You finally made your way to the online world by having a website and that’s great. But, just don’t stop there. Do you know that your website needs to be updated and optimized regularly?
Let’s explore why is it so important to do so.
Show you care and are passionate about your business
I am baffled to see that some websites have not updated their content for over a year.
It is to wonder if the company is still in operation. Or, the next question that might come to your mind would be: “Do they care about their own business? How passionate are they about what they do? “
If you don’t show any interest in your own business by not updating your website, why customers should be bothered about your services?
By updating your website, you demonstrate to your customers that you do care and are passionate about what you do. This generally make clients want to know more about what you have to offer and eventually buy from you.
By the way, the change doesn’t have to be paramount. For instance, changing pictures or adding some more could bring some freshness into the look of the website.
Breaking down a big chunk of text into small paragraph and adding subtitle make already another difference in the design. Content will always look more engaging and easier to read.
Another simple example and yet that business owners (specially brick-and-mortar store) fail to achieve is to update their price list. The other day, I searched online for a beauty salon in Ilford and found one with more reasonable price than the one I used to go. So, I called them to book an appointment and after giving me a time slot, the manager mentioned that the price on the website was not accurate. Really? They don’t realise how upsetting it is. Sorry but this come across like they try to defeat me. According to her, the prices have changed since January this year and I called in May.
What is the point to have a website if you are not able to give accurate information about your services?
Do they ever think about the user experience?
Better User-Experience
In this ever-evolving world where information is everywhere, customers become more and more demanding. They don’t even have the patience to wait for a page to load more than 2 seconds, so imagine not displaying accurate information such as the price. At this stage, customers are gone. That doesn’t make it easy for business owners, does it?
Making a few changing on your website shouldn’t take too long to achieve. If you can make the change yourself, it is great otherwise ask help from a professional web designer.
If you optimize your website to provide a better user experience, your customers will enjoy the visit. And chances are they will certainly return.
Again, changes don’t have to be massive to be effective. Let’s take the example of Sainsbury online grocery. They have made some changes to their interface months back. They put orange button for each item. This small change jump into my eyes as soon as I logged in. Then, they made another change on the trolley icon, the total of products bought can be seen.
The difference was obvious. And, I could say that the shopping experience is pleasant.
User experience is so vital nowadays that you cannot ignore it. Customers are more educated and expect more from your website.
Getting More Traffic
Google is dominating the search market, either we like it or not. They often make changes in their algorithm that affect a website ranking. Therefore, Business owners must be aware of what the search engine is looking after.
Currently, it seems that Google is interested in content relevancy. So, if you have a blog, this is the perfect platform to write good quality and relevant content to your niche.
Optimising your website regularly for SEO is crucial to attract more traffic to your website.
How Often Should a website be updated and optimised?
In the title of this article, I have already given a clue regarding the frequency.
Obviously changing the main content regularly wouldn’t make sense. However, it is advised to update the About page content every 6 months. So basically, twice a year you can tweak a bit the text or add more information if you wish.
Regarding blog post, ideally it should be written every week. The number is up to you. If you can commit to write every day or post a few times a week, you should do it.
And, you will start getting more traffic as long as you continue delivering relevant and quality content.
Hopefully, you have understood now that updating and optimizing your website regularly is crucial if you want to stay at the top of the search. And finally, retaining or attracting more customers.
