Summer Cleanout: The Attic Known as Your Website
Is your website an attic? Do you stuff it with lots of content, but never take anything out?
There is just about a month left of beach vacations, summer camps, and a more laid-back atmosphere before Labor Day rolls in and the fall vibe gets going. For those of you in the South, you might have just days left before children return to school. Regardless of where you are in North America, It is the PERFECT time to audit your website, ensure that your user journey is rock solid, and answer these (many) questions.
Look at Google Analytics
If you are still on Universal Analytics (sunsetting in mid-2023), what top 10 pages have been the most popular this year? This year over last year? Are these the pages that you want your visitors to be flocking to? Are there pages that are missing from this top-tier bunch?
If you have made the switch to GA4, what does your engagement rate look like? Are visitors spending enough time with your contact to be motivated to take an action?
Don’t have Google Analytics installed? Get on it ASAP. It provides valuable data that can inform future decision making.
Sweep through your main navigation
Are the items indicative of the secondary pages that fall within each? Do the labels prompt engagement?
Inventory your content
Are your key messages and differentiators clear, unique, and appear frequently across pages? Do you have loooong paragraphs of text (no) or are your batches of content snack-size and broken up by bullet points, images, photographs, and/or video? Most obviously, are there any grammar and/or spelling errors?
Calls to Action
Unless your website is simply an information repository, its purpose is to encourage your readers to do something. Register/enroll, make a gift, contact you, download/consume content, and other calls to action.
Are these actions clear and easy to find? Do you have pages that deadend, leaving users to go nowhere but off the site?
Yes, website auditing is just ANOTHER thing to do. However, it is a critical component of your integrated marketing initiatives. You don’t own your social media accounts or the sites where your digital ads live. If they went away tomorrow, what’s left? Your website.
