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As we make our way further into spring, you may have spring cleaning on the brain — decluttering that bathroom, reorganizing the pantry. But, have you considered that your business might also deserve a bit of primping and polishing this spring?
To help you break out that digital duster, we’ve put together a checklist of ways to spring clean your small business this season.
Giving your business a little annual boost can help revitalize it and make sure everything is running smoothly.
Follow along below to start your own spring cleaning.
6 Ways to Spring Clean Your Small Business
- Refresh Your Website
- Update Your Business Plan
- Audit Your Books
- Revisit Your Marketing Strategies
- Address Pain Points
- Declutter Your Day-to-Day
#1. Refresh Your Website
First things first, take a look at your website. If it’s been awhile since you’ve made any changes, now is the perfect opportunity.
Let’s walk through some of the refreshes you can do to improve your website’s performance.
Remove Broken Links
Have any of your landing pages or blog posts been removed since you created them? Have any of the websites you linked to been removed?
Do an audit to find and remove any broken links as they can keep visitors from having a good experience on your website. Ahrefs has a free Broken Link Checker tool you can use to streamline this process.
Create New Landing Pages
Have you started offering any new products or services? Create new landing pages that act as sales pages to help convert more customers. Use an AI website builder like Durable to make this process as quick and easy as possible.
Come Up With a New Design
Consider redesigning some of your older landing pages with a fresh, new look. Revamping your overall website design can help keep things up-to-date and modern — and we all know how much Google loves an updated website.
Durable’s AI brand builder can be a huge help in coming up with new design ideas. Let Durable generate a new brand kit for you. It creates a new logo, colors, and fonts for your business and in one click, you can easily apply the branding to your website.
Look at Your Analytics
Take a look at your Google Analytics to measure how your website has been performing. If you’re noticing a drop in traffic, there could be a performance issue. You can use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to see if you can find any underlying issues.
Audit Your Website SEO
Conducting an SEO audit every so often is key to making sure Google and other search engines are happy with your website and will continue to rank your content in their search results pages.
Google Search Console is a great place to start, as well as a paid SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush.
Look at things like:
- Are your pages properly indexed?
- Do you have a focus keyword for your landing pages and blog posts?
- Have you used an SEO plugin (Yoast SEO is a popular option) to optimize your website?
- Is your website mobile friendly?
- Do you have an internal linking and backlinking strategy?
- Are you missing any keyword opportunities?
Ensure Accuracy
If it’s been awhile since you’ve refreshed your website, do a run-through of all your landing pages to ensure all of the information — features, pricing, processes — is still fully accurate and hasn’t changed since.
Refresh Old Content
As mentioned, Google loves updated content. This means you should take your website’s spring cleaning as an opportunity to update old blog posts with new content to make sure they’re still relevant. This can be a great way to quickly boost your search engine rankings.
#2. Update Your Business Plan
You may have created a business plan when you first came up with your business idea — but have you looked at it since? And if you haven’t created a business plan, now is the perfect time to document your journey, create goals, and give yourself something to look back on next year.
Spring cleaning is a great time to make sure you’re still on track with your initial mission and goals.
Make Sure Everything is Still Relevant
Did you implement everything in your initial business plan? Make sure there’s nothing you missed that could be vital revenue sources.
For example, perhaps you had a great idea for a service offering at one point that got left behind in the early excitement of starting a business.
Make sure to add everything you know you can offer your customers. And more than that, make sure you’re still following the same mission and vision you set when you first started.
Revisit Your Business Goals and Make New Goals
What were your initial business goals? Whether you made them six months ago or over a year ago, make sure you’re on track.
Spring cleaning is the perfect time to revisit those initial business goals, check off the ones you’ve hit, and make new goals for the next year.
#3. Look at Your Finances
This is also a good time to take a look at your business’s finances. While you’re probably staying on top of your expenses, when was the last time you really gave your books — or, at the very least, your QuickBooks — a good straightening-up?
Make Sure You Have the Right Software
If you haven’t yet invested in accounting software, even the earliest of businesses need a good place to track revenue and expenses.
Make sure to work with a business accountant to get your business properly set up, and consider using a basic software like QuickBooks to track and categorize all incoming and outgoing funds.
Examine Your Year-Over-Year Performance
If you haven’t been in business long, you may not even have thought about looking at annual trends. Examining your year-over-year (YoY) performance can give you an idea of your annual growth rate, as well as an understanding of any trends.
Do you have a time of year that’s typically busier versus a time of year that’s usually more slow? Moving this “spring cleaning” checklist to your slower season can give you more time to implement any necessary changes in hopes that it makes your “slow season” just a bit less, well, slow.
And if you’re still in your first year of business, use this as a chance to document your monthly revenue so you can easily refer back to it in the future.
Get Rid of Unnecessary Expenses
Did you sign up for a tool or software awhile back that you thought you’d use a lot more than you did? It’s time to let it go.
Look back through your last year or so of expenses to see if there are any others that you don’t need anymore.
Compare Rates for Vendors, Software, Etc.
Maybe you don’t have any expenses to get rid of, but there may be some vendors or tools that you can find cheaper alternatives for.
Keep in mind that you don’t want to sacrifice quality or key features for a more affordable price point. But if you find an option that you can get the same service from at a lower price point, why not make the switch?
Update Your Annual Projections
By examining your year-over-year performance and estimations you have for the rest of the year, you can create an updated annual projection.
This can give you an idea of how much you need to cut back on expenses or if you have the space to bring on additional help.
Consider Automating Processes
Look to see if there are any accounting processes—invoicing, bookkeeping, etc.—that you can automate with accounting software. This can take your hands out of the accounting process and ensure your books are streamlined and always accurate.
#4. Revisit Your Marketing Strategies
Now let’s take a look at your marketing.
Whether you’ve been doing your small business marketing yourself or have a freelancer or virtual assistant help, there may be some room for improvement.
Consider a Rebrand
Does your brand — your logo, colors, fonts, etc. — need a refresh? And if so, it may be time for a rebrand.
Rebrands don’t have to be expensive or time consuming, especially with Durable’s Brand Builder.
The Brand Builder can completely recreate your brand for you — for free.
Once your rebrand is complete, make sure to update your look everywhere. You can easily do this with Durable.
You can apply your new brand directly to your website in a click of a button. You can download your logo, colors, and fonts to create your marketing materials like social media posts, business cards, uniforms, emails, and more.
Refine Your Target Audience
Do you know who your target audience is? Take a look at who you’re reaching on social media to make sure it lines up properly with the people who need your product or service. Then make sure your marketing messaging is resonating well with that target audience.
Make Sure You’re on the Right Platforms
Look at your overall performance to see if there are any platforms that aren’t benefiting your business anymore that you don’t need to spend time on.
And vice versa, explore new platforms that may be a good idea for you to have a presence on.
Revisit Your Brand Voice and Personality
Does your small business have its own brand voice and personality? It should! This can help inform your messaging, making it easier to resonate with your target audience.
Put together a guide for your brand voice so you can refer back to it whenever you create marketing content. It can be scrappy – you just need something to keep you on track.
Test New Strategies and Platforms
Look into new strategies and platforms you might want to test out. For example, it might be a good idea to test out creating TikTok videos or building an email list for a newsletter.
#5. Address Pain Points
This is also the perfect time to address any pain points that you, your team (if you have one), or your customers might have.
Look at Customer Reviews
What are your customers saying about working with your business? If there are any issues with your products or services, you’ll likely discover them hidden in your reviews. Make a list of potential pain points you can address.
Fix Necessary Bugs/Kinks
There might be bugs in your software or kinks in your processes that make working with your business a bit clunky. Make sure to iron those out to improve the overall customer experience with your business.
Implement New Processes
Look into additional tools or processes that can help make certain issues less prevalent.
This may involve using something like Durable’s CRM tool to easily track client communication.
#6. Declutter Your Day-to-Day
You may not even realize the number of tasks you’re doing each day that hinder you from being more efficient.
Durable’s AI assistant can be a huge help with this. Type a question or task into the conversational AI to start brainstorming solutions or get AI-powered help.
Make your processes easier with the help of artificial intelligence. Delegate repetitive tasks to the AI assistant so you can focus more on your business and the tasks that only you can handle.
Start Your Business’s Spring Cleaning Today
Revisiting certain parts of your small business every so often is a good idea to ensure that everything is running smoothly.
Use this spring cleaning checklist each year to keep up with the little things.
And take advantage of AI tools that can make processes easier, like Durable’s AI website builder.
