The screenshot here shows what happened to the traffic at a website when the site owner got distracted by… well, by life.
All of us are subject to distractions. Anything from falling in love to a death in the family can get in the way of keeping up with your website as you should.
Business can be distracting, too — getting busy at work because you have an effective website can lead to loss of effectiveness at that website.
The owner of the website shared this screenshot with us, saying that it illustrates the dangers of DIY, and that’s true. At many companies, the feeling is that the website will pretty much take care of itself, and that everyone can just pitch in whenever they have a chance. Website owners imagine that all team members will get inspired and write up blog posts, that people in every branch will help share the social media gems crafted by the marketing department, or that the owner will keep everything updated.
In reality, the team members are busy doing their work, so the impulse that starts with, “Hey, that would make a good blog post!” ends with “… as soon as I finish this project,” and not in a blog post. The social media posts get done occasionally, mostly just when there’s some special offer to promote. The owner doesn’t have time to ask someone to update the website, let alone actually do the updating.
The idea that the team will keep up the website occurs to some team member at, say, a staff meeting in August, when lots of people are on vacation and nothing much is happening. Then comes back to school, fourth quarter, Christmas, and at some point you know somebody will have a baby or a philosophical crisis.
The sad truth is, if you ignore your website, bad things will happen. This is an extreme example, granted, but most websites that are ignored see a drop in traffic and conversions within a month or so. If you have competitors who are working hard on their websites, you can see a drop in rankings, too.
Good results with your website require ongoing work. Website updates, fresh content, social media activity, and linkbuilding are essential for an effective online presence.
In order to keep all this steady when life gets interesting, you need someone whose job it is to take care of these things. If that’s not the best use of your time, call 479.966.9761 and arrange for Haden Interactive to take care of your website. No matter what happens, you’ll have someone watching your back — and your website.
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