When was the last time you looked at your website? If you’re thinking that’s not something you need to do – after all, you KNOW what’s on it – time for a rethink.
You may think you know what’s on your website, but, if you have more than a handful of pages and you haven’t looked at them for months, you might be surprised at what you’ve forgotten!
So it’s time to give your website a review – what should you look for?
Information check
Things go out-of-date – not just your services, but, if you quote prices or have packages, it’s a good idea to check if they’re still relevant. Even if the information is accurate, it’s good to think about whether they’re working or not.
Market demands change and a smart business owner stays up-to-date with them. Are your offers or packages actually working? If they’re not, it might be worth removing or revamping them. Maybe do some quick and dirty research to find out what people are looking for most right now (enter your key products or services into answerthepublic.com – and see what people are searching for).
Do you need to add new products or services you’ve launched since the last time you updated your website?
Copy check
There’s never one way to say something – the English language is rich and has many different ways to express the same thought. Re-read your website copy:
- Do your headlines attract the reader and make them want to know more?
- Is it clear what each page is about? In other words is it easy for the website visitor to understand what each page is about?
- Is it easy to understand the details?
- Does every page have a call to action (what you want people to do next)?
- Is there an attractive image to engage the reader’s eye at the top of the page?
Refreshing your copy regularly is a great way to keep the search engines interested too.
TIP: Don’t try and do it all at once – make a list of the pages and check over a few each month. If you’ve only got 10 pages – then one per month and take a month off in the summer and at Christmas! Having a schedule that is part of your marketing activities means you stay on top of it.
Technology check
In theory, once your website is live, nothing should change unless you change it. But the reality is that sometimes – for no good reason – links stop working.
You (or one of your team) should check your website at least once a month and ensure that all your links do work. That includes:
- All the menu options
- External links that link to other websites
- Internal links that link one page to another – or link a page to a blog post
- Links that launch an email or your enquiry form in the call to action on each page
- Any links to social media
TIP: If you have hundreds of blogs – as we do – it’s hard to keep up with all the links in all the blogs. You might consider keeping a spreadsheet of all the blogs and highlight the ones that have external/internal links and just check those. You can then just click the link in the spreadsheet and go straight to that blog. Our list also shows the categories so it’s easy to find them.
The secret is in scheduling
If you don’t have a plan, it’s easy to let this get away from you. Put time in the diary to do these checks. If you post blogs monthly, that would be an ideal time to do your checks as you’re on the website anyway. However, I suggest you read the page you’re checking in the same way as any other website visitor and only log into the website editor to make the changes.
Don’t forget to look at pages on different devices too – the content and links won’t change, but will look different.
