If you work in logistics, your website should reflect your management skills. After all, how will clients trust your logistics expertise if you can’t even keep your website updated? If your website shows signs of poor management, potential clients will likely stay away – and rightly so.
It’s key to keep your logistics website well-maintained and functional. We’ll give you some pointers so that your site stays in top shape for clients now and in the future.
Long story short: keep your clients in the loop. You should always give your clients updates about any changes in operating hours, or service disruptions due to an emergency. This applies to your website too: if you’re doing planned maintenance or have updated your legal notice, inform users. You can easily do this by adding a 1-3 sentence update as a banner pop-up or directly to your homepage.
Visuals are everything. Refresh your website by changing your homepage photo on a monthly basis. That’s a minimum standard. Ideally, you would also update each main webpage with a new image or graphic element. Finding a nice royalty-free image for your website takes only a few minutes. You should also check out the competition and see what visuals they’re using. Perhaps a video intro could make a splash on your company homepage.
It’s amazing how many websites run broken links. In fact, a recent study of 135 Fortune websites concluded that 131 of them had at least one broken link. You should have a regular process in place for tracking down broken links. A simple way to do this is to run an automatic link scanner, or set a calendar alert for yourself. Whatever you decide, don’t skip it. Broken links – and other outdated elements – can make a negative impression on potential clients.
So you’ve made a change on your website – great! Now go open the site on your mobile and desktop using all major browsers. We live in a mobile world and it’s not enough for your website to look good on desktop. Be sure your changes also translate well to the mobile format. There are even tools online for previewing changes in all the main formats before publishing. Do it.
Keeping your logistics website updated goes beyond broken links. You should also be creating regular blog content both to attract new readers and to add to your website’s look and feel. At the same time, this content will enhance your homepage, since you can internally link new content for maximum impact.
Your website performance is another important part of maintenance. To make it easy, create a Google Analytics report with all the key metrics you want to track. You can set this to automatically send to your email every week or month, so that you have a glimpse into performance. If you’re seeing a slow load time or a higher bounce rate, you can diagnose the problem and update the webpage. By using these reports as a guide, you’ll resolve problems on your website with needing to do in-depth analysis.
Website management also involves security concerns. Don’t get left behind with your website security. You should have a regular security check-up on your website to update plugins, check for certificate validity and make sure no technology is outdated. If you’re not sure how to do this, talk to your tech team or contact Onsharp. In this way, you’ll prevent any security vulnerabilities from becoming major problems.
In the end, keeping your logistics website updated simply takes some organization… just like all those logistics issues you resolve on a daily basis. Good luck!