Websites serve many purposes, but their primary function is to provide end users with a current, accurate understanding of the individual organization’s current activities and focus.
But many websites have become bloated and unwieldy through years – if not decades – of posting information without keeping digital hygiene in mind. The end result is frustrated end users, and a website that gets harder to maintain from year-to-year.
With good digital hygiene, organization can keep their websites efficient, up-to-date, and easier to refresh as their missions evolve. Added bonus – by building digital hygiene into your website maintenance workflows, you can reduce costs and increase efficiency.
What is digital hygiene and why is it important?
Put simply, digital hygiene is the practice of managing, organizing, and maintaining a website’s content – including pages, graphics, and files – while keeping back-end systems up to date.
The goal is to help ensure that everything you present to the public is consistent, relevant, and secure.
Government agencies, in particular, generate high volumes of information for their many stakeholders, which include congressional and executive leadership, citizens, media, regulated industries, and more. Over time, the volume of information can become overwhelming, leading to several issues that degrade the user experience, including:
- Stale or conflicting content
- Content replicated on multiple pages
- Broken user journeys
- Orphan pages that are disconnected from the site navigation
More content also increases hosting needs, which adds cost, and it can complicate web maintenance workflows, design and technology updates, and website management staffing transitions.
The good news is that by implementing a few basic standards, you can minimize these impacts and lay a strong foundation for a fully mature approach to digital hygiene.
Start here: Four pillars of good digital hygiene
Whether you’re looking for efficiency and cost savings today, or trying to get ahead of a redesign in the future, the basics of digital hygiene are the same. Here are four of the most impactful areas to address as you begin the journey to robust digital hygiene practices.
1. Information architecture
Information architecture (IA) defines the structure and organization of your web content. Adherence to a well-planned IA helps prevent lost or outdated content from circulating the web.
As a best practice, web teams should define standards that limit the creation of orphan pages. We also recommend establishing a cadence for reviewing and updating the IA to ensure all content can be found – by humans and bots.
Related: Information Architecture: 6 Best Practices for Government Websites
2. Taxonomy and tagging
Taxonomies make websites easier to manage by organizing and standardizing your content into tags and categories. By following best practices in tagging and taxonomy, you can reap several benefits, including:
- Boosted SEO – Well-organized tagging signals a site’s depth and topic authority to search engines.
- Automation – Consistent tagging powers dynamic displays of related and current content throughout a site.
- Efficiency – Well-tagged content accelerates audits and updates, minimizing hassle.
Like the site architecture, your taxonomy isn’t a one-and-done task. As your mission evolves, so should your tag structure. By regularly reviewing and updating the taxonomy and removing outdated or redundant tags, you can streamline content workflows, support site visitors, and better position your team for future redesign efforts.
Recommended read: Taxonomy for Government Websites: 5 Tips for Getting It Right
3. File naming conventions
Defining rules for how you name digital assets is the most granular step you can take to ensure good hygiene.
For example, let’s say a program or division has a new director and you’re updating the leadership page. The camera file default may be something like IMG_90210, which provides zero information to help find that file in your content management system.
Changing the file name to Director_new is a little better, but what happens when this leader moves on or has been with the organization a while?
A consistent naming convention can ensure that images, files, and other assets are easy to find, update, and remove.
In this example, profile_name, tells you the image purpose (a person’s profile) and who is in the image.
4. Routine content and back-end technology reviews
No matter how evergreen your content may seem the day it’s published, web pages, blog posts, and downloads eventually grow stale.
Your content should reflect your organization or agency’s current focus and the stakeholders’ reality. This means routinely scrutinizing copy, images, organizational charts, and more to remove or update old information.
While government agencies are subject to laws regarding information retention, site content can still be archived. There are a variety of technologies for archiving outdated copy and assets that comply with those regulations. Proper tagging of that content also make the archives easier to search.
Finally, as web systems evolve, keeping back-end systems up to date is essential. Remove plugins, APIs, and widgets, especially those that are outdated or no longer maintained by their providers. This best practice reduces the security risks associated with unsupported code.
Consistency rules the day
Good digital hygiene requires both commitment and follow-through, for every page, every tag, every image.
In fast-paced environments, it’s all too easy to skimp on digital hygiene practices. Web teams are sprinting forward, focused on the next task. Slowing down to clean up past issues rarely makes the to-do list.
It’s important to remember the downstream payoffs:
- Consistent and accurate content that bolsters your company’s credibility
- More efficient workflows for site editors
- Easier transitions to new web managers and administrators
- Vastly smoother redesigns
At Spire, we’ve led comprehensive website builds and redesigns for government and commercial clients of all sizes. We know how quickly things can snowball, creating major challenges for routine site maintenance, iterative improvements, and site overhauls.
If your agency or organization needs help defining digital hygiene practices, take a look at our web design and development services and let us know how we can help.
