For a lot of businesses, a new website begins as a project. There’s a brief and a design plan, pages are written and photos are chosen. Everything gets built, checked and finally launched. Then everyone gets back to work ...and the website sits there. There is a better approach.
Your website shouldn’t be something you finish. It should be something you use. Because a good business website isn’t simply an online brochure, it's part of your marketing team. With effective ongoing website management you can make the most of it.
Your business doesn’t stand still. Why should your website?
Six months after a new website launches, plenty can have changed. You might have introduced a new service, started targeting a different type of customer, taken on new staff, or completed projects worth talking about. You might have developed a better sales proposition, started a campaign or entered a new market.
But does your website know any of that? Too often, the answer is no.
Businesses continue changing while their websites remain frozen at the point they were launched. Eventually there’s a growing gap between the business you are today and the business your website presents to potential customers. Ongoing website management is needed.
Give your website a job to do
When you think about the other parts of your marketing, you wouldn’t create one social media post and expect it to generate business forever. You wouldn’t design one advert and run it unchanged for the next five years. Nor would you send one email campaign and decide email marketing was finished.
Your website should work in much the same way.
It can support a new service with a dedicated landing page. It can be a platform to turn customer questions into useful articles. It can provide somewhere for a social media campaign to send interested prospects. It can showcase recent work, strengthen a sales message, capture enquiries, build mailing lists and help people understand why they should choose your business.
Sometimes that requires a substantial change. But most often it just requires regular, thoughtful additions.
Small changes can do a big job
Ongoing website management doesn’t mean redesigning your website every few months.
Quite the opposite. A well-built website gives you a strong foundation that can be developed as your marketing evolves. That might mean:
- adding a landing page for a campaign or promotion
- improving an important service page
- publishing useful new content
- adding recent projects, testimonials or case studies
- changing calls to action
- improving the route from visitor to enquiry
- updating photography or messaging
- reviewing which pages people visit and where they leave
- keeping software, security and functionality up to date
- improving search visibility as new opportunities emerge
Individually, many of these are relatively small jobs. Together, they keep your website working for the business rather than simply existing in the background.
Your website should support the rest of your marketing
This becomes particularly important when marketing activity starts joining up. A social media post can generate awareness, an email can create interest, an advert can attract a potential customer.
Very often, the next thing that person does is visit your website. That makes the website part of the campaign whether you planned it that way or not.
If someone clicks through and finds an outdated page, an unclear offer or no obvious next step, some of the work you did getting them there may have been wasted. But when your website and marketing are managed together, things become much more useful.
A campaign can have its own landing page. A question from a customer can become a blog post. That blog can generate several social posts. Successful content can be expanded. Underperforming pages can be improved. New opportunities can be acted on quickly.
The website stops being a separate project and becomes part of the marketing process.
It also gives you something marketing desperately needs: somewhere you control
Social media platforms are useful, but they belong to somebody else. Over time algorithms change, reach varies, and features you used get removed, rationed or pushed behind paywalls.
Your website is different. It’s your space. It gives your business somewhere to develop its message, publish useful information, demonstrate expertise, capture enquiries and build an audience without depending entirely on a third-party platform.
That makes it one of the most useful marketing assets a small business owns. It makes sense to keep investing in it.
More than just a “project”
To make the most of this important asset, the question shouldn’t be:
“When do we need another website?”
A better question is:
“What could our website be doing for the business next?”
Maybe you need to generate more enquiries for a particular service. Maybe you’re launching something new. Maybe your strongest work isn’t represented properly. Maybe you have knowledge that would make useful content. Maybe people are reaching the website but not taking the next step. Maybe your marketing simply needs somewhere better to send them.
Those are marketing questions, not website-project questions. And that’s exactly how we think about websites at DigitalArena.
Ongoing website management puts your website to work
DigitalArena builds websites, but that's not all we do. Our job doesn’t have to end when a website goes live.
We can help keep your website moving with ongoing updates, landing pages, content, optimisation, campaign support and practical marketing activity built around what your business needs next.
Think of us less as the people you call when you need another website. Think of us as part of the marketing team that keeps the one you have working harder.
What could your website be doing for your business next?
TLDR
Your website should be an active part of your marketing—supporting campaigns, promoting new services, publishing useful content, showcasing your best work and helping turn visitors into enquiries. Your business keeps changing, so your website should change with it. With regular updates, optimisation and new content, it becomes less of a finished project and more of a member of your marketing team.
DIY, DWY or DFY?
At DigitalArena we want you to succeed online, and this can be achieved in several ways.
- DIY: You can Do It Yourself, as many small businesses and startups try to do at the beginning while they get going.
- DWY: We can Do it With You, by providing support, instructions, brand logo design, in areas your business needs help with, while you carry out the majority of the activity yourself.
- DFY: Or, we can Do it For You as a full service, offering as many or as few of our areas of expertise as you like on retainer or project by project.
To find out more, please call us on 01530 452276 or email support@digitalarena.co.uk.
