Why your Website needs consistent Updates?

If you’ve got a business, you’ve likely also got a website. But your web presence is only good if its consistently updated with accurate, important information for your consumers or presents new, exciting products or designs. Websites that remain stagnant for years simply don’t work as well in the long run. Website Design needs time-to-time refreshment. We’ve gone through and compiled a brief list that’ll show you different ways to keep your content relevant, interesting, and engaging.

Visual Appeal

One thing most people don’t realize is that a website is more than just a place to post announcements and share information – it’s also the visual representation of your company. Websites which are poorly designed, structured, or appear out of date set a bad expectation. Most people will take one look at it and think, ‘if this is the effort put into the site, I don’t trust the business!” 

Your website needs to highlight your products, that much is certain; but your layout needs to be consistent and well presented as well. Is your content dated? What about your blog posts? Have you removed or updated older, out of date content? Monitor the growth of your website, and you’ll see over time what is engaging and what is outdated. It’s your job as the site manager to keep it modern, and if you don’t; you can’t be surprised at the lack of engagement.

Make it Mobile Friendly

Let’s face it: Computers may be on their way out. We’re spending two hours a day on our smart phones, and that’s only growing by the day. Mobile users are a demographic you cannot afford to lose. For this reason, responsive web design is something you should look into. It helps your site to be adapted to the size of the screen its viewed on: perfect for any mobile user who accesses your website. Keeping your site designed with this in mind will keep you relevant to a large segment of the web browsing population; and will help you to keep a hold on the market.

How is your Site Coded?

One thing that can influence the reaction to your website significantly is the manner and techniques with which it is coded. You should be making sure your website is browser compatible, that you’re using valid source code, and that your website meets basic web standards. You need to also consider the usability of your web design. Web standards change at a rapid rate, and if you’re using older code; it may no longer be relevant to these standards or may even lead to slow down on your site. Updating or reviewing your code 1 to 2 times a year is a great way to ensure your code is up to date.

Measuring Effectiveness

Another thing your website needs to have is analytics. These provide you critical insights regarding your website and its performance. It can also allow you to optimize your content for more engagements, and to see what content isn’t interesting to your users. One of the best tools for starters is Google Analytics, a free service which allows website creators to study their analytics with a variety of reports.

Optimize your Content

While the layout of your website is critically important to your success; that’s not the only reason people are visiting. You need to optimize your content to be useful and relevant to your demographics. Perhaps you’ll need to complete a redesign of your site, or in extreme cases even revamp the content you put out. Whatever the case may be, the earlier mentioned use of analytics can be critical to ensuring the content you have is relevant and useful. Be sure to use them when completing site updates for the best possible results.

Make Things Easy to Navigate

Another critical factor in your websites success is making sure its easy to navigate. Having a table of contents or a side bar with all your web pages displayed is a great start. Without these features, users might be at a loss when searching for information; and they might decide to go to a competitor as a result. Try to optimize your website to point the user in the right direction depending on the answer they’re looking for: no one has time to search your site top and bottom for hidden information!

Improving your Security

On top of optimizing your content and site layout, you also need to consider your websites security. Protocols for site safety and upkeep change every year; so having someone on hand to help you manage the security of your site is pivotal. The last thing your business needs is to experience a hack or data leak, potentially putting your customers at risk and giving your business a poor reputation as well.

Bounce Rates and Site Speed

One of the last things to consider is your bounce rate. This refers to the rate at which users visit your site, then immediately leave without engaging with any of your content. One of the biggest causes of a high bounce rate for your website is your site speed. If your website takes a long time to load, your customer will become impatient and search for a competitor who has a more optimized site to do their business.

There’s a variety of other factors which will influence the success of your website. Doing research before you launch a site, or keeping yourself educated on the constantly changing standards and protocols of the web are a great way to stay on top of things and keep your content engaging and useful to consumers.

You can also have a healthy conversation with our SEO Experts on how to make your website more SEO friendly which ultimately helps in bringing the website to higher page ranks. For more ideas or queries you can directly contact us.