Website Spring Clean – How to give it a refresh
As the snow thaws (or it just continues to be grey and mild!!) but the spring flowers start to reappear, why not give your website a thorough ‘Spring Clean’?
It’s never a good marketing strategy to create a website and just forget about it. For most small businesses, your website is your ‘shop window’. Your website is the primary way that clients can see your products, the services you offer and get to know you. It is hopefully where they end up if they want ‘more information’.
So, make sure your website is regularly refreshed and accurate.
How to refresh your website
Be critical of current content
To start your website refresh, this Spring, take some time to give every page the ‘once over’, with a really critical eye.
Read the text out loud. Does it make sense and is it clear and explanatory.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Is the copy easy to read? (consider the colour and size of the text on different devices, as well as the sense of the words themselves)
- Is the copy written in plain English? Have you explained exactly what you offer?
- Are the sentences short and to the point?
- Have you included headings and subheadings regularly?
- Do you link between pages to other relevant pages as much as possible?
- Is all of the essential information there and easy to find?
- If you have blogs, are they recent enough? Can you update or move the dates if they are more than month or two old? Are they good enough to do so?
Update content to ensure it is accurate
Do you still have Christmas offers, January sales, Valentine’s suggestions or any other outdated information lurking on your website? Is your copyright line showing as the current year?
Also, do you need to add a Spring offer or items ready for promoting Easter, Mother’s Day or other upcoming events relevant to your small business?
Then, consider the more ‘mundane’, elements of information. For example:
- Are your opening hours correct?
- What about your contact information? Importantly, does your contact form go to the right inbox?
- Are all of your current products and/or services listed? Should some be removed or marked as ‘out of stock/unavailable’ if only temporary?
- Could any descriptions be updated?
- Are frequently asked questions by clients being answered? (It’ll save you answering the same enquiries again and again!)
Also think about the development of your business. Do you have a pricing strategy? If not, you should! At least once a year, you should be considering your prices and if these are listed on your website, then update them and ensure they are consistent across all of your platforms. Remember it is realty bad practice to advertise one price and charge another.
Improve optimisation
It is important website copy is clear, concise and well-written. Quality is always more important than ‘over worked’, rammed copy simply for search engine optimisation and to include relevant keywords.
However, there is no harm having a little think about how often you are using keywords and keyword strings relevant for your business and industry, and what focus keyword you are using for different pages.
If not, consider if you can you add them to your text and headings in a ‘natural way’. If not, don’t force it.
One quick win I often suggest, is to ensure you use your own business name enough. Plus, if you location is important to your business, that you mention where you are based or when you cover. These are both important keywords for all businesses.
If you want to learn more about on-SEO, including meta data:
Make note of ideas for new content
Search engine bots do LOVE new content – so give them lots to love.
Quick wins for website updates include:
- Update images (remembering to include good quality alt text and metadata) and to ensure the file size isn’t too big so that they load quickly
- Expand information about your services
- Add a new information page
- Add new FAQs
- Create a new landing page for an upcoming event or webinar, for example.
- Add a new blog post.
Blogs are a great way to offer new content and keep your website fresh, as well as sharing your expertise. If you want to start your blogging journey again, do check out my Hurdles to Blogging E-book to help give you the confidence to overcome any barriers.
Consider your first time visitors
Finally, before you finish your ‘Spring Clean’, think about user experience and ease of navigation.
Be really strict with yourself and imagine you are a first-time visitor to your website. Pick a product or service and imagine trying to find it. Think about the following:
- How many ‘clicks’ does it take?
- Is it obvious which page or heading you needed to go to, especially if you are not a ‘subject specialist’?
- Could more signposting or hyperlinks help?
Website visitors are impatient, disloyal and in a rush – if they can’t find what they are looking for, or find a ‘hook’ within seconds, then they will go back to the next search engine result…and ultimately choose your competitor.
Unlike a physical shop, you don’t get the chance to personally ‘jump out’ and ask, “how can I help today? What are you looking for?” – therefore, your website has to do that job for you, in an accessible and logical way.
First-time visitors often want to contact you or find out where you are, if you do have a physical premise. Firstly, consider what it is the most crucial contact information for your business. For some businesses, i.e. a cafe, a location map or address is probably the most important piece of information, so that people know where you based. For a hairdresser, it may be a contact telephone number, so that people can make an appointment. Ensure this information is prominent and obvious.
A website refresh is not just for Spring!
It is really important that you don’t just create your website and forget about it! If you have paid a website designer to create your site, ensure they show you how to make updates, ideally using a simple content management system. Make the most of that investment.
Keeping an up-to-date website, with regular changes and updates is so important. You also want a site you are proud of; a site you can promote regularly on social media; a site you can direct anyone with queries towards and a site that you proudly give the address of on business cards, in email signatures and print media.
Once you have done your website spring clean – pop in a reminder about another check and refresh in the Summer.
If you want more support with regular updates to your website, as well as analysis of all of your marketing activity and content creation process, take a look at The Content Club. We are are there to support you to continually shape and nurture all of your content and marketing to reuse, repurpose and improve it all of the time.