Update your website

Posted by Edwin Lynch on June 23, 2009 in Business Practices, Technical Tips

There’s nothing worse than a site which was last updated in 2002.

It irks me to say this, but I’ve had about 500 clients over the years and the ones who are making money are also the ones who regularly update their website. I don’t make any money when someone updates a site because they usually do this via a content management system. It’s just mostly … I dunno … a shame. By providing real, up to date and useful content, you are also providing a service and building confidence in potential customers (who are following your site).

I read a book once – not a best seller and it had nothing particularly to do with the web. It was called, “Customer Loyalty – How to Earn It How to Keep It” by Jill Griffin. Great book. In it she points out that it takes 7 times the effort to get new customers as it does to service an old one. She used cinema advertising as a result. One poster for a movie doesn’t sell the movie, but; a poster, an article, an interview and a free bag of popcorn did. Well, seven things. I think you get the picture.

Imagine your website. One page won’t get you a customer. But 7 articles written over time, a search engine result via google adwords and a banner ad about your product or service might lead to sale. Not much has changed. Think traditional advertising – and then, laterally – think of the web equivalent. Because teh nature of the internet is chaning all the time, you might actuallly get ahead of technology if you experiment with some of your marketing ideas.

Case Study

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One of my favourite clients (I won’t mention any names) has a BLOG-style (WordPress) site. It took a bit to convince her to use a BLOG interface, but this particular person was pretty keen to have a News section and update it regularly. Like with all my clients, I told her to update the site as often as possible. Every day is fantastic, every week is good and every month is okay. She started with regular updates and finally settled on updating every month. Out of all my clients, she is the only one who updates her site that regularly and, sure enough, she also happens to be the one who is making money and creating leads directly from the website.

In Conclusion

Update your site!

That’s all I have to say. :)