Business owners, is your website abandoned?

These days, it’s not enough to just have a website.

Get the most out of your investment.

Get the most out of your investment.

You have to use it. This means that once you’ve labored over choosing the right domain name, designing the perfect graphics and pulling your teeth out to write intro, about us and services pages, you are far from done. Once you launch a website, it’s like bringing a new life into the world. It must be given plenty of care and attention in order for it to do its job well. Like any worthwhile investment, you gotta keep an eye on it.

An abandoned website is a forgotten investment.

If your website hasn’t been updated or promoted in the last two months then it’s abandoned!

Why does this matter? Well, for starts, search engines like Google and Yahoo look down on abandoned websites. They can tell when a website has been updated and will give you more “points” for it. They can also tell when your website is being promoted through other websites or social media like Facebook and YouTube, for which they will give you even more “points” for. The more points you get, the higher up your website will appear in search engine searches for words related to your business, which greatly increases your visibility. More visibility is a good thing!

Secondly, if you’re not regularly promoting your business and its website on social networks then you are missing out on a great new opportunity to increase your visibility. Depending on the network, you can post videos or photos of your work, promote services through specials, take polls, create networks of people (read: potential customers)… and lead people to visit your website’s portfolio or online store.

Basically, if you’re not giving your website attention, then you’re losing out on potential customers and profits. A lot of Alaskan small businesses could greatly benefit simply by putting a few hours a month into reviving and utilizing their nicely designed websites!

With this in mind, we’ve devised a simple four-step vision of the life of a healthy, profitable website:

1. Development

The gestation phase. Planning, design, construction and launch.

2. Promotion

Real-life and virtual marketing. Social networking. Signing up with online directories, like Alaska’s own BuyAlaska.com.

3. Upkeep

Add new content (text, photos, videos, testamonials, etc). Promote new content.

4. Redesign

Incorporate new ideas and technologies to keep your website fresh!

We hope this article has helped redefine your ideas of what a website is.  Stay tuned in the following weeks as we explore the life span of a website in more detail. Thanks for reading!

Posted in

Heidi

Spring has sprung!

New Directions: consulting & coaching

It’s spring and big shifts are happening in SWS. As a business is an extension of yourself, I’ve spent the past year figuring out who I want to be and how I want to serve the world. As a result of this soul-searching, SWS has let go of technical support in order to make space…

A New Job Board for Saltchuk

We are thrilled to have launched a much improved Job Board for Saltchuk that makes their job openings shine. Saltchuk is the logistical giant that operates throughout Alaska and Lower 48 with its set of companies: Foss, TOTE, Northern Aviation Services, Tropical Shipping, and NorthStar Energy. Saltchuk was seeking to provide more value to the…

Sky Airparts Online Store

Sky Airparts International is a family business based in Anchorage and Indianapolis that keeps aviators all over the globe well stocked. They compete in a mighty industry and needed an online presence that reflected their impressive coverage, inventory, and professionalism. Last year Sky Air reached out to SWS fulfill these goals through a site re-design…