This article was written by Michelle Weger.
Ignorance may be bliss, but it can also cost you business.
One of my team members told us a story about her grandma, who was trying to visit one of her favourite stores on a recent holiday.
The store in question was about an hour away from where her grandma lived.
She wanted to make sure the store was open before she went shopping, so she did what anyone would do:
She checked the website.
The store’s site said the business was open, but guess what happened when she got there after an hour-long drive?
That’s right.
They were closed for the holiday.
Luckily for this store, my team member’s grandma still wanted to give them her business. The next time she went to the store, she mentioned it to the staff, only to be told one of the most frustrating things she could have heard:
“Oh, we know it’s wrong, but we don’t know how to update the hours or make changes on our website.”
How many customers would you lose if you had the wrong information on your website?
Instead of fixing the problem, this business left the incorrect hours on their website for potential future customers to see.
How many other people do you think saw those hours, showed up to shop at this store, and left in frustration when they realized it was closed?
Of those, how many do you think came back and told the staff about it?
How many of them will go somewhere else next time?
Keeping the information on your website updated should be common sense.
Some of your website visitors will go through your whole website and read every single thing.
But many of them are only there to find out a key piece of information:
- Your phone number
- Your email address
- Your business hours
- Your physical address, if applicable
Whether you run an ecommerce store or your website is information or service based, making sure that those details are up to date is incredibly important.
- 72% of local customers that search for your business online will visit your store
- For 88% of those people, that visit or phone call will be within 24 hours of their search
- And 70% of the customers visiting your store are doing so because of information they found online
Most people assume that the information found on your website is accurate. That means outdated information can cost you business and make people question your reputation.
Knowing how to update important information on your website is key.
Making changes to your hours, business information, or important policies should be something you can do quickly and easily.
You should also make a point of updating that information regularly.
For example, let’s say your business is closed or has reduced hours on Boxing Day. You have a couple of options to communicate that to your customers:
- You could have a “holiday hours” line along with your regular hours… but even if you have the same holiday hours every single time, you’re still going to get questions from customers. Holidays vary from province to province and country to country, so customers may wonder if a certain day counts as a holiday.
- You could list the hours for every single holiday on an “hours” page… but that’s not exactly user friendly. Plus, the more words on a page, the more likely a customer is to read something incorrectly.
- Or, sometime in November or December, you could add a line on your website that indicates whether or not you’re open on Boxing Day… and then in January, remove that information.
The last option has the added benefit of showing your customers that you are updating your website regularly, giving them more confidence in the accuracy of the information.
So how do you update information on your website?
It depends.
If you built your website yourself, you should be able to easily update the information on your website by following a tutorial provided by the platform you’re using.
If you didn’t build your website but you’re fairly tech-savvy, you can reach out to your website developer and ask them to show you how to change that information.
Note that some website developers may be hesitant to share this information. While there are certain things you should leave to the professionals, you should have access to your own website. If you don’t, it might be time to look into a new website developer.
If making edits on your own website makes you nervous or you don’t have the time to do it yourself, get in touch with your website developer and request they make the change for you.
And if you don’t have a website developer who can make those changes for you?
Well, the Book A Call button is right here.
