Orca Bay re-launched their Web site this week – a beautiful, contemporary design chock full of up-to-date information that might leave you feeling like your own Web site is populated with black and white clip-art and news articles about the 2004 stone crab season. Don’t despair! You don’t need to spend a million dollars on a new Web site to stay in the game.
First things first, spend some quality time on your own Web site simply making sure everything’s working. Broken links, images that don’t load or other technical issues can be easily fixed – but only if you know there’s a problem to begin with.
Check for time sensitive information. Are you promoting events that already happened? Running a special on King Crab from the 2008 holiday season? If you don’t have time to post news articles every day or to commit to a weekly update of your newsletter or market report – leave the date off completely. Web sites and seafood have something in common – freshness sells!
Set aside some time each week specifically designated to your Web site. Update content, change features, post some new photographs, or clean up your calendar. Be really honest with what you’re capable of maintaining. Blogging, weekly newsletters, social media obligations – before you know it these things can take over your life! If you can’t keep up, take it down – an old, outdated news story is worse than no news story.
Once you feel confident about how your Web site functions, take a minute to make sure people can actually find you. Pop your company name in a search engine – what comes up? If it’s hard to find your Web site, you might want to talk to your hosting company about search engine optimization.
Hopefully this will help you temporarily mitigate any Web site envy you might be feeling. What seafood-centric websites out there do you really love because of how they look, how they operate, or because of the quality of the content? Link us up to your favorites!
