How To Know When It's Time To Update Your Website

If you're like me, you have a love/hate relationship with your website. You know you need one because it gives you credibility. But sometimes, you wonder how many people really visit it and do you even need one if most of your clients come from word of mouth and referrals.

Potential customers do as much as 70-80% of their buying research before contacting you; much of that research is done on your website.

So, yep. You need one. And worse. It needs to be updated so it doesn’t become a dinosaur.

How do you know when it's time to update your website copy?

Regular updates are crucial to ensuring a good user experience.

Creating a website is one of the first steps most business owners take when setting up shop. And then they don't touch it again. For a really long time. Yikes!

There's no hard-and-fast rule about how often websites should be redone, but a good guideline is every five to seven years. We don't mean making some updates. We're talking about a complete rewrite. You should make minor tweaks and edits every week to keep your website fresh. This includes posting blogs. Here are a few other signs it's time to update your copy:

1. Your customers' pain points have changed.

All good website copy focuses on your customer and their biggest pain points. That's why they're on your site, after all, looking for a solution. If your customers' pain points have changed, but your copy hasn't, it's time to update. For many businesses, their customers' pain points have evolved due to the frequent changes over time due to any number of internal or external factors, including changes in consumer behaviors and habits.

You must evolve with them or risk not connecting when they visit your site. After all, their pain points are the reason they buy, so you must speak to their biggest problems if you want to engage them.

2. Your offer has changed.

As customer pain points change over time, the product or service you offer changes. Perhaps when you started five years ago, there was a significant demand for one particular product or service. But over the past few years, customers are gravitating towards another offer. I talk with plenty of business owners whose most popular offerings aren't even prominent on their websites.

It's essential that your best, most attractive offerings are front and center on your website. Don't make site visitors look too hard because they may give up and leave.

3. You're losing more and more customers to your competitors.

If you want to engage your site visitors, sometimes you need to tweak what you say and how you say it. And if you're losing business to your competition, then it's time for a good, hard look at your website compared to theirs.

If you're noticing a downturn in leads and sales, your competitors may have updated their marketing materials and are connecting and engaging with YOUR ideal customer more than you.

Spend time studying your website. Then visit your competitor's websites and ask yourself:

• Is the focus on their customers or themselves? You/Your vs. Us/We

• Do you have similar services, or are they offering something different?

• Do they discuss their customers' pain points and their products as the solution?

Note the areas where the competition does a good job of, and adjust your site accordingly! Competitive research shouldn't wait until sales slow. You should do this every six months or so to avoid a downturn in the first place.

4. You haven't touched your website since it was first built.

This is the biggest issue we hear from every call we do. Biz owners built their site when they first started and haven't touched it since. It's ok. We've all been there. However, marketing has changed significantly over the past five years. Even if your customers' pain points are still relevant and your offerings are just as popular as they used to be, brevity is the name of the game in today's marketing world.

As consumers, we're bombarded with LOTS of messages every day. It can be as high as 8,000 or 10,000. So, while you could use more words to describe your offerings five years ago, your website visitors are merely scanning your pages today. You have a much shorter amount of time to connect and engage. Your copy needs to be succinct!

Ditch the lengthy paragraphs and include more headlines, sub-headlines, and bullet points so visitors who scan only can still catch the gist of who you help and what problems you solve.

When you work for or own a small business, you probably wear many hats, not all of which you love. We know for many of you, updating your website is one of the last things you want to do. But if you don't, it could dramatically impact converting site visitors, ultimately leading to lost sales. So please, at least every 2-3 years, take the time to sit down and make essential updates to your website.