As the transition from winter to spring begins, most of us feel inclined to give the house a good clean to reset ourselves and our homes. In fact if you take a look at the Cleaning Institutions 2023 spring cleaning survey it is reported that 74% of British households at least once a year claim they have a spring-clean.
When it comes to your website, you need to think of it as the home of your charity. It should be used as the one-stop shop for your users to get any and all information, so it is entitled to its own spring clean too.
Here are some ideas on how to go about giving your website a good scrub down.
Plugins
If you have a site with add ons or plugins then it’s a good time to review these.
Plugins that aren’t updated or are outdated are a security risk and leave your site vulnerable to hackers exploiting. Plugins that are’t being used but are sat on your site
This is a good chance to review your plugins list and give it a bit of Marie Kondo style. Go down your list either by yourself or with your web developer on a spreadsheet and note what the plugin is used for, and if you’re going to keep it. If it doesn’t spark joy (or have any meaning on your site), get it gone. Once this has been reviewed, make a backup of your site, and either action these changes, or consult your website support.
Branding
Branding plays a huge part in how people perceive your website. If you brand isn’t applied properly to your website, it can put users off, and not want to engage with your site.
Updating a website is a good opportunity to look at your brand as it stands and see if it is serving you as much as it should be. Does it help convey to the user who you are as a charity? Does it pass WCAG 2.2 accessibility guidelines? Do you have brand guidelines within the charity? This is a good time to step back and evaluate the website in a branding concept, as well as how it applies to your website
User Experience
Websites should have a purpose. As said previously, it is a one stop shop to all things you. So make sure your website reflects what your goals are.
For example, if you are trying to increase donations specifically, it might be worth reviewing that user journey to get to the donation page, and all considerations that go into donating at a charity. Is there a one click journey to donate to your charity – e.g a button in the header or a call to action in the hero banner? Are there easily available impact stats to back up what you’re doing with their donation? It’s all about making a users journey that little bit easier.
Accessibility
According to the study by Web Accessibility in 2023, 96.4% of the top 1 million websites return accessibility errors and warnings.
Read our starter guide here, on how to start to tackle accessibility for your website
What to do next?
These are just some of the ways you can give your website a bit of a clean as we move into the spring months. It’s good to take a step back and review your website as a whole, but this can be daunting.
We offer a web audit service where we do the above for you. We’ll asses your website on how well it runs, can people use it, can people find it, and does it look good. This gives you a chance to see what an outside party would say about your website, and give you actionable answers to problems.
