You only get a few moments to make a good impression. When a potential customer visits your website, the usability is important, or they will leave and find a better website. On top of this, many users will be turned off by how outdated your site seems. No one visits a website, and says, “Oh, they must be busy selling/servicing their customers, and don’t have time to stay on top of updates. This is where I want to go!” More often, potential customers think, “They can’t even update their website? How good can they be?”
1. THE DATE. Seems like kind of a no brainer, right? But how many websites do you visit, and the copyright date is not current. This potential flaw highlights to your customer that you miss the little details. You can come across as a “Big Picture Only” place. On top of that, the new information you published yesterday automatically seems it could be years old.
2. The images. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? The last thing you want is for your pictures to be screaming “Out of Date!!!” You can’t call it “Cutting edge” if the person using your product is wearing clothes from 1992. You can’t say that the car for sale “Won’t last long at this price” when there’s a pile of snow near the tire, and it’s May.
3. The Company History. “About us” is a great tab, as it can provide potential customers a wealth of information to sway their purchasing decision towards your company. It can also give the impression that a company exploded onto the scene, and then screeched to a halt. If your “About Us” section lists impressive details from a couple years ago, and hasn’t changed since, you could be creating the illusion that you haven’t done anything of note recently. Be wary of inadvertently giving the impression that your company stopped growing.
4. Your “Specials” page. If you can’t keep this current, remove it from your menu. There is nothing worse than showing the great deals someone could have received if they shopped a month ago. No one is impressed by your old sale. Having a running archive of your deals from days past does not show your future customers how good your sales in the future will be.
5. Customer Testimonials. If your site has these, make sure they are still relevant and recent. There is nothing worse than seeing how great your company was 10 years ago, when your last glowing review was posted. You also probably don’t want too many great reviews for products or services you no longer offer. Having a historical testimonial is great, as long as you also have current ones that show you are still a good company to work with!
