All high street retail businesses have cycles that include busy times, restocking, new product releases and sales periods. Within all this activity there is also time set aside to look at refreshing the window displays and shop-fits to keep thing fresh, interesting and take advantage of current practices. But is your ecommerce website included in this regular cycle?

Sitemakers are often asked to review ecommerce websites for retailers and we find that well over 50% of these appraisals show a site that has not changed for a significant period of time. We are in the era of knowledgeable and impatient online consumers and they can be even more critical of ecommerce websites than our own reviewers. Customers will rapidly decide how good a website looks, feels and navigates but, just as importantly, they will expect it to offer all of the key features they are used to seeing on other websites when searching and buying from the Internet.

If your website has not been updated or improved during the past few months the chances are it will be missing some of these key new features and it may also limit access to the growing market of smartphone and tablet computer users.

Have you tested your site to see if it works on the iPhone and Android based smartphones? Over 10 million people in the UK made retail purchases online via their mobiles in 2010. In addition, the most popular web browsers - Firefox and Internet Explorer, have had major updates recently. This means that even if you are still viewing your ecommerce site on last year's version of a web browser many of your ecommerce visitors will be accessing web pages on this year's shiny new version. And it is vital that it works properly for them.

The popular phrase "the only constant is Change" is so true about modern technology with its compelling drive for faster, better, easier. Don't be left behind in this process and if you do not have the time or inclination to tackle this yourself, then get a member of  staff or a trusted supplier to take this on for you.