Web Maintenance
One of the best ways to increase web site traffic is to make sure visitors you’ve already had once actually return to your site. This is not only an increase in internet traffic, it is and increase in targetted traffic.
If you look at many sites, even corporate ones propped up by armies of press and marketing staff, you will ocasionally still find glaring gaps in their online information.
This is a common pitfall and comes about through two obvious reasons.
1) They have nothing new to say, or more likely 2) They do, but just aren’t saying it.
So why isnt it getting said?
Before heading into a web development project with you KTIC will ask you to envisage how information changes are going to be handled and ensure that this is built into your workflow.
How much change is required depends upon what your site is mean to do. So sometimes just stock levels, product lines… sometimes news. If only to reflect what changes there have been within your business
AN EXAMPLE I recently visited a local car dealers website. Upon looking through their site for images of the new model (a car which I have seen on their forecourt) I found a drop down [car model] list menu. I selected it looked for the car of my interest but no, not there. And this car has been available to buy for almost 6 months.
The probable cause for this is an innocent oversight. A new model is released and no-one at this particular dealership has the responsibility to update that part of the site. Or maybe they do, but somehow its a database that needs editing, which they can’t do. So its probably a workflow issue.
CONSIDERATIONS Are the company going to handle it in house? If so which individuals within their structure are going to update the various parts of the site that are likely to need to change. eg who are the business owners.
If the company are not going be handle the updates in house, who will they use? What acceptable time delays between the change happening and the update going live? Who will have the responsibility of instructing the outsourced web-editors of the changes. Are the necessary changes goin to be controllable by the content management system. If not who will instruc the developers to make small database changes. Who int he company holds the budget for this?
About the Author
Since 1999, Keith Trigwell has managed some of the worlds largest web sites from www.wimbledon.org through to www.england-rugby.com and has been at the cutting edge of applying web technology since the fledgeling days of the internet working in fields from the music industry to selling blue chip sports cars. He currently works from his home in Sussex and is often found hanging around on Lotus owners forums, generally irritating people.