Izzy James
Digital Marketing
You may not think about it, but cleaning out your website is essential website maintenance that you must take part in.
When focusing on your website and the sales and enquiries it’s receiving, unwanted clutter may be building up in the background and slowing the whole process and website down.
There are many different forms of unwanted clutter that you could get rid of, and we have created this blog to talk you through them.
Why should I clean my website?
It’s easy for unwanted clutter to build up in the backend of your website; unwanted/unused elements often go unnoticed, and then you’re left wondering why your site is slow and underperforming, and why you find it so hard to find what you want in the admin area. Elements that are no longer used can drag down your site’s overall performance, restrict you from reaching your targets and stop your site from running efficiently.
If your website doesn’t perform or appear to be of a high standard, customers may get a bad impression and look elsewhere. There have been surveys where 79% of customers said they would not return to a website with poor performance, that means if you acquire 500 website visitors, but have a poor website performance, you could be losing 395 potential customers.
How to Clean your Website
Remove Old Plugins
If your website has been running for a while, it’s likely that there’s a list of plugins (or addons, depending on the software you use), used and unused, that have been built up in the backend over the years. Removing any unwanted plugins can not only increase space on your website server but can also help increase the speed and performance of your site.
Whilst checking your plugins, ensure the ones in use are all up to date and running as they should to prevent any errors. We also suggest making a backup before making any changes to your plugins in case something goes wrong, and any data need to be retrieved.
Content
Over the years, content builds up on your website and in the backend, and within all that content, there may be out-of-date content or content that just isn’t needed anymore. Unwanted content can drag down the overall site speed and performance and restrict your website from running smoothly. Thoroughly check your site for things such as:
- Old content – this can be text or images that are no longer in use.
- Drafted content that won’t be used
- Spam comments
- Typos and grammar errors in text
As well as checking for these elements, ensure that any content on your site is relevant and up-to-date and that there is a good amount on each page, we recommend having at least 300 words per page and updating your content regularly to keep it relevant and useful to Google and visitors.
Layout and Design
How your website looks can also determine its performance and how people interact with it. If your site looks messy and confusing with images, text, and animation scattered across the screen, viewers are more likely to click away. However, if your website looks clean and professional, more people are likely to stay and browse.
Messy websites can confuse visitors as they won’t know where to look, and sometimes, can be confused as to what it is you actually sell or are trying to present.
When creating your website design, ensure your site clearly shows what your company is, and what you do, and has clear calls to action that are visible to the visitor.
Your website design is something that can be revisited when you’ve had a branding change, or your company is growing, as you may feel the design doesn’t suit who you are as a company anymore and doesn’t showcase your best qualities.
Here at Daneswood, we can help maintain your website, and ensure all elements are up to date and running smoothly. If you need advice on anything talked about in this blog or on any general website enquiries, please contact us today and our team will be more than happy to help.