Website Management – What’s Next

I thought this month I’d point out some basics when it comes to website management. We all know we need to have a website, hardly any business big or small can run without one these days, however often a website is a significant additional expense and as such you need to make sure you are getting your monies worth.

1. Eyeballs – there is no point in having a website if no-one looks at it – it makes no difference how simple or sophisticated the website is – without people looking at it you may as well have not bothered.My regular advice is that you should be budgeting at least the cost of the website again for marketing. So if you spent £2000 on the website you should be considering spending £2000 a year advertising it.
2. Search Engines – the obvious follow up is that you need to try and improve your search rankings. For this there remains, without question, one thing you must do – ‘Content is King’. This is more so now than ever before. If you have original and noteworthy content you’ll be noticed by the likes of Google.Three things matter for search engines – fresh content on your website, quality links to your website from quality sources, and quantity of traffic – a more popular website will do better. So in every sense it is in your interest to update your website as often as you can.
3. Spreading the word – unfortunately things are not so cut and dry as a few years ago. The fact is 80% of people’s online time is spent on just 20 websites – that means roughly 20 % of peoples on line time is spent on over 100million other websites.

You need to go where people can find you – if you hate Facebook or loath the idea of Twitter, it’s unfortunate, but this is where your customer are and therefore you need to be here.

Now for some interesting facts – just for fun:

1. I run 18 Blogs – 9 of which were updated during the last month, this is a major improvement on a year ago
2. A client designed a version of their website for Mobile, less than 0.1% of his traffic came through the mobile website – Mobile has some way to go before being successful
3. 2 Clients know they have lost business because their LinkedIn account failed to show their professionalism. 1 Client failed a job interview due to their Facebook profile
4. 3 Clients now advertise full time on Facebook and make a profit from it
5. 12 clients follow me on Twitter

All in all these recommendations are showing that we are getting something right, all the signs are encouraging, but I am always open to new ideas and ways to further improve your websites. Please do contact us if you think you should be doing more, or want to find out how you can join the various band wagons out there.