Understanding Bespoke WordPress Development

Bespoke WordPress development means creating custom themes and functions from scratch. It avoids generic plugins for tailored solutions. This ensures your website or app meets your business goals and needs perfectly.

Key Advantages of Bespoke Development

Enhanced Security
In 2022, 93.25% of WordPress vulnerabilities came from plugins. Themes caused 5.45% and core files 1.29%. Bespoke development cuts down on these risks by reducing plugin use. This strengthens your site’s security.

Optimized Performance
Plugins can slow sites down with extra code. Custom development keeps code lean, improving speed and user experience. This results in faster sites and happier users.

Tailored Functionality and Design
Generic themes and plugins may not fit your brand or needs. Bespoke development offers flexibility for unique designs and functions. This creates a distinctive online presence that stands out.

Scalability and Future-Proofing
As your business grows, your site must adapt. Bespoke solutions are designed to scale, ready for future changes. This makes adding new features easier without plugin limitations.

Improved SEO and User Experience
Custom-built sites are SEO-ready from the start. They have clean code and tailored SEO, improving visibility and user engagement. This leads to better search rankings and a more engaging site.

Cost-Effectiveness of Bespoke Development

Many think bespoke development is too expensive. But with our experience and proprietary solutions, we can create custom WordPress sites within budget. This ensures a high-quality, tailored product without breaking the bank.

Conclusion

Bespoke WordPress development maximizes the platform’s potential. It offers a secure, high-performance, and unique digital solution. Reducing plugin use enhances security and performance, positioning your business for long-term success in the digital world.

The post Bespoke WordPress Development: Unlocking Security, Performance, and Scalability Beyond Plugins appeared first on Terrostar Interactive Media.

The Significance of Mobile-First Design

Smartphones are now the primary means of accessing the internet. Thus, prioritizing mobile users in the design process is essential. A mobile-first approach makes websites and apps accessible, intuitive, and efficient on smaller screens. This leads to higher user engagement and satisfaction. By focusing on essential features and content for mobile users, designers can create streamlined interfaces that enhance usability across all devices.

Performance and User Experience

Performance greatly influences user experience. Mobile-first designs typically result in lighter web pages and apps, leading to faster loading times on mobile devices. This is crucial for retaining and engaging users, as slow-loading pages can lead to higher bounce rates. By optimizing performance from the outset, a mobile-first approach ensures users have a seamless and efficient experience, regardless of their device.

Benefits of Mobile-First Design

• Improved Accessibility: Designing for mobile devices ensures content is accessible to a broader audience, including those who mainly use smartphones for internet access.
• Enhanced Usability: Focusing on essential features and a simplified interface leads to a more intuitive user experience, reducing the learning curve for new users.
• Better SEO Performance: Search engines like Google prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their rankings, so a mobile-first design can improve visibility and attract more organic traffic.

Implementing Mobile-First Design

To effectively implement a mobile-first design strategy, consider the following best practices:

1. Prioritize Content: Identify and focus on the most critical content and features for mobile users, ensuring they are easily accessible and prominently displayed.
2. Simplify Navigation: Design intuitive navigation tailored for touch interactions, making it easy for users to find information without excessive scrolling or clicking.
3. Optimize Visuals: Use high-quality images and graphics optimized for mobile devices to enhance visual appeal without compromising performance.
4. Test Across Devices: Conduct thorough testing on various devices and screen sizes to ensure a consistent and responsive experience for all users.

By embracing a mobile-first design approach, businesses can create websites and apps that meet today’s mobile-centric users’ needs. This strategy leads to improved performance, higher user satisfaction, and a competitive edge in the digital marketplace.

The post Mobile-First Design: Enhancing User Experience and Performance for the Modern Web appeared first on Terrostar Interactive Media.

When you work with a small agency staffed by veterans, you’re getting decades of combined experience focused directly on your business. These aren’t junior employees learning on the job – they’re seasoned pros who’ve seen it all and know how to craft strategies that actually work for your specific situation. As we have found, these smaller shops tend to form closer relationships with their clients, really getting to know their business inside and out.

Yes, senior-level talent usually comes with higher hourly rates. But here’s the thing – experienced professionals often get the job done faster and better. Without layers of bureaucracy slowing things down, small agencies can make decisions quickly and pivot strategies on the fly when needed. Independent research backs this up, showing that streamlined teams can deliver results and adjust course much more rapidly than their larger counterparts.

While those higher hourly rates might make you wince at first, the total project cost often ends up lower with small agencies. Why? Experienced teams are better at scoping projects accurately from the start, which means fewer expensive revisions down the road. Plus, smaller agencies have lower overhead costs, so you’re not paying for expensive offices or layers of management you don’t need.

Ever dealt with a project where team members kept changing, forcing you to explain everything over and over? That’s less likely with a small agency, where you’ll work with the same core team throughout. This consistency means they truly understand your brand and goals, and with fewer people in the communication chain, messages don’t get lost in translation. This setup allows for much quicker adjustments to campaigns when needed.

Working with a U.S.-based agency means no language barriers or cultural misunderstandings to navigate. They understand the local market dynamics and cultural nuances that can make or break a campaign. National agencies typically have a deeper understanding of your specific market environment than larger firms juggling clients worldwide.

Of course, larger agencies have their place too. If you need a wide range of services under one roof or are planning major international campaigns, a bigger agency’s resources and global reach might make more sense. In some cases, larger firms often have more comprehensive resources and established processes for handling complex, large-scale marketing efforts.

While both types of agencies can deliver value, small senior-level agencies offer a sweet spot of expertise, efficiency, and personal attention that’s hard to beat. For many businesses, this combination leads to better results, faster delivery, and often lower overall costs. If you’re looking for a digital partner who can truly understand and deliver on your unique needs, a boutique agency might be your best bet.

The post Working with Digital Agencies: Why Small and Senior Might Be Better appeared first on Terrostar Interactive Media.

A lot of planning and deliberation goes into designing and developing a website. Months of meetings with different departments and the website agency to make sure the best product is developed for the company and its clients. But what about after the website launch? It’s important to keep the website fresh with consistent blog and article posting, press releases and news updates, regularly scheduled content audits, new product or service offerings, and anything else that will help educate your target audience. In order to keep up with everything that goes into website management, it’s important to have an easily accessible and editable back end on your website that allows for these updates without needing extensive HTML knowledge. This is achieved through an easy-to-use content management system (CMS), and why we choose to build our websites on the WordPress platform.

What is a CMS?

A content management system, CMS for short, is a software application that allows users to add to, remove from and edit the website without needing extensive coding knowledge. This platform houses all of the content, including copy, images, videos, graphics, and HTML coding written by the developer.

Two-Part Platform

A content management system consists of a front end and a back end. The front end is what the users interact with – the structure and style. Oracle describes the front end as “the part that brings HTML, CSS, and JavaScript together to deliver rich, interactive content that’s styled to match your company’s branding.” The back end is the platform that houses the content and is used to manage the website. When logged into the CMS, website admin can add, edit and remove images, graphics, videos, and pages, including the content on the pages. This combination of the front end and back end is what allows website admin to have control over the content without needing extensive coding knowledge.

And just because the website admin won’t need coding knowledge doesn’t mean there is no coding involved. The development team still needs to build out the website using HTML and CSS, which can be a lengthy process depending on the project. But once they have completed their buildout, website admin will be able to work in the CMS without requiring further coding.

Is it Time for an Upgrade?

If you are in charge of the website management at your company, ask yourself ‘is it time for an upgrade?’ How do you know? First of all, how old is the website? In our Planning for a Website Redesign blog article, we talk about the lifespan of a website. And that average timeframe is often shorter than most companies realize. According to HubSpot, the average lifespan of a website is 1.5 to 2.5 years, as design and technology are advancing at such a rapid pace. If your website is three years or older, it’s time to start planning for a full website redesign and development.

And secondly, is your current CMS hindering you from making the website updates you need to? Not all content management systems are created equally. While they should make it easier for website admin to manage the website, some platforms can be difficult to use. If that’s the case for you, it’s time to start advocating for a website redesign and a new content management system.

How to Choose a CMS

There are many content management systems to choose from, so determining which is best for your specific needs can be difficult. Our recommendation is to make a list of wants and needs for the new CMS you choose. This list should contain functionality like:

• Easy to add and remove pages without needing agency or development help
• Ability to add and remove images
• Publish blog articles
• Capability to embed video on necessary pages
• Tracking code capability globally on the website and per page
• Ability to add on to the website as the business grows
• Comprehensive security features

And then reach out to website development agencies to learn about the content management system they use and understand how that solution would fit into your wants and needs list.

Terrostar’s Choice

At Terrostar, we choose to build the majority of our client websites on WordPress. We have found it to be a great tool that allows clients to really own and manage their websites after launch. Next week our blog article will dive into more of these reasons behind our WordPress usage and how it could be a great fit for your team.

The post What is a CMS? appeared first on Terrostar Interactive Media.

Innovation is important for every business and the John Deere Classic is a prime example of a company using innovative solutions to solve problems and grow. Throughout our partnership, we’ve created the tournament’s first digital presence, allowing spectators and donors to easily find information about the tournament. And in more recent years, the online donation page has allowed the Birdies for Charity website to continue collecting donations when tournament capacity was limited. Listen to Communication and Special Events Manager Ashley share her experiences working with Terrostar and the importance of digital innovation.

Read Ashley’s Interview Below

The partnership between the John Deere Classic and Terrostar initially started in 2007. We did not have an online presence and so Terrostar provided that initial platform for us so people could find us a little bit easier.

When I started in 2015 we did a complete redesign of both the John Deere Classic website and the Birdies for Charity website so that we could edit our own content, and add photos, especially during tournament week when things change quickly. Even a lot of times from my phone when I’m out on the course and things like that. The content management system that Terrostar has behind our website has been really instrumental in keeping us up and running that week specifically.

For the Birdies for Charity website, the most valuable function especially over the last year has been our online donation page. We have not been able to do business as normal the last few years so that online donation page has been instrumental in making sure our donors can quickly and easily make donations to their favorite charities.

We really wanted our website to exude that same branding and feel that the tournament itself has so we turned to Terrostar to make sure that could happen and they’ve done a great job incorporating the John Deere branding and the Classic branding. Always keep the clients’ needs in the forefront of their minds as we work through our projects.

We love our partnership with Terrostar. We feel really fortunate to have a company like Terrostar who’s just right across the river, is easy to access, and very quick to answer our support calls as well. We feel it’s important to keep our business here in the Quad Cities so we’re thrilled that Terrostar has been a part of our history and continues to lead us in the right direction as we try to evolve our website on both the Birdies for Charity side and the John Deere Classic side.

The post Client Success Story: John Deere Classic appeared first on Terrostar Interactive Media.

A well-planned navigation structure is one of the most important features of a website. The navigation structure influences how users make their way through the website. You don’t want such an overwhelming navigation structure that website visitors immediately get frustrated on your site and go to a competitor.

Usability and customer experience are a high priority for us as we plan, design, and develop client websites. We know companies that provide superior customer experience (CX) are more likely to grow and maintain a loyal customer base. And we believe a major component of providing superior customer experience starts with the navigation. Before starting any design or development work, we put together a navigation outline, review it with the client, and get approval on the structure. We believe this sets up each project for success.

Informed Decisions

The pages in your main navigation should be the most important, searched-for pages on your website. Think about who your target audience(s) is and what they are searching for. A helpful exercise to determine your target audience(s) is creating user personas and mapping their path through your website with user journeys. These exercises will tell you who your target audience is and what they are trying to accomplish on your website.

Google Analytics is another great way to plan for your navigation pages. This data will tell you which pages get the most traffic on your website. The heatmaps show you where people are most likely to click on each page, telling you what your users find most interesting. The Behavior Flow helps you understand how users enter your site, and the path they take as they explore through the pages.

Responsive Framework

Nearly 70% of web traffic comes from mobile devices, so it’s important to have a website that functions well on mobile devices and iPads along with desktop computers. And that is easily achieved with a responsive website framework.

Smashing Magazine defines a responsive website as “the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images, and an intelligent use of CSS media queries. As the user switches from their laptop to iPad, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities.”

Less is More

We recommend keeping your main navigation simple, with no more than six pages included. You don’t want to overwhelm website visitors with unnecessary information. We understand there can be more information you’d like to share, so sometimes secondary navigation is needed. But we never go beyond secondary navigation, also called drop-down menus.

The ‘less is more’ phrase also applies to the way you label the navigation pages. It’s best to keep each main navigation page title to one to two words so it doesn’t appear cluttered. Instead of ‘About Us’ use ‘About’ and ‘Contact’ instead of ‘Contact Us.’ That will give your navigation more breathing room and your website users will still understand what the page is about.

Navigation Order

The order of pages in your main navigation is just as important as the pages you add to it. The pages should be shown in order of importance from left to right. In this blog article, web strategist Andy Crestodina said, “Put your most important items at the beginning of the navigation and the least important items in the middle. ‘Contact’ should be the last item on the list, put it at the far right in the top-level horizontal navigation, a standard location.” Since we read left to right, most website visitors will start at the left side of your main navigation, so you want the most important page in that spot.

Link the Logo

While your logo isn’t one of the pages in your main navigation, it is incredibly helpful for visitors as they browse your site. By linking your logo to your homepage, visitors always have access to their starting point in case they get lost or want to explore another area of your website.

Consistent Structure

Your navigation structure should be consistent and accessible across all pages of your website. The main navigation and secondary navigation should never change from page to page, and additional pages shouldn’t be linked only on certain pages. This makes usability very difficult and can lead to frustrated website visitors.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are critical for a well-organized navigation structure. If a website user does end up confused or lost on your website, a sitemap with links to all of the pages will help them find the information they are searching for. A sitemap will list pages in a clear, organized list in order of hierarchy and link to each respective page.

ADA Accessibility

It’s important to plan for and design a website and navigation structure that is ADA compliant. That means your website should be easy to navigate for visitors who have visual impairment or other disabilities. The pages in your navigation, and all copy on your website, should be easy to read and accessible by keyboard commands and text readers.

ADA compliance also plays a role in how search engines rank a website. A search engine will rank a website with ADA accessibility features in place higher than a website that isn’t ADA compliant.

Footer

While not part of the main navigation, the footer is another important area that will help website visitors navigate your website. The footer should include ‘quick-links’ to the most important pages but can be expanded to include more information like contact information (office address and phone number), social media links, newsletter signup form, and privacy policy.

Structured for Success

A well-organized navigation structure will set up the rest of your website project for success. Since the navigation structure will influence the layout and organization of the content, we recommend creating a navigation outline as the first step of a website redesign project. This will ensure the rest of the website is also created with a user driven mentality.

The post Website Navigation Best Practices appeared first on Terrostar Interactive Media.

Every company has a website. It’s a necessary tool to reach customers and provide them with information about products and services that will turn into well-informed purchases. This requires regular updates to the website content, including blogs and news articles, new products or services, and sales promotions. But one thing most companies overlook when making updates is the functionality. Is the website still functioning as it should? Is there a better way to conduct business on the website since it was initially created? According to Salesforce, 80% of consumers say the experiences they have with your company, including your website, are as important as the products or services you offer. So this isn’t an area you want to overlook.

What most companies don’t know is the average lifespan of a website, which is 1.5 to 2.5 years according to HubSpot. That might seem like a shocking age range to some people, but design and technology are advancing so rapidly that it’s important to redesign and develop every few years to stay competitive. If your website is three years or older, it’s time to start thinking about a full website redesign and development. And if that sounds like a daunting task, follow the steps below to plan a successful website redesign.

Where to Begin

A lot goes into a website redesign and development before sending out an RFP. And yes, we recommend engaging with an external agency that specializes in designing and developing websites. Just because your internal I.T. department can code a website, doesn’t mean they should.

Identify Current Issues

The first thing you’ll want to do is identify what is no longer working. There are a few ways to gather this information:

Google Analytics

Take a deep dive into your Google Analytics. This data will tell you where web visitors are spending most of their time by listing the top 10 most visited pages on the website, and what the average session duration is. The Behavior Flow Chart will tell you where most people enter your site, and you can see all the various paths users go through when looking for information.

To tell what is and isn’t working, compare the list of top 10 most visited pages with the pages you consider most valuable on the site. Do these lists match? Or are people overlooking valuable information? Two other important stats to note are the average session duration and bounce rate. Are web visitors spending time reading and understanding the content on your pages, or do they appear to enter and exit the page almost immediately?

Ask Sales Staff

Talk to your sales staff or customer service team about common questions they receive. Are those questions currently answered on the website and people aren’t finding the answer? Or is the answer not on the website, but should be?

Customer Survey

If you want to get information directly from your customers, send out a survey asking what they like and dislike about the current website and any additional features they wish it had. This will help you get a true idea of how customers are shopping for your products or services.

Confirm Target Audiences

You probably already know your target audience(s) but it’s a good exercise to create user personas to make sure you’re creating this new website and set of goals for the right customers. A user persona is a semi-fictional representation of your current and target customers. User personas help you map out your target and secondary audiences. To help understand these audiences, start by answering the questions below:

1. Describe this audience. What is their industry, job title, values, and barriers?
2. What action are they trying to accomplish on your website?
3. What challenges are they currently facing on your website?
4. How do they find you?

Answer these questions for each audience segment you have identified so you have a holistic idea of who will be visiting your website and what they are trying to accomplish. It’s not uncommon to have one target audience and two or three secondary audiences.

Set New Goals

Now that you’ve gathered information about what is and isn’t working and confirmed your target audience(s), you’ll want to create a list of goals the new website should accomplish. Establishing these goals early on will help set the direction for the website redesign so no important features are left out or unsuccessfully included halfway through the project. Listed below are some questions to help you identify your goals:

1. What are you hoping to improve with this new website?
2. What are the top three things you would like your website to include?
3. What quantitative goals do you have for your new website?
4. What qualitative goals do you have for your new website?

Competitive Research

When was the last time you looked at competitor sites? It’s helpful to know what other companies in your industry are doing to identify opportunities and provide valuable information to potential customers. Make a list of things you like and dislike on each competitor’s site.

Inspiration Sites

Similar to the competitive research, look for websites that have design and functionality aspects you like, and others you dislike. Look for things like homepage elements, how images are used, expanded color pallets, and main navigation structure. These design and functionality preferences will help the design and development team working on your site understand your preferences minimizing the number of revisions needed.

Identify the Budget

It’s important to have an idea of your budget and budget approval process before reaching out to multiple agencies. This will help align all members involved in the redesign and budgeting process so you can focus on choosing the right agency once you receive the proposals.

Ready for a Redesign

Once you have all of this information gathered, compile it into a master redesign document so you have all the information available when reaching out to website design and development agencies. This information will be super helpful for agencies as they work through the proposal and will allow them to put together a proposal plan and estimate that is very close to the final product you are wanting.

The post Planning for a Website Redesign appeared first on Terrostar Interactive Media.

Before starting a digital project, it’s important to consider all possible solutions to ensure the best product is made. We do this for each client with the first two phases of our Technology Impact Assessment, called the Discover and Scope phases. Listen to Minute Suites Chief Operating Officer Chris talk about the importance of this process and how it changed the Minute Suites project for the better.

Read Chris’s Interview Below

“Minutes Suites is a company that provides travelers with a place to nap, relax and work inside of the airport. We have rooms that feature a daybed sofa as well as a television and free WIFI. So travelers that might have a flight that’s delayed or canceled or they just have a little bit of extra time before their flight and they want to kick back in a room in a private setting we provide those by the hour for them.”

“We were using a third-party platform and it wasn’t quite meeting all of our needs and it really wasn’t integrated with all of our systems. We had several different piecemeal systems that were all coming into one so we thought if we could get a company that could bring all those pieces together we would have our ideal solution and centralize it into one platform. We quickly realized that what we were trying to do wasn’t going to be the ideal solution for Minute Suites. We essentially went from starting a conversation where we thought we knew what we were doing and going to do with a few different systems into one and coming to Terrostar and learning we can actually do all of this on our own without having to use some of these other platforms.”

“The first step that we went through and probably the most impressive step was Terrostar’s team really immersing themselves into our company and culture and exactly how we’re utilizing the system that we’re utilizing now. Going through this process and knowing somebody took the time to understand our company and understand exactly what our goals were really helped to define things moving forward for us.”

“We thought we knew exactly what it was that we needed and it wasn’t until we went through that process that we truly understood that there was a much better way of going about this project. It was so beneficial for us because the end result is going to be a product that’s going to last for many many years.”

The post Client Success Story: Minute Suites appeared first on Terrostar Interactive Media.

So often we focus on creating unique, engaging content that will drive traffic to your website, like in our recent blog article Tips for Creating Engaging Content. It’s an important part of marketing your company and establishing your brand as a thought leader in your industry. But creating content is only half of a complete content strategy. The other half is auditing existing content and knowing when a blog article, a phrase, or a pillar of content should be repurposed or retired.

Old content and outdated ideals can exist anywhere on your website, like in blog articles, product or service pages, or the team section of your About page. If old content is left unchecked, it can be confusing or distracting for people visiting your website or app.

Know Your Audience

Before auditing your existing content and content strategy, it’s important to understand who your audience is. This will help you determine what should be updated and what can stay the same. Creating user personas will help identify the content that will be most useful to your audiences. A user persona is a semi-fictional representation of your current and target customers. User personas will help you map out your target and secondary audiences. Start by gathering information like industry, job title, values, and barriers and organize the information into a list like the one below:

Target Audience A

• Name – Business Owner Bob
• Income Level – $100 – $120K
• Gender – Male
• Job Title – President
• Values – Professionalism, Service
• Barriers – Does not have a lot of time to spend searching for business loans

These generalizations will help with content pillars and topics for resources like blog articles and what should be the main focus on product or service pages. And having this user persona information documented will help future content audits.

Understand the Analytics

Once you have your user personas complete, the next logical step is to understand where visitors are spending most of their time on your website. Google Analytics is an incredibly useful tool, as it will tell you how visitors are entering your site, what pages they visit and for how long, and where they exit the site. There are a couple of sections that will be most helpful for understanding your audience and what they are trying to accomplish on your site.

Audience

The Audience section goes into a deeper dive into audience demographics for a longer period of time than the Realtime section. This area allows you to choose your date range, so you can compare days, weeks, months, years. The Overview subsection gives a detailed breakdown of how many users visited your site during your selected timeframe, the number of new users, sessions, pageviews, average session duration, bounce rate, and the percentage of new vs. returning users.

If you see a day with a particularly high number of visitors, investigate what went on that day. Did you publish a new blog article, launch a new product, start a digital ad campaign, or a successful social post? Whatever caused the spike in traffic, try it again to see if you see the same spike in engagement.

You can also find out helpful demographic information like gender, age, interests, and geographical location to make sure your target audience is who you think they are.

In the Behavior subsection, data is broken out by New vs Returning user, Frequency & Recency, and Engagement. This can help to determine if current customers are returning to your site looking for more/products and services. If the Returning Visitor number is relatively low, what can you do to increase it? Creating a customer-specific area of your website will attract current customers and also show prospective customers you provide service and insight beyond the sale of a product or service. The Engagement subsection breaks out the number of sessions by duration. This information is helpful to know how long visitors are spending on the site. If you have a high number of visitors but most of them fall into the 0-10 second bucket they aren’t taking the time to look around your site and research your product or service. Refreshing the content, making your information more clear, personal and relevant to your target audience will help increase the session duration.

In the Mobile subsection, the Overview shows you the number of visitors per device: desktop, mobile, and tablet. If the number of mobile visitors is low, make sure your site is responsive and optimized for viewing on mobile.

Behavior

The Behavior section shows you how visitors are navigating through your website. The Overview subsection shows how many page views have occurred in the selected time frame, average time on page, bounce rate, the top ten pages on your site with the number and percentage of page views for each of those pages, and a line graph showing the number of page views for each day.

The Behavior Flow subsection shows you the most common paths users take through your website. You can see the most common starting pages and the pages where most people drop off.

The Site Content subsection shows analytics for the top ten pages on your site, including page views, average time on page, entrances, and bounce rate. This information will help you understand where visitors are spending most of their time. If there is an important page on your site that is underperforming this data will tell you, and you can work to increase the pageviews by updating the content on the page to be more relevant to your target audience.

Start Simple

Now that you’ve identified the user personas and reviewed the analytics, it’s time to jump into the audit. The idea of starting a content audit, much less doing one regularly, can seem like an overwhelming project. Especially if you’re dealing with a well-established digital presence that has been regularly producing content for years. So it’s important to identify an easy-to-follow process for your team.

The Pages

We recommend starting with your main navigation pages. These are the most public-facing pages on the website and most likely where a new website visitor will start when navigating your website. If a new potential customer lands on your website you don’t want them to make a decision about your company based on old information. Look for things like outdated tactics or processes on product or service pages and make sure your team page is up to date. It’s common to think about these pages when the website is first launched and then not touch them again until the next website redesign, so implementing a process for auditing existing content is important to map out.

The Timeline

Unless there are major changes happening in the company, these aren’t pages that need to be checked every week. Twice a year, the beginning of the year and mid-year should be sufficient for keeping these main navigation pages up to date.

Resource Overhaul

So many companies strive to post new blog articles or resources as often as possible, but once the piece is published it’s forgotten and buried by newer, more recent posts. Keep that up for years and you have pages and pages of old articles published years ago, by employees no longer with the company about tactics and ideas that have since been updated.

Repurpose or Retire

Not everything on the blog or resource section from years ago will need to be removed. A lot of it can probably be updated to include relevant information. This is a great place for content marketers to look when trying to find content to repurpose. So before going through each article, decide on the parameters of what should be repurposed and what should be retired.
We recommend starting with an ‘articles to remove’ list. Anything that is out-of-date or no longer relevant to your process, products, or services. Just make sure to update any URL redirects to minimize broken links and 404 errors. Also, make sure no one in the company is still using the article.

Next, move on to identifying ways to repurpose the remaining content. Some of the articles won’t necessarily need to be updated and can be sent as-is. They’ve just been buried under pages and pages of new articles and need help getting in front of your target audience(s) again. If an article does need to be updated, add the article to a working list with notes for updated ideas. This will help you keep articles and ideas organized as you start working them into your content strategy. This will also help you notice patterns in the articles.

This article from Social Toast recommends the rule of 25%, which states you can add legacy content into your content distribution strategy in four ways:

• Reposting the content as is (only suitable for your email and social media efforts)
• Updating the legacy content with new stats/best practices
• Remixing the legacy content into a new media format (turn your written blog post into a video or infographic)
• Stitching together two pieces of older content into brand new pieces

Full Circle Content Strategy

So often we think about updating content only when updating a website or mobile app, but it’s really a process that should be included in every content strategy. Identifying a process for removing or reusing legacy content will help reduce the risk of confusion for new visitors to the site and also provides your marketing team with a new outlet for distributing content.

The post Complete Your Content Strategy appeared first on Terrostar Interactive Media.

For the past ten years QCR Holdings and Terrostar have been working together to create and evolve the client facing websites and content management system for the six QCR Holdings banks located around the midwest. This custom digital tool allows content managers at each branch to update the website in real time, monitors and allows for security enhancements and has decreased the time spent adding a banks’ website to the QCR Holdings infrastructure following a merger. Josh Dyer, Visual Brand Manager for QCR Holdings, shares his experience working with the Terrostar team and the importance of a strong digital presence.

Read Josh’s Interview Below

“QCR Holdings is a regional, full service financial institution. We have six independently operated and governed financial institutions around the Midwest with a central group operation. The digital solutions that Terrostar has created for us revolve around a website content management system which is the core base for all of our front-facing, client-facing websites.”

“We have content managers at each one of our banks. They all have a different level of technical expertise and each one of our content managers is able to edit the websites in real time.”

“Our needs change daily. Security changes daily so we built in a few functional specs with the help of Terrostar to centrally locate global functions such as wealth management disclosures so we’re able to update those in a single spot and roll those out globally across all of our websites.”

“Mergers and acquisitions are always a reality. And one of the core functions of that process is to merge a bank and to roll their website into our infrastructure. Prior to the Terrostar partnership, we were taking about six months to roll a bank onto our platform.”

“Over the years with Terrostar we’ve developed several processes that we are targeting now to bolt on or divest the bank within 60 days and we are able to train the new employees in a matter of days.”

“Our brand is all about people. A lot of our imagery is based around people. Our websites need to be accessible to any and all clients regardless of any disabilities they may have. Terrostar has been fantastic in helping us review those guidelines and how they are applied to our website without degrading our brand and without degrading our message.”

“I look at Terrostar as a partner. They are an extension of my team. They are an extension of my IT department. They know me, they know our company and they’re always willing to help. That’s why we continue to work with Terrostar.”

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