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Stuck in the Past
StumbleUponIdeas on how to keep your website up-to-date, relevant and informative, by David Nicholson of WordsOntheWeb.
It’s amazing how quickly an asset can turn into a liability.You spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds on a smart, all-singing and dancing website, complete with profiles, mission statements, case studies and fancy graphics. And then what? The IT department is congratulated on a fine job and everyone has a cup of tea.
A month later, nothing has changed. The ‘news’ section has a couple of stories which are now old hat, or even worse, says ‘no articles found’ or ‘this section is under development’. Some of the content is now inaccurate, saying ‘come and visit us at the CyberExpo’ which has already been and gone. So whereas the site was meant to give visitors a sense of a dynamic, well-resourced company with its finger on the pulse, it gives the opposite impression. This company is lazy, provides wrong information and has neither the expertise nor the energy to keep its site up-to-date and relevant.
Of course, many companies do update their sites, but even when they do, too often the ‘news’ presented is turgid irrelevance about having appointed Kevin McNobody to be assistant sales director, or some arduous waffle about an agreement with another company, inevitably using that hateful word ‘leverage’ and quoting the CEO saying “We’re delighted”.
As a customer of this company, what earthly use is this to me? I don’t care if the Queen of Sheba is their sales director. What I’m interested in is my business, my commercial prospects, my industry sector. If this site gives me information about that, then I may become a regular visitor, may be open to buying goods or services while I’m on the site, or becoming more engaged with it in some way.
Since I run my own journalism business, I have a relationship with bankers, accountants, solicitors, publishers, other journalists, corporate clients, charities and so on. Many of them could sell me things if they went about it the right way. And some do: Lloyds TSB has a site for small businesses called www.success4business.co.uk which is stacked with news and information on everything from haulage to hairdressing. Lloyds TSB customers get timely, relevant, well-researched news on issues which matter to them and their business, like upcoming legislation, analysis of the budget or interest rate cuts, or new developments in their sector.
This is great, but it’s pretty rare. So what’s the problem? It seems that too few companies have the imagination to see that a static website can actually harm their business. The executives have become so pickled by management speak that they cannot understand the value of independent, reliable content on their website. They think the only worthwhile web content is strictly about their company, as though anything else would be disloyal. They can only comprehend content which uses all the internal, naval-gazing nonsense which they use at strategy meetings.
Wake up, guys! The world is not a strategy meeting. Your website is probably the most common first contact with potential new customers, so make it friendly, give people something to read, keep them interested.
Think of it as the company reception area. Most companies have a selection of reading material on hand: brochures, newsletters, magazines and papers. These are more than just pastime reading, these are important marketing tools.
But company newsletters take time to create, so they have an element of datedness. Websites, on the other hand, updated daily, can include any piece of news which impacts the company or its website visitors, written in a tailored fashion, keeping in mind the actual preoccupations of the visitors.
In a 24-hour news world, being even a day late with some kinds of information can look hopelessly inept. It’s like ‘you mean you only just found out? Where have you been for the last decade?’ Being first with the news, and understanding its relevance, making connections with business issues and pointing out opportunities… These are all ways that businesses can distinguish themselves from their competition and make sure a website becomes more than an asset – it becomes a resource.
David Nicholson set up WordsOntheWeb in 2001 with fellow journalist Richard Willsher, providing journalism for corporate websites. Take a look at www.wordsontheweb.co.uk or call 020 7359 1200 to find out more.
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