Far too many business owners regard website construction as merely a box-ticking exercise. So would your website pass an MOT?

A website designer is paid to assemble some case studies and key messages, create some attention-grabbing artwork and logos and package these into 10 beautifully designed webpages which are never to be tinkered with again.

If this is your approach to your website, then you may as well save your money.

A website should never be regarded as a one-off investment. Websites need to be fluid and flexible and evolve with their visitors.

A website is a lifelong commitment, not just a launching platform. It needs to constantly improve and reinvent in order to remain relevant to its audience and make their lives easier. It needs to be maintained.

Just like cars, websites need regular health checks. We book in for our MOT every year to ensure our vehicle is roadworthy and will get us from A to B. A website is no different and should be regularly tested to ensure it remains easy to navigate. So would your website pass an MOT?

Its internal links should flow effortlessly, there should be no technical glitches and – most importantly – content needs to be relevant to target audience.

The last point is one of the most important in terms of website management. You wouldn’t get in a car and expect to travel from A to B without fuel. Similarly, if you don’t feed your website relevant content how do you expect your potential customers to travel to your web domain?

Search engines reward websites which consistently update their pages by moving them higher up in search rankings. This helps potential customers find you and diverts quality traffic to your site. It also keeps regular visitors coming back to see what is new.

It’s not enough to upload new content every few months. If you want to give yourself the best opportunity of attracting new visitors then this needs to be a fortnightly or weekly task. People don’t want to read a newspaper over and over again because it’s old news. The same can be said for your website.

Aside from content, business owners shouldn’t ignore their web analytics. If you have data about what your customers are and aren’t looking at then start evaluating it.

Find out what article titles attracted the most interest and those that didn’t and base future strategies on this insight. When you make changes, track the response to give you an idea of how well it has been received.

A website is an interactive advert opening your products and services up to a global audience. The fundamental goal of every website is not just getting people through the door it’s also about closing the deal. If you neglect your website, then it will impact on sales.

If all this makes sense then your first port of call should be to arrange an independent review of your website to find out what it is you’re doing right and how you could do things better. Why not take up our free website video review as a starting point to discover what simple changes you can make to increase quality traffic to your website?