When was your last website review?
If it’s been a while, your website may be in need of a checkup.
Hey there folks! We’ve been talking a lot lately about content marketing and consumer behaviour, so I thought it was about time we had a quick chat about the place you’re probably directing all that online traffic to – your website. More specifically, I want to talk about how regularly you should be doing a website review. You know, to make sure it’s up to date, accurate, and still working the way you want it to.
I’m going to briefly go over a couple of key points, and then it’s over to you – tell me what you want to know by posting a comment below!
How regularly should I do a strategic website review?
This is a great question and one that trips people up quite often, because it’s so subjective. The answer, in my opinion, is: at the very least, you should do a website review once a year. An annual once-over is like a GP health checkup – even if you’re not sick, you still want to make sure everything’s a-ok! Same for your website.
On top of that annual scheduled review, you should also look it over whenever any of the following happens:
- You have a new service or product offering
- Your business changes direction
- There is a special offer, sale or deal available
- You have noticed that users are viewing some pages, but not converting to enquiries or sales
- Whenever you change anything to do with your brand (this includes logo, brand voice, target audience…)
Is that more regularly than you expected? Perhaps, and it might seem like a big commitment to make. However, you need to look at it strategically – your website is the ‘single point of truth’ for information about your business, what you do, and who you are. You’ve invested a lot into building that presence to begin with; you don’t want to all that effort.
You’ve bought the big house – now you need to mow the yard. That’s the deal, people!
What should I be looking for?
Inaccuracies
When you’re reviewing your website, you should look out for anything that isn’t accurate. I don’t just mean facts and figures; I’m talking about whether it is an accurate reflection of your business as a brand. Make sure the language flows with a single voice, go through your old blog posts and do some minor content updates (then recycle the crap out of ’em!), check that all your images are on-brand.
The other thing to check here is whether there are any old services or remnants of a sale from last year still floating around on some of your less-utilised pages. A website review is a great way of picking these up and making sure they’re not clogging up your site.
Sales funnel
Here’s a fun marketing term you might not have heard of! Sales funnels are also sometimes called ‘click funnels’, and they are a really important and fascinating part of your website. A sales funnel is the track that a user takes when they land on any given page of your website. The reason it’s a ‘funnel’, is because you can use the options you give to influence users towards making the decision you want them to make – whether it’s to buy, to contact, to sign up, or whatever other outcome you most desire. Take a look at the way you’re directing users around your pages, and see whether they’re ending up where you want them to!
User experience
Yay, more marketing! Take a tour through your website and imagine you are a first-time user who doesn’t know anything about your business. Does the website help you find things out, or make it difficult? Is it interesting and easy to navigate? Are there pictures, infographics and videos to make the pages visually appealing (and convey a bucketload of information without so many words)? Do you enjoy the experience of trying to find something on the website, or are you happy to be done with it? These are just a few of the things you should be looking out for when you do a strategic website review.
A second set of eyes
I’ve talked about how helpful our brains are before, but I’m going to reiterate it here because it’s a really pertinent point. Our brains – bless their cotton socks – are just about the most helpful organ ever invented. When you are close to something, whether it’s a website, a blog post, a brochure or a book, there comes a point where you might almost know too much about it. You know it so well, that your brain will very helpfully correct mistakes you might have made, and see what you have created in the way that you intend for it to be seen – not necessarily in the way it actually is.
That’s what happens when we make silly errors like typing the same word twice in a row in an email. We knew what we meant at the time, and so our brain saw what we wanted to see. Somehow it’s only ever after you’ve sent it that you read over it and think, “How on earth did I miss that?” Now you know – it’s your brain’s fault. Dammit, brain, get with the program!
Because of this, I’m a huge advocate for having someone outside of the situation look thing over, and this definitely applies to websites! Get your friend to take a look and give you some honest feedback. If you’re not sure, talking to a strategic marketing specialist (like me!) can help to smooth out some of the bumps and clarify what it is you intend your website to achieve.
Don’t be shy – tell me what you want to know!
Now that I’ve given you a brief look at website reviews and why they are important, it’s your turn! What are you interested in? Do you have any specific queries or concerns you want to raise? Leave a comment or drop me a line and let’s have a chat about it!
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