When you are creating a website you want people to come back to over and over again … and a site you want people to recommend to others, it is important that it has depth and  flavour.

The interwebs are full of vanilla sites that are little more than online brochures, they have no depth, no personality – no real reason for people to want to come back again.

Talking to a client today, I was suggesting that to really build loyal followers and increase visitors to their site, it needs to have more personality, and more insider information than something as relatively flavourless as a wikipedia page.

Sure wiki is a great resource, but how often do you refer to the same wikipedia page more than once?

No personality resides there, and you really don’t expect much in the way of fresh information to be added on a regular basis.

For your site to really draw the traffic, make sure it is fresh and flavourful, with plenty of zing to it!

(Next post, how to add some zing.)

Enjoy!

Karen

fresh green

Sometimes we need to state what to many might seem like the screamingly obvious – your website is NOT a brochure. Please don’t just “set and forget” and expect it to provide any kind of return on the investment you have placed in getting it up and running.

Fresh is definitely best – best for your readers – old and new, and best for those lovely search engines who are constantly seeking out new material.

So the five reasons to update your site right now?

1) To show the world you are alive! First and foremost, people want to know what is going on with you and your website is your shopfront, your window to the world. If nothing is happening on your site, and nothing ever changes, then viewers might just infer that you are not updating anything because nothing is happening in your business (or if it’s a blog, your life) – you have nothing new to say. In reality, you might be way too busy to update your site – if that’s the case, please make the effort to just freshen it in the obvious places on a regular basis.

2) They won’t come back. If people make the effort to come back a few times to see what is up with you, and nothing is different, then chances are they won’t bother coming back again – so you’ve lost them.

3) You’ll lose business to your competition. If they see nothing happening on your site, visitors might also conclude that perhaps you are no longer in business, and if they are potential customers wanting to buy a product, or comission your services, then they are very likely to move on to your competition.

4) Not updating content that is obviously out of date makes your company look incompetent. Is that the perception you want the market to have of you?

5) The search engines will start downgrading your site if there is nothing new being uploaded, particularly if your competitors with the same keywords are keeping their sites fresh and relevant.

Please remember to treat your site as a constantly evolving, incredibly powerful tool – you really need to view it as something very different from every other piece of marketing collateral you have ever developed. It can be as dynamic, flexible, exciting, innovative and interactive as you want it to be – all you have to do is ask, the technology is at our fingertips like never before.

Looking forward to some juicy freshness from you now…

Karen

P.S. do you like my garden??