Spring clean your site by throwing out your fat clothes!

Posted by Laura Bergells

March 20, 2007

A number of clients are “spring cleaning” their websites this month –

Last month, we discussed putting your site on a diet to gain three big, fat internet marketing advantages.

Now that it is spring, you might also want to throw out your website’s fat clothes!

Here’s what one client did, and what you can do to freshen up your site in a hurry — just in time for spring!

Throw out your fat clothes! After a stats and site review, I had a hard time convincing a client to throw out a funky, clunky Flash navigation system at his site. The stats revealed that almost no one was using his fancy nav bar – and it was significantly slowing the load time on his site.

But my client seemed emotionally attached to his Flash. He paid a lot of money to develop that nav bar two years ago, so he didn’t want to let it go, y’see –

I know how my client felt. I have clothes in my closet that looked great on me — 20 years ago! And I paid dearly for those trendy duds! But those 1980’s fashions just aren’t appropriate for me any more. Wearing them would make me look dated and foolish. But still — packing them up and taking them to Goodwill seems like saying goodbye forever to fond memories of Flashdance fashion….

But when my client reluctantly replaced his fat Flash nav bar with slim and simple text links, he noticed that his pages loaded faster. And his total page views shot up overnight as visitors started clicking on his easy, intuitive text links.

Just like taking a trunkload to Goodwill, my client is starting to feel good about letting go of the past, bravely facing the present, laying a firmer foundation for his future growth – and getting that junk out of his trunk!

So will you! After all, ’tis the season for spring cleaning!

Look critically at your stats and your site. Don’t hold to your fat clothes because you looked good in them a few years ago! You’re slimmer now — and if you are not, you should be! After all, the web, your visitors, and your business has changed! The new Web 2.0 look is streamlined and svelte. Today’s web visitors tend to abandon slow-to-load sites with heavy, self-indulgent design.

Think spring. Think light, lithe, and refreshing. Beyond throwing out your fat clothes, what else can you do to spring clean your website?

How about:

Checking to make sure your site is accessible?
Focusing on usability?
Split-testing on-page elements for sales effectiveness?
Cleaning out any “junk code” to better attract the search engines?
Making your URLS more search friendly?
Adding new or seasonal content?
Adopting social media platforms?
Developing an affiliate strategy?
Testing your site for validity?
Streamlining your code and your pages for faster load times?
Surveying your web audience?
Writing more snappy, direct-response copy?

Oh, wait — that’s not just spring cleaning.

That’s the ongoing stuff that keeps your site attractive and active!

If you’ve been skipping some of these essentials, why not use spring as an excuse for a down-and-dirty site review?

Get regular site reviews. Here’s a handy eight-point web review checklist I use to jumpstart site reviews or as conversation starters with new clients. Use it to start spring cleaning your own website today!

Happy first day of spring! Now, get fashionably clean!