Effective websites — Maintenance

Now that your site is designed and built you want it to be used! Many people will visit a website once but the trick is to keep them coming back. Adding fresh, relevant content is the most effective way of getting return visitors. If a website contains a great deal of obsolete material it becomes a resource that is viewed as unreliable. Unfortunately it also can call into question the overall credibility of your communications.

Updates

Anyone who’s ever been responsible for producing a newsletter knows the difficulty of getting information from others. Your communications staff has the responsibility of ensuring all public and internal communications are accurate.

A content management system for websites and intranets has the advantage of distributing update responsibilities across the company. Those responsible for producing job openings, rate or tax schedules, credit policies, code changes, etc. create the new or revised content and electronically submit it for approval and posting.

Whether it’s one person or a group, clear assignments need to be made as to where the responsibility lies for monitoring sites for accuracy and freshness.

Remember to include content that your customers want and they’ll keep coming back!

Find-ability

Although you’ve done your best to organize the site from the users perspective there may be some adjustments needed after launch. Good ongoing maintenance includes enough analysis to know what’s working and what’s not.

Consider using a commercial tracking service to learn about your visitors. More statistics than you’ll probably ever use are provided in numeric and chart form. You can get an idea as to:

• where visitors come from
• what word or phrase they used
• where they enter your site
• where they exit
• how long they stayed on any page
• and a rough idea how many clicks it took

Basic information is available without subscribing to a commercial program. Most website host programs report statistics. Study them to learn…

• which pages are viewed most often
• which pages never get hit
• whether your print and television messages are sending visitors to the site

Monitor the words visitors are entering into the search box on your site to see whether they use different terminology and revise your labels and keywords as necessary. Search box inquiries also give you a good reading on topics of current interest and will help identify missing information.

Marketing

Not often thought of as ‘maintenance,' but essential, is the need to keep reminding your customers that you have a website that is there to serve them. Consider adding your web address to:

• all media buys
• letterhead
• billing statements
• newsletters and bill stuffers
• pens or other novelty items
• and use the signature feature of your e-mail program to add your web address to every e-mail

Offer a special place on your website for the media to get copies of news releases, photos, logos, contact information, fast facts about the organization and other helps. Request that they include your web address for their readers to find additional information about a topic they’ve reported on.

Keep in mind that you don’t want to market a site with inaccuracies. Place a primary importance on regular browsing by staff to correct errors, update information and add new content to one of the best communication tools an organization can have.

We provide assistance in all areas of website design and development. You may want to read more about the importance of design, content development and planning.