One thing to do on your website this week

Hi

Somehow it’s Thursday again already. And I blame the month on the calendar. Doesn’t December just go insanely quickly? The month you need to get so much done, and it just flies by.

Honest, January is my favourite month just because time goes so slowly.

Although I am having friends over today to make Christmas wreaths, so obviously December has it’s perks!

Actually, on the topic of Friends, here’s my review of “Friends the Musical – a parody” if you’re wondering what it’s all about after I mentioned it last week… In summary, Monica is amazing, the rest of it, ehhhh – not so great.

Introducing…

It’s really important to me that my weekly emails are educational and genuinely useful.

So, as of next year (but also today, so that the subject line of this email isn’t a lie), my emails will be based on the premise of “one thing to do on your website this week”.

Some tasks will be time critical around the season, but others will just guide you through essential maintenance and things to be aware of on your site, and give you frameworks and practices to put in place to make sure everything ticks over smoothly.

You’ll know you’re on top of things, so you can focus on your constantly-growing to-do list without that nagging worry that you’ve neglected the website.

Some of you are Marketing Directors of massive brands, some of you are solopreneurs hoping to make 2026 the year you go fully self employed (woop!). And the actions I email you each week – along with a nice dose of micro-learning as to why they’re important – will suit everyone, no matter where you’re at in your career or business.

I’ll also shuffle my emails to Tuesdays, rather than Thursdays, so you’ll have lots of days of the week left.

This week…

Starting as I mean to go on, a thing for this week is to make sure your Christmas opening or operational hours are crystal clear on your website for whoever wants to see them. Even if it’s just a reduction in the hours your customer service team is available.

Last postage dates come to mind here too. If someone complains that they didn’t get their purchase in time, at least you’ll be able to say your Christmas plans were publicly and clearly available.

Having them on your home page is ideal. You can add them as a blog post if your blog pulls through to your home page, or a thin strip along the header of your site (ask your developer if you can’t do that yourself). Or – rather than pay a developer – just temporarily update any obvious block of text on your home page to be about your seasonal hours. It’ll make your website look up to date and your audience cared for, which will reflect on your whole brand.

Also consider adding them – or a link to a blog post containing them – to your email signature. And send a newsletter about them.

If you link to a blog post, you can show related posts on the same page about some great wins or successes for your company this year, or link to some of your best sellers. See it as another way of getting people to your website and take that opportunity to remind them how great you are.

On the grid

Incase you’ve missed it on Insta, I’ve been talking about ChatGPT’s new Shopping Research tool, the definition of a CDN and why they’re important, and my client’s SEO win.

Fave tool of the week

OK this is an obscure one. But we built a tool called Iszy, which is for collecting content from dispersed teams, or from the public. It was built when a ski school client said they never had good blog post or social media fodder, despite having a team of instructors out on the most picturesque, beautiful slopes all day every day, whilst the marketing team were stuck in doors in England.

Things adapt and grow, and over the years it has been used by Anglo American for an International summit with people sending in their photos and comments, CSSC used it to keep their membership of 160,000 people active and engaged when Covid hit, and it’s integrated with the Corals archiving system to let people upload photos of their community from days gone by. It’s also been used a lot for photo competitions.

Anywho – this time of year – I use it for keeping track of my kids’ Christmas presents! I upload photos of each present (I’m talking stocking fillers, so lots of little things), tag it with the kid’s name and the price, and then filter by tag on the dashboard when I want to see how much each one has got so far. Gotta keep it fair. It is 100% NOT what it was designed for, and I wouldn’t do it if I had to pay, but as it’s our tool, I can use it for free, so it’s really handy!

Feel free to get in touch if you might have an actual work related use for it. And meanwhile, you could just sort your present photos into folders on your phone for the same result, to help you check that someone’s pile isn’t going to be 3 times the size of someone else’s…

OK that’s all for this week folks, speak soon.

Lisa

Lisa Freeman

​https://www.instagram.com/talking.web​

​https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisafreemanweb​