Visitors treat small dated details as evidence that nobody is minding the business: last year's copyright line, a news page that stopped in 2016, an expired offer. A twenty-minute sweep each January and July catches them.

The year at the bottom of the page

It is the first working day of 2019, and on a great many small business websites the line at the bottom of every page still says 2018.

Nobody decided that. The year was typed into the footer when the site was built or last edited, and it stays there until somebody changes it by hand.

It is rarely alone. The newest item on the news page is from 2016, a banner still offers a Christmas discount, and the contact page lists last summer's hours.

Each detail is small. Together they tell visitors something the business never meant to say.

What a visitor concludes

A first-time visitor cannot inspect your work or see inside your premises. They have the page in front of them, so they judge what they can.

What they can judge is whether anybody is looking after it, and a stale date is one of the few things a stranger can check at a glance.

The conclusion is rarely conscious. Nobody decides the work will be worse because a footer says 2018. They wonder, briefly, whether the business is still trading and whether the form reaches anyone.

That moment of doubt is enough to send some of them back to the search results, where the next business is one tap away.

The usual suspects

The second does the most damage. Every news item carries its own date, so a page that stops in 2016 tells visitors exactly how long it has been since anybody wrote anything.

The year itself is the least of it

The copyright line is the smallest of these, legally. In Canada, copyright exists as soon as the work is created, and a notice is optional.

Its real job now is as a signal: a current year suggests somebody has looked at the site recently.

Whoever maintains your site can make the year update itself, which is a single line in most themes and beats remembering every January.

But an automatic year is cosmetic. On a site whose news stopped in 2016, it simply makes the footer the only part that looks current.

News pages that stopped

A page called news creates an expectation the business then has to meet. Most small businesses publish in bursts: four items in the first year, one in the second, none since.

There are three honest fixes. Post something genuine a few times a year; take the page out of the main menu until you will; or turn it into lasting information that needs no dates.

What does not work is leaving it and hoping visitors do not click. The ones deciding whether to call you are exactly the ones who do.

Offers, hours and icons

An expired offer has a direct cost. A customer who sees the Christmas discount in January will reasonably ask for it, and either answer leaves somebody unhappy.

Hours drift the same way. Summer hours stay up into the winter, and the holiday closure notice is still at the top of the page after the doors reopen.

Social icons are the quietest of the lot. Each sends a visitor away from your site, and if the account last posted in 2015, it sends them to evidence that the business has gone quiet.

An icon for an account you do not use is worse than no icon. Remove it, or start using the account.

A worked example

A two-partner accounting practice in a suburban office building had a site built in 2014 and edited rarely since.

A year ago, its footer said 2015. The newest item on the news page reminded clients about the April 2016 filing deadline, and the Twitter icon led to an account with six posts.

The team page still showed a bookkeeper who had left. Nobody at the practice had noticed, because nobody there ever needed to read it.

It came to light when a caller asked, politely, whether the practice was still taking new clients. From the website, it had looked as though it might have closed.

The fix took a morning. The year was made automatic, the news page became a short guide to a first appointment, the team page was corrected and the icon removed.

Two dates went into the calendar for the next check.

Twice a year, twenty minutes

Nobody inside the business will spot any of this unprompted. You know your hours, so you never read them, and you see the home page often and the footer almost never.

So the check needs a date in the calendar. It takes an owner or manager about twenty minutes, and fixing what it finds is usually a short list for whoever maintains the site.

January catches the footer year, the holiday notices and anything promoted for Christmas. July catches summer hours, spring offers, and the news item that was going to be written in March.

Read it the way a stranger would, on a phone first: every page, every date, every icon.

The counter-case

Some sites have very little that can go stale.

A site with no news page, no offers and nothing dated has fewer places for time to show, and its check takes five minutes rather than twenty.

A business whose work comes almost entirely by referral loses less to a stale detail, because the visitor arrives already trusting whoever recommended you.

But the answer is never to strip every date from the site. A site with nothing current on it reads as empty rather than neglected, which is not much better.

Keep fewer dated things, and check the ones you keep twice a year.

The sweep

  1. Open the site on your phone first.
  2. Check the footer year and make it automatic.
  3. Read the newest date on every news or blog page.
  4. Remove expired offers and seasonal banners.
  5. Compare the posted hours with the sign on the door.
  6. Press every social icon and see where it lands.
  7. Book the next sweep for July.

Step seven is the one that makes the rest happen. A check that depends on somebody remembering happens once, in the January after a customer points something out.

The year in the footer is a small thing, and that is the point: it is the easiest evidence a visitor has that somebody is minding the business.

Frequently asked questions

Does the copyright year actually matter?

Legally, very little, since copyright exists automatically in Canada. As a signal it matters more, because a current year suggests somebody has looked at the site recently.

Should the footer year update automatically?

Yes. Whoever maintains your site can make it update itself with one line in most themes. On its own, though, it does not make a stale site look current.

What should I do with an old news page?

Post something genuine a few times a year, take the page out of the main menu until you will, or turn it into lasting information that needs no dates.

Why remove icons for unused social accounts?

Each icon sends visitors away from your site. If the account last posted years ago, it sends them straight to evidence that the business has gone quiet.

Why do owners never notice these details?

Because they already know the hours, the offers and the dates, so they never read them. Visitors know nothing, so they read everything, including the small print.

How often should the sweep happen?

Twice a year, in January and July. January catches the footer year and holiday notices; July catches summer hours and spring offers. Each check takes about twenty minutes.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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