Is your website successful?

One of the crucial marketing activities for any business today is to publish their website. This is an all important step due to the simple fact that today most users go to the internet to checkout almost all the services and products before they commit. However if you think that your job is done after publishing the website, then you cannot be further away from the truth.

You have to maintain websites on a continuous basis if you really wish to use them well. Here are some tips on what all to focus and which tools can make you life easy.

Accurate Content, Always updated

Keeping a website that has old static content is like slipping the same edition of newspaper under the door everyday to your customers. There is no value and no one is going to be interested in reading it. For a website to be interesting to your customers it has to be current. It is important that they see new content on your website often for them to consider visiting your website often.

Many seasoned website visitors often look for a “What’s new” section. Create a section o the home page to point users to new content so that it is easy to find it on your website.

It is important that the content should not only be new but it should also be original. This way, your customers and prospects will find some value in visiting and reviewing your website.

Leverage other’s knowledge as well

While some Web Gurus might not agree with me on this, I believe that it is not a bad idea to point users to other good content available elsewhere also. But you should make sure that whatever information that you are linking to should be authentic, original as well as related to the subject that might directly interest your visitor. If you can achieve this then your visitors will still revisit your website often. This is because they will now be assured that they will get good content from your website as well additional pointers that are relevant also.

But remember that there is a risk here. External links might die without notice. Always ensure that any link that you are providing is good quality and that it will stay there until the time you have the link active on your website. Nothing is more annoying to a user than a dead link and they will never forgive you.

Let your users participate

Open your website for user comments. Make it a 2 way street. Most web users like to share their views and you will be surprised at how much you can benefit from these comments. Comments might be some good feedback for you or can answer some other visitor’s questions. By seeking and soliciting comments, you are actually opening up the possibility for receiving free content.

A word of caution here is that not all your users will be as responsible as they should be and you might find some strange, funny and downright nonsense in your comments. So it is a good idea to setup a system of moderation before the comments are visible on your website.

Forums are another great way to create user interest. A forum allows a full ecosystem to evolve around your website and the subject area that you wish to cover. Just by adding a forum section to your website and facilitating the discussions, you can achieve a good amount of useful visitor traffic and customer attention. Forums always generate more traffic than blogs as they are more personal to the members and they keep checking back often.

These are few simple ideas that can help you keep your website as well the user interest in your company always alive.