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As your small business grows and reaches important milestones, it makes sense to refresh your website copy and share good news, like new products or business growth. However, updating your website with new content also helps your customers stay in-the-know and gives them a reason to come back to your site. Return visits are a great way to convert potential customers into loyal supporters.
Read on for insights about why it's important to make website updates for your business, how often to update your copy, and the factors that might inform your updating strategy.
Identifying what website areas need to be refreshed
There's no set timetable for how often you should update or add website content. Certain pages (like a blog) might need frequent updates, while others (like a Contact page) may be more static. However, keeping your website up to date makes good business sense from a digital marketing and user experience perspective.
Sometimes updating content is crucial because you have new information to share. For example, it's especially important to update an ecommerce website when you have new products, or if there are changes to pricing for your services. Giving potential customers accurate information makes your business and your brand more trustworthy and lets them know they can always visit your website for current business details.
As a busy entrepreneur, you may not have extra time for non-essential website edits or a large-scale revamp of your current website design. In cases like this, website analytics can make an updating strategy more efficient. Analytics can show you which areas of your website aren’t performing as well as you’d like and might need some tweaks.
For example, perhaps your website traffic is lower on one page than elsewhere on your site or customers aren't spending a lot of time browsing your online store. You might adjust the copy or add fresh content in response to try and keep visitors more engaged.
Squarespace analytics, which are included in all Squarespace websites, offers a robust suite of built-in analytics tools to measure website traffic and other important data points.
How website updates inform your content marketing strategy
Website updates and your overall website content strategy go hand-in-hand. You'll want to make sure any copy refreshes follow your website's search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and continue to incorporate any keywords you've found that make sense for your business.
Analytics can help inform changes to your content strategy as you're doing website updates. Doing a deep dive into your website traffic can give you insights into what's working. You can look for patterns—for example, blogs structured like a list might perform better, or headings that pose a question may generate more traffic—and adjust your writing accordingly.
On the flipside, analytics can also give you new content directions to explore. For example, maybe visitors are reaching your website by searching for unique keywords you haven't been using. These can then be incorporated into existing copy to boost your website’s visibility in search. Or, if visitors are coming to your website through your social media, you could share more content to your target audience on those channels.
You can also use analytics to get insight into how the items in your store are selling. You can easily find which ones aren't drawing interest and adjust how they're being promoted. Sometimes you just need to edit the product description to make it easier to discover or sound more appealing.
Scheduling how often to refresh your website
You might find it helpful to schedule time on your calendar for website updates on a regular basis. For example, you might set aside time each month to do an analytics deep dive, and then set aside additional time for updates once you know what your website needs. If your business has a more regular cadence of product launches or operational changes, you can schedule regular updates either monthly or quarterly.
Analytics can also help you decide how often you should update your website, since if you see traffic or sales dip (or increase) in a certain period, that might be a sign to be vigilant about refreshing your copy.
Determining how often you should redesign your website is a much bigger decision. Generally, business owners only do a website redesign at times of major change—like if they're moving locations (or opening a different location), going through a rebrand, launching a new suite of products, or announcing a major new project.
Website redesigns are time consuming and often involve a strategy audit and overhaul as well as branding updates. A redesign might also require the help of a developer and/or freelance writer, meaning it might need to be included in budget planning decisions.
You can also consider making smaller design updates that make sense for your site, rather than launch a whole new web design. Once or twice a year, consider any new features available on your website building platform that might be useful, or other design features that could help your current design pop, such as adding a new banner to your homepage.
Once you've implemented a particular website design and strategy, give it some time to see how it's performing before making any quick changes.