When a merchant opens his store, he works very hard to get everything ready. He selects, purchases, and arranges furniture, fixtures, displays, decorations, and signage. He carefully selects his merchandise and ensures that it’s displayed with proper lighting. He hires and trains personnel. He plans his marketing efforts and allocates a certain amount of money for advertising. And then he opens his store.
Hopefully, it all goes well and his business is off and running. So does he stop there? Does he never clean up his store? Does he let his merchandise get dusty? Does he never run another ad campaign after the first one is successful? Of course not!
Yet, that is exactly what so many businesses do with their websites once they are up and running. They are so relieved to finally have the thing done that they leave it alone, sometimes for years. Websites, of all things, must be tended just like your store or office. If you let them go stale, by not having new and interesting content, your visitors won’t come back and your search engine rankings will go down and you will have less visitors so your rankings go down even further.
TIP OF THE WEEK: Each and every week, at your staff meeting, brainstorm just one thing you can do that week to improve your website. And do it!
(© 2011 Katherine Andes)
