We are a little over a month into the new year. Many of us have reflected on our personal well-being and have probably made a few goals for improvement over this next year. Just as our personal growth is important, so is our professional development and that of our businesses. And if your business is supported by a website you should also take some time to conduct an annual review of your site.
Is the content up-to-date, accurate, and not weighing down the performance of your site? Is it effectively supporting your primary business goals? And does your site convey the intended image and message of your business to potential readers, customers, or clients?
Content Is King
Although you probably update much of your site content, as needed, throughout the year, there are likely pages that contain more general and static information about your business. Chances are you probably haven’t looked at those pages in a while. Now would be a good time to take a complete walk-through of your site and review every page. You will want to change dates to reflect the new year where appropriate. You should correct typos, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. And you will need to update information that is no longer accurate. You might also consider updating images and graphics that have been on the site for a while. You should also go through the content of the media library in the back end of your site and remove anything that is no longer being served to the site. (But do make sure you have a backup stored off-site for anything you decide to delete.)
The Purpose-Driven Site
This would also be a good time to step back and think about why you have a website in the first place. What is the primary purpose of your site? Is it to maximize online sales? Is it to provide information about your products or services and drive customers or clients to your physical store or office? Is it to provide information about your non-profit organization and solicit donations or volunteers? Do you run a monetized blog and want to increase readership and therefore ad revenue? Once you have identified the primary goal of your site then you should determine how well it is meeting that goal.
Time to Reflect
In addition to updating the content and reviewing the alignment of your website to its primary purpose, you should also consider how your website reflects you or your business. Does it accurately represent the personality of your business? Is it telling the story that you want your site visitors to know about you or your organization? Can visitors to your site easily locate the key information that you want to share?
If you determine that your website is not effectively telling your story or achieving its primary purpose, or if the review and update of your site’s content left you with a sense of staleness, then perhaps it is time for a redesign of your site. The average lifespan of a website design is between two and five years. Is it time for a change to your website?
