Okay. I have to admit, I'm starting this blog post on my phone in the car and it's pretty exciting. I guess you can add "Phone" to your running list of website maintenance tools. ;)
So - in the first two sections of the website maintenance guide, we covered a lot of review material. We learned about analyzing our current content and workflows.
Today we're going to take it one step further.
You're going to do an exercise that may feel unnecessary and really frustrating.
Stay with me, here, I promise it's worth it!
Take all of your notes about your content and your workflows. Keep them near you.
If you don't have notes for your content and workflows, you can generate them by following these steps:
- [Content notes]({{ site.url }}/maintenance-content "Getting started with website maintenance.")
- [Workflow notes]({{ site.url }}/manage-workflow "Your website is too confusing. Let’s fix it.")
Okay, now you're going to pretend that you're starting your website from scratch.
Wait! Don't leave!
I know that it's frustrating to feel like you've invested so much into your website as it now exists, and then talk about throwing that all away so easily.
I don't want you to think that way. If your website has helped out, that is great! I'm not saying your website has been worthless, just that we want it at its best.
This exercise will help you think minimally and will help you focus on only getting what you need. More on that later.
United we stand, divided we fall.
Do you have a bunch of different parts of your website?
In our "new" version of your website, everything will work seamlessly together because that is what is best. Your users expect to see the same website no matter what page they are on.
The most important links are accessible from the header.
Look over your notes, particularly your workflows. Which pages did you decide need to be accessible within one click?
Those links will be in the header.
There is always a main navigation in the header, the main website navigation, which generally leads to pages like "Home", "About", "Products", "Services" and "Contact".
There can also be a second set of links if you choose. These are the utility links. These are used to feature less used yet still important links that you'd like to make available on all pages. Some ideas for this would be "Privacy Policy" and "FAQ".
Of course, you could always feature those examples in the main navigation instead, but you don't want a thousand links there or your customers will get paralysis of choice.
I recommend picking no more 3-6 links for your main navigation, and no more than 2-4 for your utility links.
It's tempting to throw as many pages as you can, but more is not always better. Don't add pages because YOU think they'll be good for you, add them because your CUSTOMERS need you to.
Outline the content that will be on the pages in your header links.
This is where your content notes will come in. You will write a quick list of things that will be on each page. Since you've already written these notes, this is basically just re-evaluating and re-organizing them.
This can include general information, the tone you are aiming for on the page, [keywords you're looking to rank for]({{ site.url }}/small-business-website-guide-seo-keyword-research-free "Keyword Research: How to get started with small business SEO (for free).") and graphics or images you're hoping to show.
Your own website success blueprint!
Okay, if you've been organized through this process (or optionally, if you organized after the fact), you now essentially have a blueprint for success.
Congratulations! This is awesome!
Now, instead of actually trashing your current website, we're going to talk about how you can use this blueprint to guide your next steps to bringing your website into a better era.
Trim the fat.
There is a good chance that your website is bloated with lots of information you thought your customers needed to know, but it actually drives them away because they don't care.
In our new success blueprint, we've learned what is actually important to them.
Removing entire pages.
This is a painful but necessary step that you need to address first. Go through all your pages now and decide whether they fit in your new success blueprint. If it doesn't fit, take it out.
I'm not talking about blog posts here. I'm talking about the various information pages around your website.
Most of you could probably lose at least 3 or 4 pages. Make sure you keep copies of these pages for when you need to reference content from them. You don't want to lose that content if there is important data that will eventually be on a page that does fit your success blueprint.
Removing slimy content.
Make sure you review [how to write useful content]({{ site.url }}/small-business-website-guide-seo-writing-for-the-web "6 Lessons To Powerful Content For The Web and Small Business SEO.") that your customers will love, and that search engines will reward you for.
Go through the content of the remaining pages and see what doesn't fit in your success blueprint. If there's a bunch of random information or slimy sales speak, take it out.
Be ruthless.
Remove vigorously.
You can keep copies of everything if you want to work on re-writing a new and improved version later, but getting it out now is an important step to take.
Tone up and grow stronger.
It's time to make sure that you have the pages that you need.
Add entire pages.
If there are pages that are on your success blueprint but don't exist on your website, you need to get those in there. Right now you're just creating the canvas, you'll write the content in the next step.
Add necessary content.
You may need to write entire pages worth of content (especially if you just inserted whole new pages in the previous step).
You may just be adding in some paragraphs or key sentences to your existing pages. Maybe you need to get outside with your camera and snap a photo to add to the page.
Whatever it takes, get the content in there that you need based on your success blueprint.
Slow down! Take this one step at a time.
Reading through all that sounds so simple, but when you really break it down, we just talked about an awful lot of work.
Don't try to tackle everything at once.
Maybe today you're going to pick one page to get rid of.
Maybe next week you will choose one page to add.
Maybe the next week you're going to fix up the content for your About page.
The important part is that now you have a guide that tells you what specific steps you need to take next. Your actions will have a purpose and a goal, with research and thought behind it, instead of wildly guessing at what your website may need to be better.
If you want, you can write "Website Success Blueprint" on top of your notes now as a final touch. Keep it close and refer to it when you are going to make a website update.
Credit: Magic 8 Ball | Throne | Trash