7 Reasons Why You Should Keep Your Website Up To Date
Posted on 17th June 2020
You spend time and money creating a brand new website; one that showcases your business and your products/services in the best possible light. It's visually appealing, easy to navigate and positions your company as an expert in your field. It creates a great first impression to visitors, and keeps them engaged so they stay on the site to find out more about how your services can help them. You generate more enquiries through your website than you have ever done before.
Perfect. Now you can leave it untouched for years, right? Wrong!
Your business is bound to change and evolve over time, and your website should be regularly updated to reflect that.
Your website should also be kept up to date with changes in website technology to make sure it doesn't lag behind your competitors that are updating their sites.
So if yours is one of the thousands of websites that rarely, if ever, gets updated take a look at the 7 reasons you should start updating it.
1. Content - products and services
If you owned a restaurant, you would no doubt keep your menu updated with your latest dishes, so your customers knew what was on offer. After all, what would be the point of having a delicious new dish available if no-one ordered it because they didn't know it existed?
Your website should be no different. If you have a new product or service, don't keep it a secret! Tell the world about it by adding it to your website.
As well as increasing sales and enquiries for the new product, adding it to your site shows your website visitors that you regularly add to, and improve, your product offering.
2. Content - freshen it up
As well as adding new products or services to your website, it's worth considering featuring a different product on your home page, and changing it every month or so.
Just as shop windows are changed to keep them fresh and to reflect market and seasonal trends, keeping website content fresh will help you get visitors returning to your site.
3. Content - staff details and contact information
Making sure all the contact and staff information is correct and up to date on your site is crucial. Having wrong and out of date information will confuse your customers, and can damage your credibility.
4. Evolving technology
Website technology is constantly changing and evolving. Your website needs to be kept up to date with these advancements, to make sure it doesn't lag behind the updated sites of your competitors.
A great example of this is responsive web design. A fully responsive website is one that automatically adjusts to the size of screen it is being viewed on. So it looks as good, and is as easy to use, on a smartphone or tablet as it does on a laptop or desktop.
Because well over 50% of website browsing now takes place on mobile devices, having a non-responsive website will quickly lose you website visitors, as they will leave your site in search of a competitor's site that is easier to use and read.
5. Security
Not keeping the security on your website up to date can leave it vulnerable to getting hacked and risking consequences which include:
Customers' personal data being stolen.
Hackers using your site as a spam server which can in turn result in your domain getting blacklisted.
Pointing your domain away from your website, and often to an unsavoury website instead.
To protect your website from getting hacked, you need to make sure security updates are carried out, and that the site is hosted with a reputable company that takes security seriously.
6. Legal requirements
Your website must comply with legal requirements, and kept up to date with any changes in those requirements.
For example, your website must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was introduced in 2018. If your website collects user data, via a contact enquiry form for example, you should include a privacy policy that informs website users how you will retain and process their personal information.
Your website must also disclose the use of cookies and allows users to turn on/off cookies that are not essential.
7. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Another key reason for keeping your website updated is for search engine optimisation (SEO).
Regular updates and changes are good for SEO, as it shows the search engines that your website is active, rather than one that is static and never updated.
All of the other steps above will also have an effect on SEO - out of date contact information that is inconsistent across the internet can negatively affect SEO, as can a technically out of date website. A hacked website obviously brings its own problems, and can result in major problems with SEO.
So by keeping your website up to date in all the ways mentioned above, you will also be helping your website get noticed when people search online for the products and services you offer.
If your website is hard to update, or you feel your business would benefit from a new website and you don't know where to start, why not get in touch with the team at it’seeze Web Design Horsham today.
We offer affordable web design services that are ideal for local businesses, and we provide ongoing website support for all our clients too. If you're looking for a reliable Sussex web design company, we'd love to hear from you.
Tagged as: SEO, Website tips
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