There are many ways to watch your website investment fail miserably. The number one reason for failure is not caring enough about your website. You should always keep in mind the reason why you purchased your website and how much it cost to create the website, including the time that you invested. Apathy for your website will always cause it to fail and and can lead to serious financial loss. If your business is based online, apathy can be the downfall of your business and your financial success. Once you have left your website to its own devices, and it has plummeted in the search engines, it can be extremely difficult and time consuming to fight your way back to the top. Keep in mind that at least 90% of online businesses fail in their first 120 days.

When a website fails, many people blame their website designers and claim that their existing content is great, so it must be the designer’s fault. The people that fall back on this type of blame do not fully understand how search engines work, and how important updates really are to their website. Essentially, they did not do the recommended research before they decided to spend the money to develop a website. When you purchase a website, you are making a financial investment that must be cared for properly. Before you launch your website, you should ensure that you take the time to fully understand what goes into managing and caring for this type of investment.

 
There are a lot of ways that you can show apathy for your website, even if you are contributing to it on a regular basis. Here are some of the most common reasons that websites fail which will help you to plan for your business’ future.

 
Failing to Update Regularly
Failing to update on a regular basis is a commonly overlooked step in owning a website. In order to ensure that your website remains secure and safe for your customers, it is important that you consult a web designer on a set schedule. Websites are built using a complicated codes, including html and css, among others. In most cases, the owner of the website cannot up date this code on their own, mostly due to the difficulty of learning these codes and staying up to date with current trends. By setting up a maintenance contract with your web designer, you can ensure that your website is properly maintained, updated and serviced.

Not only should your website code be updated regularly in order to draw search engine attention, updating your website ensures that it remains safe, secure, appealing and relevant to your customers. The world that people are currently focused on is the online, digital world. The concepts that drive website development, website design, and online marketing are changing at an extremely fast pace. Because of this, there are quite a few things that must be updated on a regular basis.

 
Marketing Approach
Unless you are familiar with the current marketing trends, your website can easily fall to the wayside. One of the factors in marketing is the way your website is constructed. On occasion, it is recommended that you rearrange your website to accommodate the changes that have been made to search engine demands.

People are beginning to expect easier to use navigation menus. If your website is difficult to navigate, your potential customers will leave before they get a chance to make a purchase, which can dramatically affect your revenue. Think about the financial loss you are taking if 50 potential customers leave your website, simply because your website is more difficult to navigate than your competitors.

 
Optimization for Current Browsers and their Updates
Web designers are able to optimize your website to ensure that it can be viewed in the most popular internet programs, or web browsers. They can also update the speed that your website loads to accommodate what people expect from an up to date website. A website that loads slowly will cause you to lose visitors and detour people from returning to your website.

 
Adding the Ability to Manage Your Own Website
By updating your website, your web designer can give you an easy to manage back end to your website. This will allow you to update your blog, add press releases and manage your new products easily and effectively. By adding the ability to manage your website, you can update your content more often and ensure that your website remains relevant in search engines.

 
Keeping the Cutting Edge Appearance
When you initially purchased your website, it had a cutting edge design, fabulous pictures and a stellar layout. However, if you purchased your website more than three years ago, the chances are high that your website is out of date. Newer website designs have a lot to offer you and your targeted market. If you fail to update, you will start losing customers at an extremely rapid rate.

How do customers know that your website is outdated? Today’s web users are becoming increasingly knowledgeable about the websites they use. If they see outdated images, outdated color schemes, and outdated content, they will automatically think that you have nothing new to offer them. This can be very detrimental to your business.

 
Bad Content
It does not matter how much content you contribute to your blog, if it is poorly written or generic, your website will become a flop overnight. Your content should be original, engaging, helpful to readers and that offer a solution to a problem they have. If you are not able to create quality content, you should take the time to hire a writer who is familiar with your topic and has a proven track record for providing quality content on topics that are similar to what you are looking for. Ensure that the writer you choose is able to provide regular content based on the schedule that you have outlined for your business.

To ensure that you are paying what content is worth, you should compare the quotes you get to industry standards. You can easily find this information online through various websites. While the content may cost more than you originally planned, keep in mind what the content is really worth to your website and how valuable quality content is to your site.

Other writing mistakes you can make are failing to provide keyword rich headlines, falling short on visual stimulation, poor grammar and misspelled words, failing to use a call-to-action, and not posting on a regular schedule.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways your website can be left in the dust. If you begin noticing fluctuations in your traffic, contact your web designer to determine whether your website’s design should be updated to bring in new traffic.