No! It’s an awful excuse and quite frankly it’s one that I hear all too often. In business you are always going to be busy. We all have hectic schedules and deadlines to meet, and we’re always looking to make sure that we increase turnover, or at least keep the money coming in. So it’s unsurprising then, that a lot of web sites get neglected and move further and further down the pecking order of priorities. This is especially so if the site has been going for a while.

Old news is bad news

Web sites often have date stamps on content, whether the content is a classified ad, a forum post, a news item or even a price list. Now this can be a good thing, as it does let your customer know that your products, prices or ideas may have changed since the content was published. However, when we do see an out of date price list or advert it usually turns us straight off and we’re immediately looking for the back button so we can head back to Google to start our search again.

Why is this? Well we tend to get a strong impression that the site and therefore the business behind the web site is not cared for and ran as well as it could be.

So quite obviously to prevent all of these negative thoughts brewing in your prospective clients’ heads, what you need to do is to make sure your web site is up to date as rigorously as you would any other marketing media you may use.

But honestly, I am too busy!

So ok, you know your site is out of date, but you really can’t see where you’re going to get the time to bring it back to life. Well, if you sit down and think about it, you probably spend more time on marketing than you realise. Take that two day conference you’re going to, not to mention the preparation time. Or the hour a day that you spend browsing the web looking at competitors, or the endless hours spent on the phone to potential clients. All of these activities are about one thing. Getting more sales leads.

A lot of businesses only need a couple of extra leads and something like a two day conference will have been worth while. So do you think a couple of hours a month spent keeping your web site up to date would be worth doing for a few more sales leads? I think so.

Some helpful suggestions

I realise that writing copy for your web site might be quite daunting to someone who doesn’t do it very often. Try the following tips to make your life easier when it comes to updating your site.

• Make a list of all of the pages that need updating.
• For each page make bullet points for the changes you want to make, or the messages you want to get across.
• Extend each bullet point into a readable paragraph.
• News items can be about anything – industry-wide news, a new member of staff, a new product, a recently finished project or even an increase in sales.
• If you’re totally unsure, get someone else to read it before publishing.
• You could get a professional copywriter to write your content for you. A short telephone interview is all that is needed.
• Make time in your diary to do this on a regular basis.
• If you have a content management system, and have forgotten how to use it, then contact your web designer for another training session. Afterwards, make sure you use it regularly so that it becomes second nature.
• If your web designer updates your site for you, talk to them about a monthly system whereby they will carryout all of your content updates for you.

On an ending note, here at Castus we have actually been working on updating our web site, mainly focussing on the services section. We hope you like the new work. All comments are welcomed, good or bad.

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