5 Important Tasks to 2012-ify Your Website

2012 is upon us, and before the year really gets underway, take some time and make sure your website is prepared. Here are 5 basic tasks you should perform to be ready.

1) Fix copyright at the bottom of your page

If your copyright notice still says 1998, you are sending the message that you’re either out of business, or just not very detail-oriented. You do not want a potential customer to think either of these things!

If you are comfortable using php, the following code will keep your site up-to-date every year. The following will output “© 2010 – 2012″ (or whatever the current year is):
©
<?php
$start_year = 2010;
if ($start_year == date("Y")) {
echo $start_year;
} else {
echo $start_year." - ".date("Y");
}
?>

2) Review your content for out of date information

Go through your pages to check for time sensitive references like “This year”, or “For the past 4 years”. Anything that dates your site (other than blog posts and press releases) should be changed to something vague, if possible.

3) Change your passwords

While NOT changing your passwords will not affect the impression you make on customers, it is a good policy for your web security. Take the new year as an opportunity to change and document all site passwords.

4) Check outbound links

If you are linking to news articles or other sites, click through each link to make sure it is still active. Sites sometimes do not employ be practices when changing URL structures with redirects and your outbound links can end up going to blank or outdated pages.

5) Make sure your products/services are up-to-date

Take some time to look through the different products and services you offer. Have you added anything in the past year? Are you no longer focusing on the same things as a business? Make sure these are up-to-date!

Your website is the online portal to your business. Spend some time on it and make sure that it makes the impression you want in the new year. If you have any questions or would like another set of eyes on your site, please contact us!