Keeping your website in trim

There’s a great anecdote, told by the world’s most famous cockney, Michael Cain, about one of his many wild nights out on the town during the heady 1960s nights in ‘Swinging London’. The revelling crowd included one Vidal Sassoon, then known as one of London’s most expensive hairdressers, and a big favourite with the hippest stars.

Apparently, at some point during the early hours, Mr Cain leaned over and told Sassoon, “Listen, mate, you might be charging £1,000 for a haircut, but you’re never going to be really rich unless you figure out a way to make money while you’re asleep.”

It turned out to be very good advice. Vidal Sassoon launched his now world-famous product range, and currently has a net value estimated to be over £200 million.

What has this got to do with your website?

More than you might think. If your website functions primarily as a product-based, e-commerce platform, it’s probably already “Doing a Sassoon” for you every time it logs an order. In that case, you’re probably already working with Excalibur Digital to keep everything in your site’s back office running like clockwork and you’re taking full advantage of what the latest developments in SaaS technology can offer in areas like invoice automation.

But what if your business is more service-based, maybe depending on smart SEO to pull in potential clients and give them a good impression, hopefully driving them to some further action?

This is where “dwell-time” is critical. For most website landing pages, you have something between 30 seconds and 2 minutes to make that critical impression and instigate that call to action. You can very quickly lose over 30 seconds on badly designed menus, unnecessary dynamic graphics and a host of other common but largely ineffective gimmicks. We’ve all been there – and left in a hurry.

So, if you’re looking for that elusive peaceful night’s sleep, knowing that your website is working hard for you, maybe across other time zones, filling your inbox with quality enquiries for you to enjoy with your morning coffee, get some expert minds working on that homepage design – as sharp as Vidal Sassoon’s scissors, and Michael Caine’s wit.