Does Your Site need a Facelift? A Webmaster’s Checklist

Hello, and welcome to “Design Month” here at OurChurch.com. My name is Mike Cotton. I am the head web designer for OCC and I have been given the privilege of helping organizations obtain their dreams by designing their very own Custom CMS Express. I’ve also been blessed to take over the weekly blogs for the month. July is “Design Month” and, in the next 4 weeks, I’ll be discussing design related topics.

It is recommended that you reevaluate your site at least once every two years. You can keep this list of questions as a reference. In the next few weeks, we will dive in deeper into the following topics.

Content:

• Is your content current and fresh on your home page?
• Is your content easy to understand for your target audience?
• Is your content the right length?

Site traffic:

• How are your search engine rankings?
• Are you pleased with your traffic from search engines?
• What other marketing strategies are you using to bring visitors to your site?
• Do you need to hire someone to “Optimize” your site for you, so that Search Engines know exactly what your site is all about?

Visual appeal:

• How does your site look?
• Is it fresh and alive?
• Does it give a great first impression?
• Does it maintain interest and bring return visitors?
• After visitors leave, are they left with a lasting impression?
• How does it look in internet browsers other than the one you use (IE, Firefox, Netscape, Safari, etc)?

Feedback:

• Are you asking for feedback about your site?
• If so, what are people saying?
• Do visitors complain about getting lost at your site or not finding what they’re looking for?
• Do they complain about broken links or wrong information?
• Do you get rave reviews and lots of praise?

Site maintenance:

• Does your site have any broken links?
• Does it have stale content?
• Do you have new information that hasn’t been added to your site?

Goals:

• Have you set goals for your website (traffic, sales, search engine rankings, sign ups, etc.)?
• Has your site accomplished what you’d hoped during the past year?
• If so, is there anything to be done to make it even better?
• And if not, do you know why not and what can be done about it?

So, how does your site fare? Is it in good shape? Are there some “alterations” that need to be made? Is your site meeting its goals or do you need to set goals for your website?

Perhaps your site is in great shape, perhaps it needs some cosmetic work, or perhaps it’s due for an “Extreme Makeover”. Some sites may need redesigns starting from scratch, while other sites just need small updates. You should evaluate your site on its own needs, goals and budget.

Did you find this article helpful? Did it give you some good ways to evaluate your website? Did it leave you wanting more information on how to review your website and what to do to improve it? Please post your comments below. Don’t forget to vote for this blog on Blogs4God and GospelShout so others will see it.