It’s all over too quickly isn’t it? But hey, that’s life and before you know it, it’ll be coming around again!

But, now the festive period is behind us for another 12 months and we trudge back to our desks, here’s 3 things you should do now to avoid looking like a Christmas numpty

1. Remove any festive ‘decorations’  you added to your website.
Most of us do it, but a lot of folks seem to forget to take them off again. You know, the little snowmen, the twinkling Christmas tree at the bottom of your website page – that sort of thing. Leaving them in place any longer than today (4th) is not sending out the correct message to your vistors, who for all you know, are sick to death of the the whole Christmas thing by now and are instantly put off your site by another awful rendition of Jingle Bells booming out from your web pages. Take ‘em off!

2. Freshen up your website in 30 seconds flat!
A great many websites show the year date in the footer area of its pages – see below on this page. What does yours say? If it still says 2010, get it changed today! Its easy to do if you control that section of your website yourself, but if you don’t, get in touch with your web designer and have them change it to 2011. This might need to be done on each page of your site one by one, but if your designer is smart, they will have added a dynamic snippet of code that updates the date automatically as the clock strikes midnight on New Years Eve! If your designer is at a loss at this request…maybe a News Years Resolution for you…find yourself a new designer!!

3. Remove email Auto Responders
Sounds obvious but I can guarantee that during the course of today, I will receive more than one email auto response from someone, informing me “The Office is Closed until Jan 4th”. Auto Responders are great for communicating a quick ‘status’ update message but as soon as they become ‘out of date’ you lose all credabilty. If you used an Auto Respones ‘Out of the office’ message over the Chrsitmas period, make sure you either update it or remove it now you’re back at work!

There, 3 simple, quick and easy things you should have done already now you’re back at work, but if you haven’t done them yet….do them now!!

Happy New Year Everyone!!!