There are two sides of the coin when looking at the shelf-life of a business website. There are some website owners who do frequent public speaking events, or change out products seasonally, or have repeat visitors and need a home page that has fresh information or images. The other side of the coin is the website owner who wants their site to appear relevant with very little updating.
Tips for extending your website’s shelf-life:
1. “Today is…” A current date on your home page keeps the page looking up to date. This can be as simple as a program which supplies the date or incorporating a blog extract onto the page, displaying a recent entry.
2. Update the Copyright. Freshening the copyright is a subtle, yearly update that keeps the website relevant. For example, if the site was launched and first copyrighted in 2006, an update of the year to include the current year (ie. 2006-2009) quickly brings the website to date.
3. Avoid Projecting. If you anticipate the release of a product or a new service, avoid putting in a future date if you suspect you may not update this text in a timely manner. I recently updated a client’s website that announced the a new product would go on sale in “Spring 2007”, however the product had not been added to the site and the update didn’t happen until 2009. Ouch!
4. Trick the Eye. Animated images that add movement or transition through several changes say “fresh” to the web visitior. If you see something different, you believe it’s new and different.
by Vanessa Wood
Design to Spec LLC – Website Design in Darien, CT
All content copyright ©2005-2009, Vanessa Wood
