A website is for life and not just for Christmas, unlike the content

“You’ll soon be able to visit us using the new tram service” the restaurant promises on its website. Yeah, good luck with that. The Edinburgh trams may be delayed but you could say that the directions showing how to get to the restaurant will be correct one day. Even a stopped watch is right twice a day.

The beauty of websites is that they’re so easy to update. The problem is that they seldom are because they rely on non-technical parts i.e. humans.

As we try and get all our work done by Friday it’s easy in the rush to upload festive content to forget how important it is to be ready to take it down again. Don’t wait until the twelfth night, or whenever you return in the New Year, to get rid of Christmas campaigns. Plan ahead. It’s easy to schedule updates whilst you take time off. Nothing is more depressing than coming back refreshed to stale campaigns. Do we really want reminders of Christmas opening hours and delivery deadlines when the world has moved on to fitness regimes and holiday bookings?

By their nature websites are never finished and content can always be published. Unlike print, but then the beauty of print is the print deadline.

In November I was pulling together ideas for the news section of a magazine due out in January. Ensuring that each item will be timely whilst future proofing requires insight and industry experience, in order to predict themes and issues. I had to nail my colours to the mast, and perhaps one or two pieces may be wide of the mark, but in the end it’s tomorrow’s chip paper. While getting online is faster and cheaper and the technology allows you to do business anywhere 24-hours a day, it also means your shop front to the world looks mighty silly if the content is out of date.

So remember a website is for life not just for Christmas, but the festive content should be. But what do you think?