Your site doesn’t need a tiara, but it does need to be dressed.

You wouldn’t go to a client meeting in cutoffs and flip-flops. Or attend a business luncheon wearing slippers and a concert t-shirt. You wouldn’t attend a gala in jeans and a tank top. If you wouldn’t wear clothes and hair from 1999, why would you let your website? Website success depends on diligent upkeep.

Your site may be outdated if…

• You were still using a rotary phone when you launched it.
• Your backup files are on floppy disk.
• The kid who built it now has children of his own.
• The computer you used had a black and amber screen.
• You scanned polaroid photos to include on it.
• You were listening to a walkman as you worked on it.
• You accessed the internet through a dial-up modem, and were thrilled every time you heard the digital handshake connecting you.
• You printed out a hard copy on your pin-fed, dot matrix printer.

Seriously, though, many business owners put their best foot forward personally – but let their website remain a remnant of design-gone-by.

So what makes a website out-of-date? Here are 6 things to check today.

1. Your site isn’t responsive. Check your site on a smart phone. If it isn’t easy to use, you have to pinch the screen to expand the page to read it, or if the links aren’t clickable, then your site isn’t mobile responsive. A huge number of your visitors will be visiting your site on a mobile device. Make sure their user experience is easy, and shows that you are up-to-date.

    

2. Your information isn’t current. Is your phone number correct? Street address? Email address? Logo? If not, you are losing clients who can’t connect with you or find you. Consistent branding (i.e. updated logo) is also a marketing nightmare. Update all of your information. 

    

3. Most of your text is embedded in images. If so, you’re missing out on web features that read text – not only SEO (search engine optimization) but accessibility for the visually impaired. Use actual text on your site – in headers, buttons, menus, and paragraphs.

    

4. Video or audio auto-plays as soon as someone lands on your site. This can make for a bad user experience. Imagine your visitor accessing your site from a library, cubicle, or late at night while their significant other is sound asleep. Sound erupting from their laptop can be embarrassing and/or startling to the user and those around them.

    

5. Your copyright date is out-of-date. This is a sure sign of a neglected website. If you don’t update the copyright, visitors will assume that all of the content is out-of-date.

    

6. You still have a hit counter on your site, proudly displaying the number of visitors. Once helpful, these now show how ancient your site is. There are so many more ways to gauge analytics for your site, without displaying them to the public.

If any of these apply to your site, it’s time for an update and/or upgrade. Contact your web designer/developer to get changes made to bring you up-to-date. Or if you need to, find a new designer to either update your site, or redesign it to meet current visitor needs. 

A fresh site can make all the difference.

(Need some help, let us know. Contact us here.)