When was the last time you gave your website a good spring cleaning? I dislike cleaning out the garage, but I need to keep things organized and find what’s important.
Don’t let your website look like my garage
If you don’t clean out your website on a regular basis, it ends up looking like my garage. You don’t want that. Trust me.
I’ve got a toolbox in my garage. I haven’t done a good job keeping it organized. Nine times out of ten, when I’m looking for a tool, I have to open every single drawer to check if it’s in there. And every time I have to hunt for a wrench, I’m thinking “Gee! Can’t I get this better organized so it would save me time and effort?”
The different between my garage and my website is this:
- In my garage, I HAVE to be patient to find what I’m looking for unless I want to run to the store and buy a new wrench (which I’ve done sometimes).
- On my website, NOBODY has to be patient to find what their looking for. If they get frustrated, they will leave and I’ll leave the impression that I’m a slob who’s disorganized.
So it helps to go through an clean out your website’s content.
Small steps can make a difference
I’m cleaning out content myself.
- First, I started following a roadmap laid out in Michael Hyatt’s Platform University and Stu McLaren’s Tribe Workshop. Both of these sites help people like me with building their platform and business.
- I sat down and thought about the primary content categories I wanted to cover on my site.
- I took down a bunch of old posts that didn’t align with my primary content categories. Some posts were far more technical to be of any use to my intended audience. Others were ramblings with no point.
Anyway, I’m still in the cleaning and organizing process myself. But here’s some tips on how you can spring clean (or autumn clean) your website.
Three questions, three minutes
- Strategize: Why not spend three minutes answering these three questions?
- Who is your website for?
- What do you want users to do?
- Why do you want users to do this or that?
- Audit: Knowing your Who, What and Why, go through every internal link in your navigation, such as your top menu, sidebar, footer, etc.
- De-clutter: If you come across something that doesn’t match your Who, What and Why, get rid of it!
So, what’s the biggest challenge you’re facing with cleaning out your site? Please share in the comments section below?