10 ways to know your website is out of date
1. Does updating your website’s content require the involvement of your technical staff or a third-party vendor?
A good content management system such as WordPress provides a simple, user-friendly interface that allows any trained staff member to submit content for your website without advanced knowledge of web programming or the need to manipulate complex files.
2. Do you manually collect customer information and then re-enter into a separate database?
Using your content management system, you can add third-party contact, registration, and lead generation forms to collect visitor information and conversion data to help meet your marketing goals. You should set it up so that some member of your staff automatically so that they can contact the visitor immediately.
3. Is the logo on your site consistent with the rest of your marketing collateral and branded materials?
Consistency is essential to projecting an image of professionalism and competency. Your website should always reflect your current branding.
4. Does your site house “dynamic” content: i.e. – does the information on it change on a regular basis?
Your website is a virtual storefront. As such, it should be designed to give clients/prospects a reason to visit frequently. You can use newsletters, articles, and blog posts to keep your site fresh with new content. Every well optimised website should contain a sitemap that communicates with the search engines to make sure they crawl and index all of your pages and if it isn’t active, then you will not be rewarded in the organic search results! Creating a content schedule is one way of ensuring that your site is up-to-date with fresh and relevant content.
5. Are you spending a lot of money for a CMS that you don’t know how to use?
BoostSuite is both easy to use and our “pay per visitor” pricing model is fair. You do not pay us unless you get visitors. Think pay per click, but at 1/100th of your total Adwords monthly spend. There is no other content marketing platform around that provides your company with so many leads at such a low cost.
6. Was your whole website built in Flash?
This approach to website design is a thing of the past. Flash sites are slow to load, less likely to be picked up by search engines due to their image-heavy structure, and won’t load at all on most smart phones and even on the iPad.
7. Does the majority of the text on your site appear as images instead of HTML?
Image-based text is very time- and technology-intensive to update, meaning anytime you want to update your site you must devote time and financial resources to it. Even worse, images (as opposed to HTML) are a barrier to the all-important Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
8. Do clients/prospects often call to ask questions that could be answered by reading your website?
Depending upon your answer, this could be a sign that your site is difficult to navigate and that your customers are unable to find the information that they need. Using your content management system, or by contacting your website manager, you can manage your navigation structure, allowing your visitors to find what they’re looking for quickly. You can also edit all of the page content to include important information above-the-fold whenever you want.
9. Is it important for your users to be able to access information on their smart phones or iPad, which is not possible with your current site?
More and more consumers rely on their phones to access the web. If your site is based in Flash or for other technological reasons, can’t resolve on customers’ phones or other gadgets, your website may be frustrating your customers. However, some business models don’t require smart phone accessibility.
10. Does your site look like it was built in 1996?
Try to be honest with yourself. Better yet, ask a teenager. If you answered “yes” to three or more of these questions, it may be time to consider re-designing your website to better meet the needs of your customers.
if you answered yes to any of these question blue orange Design agency are here to help on the right path to success, Contact us today.
