As people are finding out, it's important to have your website up to date. It's now, more than ever, the first place where people will go to find out about your business. And that makes sense, too. The Web is everywhere - in about every home, at the office, at coffee shops and on phones. People are now used to having the Web wherever they go. Sites like Facebook and Twitter thrive on having the very latest information possible available. If you're website is 2 months old, it has cobwebs on it. Researching anything is only a few seconds away.
Make sure you're not giving people old information and make sure you're not holding back information that they should have.
I'm sure that's a question that company presidents say a lot. They understand the importance of the website but are wondering who is responsible for it. Maybe it's someone who is tasked with 10 other jobs that take priority over updating the company website. That just doesn't work in today's market. Someone should be updating it at least weekly, if not more.
We just started working with a local insurance company here and they have someone they just hired whose job it is to keep the website updated along with all their social media sites. Yeah, she gets paid to tweet and update Facebook but the company sees the value in having updated information and reaching a younger demographic who are using sites like Twitter and Facebook. This just shows you how important up to date information really is.
If your company isn't blessed to have someone on staff to update your website, then it makes a lot of sense to outsource it. It's much cheaper than hiring someone to do it and you still get the website updated frequently. Because you hire a website design firm to do the work, it's being done by experts who test their work in multiple browsers and know how to fix things that have programming behind them. It's very difficult to find one person that can do great design, work on SEO and do programming work. I think there are 3 of them out there and they're all doing very well. 🙂 That's why it makes tons of sense to hire a website firm that has a team of these kinds of experts.
There are many kinds of web maintenance plans out there. Some require that you pay a monthly fee, like a retainer, for have that web design firm available. Other plans have you only pay for the work that you need done. Some plans may work better for different companies but most small to medium sized businesses will find that the pay-as-you-go type of website maintenance plan works the best for them.
Here at Webstix, we have a system called "Maintenance Blocks" that works very well. It's a pay-as-you-go type of system.
Here is how our Maintenance Blocks work:
The pricing of a block will vary. They are pre-paid, so the more you buy in advance, the better rate you get.
Find out more about Maintenance Blocks now or get right into it and submit a website maintenance request.
Get that website up to date!
-Tony