Spring Cleaning for your Website

Forget the allergies, forget the first pitch of the season. Spring Cleaning is an event a lot of adults mark on their calendar to look at the clutter and mess of their home. It’s one big fat reset until next year when the cleaning bug starts to rear its ugly head again. While it is important to clean during the rest of year… this is when you get to your junk closet, clear out the garage, or really deep clean your home. …And you guessed it, the same should be for your website.

An annual review of your goals, technical website goals, and business are just as important as donating those jeans you kept from high school. So, how do you get started and what should you “clean up” on your website?

set your goals

Since you launched your website, your business has hopefully grown and made some changes. The important part of a website is that it is NOT a digital brochure for your business — it should be dynamic and tell your story thoroughly.

The first step is setting a foundation on what you want your goals to be. Do you want more sales? To promote one service over another? To improve your search results ranking? By understanding your goals, you’re able to focus on those changes needed. Here’s a few suggestions:

• For more sales: copywriting is clear, call-to-actions strong, prices clearly listed

• For services: outline your services pages with importance, mention your main service on your home page and send them to your services page

• For search ranking: use headlines for keywords you want to rank for, use a third-party plugin for SEO, and break up services page for individual pages per service.

bring site visitors on a journey

A website should undoubtedly be a roadmap to get your visitors to take action. If your website hasn’t brought your visitors on a journey to take action, you could be losing them right on first site load. Take time to think like your customer:

• What is this company about?

• Are they meeting my budget?

• Do they offer the services I have?

• Do they have pictures of their goods or services?

• Can I find answers to common questions on their website?

• Do they have social media sites?

• Do they have a phone number, e-mail, or contact form?

By asking these questions to yourself, begin looking at your website through a different lens. Making sure all these questions are answered is an easy task, but you have to make sure to honestly tell your branding story organically as well. Think of yourself as a guide to your site visitors, answering their questions on the way and clearly helping them understand why your amazing business is worth the investment and second look. If you’re having difficulty answering these questions, it may be time to add some new content to your website.

If you need assistance clearly answering the questions above, schedule one-on -one brand session with me to get the most out of your website.

review existing information

One of the final suggestions on getting your site clean for 2021 is looking at your existing information. Have you added or removed services? Have you added team members? What about your target audience, has those changed? By spending the afternoon looking at your site and seeing if it really speaks to your target audience and is up-to-date with information, you’re able to narrow your sales funnel to informed and preferred site visitors reaching out to you with a high chance of going through with hiring you or buying your products.

Here’s some areas to look at:

• Is your services up-to-date?

• Is your about or team page current?

• Have you had any changes in store hours?

• Do you have a change in phone numbers or e-mail addresses?

• Is your physical location noted, if you have a brick & mortar business?

• Have you earned any new awards or undergone certifications?

• Do I have some new 5-star testimonials to showcase?

Ask yourself this question before jumping into updating your site – all of these are important elements of fleshing out your brand and really telling your brand story. Your website isn’t just about YOU and praising YOU, it’s about confidently connecting with your audience and showing them what you can do for them. Chances are some of these items have changed in the past year, so make sure you highlight these exciting new additions!

talk to an expert

If you’re still not feeling confident, make sure to seek the expertise of a web professional! Any expert can guide you in the right direction and provide you with the tools to empower yourself. Your website is more than a stagnant material that should be ignored once it goes live, search engines encourage updating your site to stay active for your audience. Feel free to reach out to me to look over your site and schedule your consultation!