Is your website starting to look “so last century?”
When was the last time you posted new content on your website?
Does it have a date last updated on the bottom that says you have ignored it since 2007? Or longer?
Even if you aren’t Amazon.com or Zappos.com, your customers and potential customers are probably finding you more often by Googling you than looking you up in a phone book, if they still have phone books. Try looking your business up on Google, Bing and/or Yahoo. Does it appear in the first page of results?
I wouldn’t get excited if you don’t appear on the first page, especially if you typed just your business name and it is relatively common. But if you type your business name, the city and the state and don’t show up, there may be search engine optimization (SEO) problems on your site. And another reason it may be time for a new website.
SEO is a huge subject, there are many books written about it. And there are several multi-day conferences on SEO every year. Plus it is a moving target, the algorithms used by the search engines in ranking your site are always changing.
But one measure every search engine uses in their ranking is how recently your content has changed. Newer content is assumed to be more current and therefore more relevant.
Also, like women’s fashion, website design is constantly changing. What was a reasonable website design 5 years ago now looks dated compared to what other companies are doing. Like any advertising or brochures you might have, that first impression you give when a visitor comes to your website is critical. Especially since they might just click their back button and return to the search results page if you don’t capture their attention in just a few seconds.
Over the next couple of articles I’ll cover more about building your new improved website.
But in the mean time, be thinking about what you want a customer, or potential customer, to see in the first 10 to 20 seconds when they visit your website. Usually if you haven't hooked them by then, you can figure they have hit the back button and are looking down their search results list for the next website.
Then if you can keep them on your website, think of all the questions they might want answered about your company, your products or services, and how to buy and use them. One thought, since people buy from people, make sure that you profile anyone your customer might deal with. Our third generation website, done back in 1998, had a page for each employee to share with their friends and family. Long before Facebook and social networking, it put a human side to our company that is still applicable now.
