You wouldn’t expect your garden to magically improve without dedicated attention, so why do we expect the same from our websites?
Where to start?
It can be really daunting looking out the window and seeing a jungle of unexplored territory and your website is no different. Perhaps somebody else had responsibility of it previously and wasn’t dedicating time to its upkeep and now you find yourself engulfed by masses of deeply rooted broken links, large images, inaccessible pages and more. While you could just start going and pulling them out by hand, it’s a much better use of time to get the right equipment to help you solve the problem effectively.
Tools
Without a trowel pulling at a weed will only solve a small problem at the surface and leave tons of unwanted mess underground that can have a really negative impact in the future. For your website, the most effective way to tackle these issues is by using a Web Governance tool which will crawl the whole website and code to put together a content inventory and find errors, detailing to you what the issues are and where they are referenced. This way you know the full extent of the problem and can form a digital strategy to help you improve the website quality long term.
Weeds
Weeds can take a whole number of forms and the more you learn, the more you will find. The key is to prioritise which are having the biggest impact and delegate those issues first. Key areas will have the largest effect are things like; Response Times, Spelling Errors, Poor Accessibility, Broken Images, Broken PDF’s and Broken Links. However, dig deeper and other areas which are also imperative include; 3rd Party Tags, Cookies, Errors inside of PDF’s and more.
Pruning
No matter how many hours you dedicate to your garden there will always be more work to be done as it is constantly growing. The evolution of your website is much the same. Keep on top of issues as they arise and you will never be overwhelmed by it again. The better quality your website the longer your users will want to stay there.
A beautiful garden only stays that way through constant care and diligence, put the time into your website and reap the benefits.
Contact our Gardening (Governance) Team today!
