Now that Labor Day has passed us by, many of us will be reviewing our books, taking note of our successes thus far, maybe adjusting our plans to meet our 2007 Fiscal Year goals, and preparing our website budget for 2008.

Here’s a list of items to take a look at and include in your website budget.

• General maintenance items like:
  • Updating the copyright date on all pages
  • New/retired employees on your staff page
  • Updates to your Seminars, Workshops, and Events pages
  • Update contact information if you moved during the year
  • Testing and updating the links that you provide in your Resource/Links page
  • Updating the Sample Newsletter. The sample newsletter should be dated within the last quarter.
  • Updating Job Opportunities
  • Removing the “NEW” label next to content that has been posted for two months or longer
  • Updating your bio and company history. Oftentimes, these contain phrases like “15 years experience” and “established 10 years ago”.
• Upgrading applications that you may use. For example, Ad Management, eCommerce (shopping cart/catalogue), and Blog software packages. It is a good idea to stay current with these packages -and- it is less expensive to keep current with the newer versions than it is to take a leap from an older version. (See my previous post, Web News and Blogs Upgraded. Had I stayed current, it would have taken a lot less time.)

I frequently talk to my clients about “energy” when I am asking them to define their target audience… and, frequently, I’m not 100% sure that they understand to what I am referring. So, I was delighted to find this blog post this morning that talks about the “energy” of a website…

The post, entitled “Flywheels, Kinetic Energy, and Friction”, is by Nick Usborne. Mr. Usborne uses a simple and familiar visual (the flywheel (see the Wikipedia definition)) to explain why less is more when you are serious about getting prospects to take action at your website.

In short, the flywheel is propelled by energy and stopped by friction, and, (under normal circumstances) experiences diminished energy before coming to a complete stop.

Equating that to your website:

• The text and design (graphics and photos) produces the energy.
• The process you define for completing the “call to action” produces the friction, and,
• The degree of difficulty of that process produces the diminished energy.

Mr. Usborne suggests that one can significantly increase the likelihood that prospects will complete the call to action by keeping the energy high and the friction low.

He cites two tests as evidence of success for the less is more strategy. Both tests were done at subscription service websites. At one website, the subscription process was reduced from 9 pages to 3, and at the other, the information requested was minimalized. The results? The services saw an increase of 293% and 500%, respectively. That is, 293% and 500% more prospects completed the call to action (subscribe) than prior to the changes.

To Do:

1. Maximize the energy and build anticipation and excitement for the prospect by using text, graphics, and bonus incentives for completing your call to action.
2. Minimize the friction by keeping the process you define for completing the call to action as easy as possible. The fewer hurdles you present, the less diminished committment to completing the call to action a prospect experiences.

Read the full blog post at the “A List Apart” blog.

After you have checked your domain name, take a look at these items on your Web site. Are they as up to date as they can be?

• Are all the Links working?
• Has the Copyright Date been updated? What about the Page Last Updated date at the bottom of your pages?
• Have you added your Q1 Workshops, Seminars and Events? Removed the Q4 events?
• What’s the date on the latest Newsletter?
• Do Job Postings need to removed/added?
• Does the label “NEW” – need to be removed from an item that was posted 4 months ago?
• Is the list of Associates and Affiliations current?
• Does your bio say “20 years experience”? Does that need to change to over 20 years?

It is the end of the year. Many of us are writing our 2006 Marketing Plans and updating our Business Plans. We know that there must be some activities to do with regard to our Web sites – but – what?

First and foremost, protect your domain name.

1. Go to www.networksolutions.com
2. Click on the WHOIS link on the bottom left of the screen.
3. Enter your domain name in the “enter a search term” box.
4. The WHOIS Search Results page will display.
5. Scroll down to see the information on file for your company. It is very important that all of the contact information be correct. Check especially, e-mail addresses and street addresses.

If the information is correct, great, you can focus on other aspects of your Web site maintenance. If the information is incorrect, fix it as soon as you are able. If you do not have the resources to fix it, send me an e-mail with the correct information and I will update the information.