Spring Cleaning for Your Website
Just like your house, spring cleaning for your website should be on your to-do list this time of year. Updating your site can be hard to stay on top of because let's face it, if it's up and running, many of us don't have time to revisit it as much as we should. But, just because it's up and running, doesn't mean it's working! I recommend you take a look at your site every few months to make sure it is up to date and functioning as you need it to. For spring cleaning, let's dig a little deeper than our monthly checkups and try to make some improvements. Here are 5 areas you should evaluate and improve while you're spring cleaning your website.
The Spring Cleaning for Your Website Checklist
Accuracy and Relevancy - Review your content for accuracy and relevancy. You should look at things like your business hours, policies, service list, pricing and about us page. Make sure everything is up to date. Then review the same information for relevancy. Things change and businesses change. Make sure that you're sending the right message to your website visitors. Does the tone of your content still match your business's vibe? Have you shifted focus in your business? If so, you may want to refresh your content to highlight the new services you're focused on providing. Bottom line, review your content and make sure everything is accurate and relevant.
Images - If you're using old images, it's the perfect time to swap some of them out for new, fresh images. Before adding them, make sure they are the proper resolution and size. Then make sure you're adding the proper information on the back end for SEO like alt tags!
Security - This is a big one! A lot of people think their site is secure...until it's not. As you're doing your spring cleaning, I encourage you to take a good hard look at your website's security and back up methods. If you don't have an SSL, it's time to add one. If you don't have a back up method in place and your hosting company doesn't save back ups, make sure you implement a plan before it's too late. Once a hacker has gained access to your site, the only option is to fix the site. In the process, if you don't have back ups, you could loose content and more. If you’ve built your site in Squarespace with me, this is already set for you!
Take a look at your SEO - If SEO is something you focused on when you first built the site, it's probably time to revisit it. SEO should be an ongoing effort, but if you haven't been able to do that, doing an SEO evaluation every once and while is better than nothing.
Overall look and feel - Does your site represent your business the way it should? Be honest here. If your site is outdated, unresponsive, has a confusing navigation or is just plain ugly, you could be turning customers away. Your website should match your brand and be in line with what customers will experience when they walk in to your space. If you're running a brand new spa that's offering the latest products and services, but your website was built by your neighbor who has no formal web development skills it may be time for a website makeover.
As always, if you need help with spring cleaning for your website, not your house LOL, contact me! I offer several options to help you get your website updated including making suggestions that you can implement yourself, or I can do them for you. If you’re interested in learning more, contact me. Happy cleaning!
