Your 2023 Website Spring Cleaning Checklist
Does your website need a refresh? Are you dealing with lengthy load times, missing meta-tags or dated messaging? Even a few minor issues could be cluttering your website performance. Making some small tweaks can make a big difference in optimizing user experience and attracting investors. Check out our checklist to help spring clean your website:
- Define your goals: Your website is a powerful tool. If you are an issuer undergoing a capital raise, your goal might be lead generation. If you are an asset manager, you might use your website more for informational or brand awareness among advisors and retail investors. Keep your goals in mind when reviewing your website analytics.
- Leverage analytics: Review your website metrics to understand and benchmark its performance. Evaluate your website audience to see where visitors are coming from, how long they stay on it and what pages they tend to go to. Your analytics can tell if you are attracting your target investor audience, and what content is resonating most. If you don’t know where to find the analytics you need, you can start by Googling “Google Analytics.”
- Refresh your content: Apply the insights you get from your analytics to update content that speaks specifically to your target audience. This will help decrease your Readers prefer easily accessible information, so you might want to change how your content is laid out by making your website’s hero banner a conversion superhero. Take inventory of high-performing content (the stuff that is most viewed or shared) and move it to the home page to increase engagement. Having a user journey and distinct call-to-action will also increase engagement and conversion.
- Revitalize SEO: Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important step in your cleaning process. It makes it easier for your target audience to find you. Here are a few technical items that are often overlooked:
- Broken links: Remove any that go to removed pages with error messages.
- Meta descriptions and alt-text: All pages should have meta-descriptions. Alt-text shouldn’t be too long or too short. This is a great place to insert keywords to improve your overall SEO rating.
- Page speeds: Reduce page speeds to one to three seconds to increase user retention. You can eliminate any code that isn’t being used to increase your website’s speed.
- Leverage plug-ins: Tools like Imagify for image compression can free up a lot of time, enhancing your website performance.
- Maintain regularly: Websites are meant to be kept current and should be frequently updated. Find a cadence that works for you to update your website and stick to it.