New Media Matters: Keep your business website relevant

Published: March 13, 2013 

Does your company’s website rock or just roll along?

As a small business owner, you have cut the frills from your company’s website. Your site’s relatively inexpensive overhaul has resulted in a leaner, cleaner and keyword-optimized online placeholder that help viewers find your business online. Your site may now also include a nifty content management system that allows designated people within your company to make tweaks and add changes, corrections and updates quickly and easily. To keep your website optimized, you are changing the content frequently to keep visitors -- current and potential customers -- coming back.

Maybe you are even doing this by blogging regularly, giving visitors insider’s information they can actually use. Some of you are setting up accounts on Twitter and Facebook, some even using the latter as a substitute for a website. If you are selling products, you are beginning to see the virtues of using Pinterest, and you are getting the word out widely. If you are offering services to customers or clients or working with other businesses, you are using Pinterest to post helpful information, infographs, checklists and other material that keeps your company top-of-mind as well and positions your business as an industry leader. You’re keeping all online content fresh and relevant. You’re connecting everything -- your website, your networks, social sites, blogs, etc. -- with your website serving as the hub of the wheel that connects all.

So, then, are you doing enough online to ensure your company’s website is working for you? Consider the following sources, mostly free, except some that will request e-mail or contact info.

Some of these checking or tracking services are available as mobile applications, too.

• Use web-browser testing services to check your site’s strengths, weaknesses and its ability to easily be found using major search engines. Just plug in your sites URL, as indicated. Try: https://browserlab.adobe.com, www.browsershots.org, www.crossbrowsertesting.com, www.xencode.com browsers, www.getclicky.com and my personal favorite from Hubspot Software, www.marketinggrader.com, which allows you to compare your site’s effectiveness with competitors’ sites.

• See who’s going to your site and exactly what they’re doing there. Use a traffic reporting service to glean helpful analytics: http://web.analytics.yahoo.com, http://awstats.sourceforge.net, www.piwik.org and www.google.com/analytics.

• Check to determine your website is visually compatible with all browser programs and on all mobile devices, such as www.microsoft.com/ie, www.firefox.com, www.apple.com/safari, www.google.com/chrome and http://browsers.evolt.org.

Paige Henson is a new media consultant for businesses and nonprofits. She specializes in inbound marketing techniques and content management. Her e-mail address is paigechenson@gmail.com.

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