Spring cleaning

It’s spring, and that means it’s time for spring cleaning.  You’ve already cleaned your house top-to-bottom, right?  (I haven’t, but I assume you’re much more organized and motivated than me, so you’re probably already done!)

Just like your house, your website needs a little special attention sometimes.  There are things you need to do once in a while to keep it performing its best.  Depending on your needs, you might want to do these quarterly or yearly, but you should check up on them at least once a year and make sure everything looks good. It’s not sexy or exciting, but it will help keep your website running smoothly. And now is the perfect time to get started.

• Clean up your email database. Most eCRMs give you tools for cleaning and de-duping your email list. No matter how you import supporters to your database, over time, you’ll end up with some bad data as people move, change their email addresses, or accidentally create duplicate records when they take actions on your site. Get rid of bad data, and consolidate your duplicates as much as possible. This is a big task, but it’ll give you more accurate metrics, improve your spam reputation, and reduce the chances that you’re bugging people with multiple copies of your messages.
• Update outdated content/actions. Take an hour and browse your site with fresh eyes. Are your news stories recent? Do you still have a promo, buried on your subpages, for a campaign that finished a year ago?  Is the contact information up to date? What about that little typo that bugs you every time you visit the site? Set aside time to find and fix these little errors – over time, they can really pile up.
• Fix broken links. Link-checking can be fast and easy.  There are many tools to scan your site and identify bad links, both within your site and to external sites.
• Look at your 404 pages. While you’re at it, take a look at your 404 (Page Not Found) errors. Your analytics tool can tell you what missing pages people are trying to visit, and where they found them.  Maybe Google is still indexing old content, or another site has a link with a typo. Some of them, you may be able to fix.  This is also a good time to look at the content on your 404 page itself. Are you providing useful information to help visitors get where they wanted to be?
• Check your “hidden” content. Welcome messages, autoresponders, donation forms, error text… all this content is “out of sight, out of mind” when you’re running a website day-to-day, but it’s very present for many of your visitors.  You know that good Thank You messages are critical for engaging new subscribers and first-time donors, but when was the last time you took a critical look at your default messaging?
• View your site in new browsers. Unless you just redesigned your website, there have probably been new versions of some major browsers since it was developed.  Look in your analytics to see what browsers and versions most of your visitors are using.  If some of the new ones are on the rise, download them (or find a friend who has them installed) and spend a few minutes browsing the site to make sure everything looks okay.
• Test your SEO. Type the name of your organization into a search engine. Where do you rank? What does your listing look like? Do the same for a few non-branded keywords that describe your org. Do the most relevant pages show up first?  Where do they rank?
• Review your site search. If visitors are having trouble finding something on your site, chances are they’ll search for it.  So reviewing your site search analytics is a great way to see what stumbling blocks users are finding on your site.  Not every search term that’s used will indicate a problem – but site search is the one part of your site where users tell you exactly what they’re looking for, and it’s worth paying attention.
• Long term reporting. Chances are there is some data you’ve been meaning to sift through.  How have your emails performed over the long term? What’s the churn rate on your email list? How are you doing on those important goals you set way-back-when?  Now is a good time to look into some of those questions you never got around to answering, or just to spend some time with your analytics tool and see what you find.

Be Sociable, Share!

•