Give Your Website a Spring Cleaning
First, there was Marie Kondo and keeping the items that bring you joy. Then there was the art of Swedish death cleaning, which is not as macabre as it sounds. The latest phenomenon in personal organization is The Home Edit, (THE) a four-step process that leaves any space perfectly organized.
Led by the two-woman team Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, The Home Edit got its start helping celebrity and noncelebrity clients organize the messiest rooms in their homes. The company built a thriving fan base on Instagram with beautiful photos of color-coordinated closets, pantries, and junk drawers. In the seven years since its inception, THE has become wildly popular, with two seasons on Netflix, three books, a magazine, and its own line of organizational products.
As we watched The Home Edit team take over Reese Witherspoon’s closet, we couldn’t help but notice how similar their process is to redesigning a website. Whether it’s your basement or your website that needs a little spring cleaning, it all boils down to four steps.
Step 1: Edit
The Home Edit team gets started by working with the client to get rid of all the junk they don’t need anymore.
When you embark on a website redesign, the first step is to consider what you have already and decide what’s working and what isn’t—like outdated functionality, old-fashioned branding, or content that isn’t reaching your current customers. What can be eliminated and what should be prioritized?
Step 2: Categorize
When it comes to your pantry, the categorize step includes organizing all the items, putting the pasta with the pasta and the snacks with the snacks, and labeling all the groups.
The same goes for your website. Consider all the content you have, what you want to communicate, and create a basic page inventory and primary navigation.
Step 3: Contain
When the team at The Home Edit reaches the contain step, they take all the grouped items and put everything in appropriately sized containers, and put those containers back in the space.
This step is when the website is actually built, and the containers we use are wireframes. Wireframes are blocks that define what info goes on each page, where it should go on those pages, and how much space the block should use.
Like using the right bins for the right space, it’s important to use the tools that are best suited to your needs. For example, a carousel for fresh news or topics or a video library for in-depth information.
And of course, design is key. The site design will express your brand’s style, voice, and personality, and it should be intuitive and easy to use.
Step 4: Maintain
The final step is maintain. For The Home Edit, this means keeping up with the clutter in the space, putting things back where they need to go, and regularly getting rid of junk.
For a website redesign, the maintain step means refreshing your content, whether that’s articles, videos, or inventory, and making sure your technology stays up to date.
Ta da! A beautiful, easy-to-navigate website (or closet).
If your website needs a little spring in its step, give us a call.
