I bet you can’t believe I’m writing the same blog post for the 3rd or 4th year in a row? (Who’s counting?)
But it’s that time of year again! The kōwhai and cherry trees are blooming and it’s time for an unsolicited lecture on how to spring clean your poor neglected website. (Skip this one if we are already managing your site for you, you can just relax).
Lets start with the ABCs….
A – Always
B – Back-up
C – Computer stuff
If you’re one of our clients on a long-term maintenance plan, you have access to backups of your website completely separate from our copies. If you have forgotten how to find them give us a yell!
Next… SPRING!
S – Security
P – Plugins
R – Responsiveness
I – Integrations
N – Navigation
G – Graphics
Now if you are a truly dedicated blog reader you may have noticed I changed the acronym again. I make no apologies and will likely change it every year, so keep checking in.
Let’s start!
S is for Security
Previously I’ve had Server or SEO in this spot, because Security is a year round consideration, but I thought I’d give Security the leading spot this year. Here are some points to consider in your website spring cleaning.
Admin Access
Go through your website user list and check who has access. Do you know every admin account holder? Does anyone have an admin account they don’t really need? Perhaps an author or editor account would be more appropriate in a lot of circumstances.
Login Security
Use 2FA, passkeys where possible, don’t create logins associated with shared email addresses. Don’t reuse passwords.
Your email address is probably used to login to a lot of accounts, including your website. So make sure your email address is secure, has 2FA, is free from forgotten or malicious forwards and auto-replies. Check DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records are correct.
Data
Is your website hoarding data it doesn’t need to? 10 years of contact form questions? Customer accounts and purchases beyond what’s required for tax purposes? Reducing the data your website holds for other people, can help protect them in a security breach. Also, make sure you know your obligations under the Privacy Act. Your business should have a Privacy Officer, and they should be fully aware of the responsibilities of their role.
Plan
What’s your plan if your website or email did get hacked? Whether by a disgruntled ex-employee or a quiet little malicious script? What is at risk? Your content? Other peoples data? Your business’s reputation? Your main lead generator? Have a think, and make a plan. Your plan may involve restoring from a back-up, so remember those ABC’s from earlier!
Plugins
Now I don’t mean to be WordPress-centric, but update your plugins. And if you haven’t been doing this regularly you might need to weigh up the risks and benefits of enabling auto-updates.
Plugins are a great way to add functionality and solve a problem. Sometimes, they get forgotten after a problem is solved. Sometimes multiple plugins get added that solve the same or similar problems. Its never a bad time to review your plugins and see if you can remember what they all do. Keeping a spreadsheet of plugins and notes about their purpose is a great idea if you genuinely need a lot of plugins and a method to keep track of them.
And tying Plugins back to Security… watch out for plugins that haven’t been updated in a long time, they may be abandoned or no longer maintained, and they may have unpatched security risks or not be compatible with newer versions of WordPress etc.
Not on WordPress? The equivalent may be called apps or extensions or modules. Essentially a way that extra code and functionality is added to the base model of your website platform. Check what you have, and that its still what you need and still functions correctly. No point paying for an extra SquareSpace Ecommerce subscription if you’re not actively using your website to sell products.
Responsiveness
Look at your website on every different device you can find, and start a task-list of problems. Next, complete basic website functionality on every different device you can find, and start a task-list of problems. Finally, set yourself to solving the problems. (It’s ok, we can help if you get stuck!)
Every year, there are more devices available, and every year there seem to be more techniques for solving the problems of getting every page to work nicely on every device.
Accessibility also fits well within this topic. Your website not only should work for every device, but also every human associated with a device. Human-first design. Does your website work with screen reading software, keyboard first navigation, dark and light mode, is it simple to navigate, can it be zoomed in on without breaking responsiveness? Does language translation work on your website? This can be a topic that sometimes gets a bit overwhelming especially when creating a DIY website with a small budget. If you can’t get things perfect right away, work on continuous improvement.
Pagespeed Insights have also added a new metric I’m going to shoehorn in here, Agentic Browsing. How does your website appear to the allegedly friendly robot citizens of the web? Can they find the information they need to help their humans? Standards for this are still emerging at the time this post is being written, but if you’re aiming to ensure your website is accessible to a wide range of humans, that will likely assist with this category too.
Integrations
Previously this section was Intention – which I still think is important, and Integrations has some crossover with Plugins, but I think Integrations needs its own section this year. You can check out a previous year if you have a basic brochure site where Integrations are less relevant.
What other platforms or 3rd party software is your website integrated with? Try and count them, unless you have a very basic brochure site you might be surprised. Think about what you consider an integration as well. Can your website automatically send emails? Can it process purchases? This comes back again, to security. If your website is hacked, what could the knock-on effects be? Think about this carefully when adding any new integrations. Especially integrations that may involve unpredictable effects, like LLM’s and Agentic AI.
Do you have a development site and staging site where you can test integrations before they go live?
Navigation
This one relates closely to responsiveness, in that the Navigation needs to work on all those devices and for people who use websites in a variety of ways.
Your website should have a menu at the top of the page. I know, boring right? These ‘boring’ design aspects are what humans expect. And when they don’t get what they expect they don’t usually say ‘wow, this website is so interesting and subversive’ they just click the back button and move on with their lives.
Usually. Unless the website is generally extremely cool and fun like this one crossstmusicfestival.co.nz
Cross Music Festival (at time of writing) have their menu at the bottom of the page, and the whole site seems to spin around you when you use it. It’s quite a dizzying experience, and very cool for a music festival, but if you’re a B2B or service business or pretty much anything outside of experience based arts, then just put your main navigation menu at the top.
Your website should usually have a footer (unless you are a cool music festival in which case you are exempt) and the footer should contain helpful common links like terms and conditions, contact, and the business location or address. NZ businesses often include their NZBN, which is a helpful signal for local customers these days as a lot of overseas businesses seem to have a .nz version of their website to appear more local than they really are.
You can use heatmapping to track customer journeys and see where people click as they use your website. This can help guide decisions around whether your navigation is currently helping or hindering your potential customers.
Graphics, Images, and Typography
Check that images are of a decent resolution, have Alt Text describing them, and are relevant.
Ensure that logos are used as directed in the brand guidelines provided by your graphic designer, eg correct spacing around them.
Doublecheck you’re using the fonts and colours your designer recommended, or if you have decided to go off on your own tangent and just have fun with it, try to be consistent.
But what about…
the rest of the things on the never-ending to-do list?
Try to incorporate as much as you can on a monthly to-do list… and consider outsourcing some of the workload to us if your website is too big and getting out of hand!
For our clients sites we always have these things and more in mind when providing monthly care plans. This becomes a considerable workload on websites with hundreds of products, pages, and posts, or multiple authors and editors, at which point our focus is on the pages that seem most valuable to customers. We may use analytics to track user journeys and make recommendations for focus areas, to keep within your budget as your website grows.
Have a lovely spring, and do let us know if this post has been helpful, or if you need our help with any of the topics.
Cheers,
Kristie.
