Spring Clean Your Website

When the snowdrops start to show their graceful heads and the daffodils slowly start to push their way through the dark soil, I’m excited to see that spring is on its way.

And with that hopeful energy comes the urge to tidy up and brighten your living space – so why not do the same for your website.

It’s a good idea to routinely check your website to make sure it’s still working well for you and your business, and so I thought today I would offer some suggestions on how you can do this.

Behind the Scenes

Step 1 – Backup your website

Before you begin – make sure your backups are completing successfully and capturing any amendments you make to your website.  If you aren’t regularly backing up your website, please do, I highly recommend you get this feature in place straight away.  

You wouldn’t want to lose all your hard work and effort.  Check with your host to see if they backup your website regularly, many do but you may also want to put in place a back up system that you control in addition.  

If you have a WordPress website you can install plugins to help with this task – I personally like the plugin Updraft and have found it quite easy to use.  You can set it ‘backup manually’ or ‘automatically’ and choose which parts of your website are backed up and to which destination.

Step 2 – Update your plugins/themes

Once you have a recent backup of your website, you’re in a good place to ensure your plugins/themes and core files are up-to-date and are still tested with your version of WordPress.

Step 3 – Check your website links are working and taking you to the correct places

As you and your website grows you may add or delete pages and posts so spending time going through your website and clicking on these links can help to pick up any that aren’t working correctly.  You can do this manually or to save time you can use the link checker called DeadLinkChecker

Step 4 – Google Analytics

Check your Google Analytics are connected and take a little time to see where people are coming from to get to your website.  This can be by country but also from which platform.  

Are your Facebook/Instagram posts bringing you traffic? If not you may need to start rethinking your posts.  

What pages are people viewing and spending the most time on?  Is that where you want them to be?

Front of House

Step 5 – Check your content

Is your content up-to-date? 

• Do you still have the same phone number, email address, address, logo etc.  
• Are you still offering the same treatments or do you need to add/delete some details?  
• Are your prices correct?
• Do you have testimonials dated 2020 showing – can you replace these with newer ones?
• Have you done any blogs recently – if not definitely put these on your to-do list so your visitors have interesting articles to read – then consider updating existing blogs with up-to-date information.
• Does your photo on your about me page/section still look like you or do you need an up-to-date photo?

Step 6 – Check if your website is mobile friendly

On average more than 70% of your website visitors will be checking you out via their mobile.  Make sure your website still looks good and acts as it should on mobile.

Step 7 – Do the jobs you keep putting off

We all have moments when our creative juices are flowing and think “I need to add this to my website/I need to take this off my website” etc.  Make yourself a cup of something nice and sit down for a couple of hours with your laptop and complete those tasks.  You will feel so accomplished when you have finished and your visitors will thank you for it.

And if all else fails and you don’t have the time, skills or inclination to do the above, get someone else to do it for you.  So you can go to bed at night knowing your website is working as hard as it can for you 24/7.

If you have any questions about the above steps please do get in touch.

Thanks

Sarah x

Photograph credit: Lucija Ros