Every year at this time it’s customary to look back on the previous year and examine things you could be doing better, and this should include your station website. Here are eight website resolutions that we think are worth considering.

1) Devote More Resources to Your Station Website: The importance of your station website across all departments should be equal to the importance of programming your radio station. Your website should entertain and generate its own revenue. It won’t do that if it’s not being consistently maintained.

2) Add New/Different Content: While it’s great to have a familiar website that your audience knows what they can expect, it’s also good to expand your offerings each year. Take a look at your market and find areas that are not being addressed online. This could be high school sports news, garage sales, restaurant reviews, local rodeos, racing schedule, and so on. Every market is different. Your station website has unlimited potential for new feature content and that means new opportunities for sponsorships.

3) Try a Different Color/Layout: As with content, the same thing year after year can become mundane and complacent. Try adding a subtle design change to your website. This can be a font or layout change that complements your existing brand. Smaller tweaks to your website design made gradually over time can be better than a complete makeover for some visitors because they don’t have to re-learn your website from scratch.

4) Examine Your Stats and Adjust Accordingly: Take a look back at your website analytics from last year and use that as a base for improvement moving forward. See what content worked best. Try beating your monthly numbers from last year by adding more of what worked during that month, or overall.

5) Be More Social: We advocate that all station members should actively participate in the station’s social media channels. Link back to the website as much as possible and engage listeners when appropriate.  Research and invest in a plugin or service that allows you to auto-post to your social media channels on a consistent basis so that new content has a higher chance of being seen in follower feeds.  Identify meaningful, measurable goals for your social media campaign, and plan for how to achieve your goals.

6) Build a Local Photo Library: Never grab something from an online search. We suggest that every station capture important images around your town and state like a local police car, police lights, fire truck/station, state flag, courthouse, intersections, street names, etc.

Inventory these so that they can be found and posted easily when news stories break. Don’t wait until you need them. Once they are in your website media library, use them again and again without uploading the same image more than once.

7) Write a Blog That Targets Advertisers: We’ve had several clients reach out to us to handle their station website simply because they found the free information we’ve posted in our blog. We want stations to feel comfortable in our knowledge. When you offer free insight to your clients, no matter where they choose to buy, you instill trust in them.  You have now become the expert they need.

8) Take Inventory of Your Online Assets: Inventory all of your domains, websites, review site entries, social media pages, and anything else with a URL or a login. Include usernames and passwords so that you know what’s out there and how to get to it.

We hope you have a wonderful and prosperous new year online. If you’re looking into a new website experience for your station, please reach out to us.