Congratulations! You have a shiny, brand-new dog training website. Just like getting a new puppy, finally getting the website you’ve always wanted feels like standing at the threshold of Big Things to Come. 

All the potential, the hope, the dreams. Having a dog training website gives you real opportunities to seriously promote your business, grow your audience and achieve your financial goals.

Oiling the gears

Unfortunately, websites aren’t something you can set and forget. To keep them working properly they need a bit of regular TLC to keep everything ticking along nicely. At the very least you need to be doing ongoing small updates and checks to keep your site working well. Here’s a list of monthly maintenance tasks to keep your site up and running smoothly:

1. Update regularly-changing details like training class schedule, private lesson availability, etc.
2. Check your contact form is still working like it should. (You’d be amazed at how much business is lost through broken contact forms!)
3. Backup your site
4. Run any tech updates to avoid security vulnerabilities

But there’s something else you need to know… Even if you give them regular TLC, dog training websites don’t last forever. I’m sorry, but it’s true. There will come a time in the future when you’ll need to redo your site. A dog is for life — a website isn’t. 

Lifespan of a dog training website

Maybe it’s better to think of a website as having a short life expectancy rather than needing a trade-in. A trade-in sounds so callous! However, the reality is, even the best built site won’t be cutting the mustard after a few years. How long do you have before you need to say a sad farewell? Somewhere between three to five years in most cases.

Let’s take a look at why you’ll be waving goodbye sometime down the road…

Technology updates

You’d have to be living on a desert island, with no internet, to not realize that technology is changing faster than a sleeping dog can go from comatose to Cujo when the doorbell rings.

So, what do I mean by outdated tech?

Well, for starters, Google is always updating which technical factors they consider for ranking and SEO. This shifts enough that after three to five years you’ll need to rebuild using the latest tech if you want your site to still rank on search. 

A good example is how for the longest time Google didn’t require an SSL certificate. Because they weren’t needed, people didn’t bother installing them on their websites. Now, Google does require an up-to-date SSL certificate — and refuses to display your site if it doesn’t have one. 

Then there’s the fact that technology just becomes outdated. Browsers update how they read the code on your site; different types of code become non-functional, and new options become available. Web standards change! These types of things can mean your site becomes less functional, or just less intuitive, as new functionality becomes commonplace.

This often means a new site can do things your current site can’t. Things that used to be hard to do become easy, new things become possible. Added functionality may mean you can simplify and further automate your work after a website rebuild. And who doesn’t want a site that makes their work easier?

The human element

We also have to consider how human behavior changes over time, and keeps in step with changes in technology. 

For example, there’s been an growing shift of people moving toward using their phones and mobile devices more, even for things that they used to prefer a laptop or desktop for. As Google gives preferential treatment to factors like these, we see new technology being developed to improve those aspects. What people want and consider cutting-edge today might be old hat tomorrow!

And finally, your website designer may have new skills — just like you, they’re always looking to level up (at least we are!) and they may be able to rework your site to improve its results and conversion rate.

Content relevancy

Tech isn’t the only thing that becomes outdated over time. At the bare minimum, you and your dogs will probably look different than you did three to five years ago! So your pictures will likely need to be updated, especially if you haven’t been slowly changing them out in the interim.

But content relevancy goes deeper than just your out-of-date images. 

Over several years your business will almost certainly evolve and grow — your service offerings may change, your bio certainly will, and likely other things about your process or client-facing approaches will as well. 

This means you need to periodically rework the CONTENT on the site, reviewing it in detail and overhauling things as needed at least every three years… with smaller reviews on a yearly basis in addition to your monthly maintenance.

To make the job of revamping your site manageable, take the time to do an annual content overhaul. Use the checklist below to assess what needs updating and how.

Yearly content review checklist:

• Home page
  • Is it still focused on the right things? 

• About page 
  • Are your bio details correct? 
  • Does anything that mentions numbers need updating? 
  • Are your credentials still valid?

• Info about your dogs 
  • Is it still up to date?

• Photos 
  • Are they still the best you have available? 
  • Are they accurate and “recent enough”?

• Is all your tech still doing its job?

Businesses change

As your business grows and evolves, you may find you need some bigger, more structural changes. Poor site or page structure leads to lower conversion rates. When prospective clients can’t find what they’re looking for, or can’t make sense of the information provided, they leave. Fast. No-one has time for “huhh?” moments these days.

To avoid would-be clients bailing before getting to your contact page, think about how your website content may no longer be working in sync with your business. 

Consider these content changes as your business shifts:

• Does your site still reflect your ideal client?
• Have you changed the services you offer — and does your site clearly show them?
• Do you still use the same processes for how you work?
• Have you automated some steps that used to be manual?
• Are you still using the same pricing structure?

You may need to add new pages. Or restructure your current pages to include more text and remove old information. Whatever you do, you’ll need to ensure your customer’s path from “home” to “contact” is still clear and easy. This is especially true if you’ve added completely new pages.

Don’t panic!

Not all sites will need a major overhaul every year (thankfully!). Some sites may just need a light facelift — a visual update to look modern and relevant, with some minor on-page reorganization to make your content flow well and keep the pages working properly for you.

But some sites may need a bit more of an update. If you’ve had major changes in your service offering or your marketing, it makes sense to create new pages or add new functionality to reflect those changes.

And eventually, some sites will need a complete rebuild. Even if your current site is still — kind of — managing to do its job, you may be best served by starting from scratch and choosing to pull out only the bits that are still relevant.

If your site falls into the last category and you’re considering a complete redesign, get in touch. We’d love to chat.