Many companies early in their life make the decision to commit to a website under the assumption that it would be an easy win. Should be, right? With a small budget, they get a domain live with their brand strewn about and a few buzzwords put on the front page. They input basic information about their story, what services they provide and how to contact them. It’s created in a week and the business refrains from ever touching or updating it again.  That’s it. The job is done!

There is a good chance you have come about a few websites that look like that. They always stick out for the wrong reasons regardless of your experience in web design. It can be very easy to see when the company has walked away from their website under the assumption that it was a one-and-done job. 

Information hasn’t been updated to account for changes in the industry, the website begins to run poorly due to lack of upgrades or is no longer sufficiently compatible with computer/mobile browsers.

So ask yourself: is your website still an asset to your business, or has it become a liability? Let’s discuss how to ensure you can maintain the success of one instead of letting it create a pitfall for your business.

Visual Identity 

A website needs to contain all of the pertinent information about your business, but it needs to be presented in a consistent manner. Far too often will you find websites with a different font per webpage – worse yet, sometimes even different paragraphs or columns. Maintaining a clear, concise representation of your brand through the use of colors, fonts and sizes is of the highest priority.

One suggestion is work with your brand/logo designer and get a ‘Branding Guidelines’ file. This is a common feature that shows the EXACT colors, fonts, and common usage of logos for multiple mediums. 

Another sore thumb is when images are uploaded onto the website that are of lesser quality. Whether it is your logos, photos of your staff or services/products, you need to ensure each one of them are of the proper resolution, file type and cropping. A single one is enough to create a first impression that isn’t to your benefit. It might seem like an inconvenience, but trust us when we say you need to be picky here.

If you want some examples of consistent visual identity, look through some of TLC’s works here!

Accuracy of Content

Chances are more likely than not that, regardless of what field your business is in, pertinent matters will change often and in significant ways. 

Price restructuring, change in staffing, the relocation of your business… the list goes on. It can be easy to forget your website needs constant maintenance and editing in the whirlwind of change. Visitors expecting one thing only to find out something completely different hurts you.

The good news is that it’s easy to avoid such a simple mistake. If you have a big enough team, we would recommend assigning someone to monitor and maintain your website. Assuming it is just yourself or you simply do not have the budget to make maintenance a daily affair, schedule a specific day in every week or month to devote time towards updating accordingly. 

It also helps to know where and what will require constant updates or monitoring. Review our post on what to consider when first developing your website so you can get in front of it.

Website Health

So you’ve successfully kept everything on the front of the website up-to-date and accurate. Congratulations! Now how about the backend? None of that hard work will matter if you aren’t keeping your website strong and healthy. This is where things can get tricky for those inexperienced in the field. 

Failure to optimize can result in slowdowns, vulnerabilities for hacking or even the full downage of your entire website. And if that isn’t enough, barely meeting the minimum can impact the performance of your website being located via search engines.

Taking care of all of the good stuff is paramount to a successful website that is making money for you and not the other way around. Investing in a solid website platform like Shopify, Squarespace or Weebly can future proof your URL for big developments and changes.

Proper hosting through services can maintain efficient web speeds, excellent customer support and minimal downtime when things go wrong. 

Hiring an SEO professional to monitor important keywords and/or what kind of additional content to generate (i.e. blogging) can boost your ability to be located on sites like Google and Yahoo. 

In Short

Your website should be putting money into your pocket in the long term, not taking more of it out. Yes, there is no denying that the initial creation and successful development of a website costs time and money. That is the investment towards your eventual asset. Letting it become a liability is a true waste that is easy to avoid so long as you follow our tips. 

Better yet, trusting a marketing team like TLC ensures you have dedicated professionals handling all of the things you know you don’t want to. This is our bread and butter. Let us help you do what you enjoy! Contact us today so we can schedule our free 30-minute consultation and prove why we are capable of creating multiple assets for you.