Yesterday’s news

I have to admit, that yes, I often err on the side of perfectionism, but nothing bugs me more than websites that are out of date. I cringe when I still see Christmas and Happy New Year messages. I cringe even more when the first ‘current news’ article dates back to 2005. Updating your website is simply essential. I can’t stress it more. It reflects so much on you as a company.

The positions vacant or careers section is probably the worst candidate. Imagine working for an organisation for a few weeks, then discovering they’re still advertising your position on their website!

News is also another section which is frequently out of date (ironic, considering that a news section is generally set up to keep your web visitors informed of latest events, awards, projects, issues, new legislation etc.). If you have a news section on your website, make it a company rule that it must have a new article at least once a month. Even if it’s not that interesting. You will notice on our website that we sometimes celebrate Scott’s new hairstyles (for those of you not familiar with his fashion antics, this happens frequently).

There’s also the current staff section. Yes, it takes time to write profiles and get photos taken. But believe me, nothing is much better than something that’s out of date. Staff profiles and photos should form part of your employee induction or orientation period – make it a pre-requisite of employment that they write their own profile, and take the task off your hands.

In any good website system, there are methods to set dates and times for items or messages to turn on and off automatically. In our custom designed CMS system, for example, you can write a Christmas message, set it to turn on, on the 20th December, and turn off again at midnight on Boxing Day. You can then set up a Happy New Year message to turn on at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and off again after a few days. This means you can be in Bali, or wherever your Summer break might take you, and your website is still up to date.

So unless you want your company to appear old-fashioned, slow, not technology driven, out-of-date and smaller than you are, pppplllleeeeaaassseeee spend just 5 minutes a day updating your website. Trust me, it’s worth it.