you want or need your changes to be more complex to maintain your site.
- Complete changes in content to help returning customers in different stages of a process.
- Add new items to respond to the traffic and demand on the site.
Always audit your site or ask someone else to help you do that. What’s worse than a broken image that may have contained your phone number or a link to send feedback that gives the customer an error. Maybe you link to other sites to help your customers. These sites you use are not responsible for ensuring whether you have the right link. Or what if a link changes, you need to audit your site with regularity to make sure you don’t have any broken links.
Clearly, it would never be your intent to put out a broken page but these things happen. Put it on your schedule. A few minutes a week or every few days to click test your site. Send test emails, push all the buttons, try all the links, and see if you can break your site. This will help you to ensure your customer will not visit you only to leave frustrated only to never return again.
I once said “Just because you have a website does not mean that you will get all the business you were hoping for.” Well, in that same vain, once you get the business, why not make sure your website helps you keep that business.
About the Author
Visit Diego Norte’s blog to read more articles about running a successful Internet business.
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