Spring Cleaning: Necessary for More Than Just Your Garage
The arrival of spring is all about growth and Mother Nature’s refresh button. People start their yearly spring cleaning events from inside their homes, garages, yards and workspaces. But now is a perfect time to link that same mentality to your website as well. When was the last time you really went through to clean up all that was old, no longer working, or needed?
Out with the old and in with the new! Things can change quickly from year to year within your business. Staff, projects, awards, locations, products and services, or even your company focus. There has never been a better time to update your website so that you are providing your audience with accurate and up-to-date information.
Dusting off your Design. If it’s been a couple of years since you last gave your website a facelift, it’s time to start planning to refresh! To start with, aesthetics are the first thing users notice – before content, usability, or anything else. If your site is feels dated and ugly, you are setting them up with a sour taste before they even get started!
Along with the aesthetics, it has to look good across a variety of devices – laptops, desktops, tablets, mini tablets, e-readers, and smartphones. You never know what screen size your user will be on so multi-device scalability is 100% essential today.
Scaling Back. Over time you may have added a link or two here, stuck in a new paragraph here, and added some photos over there. It can get to the point that the organization and flow is lost. A busy, overdone website may deter a visitor who really could have used your awesome products and/or services. If users get overwhelmed when they come to your site, that can lead to lost opportunities! Relay your message using simple content (avoid too much industry jargon, for example) and a few, well placed images. And don’t underestimate how much a clean refreshed Navigation map will help.
If any of these apply to your website, now is the time to get to work! Luckily for our clients, a lot of that cleaning can be done right within your own CMS – clean up those pages and links! If you feel overwhelmed and not sure where to start, Terrostar has some great solutions to do the heavy lifting for you. Our Premiere Assurance monthly package options gives you the most personal support and service to keep your website running smoothly. You can also purchase post launch service packages giving you access to our programming, design and training experts. We are of course ready to tackle a brand new website if you need to make a real clean sweep. Stay tuned next month, we will unveil details of our new Rapid Redesign option! Rapid Redesign will allow small business owners to stay focused on what they do best, while we take care of the full website transformation!