Get An Up-To-Date Copyright
A current, visible and readable copyright and year tell your potential customers 2 things; Your website & your business is “up-to-date” and the page has finished loading.
Does your website have the wrong year in the copyright? Or worse – is your website missing a copyright completely? Let’s find out why it’s important to fix your copyright immediately…
Get More People to Actually Use Your Website
Google discovered the importance of the copyright back in 1998. They watched people use Google.com with and without a copyright and the results were incredible. Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google talks about the testing (read the entire article here):
[Our beta testers] would sit in front of the Google screen for 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute… Google was perplexed.
So Mayer would eventually intervene and ask what was holding up the searchers. “I’m waiting for the rest of it,” they’d say.
Without the copyright, internet users didn’t use the site because they weren’t sure if the site was finished…
As a result, the company put a copyright notice at the bottom of the page. “It’s not there for legal reasons,” Mayer said. “It’s there as punctuation. That’s it. (It tells the searcher) ‘Nothing else is coming; please start searching now.’”
What’s this got to do with your small business website?
Don’t let customers sit and wonder if your website will ever finish downloading. Tell your customers it’s ready by adding a copyright.
Let Customers Know You’re Still Open for Business!
Yesterday, I found a website with a copyright that said “2004.” It’s now 2009. I didn’t know if the company was still in business because the copyright was 5 years old – that’s a long time in internet years!
Did they shut down and forget to pull the plug on the website?
Determined to find out what was going on, I found an email address on the contact page and sent an email. However, I didn’t know if the email address was still working because it looked like they hadn’t done anything to the website in 5 years – how stressful?
Please update the year in your copyright. Make it current – or you risk losing a few customers (and making them wonder if you’re still open for business.)
How to Automatically Update the Year in Your Copyright
For all you small business website masters and do-it-yourself types, here’s how you add code to automatically update the year – every year – without ever having to touch it again.
The code reads the year on your web server, then writes the correct year on web page – sweet!
First, you need to find out if your website hosting service is using PHP or ASP. The fastest way to find out is to look at the URL of a page on your website (but, not the home page.) Then look at the very end of the URL.
If you see .asp or .php then you know exactly what you’re working with.
Examples:
www.yourwebsite.com/contact.php ← You’ve got PHP
www.yourwebsite.com/contact.asp ← You’ve got ASP
www.yourwebsite.com/contact.html ← Call your web developer
www.yourwebsite.com/contact.htm ← Call your web developer
PHP
Got PHP? Paste this text into the CODE of your web page where you want the year to be displayed: <?php echo date(“Y”); ?>
Example: Copyright <?php echo date(“Y”); ?> Minneapolis Web Guy
This will show up as: Copyright 2009 Minneapolis Web Guy
ASP
Got ASP? Paste this text into the CODE of your web page where you want the year to be displayed: <% Response.Write Year(now) %>
Example: Copyright <% Response.Write Year(now) %> Minneapolis Web Guy
This will show up as: Copyright 2009 Minneapolis Web Guy
What the??
If you need help, contact me or DM me on Twitter: @TonyStocco.
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