We subscribe to the theories of site renewal and refreshing based on both our four years of experience and our working knowledge of its effectiveness.  It was reiterated in the webinars and we were not surprised to see our team on-target with attention to SEO's.  In fact, most recently  recently, we reached out to 25 of our clients who had the longest interval of time since their last website update. If you received one of these e-mails, we strongly urge you to contact us and consider making some changes to your site. If you did not receive one, we asked that you continue your efforts not to fall into this category.

One of our clients who received this e-mail did contact us with an interesting reply which we want to share and address, as this need be on the minds of many ...

"Thank you for contacting me regarding my lack of web updates. It has been a very busy year for us, and right or wrong the website has not been a priority for us. I took some time and went through the site after receiving your note and I have to admit I'm at a loss for direction. To me my site is current. I love my photos, the text remains accurate about our operation and I really like the layout you created. So what can I do to update my site but not change a thing is I love it the way it is?"

As we have mentioned, it is important your website always reflect you, your organization or company and your mission or services you provide. As all organizations or businesses evolve at different rates, regular updates may pose a challenge for some site owners. Here are some general ideas, which you may find helpful:

1.) Start and maintain a news section which can be used for a variety of things. From sharing news and upcoming events within your organization, promoting special events or sales, reminding your clients or customers of important issues or dates, etc. many clients find this feature useful in many ways.

2.) Review your text, update some photos, or change the order on a bulleted list.

3.) Add a new feature to your site which will make your life easier. Two of our clients this month add custom tools to help manage their daily activities.

a. Kurt Bluemel added a new online calculator to assist their clients in calculating the plant materials required for specific projects.  Check it out at   www.KurtBluemel.com/tools/index.html

b. Traditions Resort and Conference Center added an online request for proposal to assist them with managing requests for large-scale events and meetings. You can see this at www.TraditionsResort.com/proposal.html

4.) Build a photo gallery...  Campville fire has a great start to theirs... Check it out at www.CampvilleFD.com

5.) Add a recipe, tip or research item of the month.  This can be very effective for many reasons. Not only does it schedule you regular updates, but this can be done well in advance. We have some clients that submit their entire year of tips or updates at once, and then we just plug them in at regularly scheduled intervals. Obviously if something more pressing comes up, we can change course and the schedule at any time. Some clients prefer this as they need to only really scratch their heads and come up with updates once, and they're covered for that area of the website for the entire year.

If you're faced with this problem, please contact us and we can help you brainstorm ideas for your individual site.

We have noticed that some of the obvious benefits of this technology are that it has significantly reduced our non-billable time.  We respond to client emails, generate in-depth proposals, and plan at a significantly quicker pace.  The benefit to both the time in the time conservation is matched by the benefit to our customers at lower billable hours to complete tasks.