Ok, you might be thinking the tree isn’t even up yet and you’re already talking about the New Year. Yes, I am, and that’s because it’s easy to let things slip and we procrastinate on what’s important. We want you to have the best start to 2020 so here are some things to get your site ready for 2020.
Back to basics
Your website has a goal, you either want people to buy things from you, work with you or apply for a job with you. Whatever your primary goals are, you have got to make sure that all your content is up to date.
- Have you got prices online, are they all up to date and correct for the new year?
- Do you need to remove any services or packages that you no longer offer?
- Have you updated your terms & conditions or privacy policy?
It’s basic but it’s critical and easily forgotten because we’re all busy and things slip. You’re probably thinking ‘nah, it’s good and everything is fine’. Well humour me, when was the last time you had a good look over your website? A week, a month, a quarter? Go on, go do it now.
If you’ve done that and you’re not sure if your website is letting the side down, go and take our little quiz and score your website to see how its faring.
Your about page or your bio
Have you got up to date pictures of your team, has any one left who needs to be removed, have you won any awards or new certifications that you can proudly show like a badge of honour? All of these little things add up to one thing, that one thing is your credibility.
It’s also a good time to check on testimonials, what can you add or update? And when sending out your Christmas cookies, what better time to ask your loyal customers or clients for a word or two that you can use as a testimonial.
Technical stuff
Ok, we’ve covered the basics. It’s time to get down and technical for a moment. You need to answer these questions because Google and your visitors are smart, you don’t want to send them to things that aren’t valid, working or worse out of date.
- Have you got any old campaign landing pages that aren’t relevant that need to be hidden or removed?
- You should check your sitemap.xml to list all your public pages for anything you don’t want showing up on a search.
- Have you set up redirects for pages that have been deleted or removed?
- What about old tracking code for bye-gone campaigns that could be clogging up your site and slowing down your loading times?
- Have you got old promo codes that you need to deactivate or delete?
- When was the last time you checked your contact forms and newsletter signups to make sure they’re working?
This doesn’t have to be time consuming and take up your whole day but the opportunity cost of not keeping your site up to date could be pretty jaw dropping. And once you’ve looked at your website, why stop there. When was the last time you updated your LinkedIn profile, your email signature, any profiles on other websites?
We hope we’ve given you a nudge to start looking at your getting your website 2020 ready. A little time spent now before the festivities begin will leave you ready to hit the ground running and concentrate on your New Year’s resolutions!