Time for a Website Spring Clean?

While we at Individualise love a shiny new website, we also believe that every website deserves a little love.

Nobody – and especially no-one here at Individualise – likes to see a website gathering digital dust. You’d be amazed (well, we are) at how many websites don’t get the basic attention they need. Glitches, slow loading, uncorrected grammatical errors – all these are easily remedied in order for a website to be the effective business tool it can be.

If you have a website that you haven’t paid much attention to for a while, let alone given any tlc recently, read on.

Shop Front

If you think of your website as your shop with frontage – it might be your only one, or could be a digital addition to the bricks and mortar one you already have – it stands to reason that you care about how your shop represents your company. This is your first point of contact with potential customers.

With your bricks and mortar premises you will have the windows cleaned and interior tidied regularly, you will get new stock and perhaps rearrange the displays. You will definitely tidy up regularly and you might even redecorate now and then.

So it should be with your website.

Take Time to Assess and Consider

Imagine you are a potential client. Visit your website and take a tour of it. Does this website appeal to you? Is it an attractive shop front? What does it look like inside?

Look at all the pages and check the following:

• Are the pages loading as they should or are there a few glitches that slow the process?
• Are the links working?
• Is there anything that is immediately off-putting: typos or grammatical errors?
• Are all the references up-to-date?

If a shop’s windows are filthy or there are piles of unorganised stock just inside the front door, it’s not tempting to enter. Instead you might keep walking and go to the shop next door.

Similarly there are few things more off-putting to a potential client than a slow website that doesn’t work. There’s also few excuses for shoddy spelling and grammar. There are so many websites out there; at the very least your website should be firing on all cylinders to give it – and your business – the very best chance of standing out from the crowd.

Take Action

Perhaps the plug-ins need updating for your website to continue functioning as it should. (These need updating on a regular basis). Have you spotted anything else that needs correcting – perhaps a typo here or an out-of-date reference there? Are all the links working?

We’ve even seen sites that still have old contact details on them after the business have moved premises.

The good news is that all of these can all be remedied very easily.

List all the annoying glitches, spelling mistakes and things that need correcting on your website. Go into your web design program and resolve these issues one by one.

Just as you wouldn’t necessarily clean the windows or redecorate your shop premises yourself, if you don’t know how to do it yourself or don’t have the time or the inclination to learn, employ someone who can do these things for you. If you don’t have the time to go through your pages one by one to check for errors and glitches then add that to the job for your web developer.

At the very least you need to be giving your website an annual overhaul. Ideally you should be looking at it on a more regular basis.

Blow the cobwebs away and maximise your website’s potential. In other words: put the spring back in your website’s step.

Here at Individualise we offer digital maintenance packages either as a one-off Spring Clean or ongoing basis that ensure your website is up-to-date and fully fit for purpose.