It’s extremely exciting when your business website is launched, everything is so fresh and new. However, unlike a company brochure, a website is more flexible and can be changed, updated and expanded more regularly, which in the long run is much more economical. This makes it an essential promotional tool for any business.

That is why it is so important to look after your website. Think of it as a flower ~ it needs watering regularly, tidying up occasionally and simply requires a little love and care the rest of the time. It cannot just be left alone and be expected to bloom all by itself.

The inclusion of up to date content, products, information, details, prices, as well as all your latest news and offers, ensures the website is an accurate representation of the business when it goes live but this needs to be regularly maintained. In garden talk it needs to be ‘fed and watered’, for its entire life span, so that the information always remains current and it ranks higher with search engines like Google.

A brand new shiny website will include images, that have been cut and optimised to reduce loading times, a bit like ‘sowing the seeds’ and then letting them grow. However, this process needs to continue and the same method applied when updating the website. This will ensure the performance is not affected and the website doesn’t become completely overgrown.

If this isn’t implemented, then over the next few months and beyond, the site starts to become static, slow, outdated, untidy and it’s performance will deteriorate. Some factors that could cause issues through poor maintenance and not being actioned, include things such as:

~ Things breaking and not being fixed.

~ Information changes but the content doesn’t.

~ Technology keeps advancing and changing but it isn’t applied to the website.

~ Employees/business owners/in-house editors start adding images that are too big (file size) and this affects the website loading speed.

~ Marketing experts may add colours/fonts that don’t meet the branding guidelines, of the business, set by the designer.

~ Editors start adding files/documents, such as PDF’s, that they have made in Canva and the file sizes are huge.

~ Editors break things and do not know how to fix them. The designer/developer then has to try and fix things as well as retain the new content. This can rack up a large invoice.

~ People leave the business and knowledge of the website editing is not handed over, therefore no one in-house knows how to actually update the content.

If these issues are not addressed then it’s simply a slow and steady demise until the next big website redesign is required ~ an expensive fix! The cycle then starts again. It sounds ridiculous but it is so very true!

Our advice is to always give your website a few days, a couple of weeks, or even a month, to simply settle. This is the time it will take for your new website to be fully visibly indexed in the Google Search Engine and will give you a chance to have a good check over everything and get used to how it all works. Whilst the new website is settling in, there are some important things that you can do in the background:

~ Submit your site to Google Search Console/Search Engines – so they can crawl your site and check for any errors.

~ Set up any necessary redirects (if your website was a redesign), so that your users don’t get lost, you don’t start losing visitors/traffic and Google knows you have done things right.

~ Set up/install Google Analytics, so you can track your visitors (we set this up on all our websites as a standard feature and it can be easily accessed via the WordPress Dashboard).

~ Check things like your Google Business profile is up to date, broken links are fixed quickly, social media links are active and your website is promoted/advertised wherever possible.

~ Check and add image tags (alt tags), as this helps usability and also SEO.

~ Check your site loads as quickly as possible. Don’t use images that have large file sizes or add big video files (these can be embedded from a platform such as Vimeo to cut down load times).

So, in summary, your new website needs a helping hand to nurture and grow. If you expect to just sit back and wait for the phone to ring, or the website orders to come in, once the website is launched, you might be extremely disappointed.

A website is an on-going project. Search engines favour regularly updated websites that have fresh content, links and those that are secured with a valid SSL (Secure Server Certificate).

The more people that visit your website, the more opportunities to convert them into clients/customers. If no-one is visiting your website, even having the best website in the world won’t help. It’s a bit like hosting a party but forgetting to invite any guests. Word of mouth may get passed around but the turn out may be extremely small and disappointing.

Marketing your business and website is imperative. Whether it is digital marketing, PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, Google Ads, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) by an experienced third party, regular Social Media campaigns and posts or some simple targeted email marketing. All these options will drive visitors/traffic to your website. It’s a bit like giving someone a map/sat nav to help them find you quickly, and directly, rather than having to search around aimlessly for hours and stopping for directions.

Most websites will require maintenance, on some kind of level, whether it be simple general work in the background that only takes one hour per month or more apparent updates on the front end that take several hours. General maintenance includes the basics like software updates, to reduce security risks, any fixes that need to be implemented, as well as regular back ups. Advanced maintenance can include the addition of new products, information, images, reviews or even creating new sections/pages. If you are not confident about carrying out any of this maintenance yourself, or you simply just don’t have the time to dedicate to it, we can help. We offer a wide range of retainer packages tailored to your specific business requirements.

All this can be extremely daunting, as well as time consuming, for someone that does not have any prior experience, therefore a retainer package, at whatever level you require, will free up your valuable time, leaving you free to dedicate absolutely 100% of your energy to the most important thing which is actually running your own business.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS OUR WEBSITE MANAGEMENT RETAINER PACKAGES, WHEREVER YOU ARE BASED, PLEASE DO GET IN TOUCH FOR A FRIENDLY CHAT >>