OK, so this is going to be a more technical blog post about the functionality of your website, and why you should always update it with the most current software and plugins. I know it’s something that’s a bit dry. And maybe not as palatable for all you beauty peeps out there. But I’ll try to make it as fun as possible — I promise!
In the last 20 years websites, like everything else in our techno world, have changed and evolved dramatically. If you remember any website from the 1990’s — ya, the Dark Ages of digital — they were all pretty much static, with very little moving parts. A website was your basic HTML, also known as Hypertext Markup Language: a standardized system for tagging text files to achieve font, colour, graphic, and hyperlink effects on the web. And believe it or not GIFs were super popular in the 90’s! No, Instagram didn’t invent those for stories… they just came back into fashion.
Your Website is Alive!
Twenty-five years ago, a website was basically a nice billboard you put up on the World Wide Web. But now, there are just so many bells and whistles to customise a website with unique features, functionalities and design that it’s rare they’re built from scratch by one sole computer coder. And we’ve gone waaaaay beyond the pretty box. Today, your website has to kick ass on desktop, tablet and smart phones. So imagine all the computer code that’s needed to power all this seamlessly… Like magic!
Although it may seem purely mathematical and mechanical, the internet is truly a living thing. Websites now heavily interact with each other and, even more important, portals like Google, Bing Yahoo, Baidu (the Chinese Google), etc. are paying close attention to what’s happening on your website, ranking it based on how well it plays with others and the amount of attention it’s getting from humans searching the Internet. Not to mention a well-designed and maintained website helps your excellent SEO.
A web designer usually buys specific parts, sections and functionalities from specialty companies and adds them to a chosen layout, usually designed by another third party. Some examples? The link to Google maps on your website so your clients can easily find you, not to mention the text that appears in another language if you happen to publish a website for an international audience. Or if you’re based in Quebec…
These add-ons to the straightforward content must all be implemented in special sub-sections of the website that require coding, or plug-ins. And because there are so many of these moving parts, you have to make sure you – or the agency that’s managing your website – update it regularly so that it offers a flawless experience for your clients on desktop and mobile. Nothing worse than a 404 error (“page not fount”) popping up randomly, or a page that is no longer responsive.
So, when you see an agency charging a yearly fee for website management, it usually means someone is regularly updating all the moving parts of your website to make sure every section is working optimally to avoid any glitches.
After all, you wouldn’t expect a client to walk into a brick-and-mortar shop that looks messy, and disorganised. Why would it be any different on the Internet? First impressions count everywhere!