Keeping viewers involved in your website is very important to most businesses.  The last thing you want your potential business to do is forget about you.  Having a calendar of events is a key component to increasing the number of contact points with this group of people.  Actually, this post doesn’t limit itself to just a calendar of events.  It encompasses any reoccurring communication that you plan to have on your website.  It can be tips and tricks, a newsletter, or just informative literature. 

There are two things to consider if you want to have a calendar of events on your website.  One, will it be possible to keep the events current and correct?  Two, will it be costly to maintain and will there be a positive ROI?

If the design and maintenance of a calendar of events is built correctly, it can greatly reduce the effort of keeping the events current.  However, if there is a place for upcoming events, and no events exist, viewers think the website is not current and question the validity of anything on it.  If you plan to have a calendar of events on your website, plan to make the investment in maintaining them.  If you don’t plan to commit the time to maintain it, don’t include it on your site to begin with.

Having a calendar of events on your website assumes that your viewers have the time and will remember to visit regularly for updates.  Although you will have people that do this, by and large, the bulk of viewers will return very infrequently, if ever.  To maximize the return on the time spent maintaining this content, have the option for your viewers to sign up to be notified by email.  By doing this, you will inform those visiting your website as well as those that have visited it before. 

Although email is a far more effective tool for disseminating reoccurring information at this time, RSS will be the next big thing to accomplish this.  RSS is a common format to deliver regularly changing information from a website.  RSS Readers come in all forms (websites, cell phones, iPhones, etc.).  RSS Readers can include any number of RSS feeds and display summary information with the option to open the detail.  It is used heavily on news sites and BLOGs.   For example,  I am a Columbus Blue Jackets fan.  I have the CBJ news feed in my RSS reader.  At my convenience, I can open the reader and see recent headlines related to the Jackets.  I also have RSS feeds for weather, local news, sports, and even the hockey schedule for my 9 year old son!  As feature rich as RSS is, it is still growing.  The number of non technology people using RSS is still way to low for me to recommend this as the only method of updating people about changing content.  It should definitely be integrated for those who do use it.

A lot of people ask me what hosting is.  The simple answer is that hosting is a place to put your website and email.  Most retailers don’t purchase a mall to open a store, they rent one storefront because it is much more cost effective, and they don’t need an entire mall.  The same concept applies websites.  Most people don’t purchase all the equipment and software to have a website.  They “host” it, meaning they rent space and share the costs with other people because they don’t need the power of dedicated equipment. 

This is the first of a number of posts dedicated to hosting.  Hosting is no different than anything else.  It is not black and white.  Hosting charges can range from $10 per year to more than $1,500 per month.  Hosting providers fall into one of three groups. There are organizations that provide extremely cost effective hosting services.  There are those that use technical concepts to try and dazzle your mind and explain why you should spend far more than you need to.  Lastly, there are those that help you choose the best technology for your specific situation so you have the lowest cost of ownership possible.  I fall in to the later of these buckets.  I have created some amazing tools so my clients can manage their own websites without having to get an IT degree to do so.  These tools also completely eliminate the need to purchase code editors and graphic editing packages. 

To get a complete understanding of how much our website content management tools can save you, both in software purchases and in website designer fees, contact us today for a free assessment.