Having a website that’s up-to-date has always been an interesting topic for us. While the technology exists to make it easy to update every website that we build, it doesn’t always work that way. Some sites that we build get updated all the time, and some never do.
At some point it’s not even about the technology. It’s about convenience, or just the psychology of the thing. There’s several places in Portland that we pass on the way to work with signboards out front. These aren’t easy to change – they require at least a ladder and some time to kill – yet some are updated several times a week. Gas stations do it, movie theaters do it, lots of businesses around town do it, but it’s unlikely that they’ll update their site as often.
Or consider the small restaurant. Most every restaurant we like has a chalkboard with their daily specials. But what are the odds that they would keep the same information updated on their website? Pretty slim, but then again, most folks want to know what’s on the menu when actually sitting in the restaurant, not while sitting at their desk, daydreaming about lunch.
That doesn’t mean that it’s worthless. I have no doubt that some folks would find that information useful, and it might even convince some of them to drive across town and eat there. The problem is just making it easy for the restaurant to update their website. So I’ve been thinking about how technology could help. Perhaps, rather than typing in the daily specials after writing out the chalkboard, they could just take a picture of the chalkboard and upload it to their site. Or maybe a webcam, pointed at the chalkboard, would ensure that there was always an up-to-the-minute version of the specials on their website.
So we’re still looking. And we’d love to hear suggestions!
