If you archive your company’s website, congratulations. You’re among the few, the smart and the prepared. In fact, while 50 percent of mid-sized and large organizations archive their email, fewer apply the same thoughtful approach to their Web content, according to a 2012 white paper from Osterman Research. A December 2013 Gartner poll found that 43 percent of respondents did not archive their websites.

Choosing the right Web archiving solution for your company depends on several factors, including the level of risk protection desired. The more litigious your industry, the more robust the solution needed.

Here are five points to consider when looking for a comprehensive Web archiving system:

1. The Web experience. Make sure your Web archiving solution can capture and present many of the components that comprise today’s Web experience, as well as other video and image types. The solution should re-create exactly how a user experienced your website at a specific time. That includes active links that navigate to the pages the site linked to at the time of archival.

2. Level of Detail and Forensic Integrity. Your Web archives must stand up in court. That calls for a solution that prevents any changes to the content after it is captured within the archive. Simple screen scrapes are easy and inexpensive but usually fail compliance standards.

3. Retrieval and Search. Compliance officers, IT and legal staff need quick, easy access to the data. Robust, full-text searching tools matters when you’re looking for specific keywords and phrases during litigation, regulatory audits or internal investigations. Easy-to-use search, review and retrieval tools contribute to a smooth workflow.

4. Active Supervision. Look for a solution that allows you to monitor a page or group of pages and easily monitor content changes when they happen.

5. Comprehensive integration. Make your Web archiving part of your organization’s comprehensive approach to archiving all forms of electronic communications, including email, instant messaging, mobile messaging and social media. Look for a solution that allows you to conduct search and produce your data in one place. This not only saves time and minimizes duplication of effort, it also give you a 360-degree view of your organization’s digital communications, providing increased efficiency of supervision and improved risk mitigation.

A complete Web archiving solution is a legal and regulatory necessity today, particularly for heavily regulated industries such as financial services. It will help you prepare for litigation or e-discovery, comply with regulatory obligations for retention and supervision, and preserve content in context for historical, marketing or research purposes. It also will save time, effort and expense compared with manual archiving approaches.