Have you taken the time to do a thorough website evaluation lately? That's right, your website- the front line of your worldwide sales force, your tireless, "never say no" marketing machine. Even if your company doesn't have a lot of time and resources to keep the site in tip-top shape, there are several things that evaluating your website can bring to your attention that you can do to tidy up at little or no cost. If you don't have the technical know-how to fix the issues that your website evaluation might bring to your attention, you can put any decent web designer or programmer on the job (nothing mentioned in this article requires more than a basic skillset).

Reiterate the Goals and Purpose of the Site

Hopefully your company had a goal or purpose in mind when the site was originally designed and launched. It may have been to promote brand awareness, drive sales leads, sell more product, etc. As the first step of your website evaluation, confirm that these goals have not changed, and if they have changed, determine what your new goals and objectives are. Throughout the process of evaluating your website, continually ask yourself if each site element helps to meet the goals of the site.

Take an inventory

Set aside a time when you can browse the entire site, and try to conduct this visual website evaluation through the eyes of a new visitor. Click on every link and view every page. Hopefully, the site still accurately represents your organization. Be on the lookout for content items that are inaccurate, out of date, or no longer important. Any such issues discovered while evaluating a website should be addressed and corrected as soon as possible.

Start a spreadsheet or list

It's a good idea to keep a "to do" list for the website at all times. This list can be as simple as a Word document or as complex as a database, including (at the very least) each item to be modified (page, copy, graphic, link, etc), the desired action, (add, remove, update), and the priority (low or high). Then, if you or your staff happens to have a few minutes here or there, this list can be continually reduced in an efficient manner (or sent off to your web designer as needed).

Eliminate Broken Links

One of the most common, embarrassing, and easily correctable maintenance tasks is identifying broken links in your website evaluation and fixing them. Working links may lead to other pages (either to your site, and other external sites) or to graphic images. Broken image links appear as either a little red "x" or a blank box representing where a graphic is supposed to appear. Broken page links will result in the dreaded "404 FILE NOT FOUND" error message. Hopefully, through the process of evaluating your website, you've already compiled a list of these annoying anomalies. If you'd like to double check for additional links you may have missed, you can use a free tool such as the Netmechanic Toolbox which will not only verify all of your links, but also check for spelling errors (just don't rely on this as your sole method for spell checking) and perform other useful functions such as checking page load time and discovering browser compatibility issues. When you do come across a broken link in the course of your website evaluation, it's usually one of two things: an incorrect path to the graphic/page has been used, or the graphic/page no longer resides on the server. Have your webmaster correct the issue in either case. No link is always better than a broken one. Read More...