The fact that many websites fail to deliver on their initial promise is well documented. Often this failure
can be attributed to a decrease in effort or quality once the excitement of getting a site up and running
has gone.
This guide looks at the practical implications of running your website after its completion. It provides
business owners with hints and tips on how to fulfil your business’s online objectives.
What needs to be done to maintain your
site?
If you don’t specifically make someone responsible
for your site then you run the risk of failing to maintain
it adequately and jeopardise your chances of reaching your
online objectives.
Even if you are employing a third party to look after some,
or all, of your maintenance requirements, you need to be very
specific about just what your contract includes and mutually
agree measurable and realistic targets.
The smaller your company (and your budget) the more those
with site responsibilities may need to become a jack of all
trades, but this means you need to be even more careful about
allocating responsibilities.
Ask yourself the following questions:
Content
Who will provide my new site content and ensure my current
content is kept up to date? How often will site updates occur
and how will I measure the quality of the work produced? Will
content for any new sections be the responsibility of the
same person? At what point will I have to consider additional
resources?
Technical
Although these are the most likely tasks to be handled outside
the business, it is vital someone has responsibility for the
smooth delivery of the site to your visitors. What happens
if my site goes down? Do I have 24-hour cover? What happens
if I want to upgrade my services? How often will I receive
traffic analysis (details of how many people have visited
the site and what they looked at)? How will I be kept informed
of technical innovations that can improve my site?
Design
Who will incorporate new material into my site and maintain
its current identity? Will new sections be designed in a similar
style and will this work need to be carried out by the original
designer? Who will keep abreast of recent findings on web
design to recommend changes? How often will I review the overall
design of my site? What are the cost implications?
Marketing
Who will be responsible for ensuring I maximise my Web potential
by attracting site visitors? What funds/resources will be
available to them? Will they take responsibility for creating
partnerships with other companies for mutual benefit (e.g.
to exchange links or suggest affiliate programmes)? How will
I integrate my offline and online promotions?
Strategic
Who will review my site objectives, set my goals and review
my performance against these criteria? Who will ensure that
my future online strategy complements my overall plans for
the business?
In addition to these responsibilities, you may also need
to consider the areas of advertising, sales, stock levels,
fulfilment and delivery deadlines, legal issues and security.
Also, domain names (Web addresses) need to be re-registered
on a rolling basis – usually every two years.
Who will do it?
Taking on site responsibilities may mean asking people to
acquire new skills, expanding your team to obtain new skills,
or relying more on a third party than you havedone before.
You should therefore carry out a website skills audit.
Content
Your content provider/manager should be able to produce high-quality
material that your site visitors want to look at and use.
You should agree targets for the volume of work expected within
a certain timeframe. If external contributors also provide
material, then your content manager must be able to commission,
edit and proof read their copy.
Technical
The person/company with technical responsibility for your
site must be able to ensure that any problems with your site
are quickly remedied. Don’t let your own technological
ignorance or worries stop you from discussing your expectations
for your site. If you don’t know what these should be,
ask around so that you candevise some minimum service requirements.
Design
You should remain as happy with the appearance of your site
as you were when you first launched it. Your designer should
be sufficiently abreast of site design to ensure your Web
presence benefits from any significant style changes that
could modernise your site.
Marketing
Effective site marketing requires the skills of a strong
communicator as it is very often about building relationships
with other site owners or industry organisations. Innovative
site marketing often stems from tiny budgets, so put a creative
thinker to work on your promotional plans.
Strategy
Does the individual with strategic responsibility for the
site have a sound understanding of both your overall business
and the potential of the Internet within your industry? Does
this person have the authority and vision to suggest radical
change should it be required?
Why is updating the site important and how do
I manage it?
As the key way to drive repeat traffic to your site is to
constantly add new content and keep the information that is
there relevant and accurate, then site updates will play a
major role in the ongoing management of your website. Generally
speaking, the more often you can update your site, the better.
Set realistic and achievable timescales for your updates
and stick to them. If you find that you can’t adhere
to your own timetable, then you either need to reconsider
your updating resources or set yourself new and more realistic
goals. Don’t simply continue to miss deadlines as this
will quickly become the norm and the time between your targeted
and actual completion of the work will increase.
If a third party does your updating, then you must check
that they are meeting your mutually pre-agreed targets. Again,
you must not ignore any failures to deliver updates on time.
It will engender a belief that you either haven’t noticed
or don’t care, and this could send your site updates
further down a priority list.
Prioritising your updates
Different types of information will need updating at different
intervals. It is vital that some categories of information
should be amended or changed as soon (or as regularly) as
possible. These include:
- News – Nothing more clearly shows
that a site is being overlooked than out-of-date news. If
your site has a news section, make sure it is kept up to
date.
- Prices – If you’re trading
online or simply allowing your wares to be viewed, then
you are legally obliged to make sure your prices are accurate.
Some sites choose to omit costs from their product range
so they don’t have to update their prices, but if
your goods (or something similar) are available elsewhere
you could easily lose a sale by not providing vital information.
- Changes to your terms and conditions – You
are required by law to ensure that they are
accurately displayed.
- Product availability and delivery deadlines – If
these are wrong you may make a first sale but
you’ll never get a second.
- Contact details – These should be altered as
soon as any changes occur. Any users who finds
that your company or a specific named contact
cannot be reached will not be filled with
confidence.
How can I record who visits my site?
Your ISP (or whoever hosts your site) will have access
to your Web logs, which contain vital information about
your site visitors. Many ISPs will analyse this information
free of charge (or include the cost as part of a payment
package). Users visiting your site are usually referred to
generically as ‘traffic’. There is lots of other jargon used
about the kinds of activity going on on your site related
to the measurement and analysis of such traffic, such
as:
- Page Impressions – The number of total pages
viewed on your site over a given period of time.Although a relatively crude measure, it does give a
clear indication of your traffic volume.
- Unique Users – The number of visitors to your site
over a given period of time. This allows you to see
just how many people have browsed your site.
- Average visit length – There may not be many
visitors, and they may not look at many pages, but if
they stay on the site for some time then you’re
getting something right.
- Most popular pages – So what do your site visitors
really want? This can be very different to what you
may have predicted and to what your visitors
claimed they wanted from your site.
- Least popular pages – The candidates for removal
if space is tight.
- Top entry and exit page – Remember that visitors
arriving from search engines won’t necessarily
arrive via your homepage. The entry pages can tell
you what people were searching for when they were
directed to your site. A popular exit page could
mean visitors start to lose interest, but it could also
mean they experience delay. Does this page take a
long time to download?
- Most popular paths – How do people get through
your site? Does your current structure help or
hinder this process?
- Most downloaded files – Can you provide more
like these?
- Most submitted forms – What is really cutting
down your administrative costs?
- International access – How much of your traffic is
coming from overseas and are you catering
properly for these visitors? If you are trading online,
then there are legal implications. Do your terms and
conditions conflict with the laws of other
jurisdictions? You may need to regulate access to your site, or run site disclaimers, which reduce the
risk of legal liability by defining your intended
audience.
Your traffic analysis should be viewed alongside your site
objectives, so as to provide clear evidence of success or
failure to reach your goals. If you haven’t been successful,
you may at least be able to identify possible reasons for
this and set about rectifying them. You shouldn’t be surprised
if your first analysis of your site visitor activity causes
some fairly drastic changes to your initial objectives. It
may lead you to question the true role of your site, rather
than the one you had assumed it would play.
What about customer feedback?
Customer feedback in the online world is as vital as in your
traditional business channels, but your website has some significant
advantages in collecting it. The interactive nature of the
Internet, and the fact that you can gain immediate access
to your feedback, make your website the perfect environment
for analysing your customers and improving your relationship
with them. Ways of encouraging customer feedback include:
- Putting an email facility on your site – If your
customers use your site to email enquiries directly
to you, then you can consider keeping in regular
contact with them via email, to update them on your
product or company news. Prompt response,
particularly to an initial enquiry, is vital to encourage
this new method of customer contact.
- Online questionnaires – Get responses directly
from your customers in real time. The easier you
make the form to fill in, the better your response will
be. This is a highly cost-effective way to gain
market research.
- Online polls – If you want to know the answer to
what your customers think of a specific issue, ask
them directly in a poll on your site. If you let
respondents view how other people have voted,
you’ll improve your response.
- Web forums – Let your customers chat to each
other, and you, online. It’s a great way of finding out
more about them and their attitudes towards your
products/services. It is, however, vital that you
police (and if necessary censor) what is being put
up on your site to avoid possible litigation.
- Provide product reviews – There can be no better
way of encouraging other visitors to buy your goods
than by providing potential customers with an
independent testimonial from a satisfied customer.
Remember that even if a review has negative
points, a customer will trust you for allowing them to
read it, and so may buy an alternative product from
you.
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