The new year 2009 might be a tough year for many businesses but if you do it correctly, it can be a very successful year for you.

Before you start with new things, you should make sure that your current website is up-to-date. The following checklist will help you:

Step 1: Check your company information

Does your about page draw a current picture of your company? If you have a staff listing on your website, is it up-to-date?

Check these pages as well as the copyright notice and the privacy police of your website to make sure that your web pages don’t look outdated.

Step 2: Check your contact information

Does your website list your current phone and fax numbers? Are the mailing and email addresses listed on your website correct? You’ll lose customers if your contact information is outdated.

You should also check the email addresses that you use on your website. Are help@yourdomain.com, info@yourdomain.com, order@yourdomain.com, etc. redirected to the correct recipient? Send test email messages to all addresses that are listed on your website.

Many businesses have so strong spam filters that many legit customer email messages don’t reach them.

If you have contact forms on your website, make sure that they work and that they are easy to use. If someone doesn’t enter a correct email address in your contact form, does the error message make sense?

Step 3: Check your auto-responders

Do you send automated confirmation messages when someone sends you an email message? Does your shopping cart send email messages after an order?

Check the text of your automated messages to make sure that it says what you want to say and that is contains current information.

Step 4: Check the links on your website

The older your website is and the more pages your website has, the more likely it is that it contains some broken links. For that reason, you should regularly check the links on your website.

Step 5: Check if your web pages are ready for Google

If you want to get high rankings on Google, you must make sure that it’s easy for Google to parse your web pages. Can Google easily find all of your web pages? Do you target the right keywords on your web pages? Are all elements of your web pages optimized for Google? You can check this with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer.

The economic times are tough but it also depends on you whether 2009 will be a successful year for your website or not. If you do the right things, chances are that your website will help you to get more customers this year.

Source: Axandra.com

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