Kulture Konnect Blog

Conducting a website assets inventory is an important part of any marketing strategy. After all, a comprehensive inventory can provide companies with a wealth of resources and valuable information to help hone their online strategies and increase web performance. During a website redesign, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll want to change every single thing on your page–in fact, chances are there’s already something there that is working effectively at reaching your website’s goals, and it’s crucial to know just what those things are!

I Get It, I need It... But, What is a Website Asset Inventory?

A website asset inventory is the process and the result of identifying your website goals and current metrics to determine what is working on your website in terms of content. This will allow you to catalog the entire contents of a website including subdomains, pages, images, documents, videos, audio, articles and files.

Got It! It Looks Like a Lot of Work, Why Do I Need One? 

A website asset inventory can save you from a potential disaster in a website redesign by allowing you to determine what is currently working and review things such as:

• URLs to make sure they are search engine friendly
• Your meta titles and meta descriptions 
• Your keywords and their use in meta titles, descriptions, headings, and content
• High or low performing pages and articles 

All this can help you decide what type of analytic metrics are needed, which in turn will allow you to figure out more accurately what assets are performing the best. 

4 Essential Tips For Conducting a Website Asset Inventory

This must-know advice clearly identifies every step that all businesses should take to have a successful inventory and determine the best course of action for marketing strategies going forward. Keep reading to gain access to industry-approved expert knowledge that can help your business’s website redesign run smoothly. 

1. Identify Specific Website Goals:  

The single most essential advice is to know what you want your website to accomplish. Before you even begin to think about making any changes, determine precisely what you want to improve upon and how you’ll measure success. Doing this will let you know what current assets are already performing up to your standards–and what still needs improvement. Website redesign goals–and the metrics used to measure your website’s success–will differ greatly depending on the company. Not all companies will have the same aspirations and forms of measurement. Some brands value conversations while others emphasize pageviews. It’s up to you to know exactly what your goals are and to carefully take inventory of those assets and measurements.

2. Use Metrics:

After identifying your goal, the next step towards achieving a successful website inventory is to use metrics to tell you how impactful different elements are. Identify what pages on your website currently have the most traffic, the highest pageviews, the longest length of stay, and whatever other forms of measuring online performance that your company has deemed valuable. Other key metrics to make an inventory of include bounce rate, click rates, viewer demographics, and completion of goals, whether in the form of surveys or sales. But that’s not all of the possible metrics available for use. Keywords are also highly crucial to any website on the Internet, and knowing precisely which keywords have been most successful for your business so far can help save time and effort in attempting to create new ones.

3. Take A Content Inventory:

Here’s where the true work begins. Now that you’ve set your goals and used metrics to uncover all of the key data, it’s time to start taking inventory. Identify and categorize every type of content currently available on your website to determine what should stay, and what needs a little TLC. Pay careful attention to key data, such as the listed URL, the topic of the content, the title and date published, plus links that lead to other pages. Meta description, author, and type of content are also important things to make note of when doing an inventory. Throughout the whole process, it’s important to be thorough; putting in a little time now can save a lot of time later if the new content doesn’t perform as well as the original.

Identifying inbound links is also a crucial step that deserves extra attention. Imagine if you removed a page that highly contributed to your SEO’s ranking, such as one with a huge number of inbound links. Removing the page could potentially tank how your website performs on online search engines, damaging your website’s performance and ability to bring in visitors, create conversions, and assist in achieving your website’s goals.

During this step of the process, don’t be afraid to find content to revise, or even outright remove. Clearing up some space can help focus the purpose of your website and direct visitors to more persuasive information.

4. Make It a Habit: 

Now that you’ve finished your content inventory, be sure to schedule in time to do it all over again. After all, these website inventories are not a one-time deal. Think of it like your website’s annual check-up or visit to the dentist, something essential to keeping everything else healthy and running smoothly. Adding website inventories into your current marketing strategy and branding efforts can pay off big time in the long run.  

CONCLUSION: 

A website inventory is an essential component of any company’s marketing plan. If you do not know what type of content is on a website, it is impossible to know what to measure. It is useful for many instances, including a website design, website redesign or even a website migration to another domain. By figuring out the exact areas of your business making a genuine impact on success, it’s far easier to optimize website content that makes a deeper, and more relevant connection to your audience. Guide visitor’s farther along the buyer’s journey, take stock of every important aspect of your current design, and get started on making the best strategy for your business going forward. By following these 4 website inventory tips, boosting online performance is simpler than ever! 

And, after carefully checking over all of your metrics, data, and assets, it’s time to turn the focus outwards—towards examining the performance of your competitors. Learn all about this—plus countless other marketing tips during a website redesign—in next week’s can’t-miss article.