Wanting to do some “spring cleaning” is a pretty typical feeling for most people this time of year. After months of keeping doors and windows shut to keep out the winter cold, we want to open our houses up and air them out. It’s a good time to think about doing some “spring cleaning” on your website too.
- Remove anything seasonal from the winter months and replace it with products and services looking forward to spring and summer. If your products and services don’t change, perhaps your language to describe them does. For many website owners, once the content is in place, it rarely if ever changes. This can be a mistake, because Google and other search engines are “attracted” to website content that gets refreshed on a regular basis.
- Replace wintry images with spring and summer ones. Why not update the header image on your Facebook, Twitter or Instagram too?
- Add some news. Did something interesting or exciting happen with your business over the winter? Add that to your website.
- Try a new source of traffic. If you haven’t traditionally boosted posts on Facebook, give it a try. You can set advertising limits of as little as $5 per day. This Limelight Department post, “3 Ways Facebook’s New Advertising Updates are Helping Small Business Make More Money,” outlines how to get started with a high-performing Facebook ad.
- Test everything out! I’ve encountered a few websites recently that looked great, except that when I tried to sign up for their emails I got an error message. If you haven’t gotten any new newsletter subscribers lately or you just haven’t checked in a while, test out your email sign-up buttons. On WordPress sites, forms and email collectors are often plugins, and the performance of those can go awry if one thing updates and the plugin doesn’t. Or vice versa.
While you’re in there, test out all of your contact forms. Test any download links or buttons you have on your site. Fix broken links from other parts of your site or going to other sites. If a website visitor encounters a broken link they are likely to just leave rather than continuing to dig deeper. Your Google Search Console is a great resource for checking for broken links on your site or to other sites.
- Does any of your business collateral need to be restocked? Check your supply of business cards or brochures.
- Update any dates on your website. When people write, it’s natural for them to write things that put events into context. Like, “last year, we introduced…” or “last month our new service…” Many times, people say things like, “We started this business 6 years ago…” but it’s been a lot more than 6 years since that text has been updated!
When just a little time goes by, these descriptions are outdated. Read over your website content for anything that gives dates that are no longer accurate. Try to replace dates like “6 months ago” with a month and year, so that people reading it a year from now will know what time frame you actually mean.
Just as it feels good to sweep in the corners around the house once in a while, you’ll be glad that you gave your website the once over.
