If you already have a website or you're thinking about making a serious investment in building a site you need to understand that it will grow to be the most important part of your companies image.  You need to stay on top of your site and makes sure it's not something that you'll do tomorrow, like updating products, articles, pictures, VIDEOS for email blasts to your already satisfied customers.

However, if you have a site and you're not updating regularly, then it might turn into a cobweb and that will run the people off.  So check the list below and see where you're at.

Before anything else, determine what it is you want your website to do for your business. Do you want to get more people to sign up for your monthly newsletter, download your recent white paper, generate more leads, create more revenue or even launch new products and services? Don’t let the details trip you up. While flashy graphics, 3D media, music, and design may be important, businesses with websites that work are thinking about the bigger questions.

Too many cooks in the kitchen

Your website is a real job.  It's a collaborative effort between marketing and advertising team and your dedicated webmaster (unless it's you) to keep your internet presence strong.  Assign one person, be it outsourced or internal, to make adjustments and  IT suggestions on the site.  If there are too many people in the process you wont get the consistency that you need to deliver the right info to the visitor.  A fragmented approach to web management is just that – fragmented, and it shows in the final product.

You're not updating your website

If you don't update your website then it will look like you might be out of business or maybe because it doesn't look like your updating you don't really care about what you're selling.  Keep putting new information on your site like you do your store shelves.  Update simple things like graphics and new color schemes or updated company blogs.  This shows that you're going to be just as present for your customer as you are to your site.

You don’t tell your visitors what to do

Make your visitor take action! “Sign up here”, “Click here”, “Download now”,” View our whitepaper”, “Subscribe to our newsletter”, “Contact us”, and “Buy now” should be part of your website’s vocabulary. Take a look at your site to see if anything’s missing.

If you use your website as a portal to engage the consumer to buy from you or get pertinent information about your company, then you need to treat it like a live sales executive.  If it's not working for you, you can't fire it.  You have to constantly make adjustments.

You don’t know anything about your visitors

If you really want to take your site seriously then you need to see who's checking you out.  Checking your web-stats with centralized web analytics and measurement software

 will help you out with visitor behavior patterns.  When did they come? How long did they stay? How many pages did they look at?  Did they make it to the page that has the most important information about your company?. 

You are not dedicated

You have to stay on top of the activity on your site.  Running your web stats daily will show you what kind of activity is happening on your site.  That way you can make adjustments to optimize the visitors experience and get them to the end game faster.

Your website is invisible

Even if you're maintaining your site by yourself, actively engage in search engine optimizations at least once a week.  There are many SEO programs out there, but you have to do it yourself,  follow some of these basic tips, you will stay in the game.

It’s too difficult to use

If you think that consumers today want to taking time out of their day to try to figure out what to do on your site; gone, bye-bye.  Make the navigation easy for the visitor.  Remember, they don't really care about you.  It's about what their trying to get from your site and it should be right there on the front page.

If any of the this is you, CALL YOUR WEBMASTER AND MAKE IT RIGHT!  If you don't your competitor is and taking cabbage from your plate (money form your pocket).