Here’s a fair question: How many times since you’ve designed your
website’s content, graphics, look since you’ve gone live? Twice? Once?
Or not at all? Well, if you’re among the hundreds of other website businesses,
it turns out that many are still hosting first-generation sites that went up.
If that’s the case, you may be losing out on literally thousands of potential
customers because your website is simply outdated. Look at it from this perspective:
Someone clicks onto your website in regards to an upcoming seminar you are promoting,
only to find out that the seminar was hosted in the year 2002 and you never bothered
to take it down. Huh? That’s a big no-no.

Internet-savvy businesses are honing in on the fact that there are many more
internet users that are much more educated, so by changing their websites to
meet the needs of their current customers and to create new ones is the only
way to stay one step ahead of their competitors. A website facelift can be a
good way to bring new life into an existing website and retain users interests.

Getting right to the point, here are 10 tips to get your site modernized quickly
without costing you a bundle.

• Get Stylish!
  Revise your website’s color palette and overall look. Be in tune with today’s new colors and looks for your website. You will attract more visitors that way. Do away with the colors that were recommended when websites first came out (purple, royal blue and bright yellow). Get creative and make your site pleasing to the eye.
• A Solid Back-End Database.
  Use your site as a marketing tool and capture all kinds of data to help you
  determine where your traffic is coming from; which search engines or which
  pages they’re entering from. If you don’t have a way to define
  your tracking methods and develop a sound navigation structure around the
  data you receive, you will lose visitors quickly. Be smart and implement a
  metric tracking database to get you started on the right foot.
• Give Out Incentives.
  Your email programs should offer incentives for visitors to register or give you their e-mail addresses. Only offer incentives to your targeted market and when you receive email addresses in return, you then can set up effective email campaigns and send out newsletters for your recipients to view.
• All About Speed.
  Fancy graphics and animations were once believed to be the way to set up your website’s main page, but now it’s considered an obstacle. Keep things simple and allow all of your pages to download quickly or you will have visitors departing before they really get to know you.
• Convenience and Control for Visitors.
  Allow your guest to have the capability to do everything from your site without
  actually picking up the phone to call you. For instance, you run a Spa offering
  various services and allow your customers to book appointments for pedicures,
  manicures, massages or facials right from the computer and they can receive
  confirmations of times and dates of their appointments that they booked. The
  more you make your services very convenient for your customers, the more return and new customers you will gain.
• Reward Your Customers!
  Treat your best customers with perks and discounts for repeat purchases or referrals they provided to others about your business. That will get you praises and it’s an effective viral marketing tactic as well.
• Don’t Forget the Search Engines.
  Your old homepage may not be working well within all of the search engines
  because of the graphics or the text placed within it. Make sure that you design
  your website with the search engines in mind to get the site effectively optimized. You can’t get anywhere without those search engines indexing your site.
  This should be your most important page and make it compatible to the major
  search engines for optimization purposes.
• Navigation and Links.
  Make sure that you improve your navigation abilities and that all the links are functioning the way they should be. What may have worked 10 years ago may not be the best effective method today. With all the advanced technology and improvements being made, try to stay within the newest trends and methods in navigation for your customers. If your site isn’t easy to move around in, it’s a good sign that it needs updating.
• Update Your Own Site.
  Instead of tracking down your web designer for every change or modification you want to make on your website, make it easy for you to update your own site at your own convenience. Invest in a good content management system and make most of your own updates if you’re serious about generating revenue online through your website.
• Marketing Trends Change.
  You need to be able to adapt to the times and in the Internet world, it changes very rapidly and drastically at times. Find out through colleagues and website designers what are the hottest things for websites to entail for successful viewing and generating traffic. Make your online presence a priority and don’t get lazy. Keep your website in sync with the times and keep moving ahead by improving your website all the time.

In closing, for your Internet presence to be a success, you need a combination
of new visitors and repeat visitors. Think of it in this way: Do you still have
the same hairstyle today as you did 5 years ago? The answer to that question
is (I hope), no. Repeat visitors can be discouraged very easily if they keep
seeing the same old thing on your site. And those repeat visitors will be the
first ones to tell your potential visitors not to bother wasting their time
going to your site. Don’t let that be you.