For most, a website acts as a gateway to a brand.
The majority of people considering doing business with you will check you out online first (76% according to this report). That number only grows if what you sell is expensive, complex, or consultative.
In order to make a good first impression, you’ll need to make sure your website’s copy is clearly-written, its design matches your visual brand, and its build allows for fast loading.
But even if you launched a website that checks all of those boxes, it’s important to make time to review it every so often.
After all, your brand is constantly evolving – and as new ideas and products come to light, you’ll want to make sure your website continues to accurately reflect your brand.
Checking in on your website doesn’t have to be a strain on your schedule or resources. Here’s how you can make sure your site stays on-brand while capitalizing on new opportunities.
Step 1: Mark your calendar
Go to your calendar and create a 30-60 minute event that repeats every two months. This time will be spent reviewing your current site (not writing or inputting content, that’s a separate task).
Step 2: Briefly review Google Analytics
Reading through everything in 30-60 minutes can be a tall task if you have a content-rich website. In order to get to the good stuff, briefly review your Google Analytics to get a sense of which pages are getting the most traffic. These are the pages you’ll want to hone in on as you review, since they clearly matter to visitors. Make a note of pages you’d expect people to be reading, but that aren’t showing good traffic – there’s likely a reason why.
Step 3: Read through key pages and make notes of changes and opportunities
As you review your website’s key pages, try not to focus your efforts on technical copyediting (there’s no harm in correcting typos, but that’s not the point of this exercise).
Instead, consider your brand, how it’s changed in the past two months, and whether or not what you’re saying/showing/offering is in alignment.
Make note of the changes you wish to make, but avoid the temptation to make them right now. Content management and brand management require different headspaces.
For now, focus your efforts on identifying improvements. Make notes so you can implement the changes later.
Step 4: Implement your list of changes
Now that you’ve identified some areas where your website can better represent your brand (and what you offer), you need to figure out how to get it done.
If you plan on making the edits to the site yourself, you’ll want to block off a chunk of time in your calendar to focus. Writing/editing/inputting clearly organized content is difficult to squeeze in to breaks between meetings. With time to focus, you’ll implement the changes more effectively without making careless mistakes.
If you plan to delegate the website updates to an employee or the company that manages your website, you’ll want to deliver a clear list of what you’d like done so they can knock it out in a block of time. This saves you from inefficient back and forth conversations which slow progress.
If you’ve identified areas for significant improvement/evolution and have no idea what to do/delegate next, it might be worth investing in a professional review with a digital brand expert.
This can help you safely evolve your website in a way that intentionally supports your business, rather than “switching things up” and hoping it all works out.
Links break, content shifts, and new opportunities arise.
By blocking off a little time for a bimonthly website review, you ensure that your brand continues to make an impactful first impression.
Has a small change to your website ever paid off big for your business or brand?
