5 Important Housekeeping Rules For Website Upkeep | Varn

Insights

15 April 2016

5 Important Housekeeping Rules For Website Upkeep

1. Schedule Times For New Content

Schedule regular updates of your social media channels and blog. Keep Google aware that you are updating content and keep your followers interested in returning to your brand. If you update the same day every week – followers will begin to expect and look forward to your next blog or social media post. Some channels need more posting than others, for instance Twitter needs higher frequency of posting than Facebook to keep momentum up.  Make sure you have the right social media channels for your business. Sometimes you can even drive the business on the strength of the social media.

Here’s a quick guide:

Pinterest – female bias and visual.

Instagram – young professionals and students.

Linked-In – b2b.

Facebook and Twitter as standard.

There is nothing worse, in terms of perception to customers, than a site where the latest social post was a year ago. Make sure if you have a blog that it has a purpose, for advice or information that is of use.

2. Manage Your CRM Database And E-Marketing

Manage your customers as they come in. If they subscribe give them good offers regularly, maybe 20% off an order (which is open for a limited time). Give them a newsletter and keep them in the loop with any offer or development on your website or in your business. Give them added value for their loyalty – it can be easier to retain a customer than recruit a new one. Four repeat customers – each with 20% discounts for loyalty, can harvest more ROI than a new customer. If someone has bought from you, in theory they already trust you as a business and even like you. Make sure when you send an email to have a good subject line and if there is a discount, put the offer in that line so people open it. Tie in offers to topical events – say for example, an offer open only for the duration of a bank holiday weekend.

3. Track Company Changes

Make sure any staff that leave the company are taken off your About Us page or new recruits are added. Keep all changes in the company visible on your website. For instance, if you have a good new client – make sure they are added to your website for credibility. Update endorsements if you get them, so visitors know that you are good now, rather than three years ago. The same goes for media your brand may have appeared in, tell everyone about your fame by adding a line on your website such as ‘As seen on TV’. Maybe you have new offers or services since the website was built, which you should add – perhaps as a pop-up? Highlight new exciting developments or offers on the homepage and always label any content you add carefully and appropriately for SEO.

4. Analysis As A Regular Exercise

Always keep on top of the way visitors interact and use your website. Understand where they stop on their path to converting to sale on your site. If there is a regular pattern in user behaviour that, for example, shows that people disengage at your checkout page, you may have identified a page that is ineffective. You will need to study that page and see if it is not enticing enough, slow to load or gives a poor message. Visitors do not have patience with pages they cannot progress from easily, especially so on mobile devices. Identify and fix all problems in paths to conversion to sale.

5. Be Available

If you are inviting visitors to email you make sure you pledge a bracket of time to return an answer to their question e.g. 48 hours. Ensure you can handle dealing with the request traffic. Have an answerphone message that promises a response if you are not answering all telephone calls to the number supplied. Alternatively, to be really ‘on the ball’ you could offer a social messaging service to deal with queries relatively instantly. This needs to be manned so do not ignore the function if you include it. It will make the website more human and accessible.

Websites need to be carefully managed on a daily basis whether they are E-Commerce sites or static pages with social plug-ins. For more advice on caretaking and developing websites contact the team at Varn.

Article by: Tom, CEO of Varn More articles by Tom

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