UPDATE YOUR WEBSITES!

As the United States and the world economically continue to act like a sick patient (recovering, relapsing, rinse and repeat....), and with all the drama of the Great Recession, it's easy to forget the previous economic crash in 2000 from the Dot Com Bubble bursting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

I was thinking about the early days of the internet and how from 1995-2000 how much businesses constantly evolved and updated their websites. I have also been spending a lot of time on over 10 major airline sites, and the most consistent thing I realized about the airline websites is that none of them have changed in over 5 years. Now, almost every corporation has settled on their website design and they almost never change. And I think that's a bad business decision.

As a business in the 21st century your website should be update yearly with the latest web enhancements to make your business stand out. Consumers directly relate to your company and your brand online. It's their own personal experience with your business. What are you saying to consumers if you don't update your website for 5 or 10 years? What would you think as a consumer if you walked into a retail store and it hadn't been changed, updated or dusted in 5 or 10 years? You'd walk out.

And the airline industry is not alone in this. Most companies are not updating their websites yearly. At Warner Bros. International Television we update our business to business website every year for the LA Screenings. For some of our clients, this is the only time of year that they interact with our website. And each time they do, we want them to see that as a company, we are as new and fresh as the programming we are selling them each TV season.

On the internet, even Google is getting a little too comfortable with itself. Microsoft is building a smarter search home page than Google's. Google has recently made some improvements to its search, but there's much more it can do to stay easy, but be updated in consumers' mind.