If you can believe it, spring is almost over, which means that spring cleaning has either been completed or successfully avoided. If you’re one of the avoiders, this one’s for you. Now, you probably thought I was referring to cleaning your house but today I’m going to talk about cleaning up your website! As everything does, websites age and collect items that are no longer being used or are no longer relevant to your business. Let’s discuss the different areas of your site that could do with a little spring cleaning.
1. Images
If you’ve been adding images to your site over the years, chances are there are a number of them that aren’t being used anymore. If you have uploaded images that aren’t displaying anywhere on your site, delete them from your admin area so you don’t have as many clogging up the back end.
2. Content
This is a really great time to read through the content on each page of your website and see if the messaging still lines up with your brand and with the focus of that page. If not, it may be time to make some changes. On that same note, there may be whole pages or posts that need to be removed depending on services that may or may not be offered anymore.
3. Plugins
If you’re using Wordpress, chances are you or your developer has installed plugins to extend the functionality of your site over the years. Sometimes it’s a good idea to remove the ones that haven’t been used in a while. I will say that you should definitely consult with your web developer or reach out to someone for help if you have a question about deleting plugins. It’s not something to go about lightly.
If we look at these three areas carefully and weed out what is old, outdated, or no longer relevant, we can help our users more clearly find information on our site and keep the resources on the server free to serve up content quickly. Additionally, we now have room to grow our website with new content and new images; a topic for another day. If you need help knowing what to edit out, what to keep, or what plugins are still being used on the site, reach out. We’d be happy to help you navigate through some edits.