This is the time of year when new growth emerges from the ashes.

With the first day of Spring right around the corner (March 20, astronomically speaking), the days are getting brighter and spring flowers will soon be peaking through the soil. The urge to throw open the windows gets stronger by the day. And if you are a gardener like me, you’re planning this years crops and getting your seedlings started.

From a business standpoint, this is also a great time to be shaking out the dust and giving everything a fresh coat of paint. Even your website can benefit from a good scrubbing. Giving it a fresh look and getting it ready to take on the rest of the year in style doesn’t have to be a daunting task.

Just like your wardrobe, your business website should change with the seasons, be they the meteorological ones or as defined by your industry. For a majority of small businesses, your website is the first impression a potential customer gets of your business. If your site is still sporting outdated designs, or content, you could be losing savvy money-spending customers to your better dressed competitors.

So let’s clear out the dust bunnies and give your website a good scrubbing!

10 Website Spring Cleaning Tasks

1. Declutter

It’s out with old! Review all the content on your site. Remove any old calendar items or past events (unless they still hold current relevance). Archive past articles and newsletters. Do you have lists of links on your site? Are those links still relevant to your business or have they become outdated as well?

Remove any information, pictures or events that would no longer have any value to your visitors

2. Review site functionality

There is nothing worse than a website with broken functionality. It’s time to make sure that your site is still operating properly. Look for broken links. There are free link checker tools available to help with that: World Wide Web Consortium,  Broken Link Check or ScreamingFrog.

Do all of your web forms still work and is their content relevant? (i.e. Call-to-action(CTA), opt-in, contact, quote requests, etc) Are your social media widgets setup and up-to-date? Also confirm that any other widgets you may have on your site are functioning as expected. If you are using WordPress or another website content management application, ensure that it and any plug-ins or apps are up-to-date.

3. Revisit your navigation

So this is something that often gets over looked. Yet it is an important part of your site. The more streamlined and accurate your navigation or menus are, the more usable your site is for your customers. 

When considering your navigation, ask yourself a few questions. Does your navigation make it easy for your users to find what they are looking for? Is the text that you use easily identifiable to your average visitor? Does it use the K.I.S.S methodology (Keep It Simple, Silly) What are your most popular pages? Are they easy to get to? If you don’t know what your most popular pages are, check your analytics. Most hosting companies have some sort of statistics available to their users on their hosting dashboard. Of course, Google Analytics or StatCounter can also be added to your sight to get more in-depth information. 

4. Review your content

Even if nothing has changed in regards to your business and services, its still a good idea to review your existing content. Just refreshing your verbiage can be beneficial as the search engines appreciate sites that regularly provide fresh content to their visitors. It tells them you are still alive and kicking!

Is your content still relevant and applicable? Do you have any changes to pricing or services information? Other website sections to review include your contact and business information as well as the copyright date in your footer.

5. Review articles and comments

Unlike a static website, content in a blog is constantly changing as you add new articles and visitors post their comments. But from time to time it’s a good idea to  review these and do some housecleaning. Older articles, especially ones with outdated content, can be removed or closed for comment. One way to keep visitors informed when they land on these posts? Write a blog post with updated information and create a link to that new post from the old one. (i.e. “Looking for current information on this topic? Check out this update!”). If you are still receiving comments on a popular article or want to “bump”a previous post, create a new post and either re-craft the original content in a fresh way or and refer readers to the original post.

6. Update your SEO

I could write for days on this topic alone. But there are some simple actions you can take to improve your search engine rankings. The key to good SEO? CONTENT! Content is your golden goose when it comes to ranking in the search engines. 

Here are some simple steps you can take to refresh your standings.

• Create clear, concise content. Each page of your site should have a single clear focus. Make sure you  don’t go off on tangents. Don’t forget to include keywords relevant to your topic. This should come naturally as you write. Don’t try to overload your paragraphs with so many keywords that it doesn’t read like a natural conversation.
• Use proper headings. Adding section headings to your content not only helps to grab your reader’s attention but that of the search engines as well. Including keywords will also help. Secondly, format your headings using the H1, H2, H3 html tags. Google treats these like mini titles for that section of content. Yoast SEO has a good article outlining the use of headers.
• Check your current search rankings on Google Search Console

7. Check your page loads speeds. 

Slow loading pages tend to rank lower on the search engines. Site Speed in Google Analytics is a great tool for identifying pages in your site that could use a boost in efficiency.

Causes for a slow loading pages can vary but the most common culprit is over-sized images. Novice designers will erroneously load a high resolution image to a web page then use code to resize it. Even though the image on the screen is thumbnail size, the browser still has to read in the original image file before it can resize it. And that takes time and bandwidth. The larger the file, the more slowly the page loads. 

There are many free tools that can be used to resize and optimize images for use on the web. Optimizilla is a free online image optimizer tool. For more image editing capabilities, GIMP and Photoscape both offer impressive online editing at no cost.

8. Newsletters

Do you send out regular communications to your customers, members, or followers? If you do, great! Its time to create a fresh new look for your newsletter. Something eye catching and fresh! Out with old dreary business formats. Get creative with your newsletter design and article titles. Take the spring theme to the extreme.  Make it BURST with excitement! Eye catching colors, headings and images will give your newsletter that breath of fresh air that says “SPRING IS HERE!”.

Don’t have a newsletter yet? its never to late to start. Whether you have 10 customers or 10,000,  there are some great email marketing services on available to you. Many offer free accounts up to a certain number of users or a free promotional period for you to try it out. Some of the more popular services are listed here. Prices vary but so do the features and options available with each service and plan.

• Aweber – 30 day free trial, plans start at $19/month, discounts available for quarterly or yearly payment plans
• Constant Contact – 60 day free trial, pricing plans start around $20/month.
• GetResponse – 30 day free trial, plans start at $15/month
• Drip – free account up to 100 subscribers, plans start at $49/mo with all features included.
• Convertkit – 14 day free trial, plans start at $29/month
• MailChimp – free up to 2,000 subscribers, plans start at $10 for 500 subscribers and go up from there.

9. Add some new fresh content

There’s nothing the search engines and your customers will appreciate more than fresh new current content. If you’re blogging, you know how important it is to add new posts and relevant content to your blog.  This is what keeps you and your company in the mind of your customers when they find themselves in need of your product or service. Even posting to your blog once a week will make a difference in your traffic and your site rankings if done well.

Some tips for blogging:

• Write as if you are  having a conversation with your reader. There’s no need to throw out big words. You want to connect with them on a personal level, so be real.
• Focus each post to a single topic. Not only will these keep your reader’s heads from spinning but the search engines like it too.
• Include images or videos in our posts that are related to the topic you are discussing. This helps to break up the text and improve readability. Plus, it’s just visually appealing.
• Solicit comments from your readers. Engage with them in the comments section of your site. You don’t have to agree with everything but you should respond. Keep it professional – joke with them, talk with them, discuss the topics.  There are bound to be nay-sayers. You don’t have to sling mud with them but a simple “thank you for your input” goes along way.
• Invite your readers to sign up to receive notifications when you add new content/posts. See #8 above for information on newsletters and email marketing services.

Not a blogger? Not a problem. Create a page on your website that contains links to articles relevant to your product or  business or a related topic. Or use your newsletter to send out “interesting links” and information to your customers. Add an opt-in form on your website for interested reader’s to sign up to receive it.

10. Freshen up your look

Just like last decades’s runway fashions, old website layouts, features or images can give your business an old, outdated look and feel. With the ease of today’s website creation tools, changing the look of your site is no longer the complicated task it used to be. Drap and drop options, pre -made templates and the option of assigning different color schemes can be down with a few clicks of the mouse.

Simple changes, like color themes and images, can make a huge difference in how a prospective customer sees your company. Not sure what perception your site is giving your customers, ask them. Use a survey to get feedback. Don’t feel comfortable doing this, ask a family member or close friend to provide you a no-BS review of your site.

As with any major changes, don’t forget to make a back up of your site first. That way if something happens or you don’t like what you have done, your can restore it to its former state.

So break out those dust pans and let’s get cleaning!

Do you have a spring cleaning activity that you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments below. We’d love to hear about it.

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