Your organization just received its 1 millionth membership, and you want to tell the world – or at least the other 999,999 members. Heck, this is a big deal! Few groups reach that size, but you beat the odds!
There’s only one problem: the last time any member of your club – or anyone else – visited your site, Gore and Bush were still battling for presidency. After you stopped updating content, they started avoiding the site. Sure, you had a few stragglers at first, but in a week or so the visits stopped completely.
There are a lot of ways to avoid this mess. Your customers, members and friends don’t have to be left in the dark when something big happens.
Of course, the obvious way to keep customers coming back is fresh content. Giving people something new to look at each time they visit your site is a surefire way to keep them coming back. Periodic news about the latest events within your club or business will keep their interest, so long as it doesn’t consist of, “added a new link to the links page today.” Find something that fits and keep updating it.
Unfortunately, some Web sites get updated often, but not on a schedule that would keep people coming back regularly. A weekly or monthly e-mail update can solve the problem of letting people know what has been changed, and when. Give your visitors a way to sign up for their e-mailed updates, and then be sure to let them know what is going on.
That’s fine and good for sites that update fairly often, but what if your site doesn’t update every week, or even every month? E-mail updates will still work. You don’t have to send out an email each month that says, “here’s your update on our recent updates: we didn’t update anything.” Simply send out an email to your list when you do update.
Fresh content is a must for any Web site if you expect to keep people happy. But if you can’t update constantly, at least let people know when you do. Otherwise, your Web site just sits in the corner of their bookmarks and collects dust.
*Originally published at LangDesign.com
Rebecca Lang is founder of Lang Design, Inc. an Internet web design and development with an emphasis on marketing website business. Serving businesses nationwide, we are located in Wilmington, Delaware, just south of the Philadelphia Metro area.
