Web 101 – Get Fresh With Your Customers

This is a pop quiz.

Go to your website.

Has anything changed since your last visit? Since last week? Last month? Has it been that long?

If you answered “not much has changed” or worse yet, “nothing”, then think about your business. Ask yourself what’s changed about your business since last month? Or last week? Or even, yesterday? Did you roll out a new product? Win over a big client? Add to your sales staff? Received an important award? Or has business slowed and you need to get more aggressive with your marketing?

Survival means change. New strategies, new marketing, new technology – new ideas. And, of course, communicating these ideas. Given this economic climate, what business can afford not to change?

So back to your website. Why hasn’t it changed? Or if it has, has it kept up with your business? Does it fit with your current marketing strategy? Does it communicate what’s happening with your business today? Does it connect with your target customer? And what about your staff? Websites not only communicate to the outside world but are a powerful tool that can aid in the day-to-day operations of your business. If the information on your site has grown stale, then your site is of limited use to you, your company and your customers.

One prevailing problem is the traditional web development model that has one person designing your site and then someone else doing the coding, but no one charged with maintaining it.

If you want to change anything, much less adding content, good luck. If you can even reach the person that coded your site two years ago, you’re probably going to have to wait for him to get around to making the changes – and you’re definitely going to have to pay a web developer’s rate.

So how about adding another abbreviation to the old gray matter – CMS. That is, a Content Management System which, simply put, is a tool that makes it possible for non-technical people to manage (add and edit) a website’s content.

CMS’s run the gamut from industry-specific proprietary solutions to highly flexible open-source systems that can be tailored to your business’ needs.

Features might include site searching, the ability to approve or validate content before it gets published to the site, content syndication, collaborative content development, as well as threaded commenting. The better systems have available an extensive array of modules or plug-ins that make it easy for your developer to add features as your business needs and goals evolve. Such features might include event calendars, blogs, e-commerce, polling, surveys, event registration – you name it!

The key is finding a CMS that meets your needs and lets you manage your own content while allowing your developer to easily integrate new features as your company grows.
Oh yes… once you have a CMS in place, there’s the part about actually making the updates. There’s simply no other way to get it done than by doing it (or by delegating). But it doesn’t need to take a lot of time, especially if you’re disciplined and do it regularly.

Finally, the added benefit of keeping your site content fresh is that search engines rank sites with regularly updated content higher than sites that have grown stale.

Your business website is too valuable a tool to let languish and, given the current state of available CMS options, now there’s no excuse.