It is sometimes easy to believe that simply building an eye-catching aesthetic website is all that is needed to bring more visitors to your online store or company website. The reality however, is that attracting and keeping visitors to your website is not much different from gaining a following for a real-world brand or business.
Maintaining your website over the long run has many benefits. On the web content is King and it’s been that way for a long time now. The signs are this will not change anytime soon and maintaining your website with high value interesting and engaging content will continue to be the best way to keep visitors returning to your website.
Let people know you are an authority on your subject or area of Interest.
Regularly posting clear and informative articles to your website lets your visitors know that you know your stuff. It’s important for visitors to trust that your website content is accurate and reflects the level of detail they expect for the topic or subject matter that they are searching for. The best way to do this is by regularly posting articles or other informative content that provide novel information not available elsewhere on the internet. Here, the novelty of content on your website is important. You must provide something that is found nowhere else on the internet. It must be accurate and it must hold your user´s attention. Well written scholarly articles that cite sources and provide links to external resources will go even further in providing users with a treasure trove of information that they will find useful.
The use of multimedia will make your efforts at appearing to be an authority on your subject more impactful. The ability to quickly pull up a video, multimedia slide presentation or podcast where your information is discussed in audio and/or visual, multimedia detail is guaranteed to hold your users attention more than just plain text to by itself.
Surprise your users with goodies
everyone is surprised by novelty. The addition of something new on your homepage or a regularly visited page of your website will pique your visitorś interest. Whatś even better is when that new thing is a gift or a present for your unsuspecting visitor. Periodically surprising your users with free giveaways, discount coupons, sneak peeks at new information or creative content not regularly available without payment will go a far away in building a loyal following for your web site. You can also use giveaways on your website to capture email addresses for newsletter sign-ups so you really get more when you give to your users.
Try to always keep your giveaways relevant to your businesses´ subject matter or area of Interest. Don’t go wild giving away products or services that are unrelated to what your website is about. Updating your website regularly with giveaways or new offerings is a simple way to build a very loyal customer base.
Avoid downtime and security threats by keeping up with the latest code.
Most modern websites are built on a content management system the most popular of which is the WordPress content management system. Like any other software, content management systems need to be updated on a periodic basis to keep them free from security threats and other defects and bugs. Regularly maintaining your website or having a website maintenance provider will ensure that your underlying content management system code is up to date and will keep your website from going down due to malicious code and outdated plugins.
Keeping up-to-date with the latest versions of your content management software and its plugins will make it easier when the time comes to redesign your website. In general we find that most of our customers ask for a redesign or overhaul of their website within 24-35 months after its initially built. Technology and best practices change constantly on the internet. The need to redesign your website does not mean it was not built properly in the first place. A redesign is simply the reflection of a changing internet ecosystem where coding practices, aesthetics, and whatś cool and hip change constantly.
Maintain your website to keep the bots coming back for more.
By maintaining your website on a regular basis you tell Googleś search engine bot and other search engine robots to regularly visit your website because it is likely to change often. This will help persons searching for your products and services to frequently get the latest version of your content instead of old cached versions from further back in the past. Maintaining a properly structured XML sitemap of your websiteś pages also helps in this effort. XML sitemaps immediately tell search engine companies about changes such as new pages in your website structure or if you have reorganized how your website is laid out. This is important in helping search engines to know how your pages relate to each other and how the content of your pages could be potentially relevant to your users.
Let your users know what’s happening in the real world.
Updating your website with news and internal happenings in your company might seem like a mundane task. However it’s important to let your users know what’s happening with your company offline as well. You want to build trust and reliability with your users. Remember the internet is a global Marketplace the person visiting your website could be from anywhere in the world. They won’t always be able to stop by your office to see that you have new staff, redesigned office space, or that you had a party for a long-time staff member. Letting your users in on these small details lets them know you are real people with real lives who will be accountable and who they can trust to do business. It could very easily make the difference between making a sale, signing a contract or that person leaving and never coming back.
They’re many more reasons to keep your website up-to-date and well-maintained. In many countries you have to honor any price for a product that you display to the public. In this way it’s very important to have accurate information always displayed on your website at all times. Inaccurate pricing or outdated service offerings can hurt your pocket and your credibility with customers.
Content Management Systems make it easy to maintain your website yourself, but if you don’t have the time it’s always best to hire a website maintenance company such as Blitz Web Design to keep your website content fresh and keep your website visitors coming back for more. Find out more about Blitz Web Design´s Wicket-Keeper Website Maintenance plans here. We will maintain and upgrade any website old or new.
We hope you get the most out of your initial investment in having a website built in the first place. Click to Chat with us NOW!
