Marketing Monday: Website Lifespan, Stepping Up Security, SES

Welcome to Marketing Monday – a short series of practical tips on what’s working now in SEO, Google Ads and website performance.

Here’s what’s in this issue:

• How long should a website last?
• Stepping up WordPress security
• Client highlight: Southern Electronic Services

How long should a website last?

A website is one of the most important marketing assets of a business.

It’s one of the first opportunities that a prospect has to learn more about what the business has to offer.

Have you ever considered what the lifespan of your website is before it needs to be refreshed to be effective?

There’s no definitive answer to the question, as the lifespan of a website will depend on the industry, emerging technologies, and the level of competition the business has.

Design trends tend to go in cycles online, with new ideas and technology appearing rapidly.

These give new opportunities for business owners and marketing teams to leverage on their website.

A simple example of change over the years is in the hospitality industry.

The first hotel websites didn’t have any opportunity for a user to search for availability or to make a booking online.

Over the years, and with new technology, this functionality became available. It improved the experience for customers and allowed hotels to make more revenue.

Your customers are savvy.

Digital changes have led to a world where people have limited patience when they’re browsing online.

They want to find information quickly, skipping over websites that are slow or that don’t immediately feel trustworthy.

This is as true for B2B as it is for B2C.

As your prospects are researching your industry to find solutions for their needs, it leads to first impressions counting more than ever.

The first few moments that someone spends on your website are crucial to winning them over.

Your website needs to be more compelling than your direct competitors.

While there’s no definitive answer, I can give you a reasonable rule of thumb for the lifespan of the average website.

The average website has a lifespan of around three to five years.

This rule of thumb considers design changes, new products or services, companies that pivot their offering and even those that rebrand entirely.

With each major change that your business makes, it’s worth taking a moment to look at your existing website and ensure that it is still meeting your goals.

You can refer to your sales data, look at website analytics and take a moment to compare your website to your competition.

At some point during your website’s lifecycle, it will be necessary to make some changes.

This can be as simple as updating page headings and photos of your team, right up to a full website redesign to take advantage of new technology or opportunities.

Your website is an important investment and a great marketing and sales asset.

Keeping it up-to-date and refreshing it when needed helps your business to appeal to those looking to do business with you.

An up-to-date website, in turn, brings more leads, more sales and more growth.

If you’d like to talk more about when to refresh your website or to review your existing site, tell us about what you have in mind. We’d love to chat and see how we can help.

Stepping up WordPress security

The unfortunate truth is that anything on the internet is vulnerable to attack.

From our smartphones to websites, even smart fridges are never completely safe from being the targets of cybercrime.

Our commitment to WordPress security for our clients means we must continuously evolve our security practices to stay ahead of potential attacks and keep our clients’ websites safe.

As part of that commitment, we’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Malcare, one of the leading providers of WordPress security for high-performance websites.

This enhances our existing multi-layered approach to website security to include:

• Website firewall with WordPress-specific rules to block bad traffic trying to find and exploit weaknesses
• Malware scanner to automatically detect, clean and harden your website defences
• Blocking bots and brute force attacks to save your website resources.

If your website is already on a WordPress support plan with us, you don’t need to take any action — your plan has been automatically upgraded to include these security enhancements.

Client Highlight: Southern Electronic Services

Southern Electronic Services (SES), a trusted manufacturer of custom power transformers, chokes, and wound components, wanted to expand but felt their website and digital marketing were limiting their growth.

We partnered with SES to develop a digital strategy aimed at attracting and converting more ideal clients. By leveraging targeted SEO and Google Ads campaigns, we helped drive the right traffic to their website.

The results have exceeded SES’s expectations, enabling them to win larger contracts and successfully compete with bigger players in their industry.

Read the case study

View the SES website

That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading.

Do you have a question about optimising your website? Contact us to let us know, and we’ll answer it in a future post, and if you liked this content, register here to receive Marketing Monday directly to your email!