One thing I always advise my clients is: if you’re going to put anything on a Web site, keep it up to date. Solid advice, and often overlooked.
A few years ago, I was doing background research for a client that had me reviewing Voss Water’s Web site. At the time, their News section was more than a six months out of date, and they had an Events category that was more than a year out of date. In my report to my client, I wondered if they had gone out of business. They haven’t. Don’t know what happened that caused their site to get completely out of date, but I’ve been using their story as an example ever since.
Then there’s this blog — my collection of free Web site advice items, which I’ve been posting to periodically since 2004. And it pains me to admit that the most recent post before this one is July 10, 2009 — more than five months ago! Ugh… I never intended to publish something every day, but a five month gap is ridiculous. Raises the same question as Voss Water: has Brian Wold Consulting gone out of business?
Nope. Thankfully, I’m still in business, and as it turns out the latter half of 2009 was filled with plenty of fodder for more posts to this free advice column — Web strategies implemented, CMS lessons learned, thoughts on the future of the Web, and more. But the gap still looks bad, and I feel compelled to explain. (I was busy!)
Bottom line is, if you’re going to have a News page, you had better keep the news coming. Your Calendar page shouldn’t say “no events” for months at a time. And — gulp — your blog of free Web site advice needs to be updated.
Resolution #1 for 2010…
