A friend of mine who was an estate agent received a call from a prospective buyer about an upmarket property on their website. He was very excited but when the caller referred to the property he realised that the house was sold 5 years ago. Both estate agent and prospective client were disappointed and consequently the property was removed from the site, 5 years too late.
Will the prospective buyer trust the web site and the agency again? That’s very unlikely.
The importance of website maintenance
As we live in the digital age more and more customers are turning to the internet to research and search for new products and services.
Landing on a website that is not maintained on a regular basis is like walking into an old retail store. Shopkeepers are unavailable and perished goods are on the shelves.
Websites are no different from shop displays and business owners must take ownership and ensure that their websites are kept up to date as soon as new relevant information is available, in other words “Hot off the press”.
What to update on a website?
Often business owners don’t realise the importance of updated information on their websites. They argue that their products or services are the same since granddad incorporated the business 50 years ago.
Typically the following are examples of what must be kept updated:
- New products or services
- New industry information and related standards
- New affiliations
- New employees
- Updated legal information, e.g. terms and conditions, return policy etc.
- Change of offices and street address
- New contact numbers and email addresses
- New photos of completed products or installations
- Updated product information including new pricing
- New target markets, regional, local or international
Updated websites with good content not only display valuable information to users but also add to your search engine optimisation efforts. Search engines will identify up to date, relevant content.
To conclude.
Maintaining a website is not only the responsibility of “Big Brands”. Small and medium size businesses must ensure that their websites have the latest relevant information available, not only for existing customers / clients but also for potential new clients.
Over to you, if you can think of any other reason why website maintenance is important, feel free to drop us a post below or contact us if you need more information about maintaining your website.
Author, Fritz Els 22 January 2014