If you’ve ever done a whirlwind cleanup before hosting guests, you know how small changes and overlooked clutter can accumulate over time. Your website is no different. Throughout the year, shifting business goals, evolving technologies, and new regulations can all leave their mark on your digital presence. What worked perfectly in January 2024 might now be outdated—or even hindering your success.
As we enter 2025, it’s the perfect time to put your pencils down, conduct a review, and ensure your website is performing at its best. A finely tuned website can drive better engagement, elevate user experience, and support your business goals. The good news? You don’t even need a full overhaul to see impactful results.
We’ve outlined five critical areas to evaluate and improve to help make sure the year kicks off with a website that works as hard as you do.
Are You In Love With Your Content Management System?
Your Content Management System (CMS) is the backbone of your website. It’s the tool your team counts on to keep your site dynamic, engaging, and up-to-date. But not all CMS platforms are created equal, and the one you chose a year—or five years—ago might not be serving your business needs today.
Is Your CMS Empowering Your Team or Hindering Progress?
A modern CMS should work for your team, not against it. If making basic updates to your site requires submitting a ticket to IT or navigating a labyrinth of unintuitive features, your CMS is working against you, not for you.
Consider these key questions:
- Ease of use: Can your marketing team easily create and update content without technical help?
- Integration capabilities: Does your CMS easily connect with the marketing tools you rely on, like CRM systems, email platforms, or analytics tools?
- Scalability: Is your CMS built to grow with your business and support future needs?
A CMS that your team can easily and readily use can free up resources, increase productivity, and ultimately improve your website’s impact.
Time for a CMS Upgrade or Migration?
If your current CMS is falling short, you may want to consider a migration to a more suitable platform. And while this isn’t a small endeavor by any means, it’s often less time-consuming and expensive than a full website redesign and build.
Here’s why we think it’s worth considering:
- Improved usability: Rebuilding your site in a user-friendly CMS means your team can handle updates in-house. No more reliance on expensive IT resources.
- Enhanced design and UX: CMS migrations often include opportunities to make small but impactful improvements to design and user experience (UX), which makes your site more intuitive and engaging.
- Better performance: Many modern CMS platforms come with access to powerful tools to boost speed, improve SEO, and ensure security.
Keep in mind that even a CMS migration requires planning and resources, but the long-term benefits—freed-up teams, simpler processes, and higher conversions—are well worth the effort.
Is Your Data Lying to You?
Tracking website performance isn’t just gathering data, it’s gathering the right data to make informed decisions. Over a year, your business goals may shift, and so should your tracking methods. If your analytics setup is outdated or misaligned, you could be facing misleading insights and missed opportunities.
Is Your Data Reliable and Actionable?
Accurate data is critical for measuring ROI, optimizing campaigns, and understanding customer behavior. But reliability isn’t the only factor to consider—you also need to be sure you’re tracking the right metrics.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
- Are our tracking tools accurate? Errors in GA4, Google Tag Manager, or other platforms can skew results, making it hard to trust your numbers.
- Are we measuring the right data? KPIs should align with your current business goals. If your focus has shifted to customer retention, but your tracking is still centered on lead generation, your efforts may be misdirected.
- Is our setup cluttered or outdated? Over time, tags, triggers, and goals can become messy, leading to inefficiencies or conflicts. Multiple agencies working in silos can also have undesirable effects.
A clean, focused approach to tracking guarantees your data is both reliable and actionable so you can make better business decisions.
How to Conduct a Tracking Audit in 2025
Performing a quick tracking audit can reveal gaps or errors in your setup. Here’s how we recommend you get started:
- Review your KPIs: Ensure your events in Google Analytics and other platforms align with your current goals. Are you focused on website conversions, page engagement, or something else? Adjust or create new events to reflect updated business objectives.
- Validate tracking tools: Check that Google Tag Manager and GA4 are properly configured, working in concert, and accurately reporting user behavior. Make sure your site setup is free of errors, duplicate scripts, and outdated tags.
- Test events completions: Use real-world scenarios to confirm your events are tracking correctly.
- Leverage tools for efficiency: Tools like Google Tag Assistant or GTM Preview Mode can quickly highlight errors. An advanced tool like Looker Studio can create custom dashboards for ongoing tracking.
A robust tracking audit keeps your data clean and accurate so you can focus on the metrics that matter most to your success.
Is Your Website Ready for the Privacy Police?
Virtual spaces are constantly evolving, and so are the laws and regulations governing how websites handle user data. Think privacy policies to accessibility standards. Staying compliant isn’t an option—not only to avoid penalties but also to build trust with your audience.
Staying Ahead of Evolving Requirements
If your website’s compliance practices haven’t been updated in a while, you could be at risk. Privacy laws like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), and others are updated frequently, and standards like WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) continue to evolve to promote inclusivity.
Not meeting these requirements can result in:
- Legal penalties: Non-compliance with privacy regulations can lead to hefty fines.
- Loss of trust: Visitors expect websites to safeguard their data and provide an accessible experience.
- Missed opportunities: Accessibility improvements, for example, can expand your potential audience.
Key Compliance Areas to Review
When it comes to compliance, we strongly recommend that you review the following areas as you prepare for the year ahead:
- Privacy Policies: Are your privacy policies up to date and reflective of how you collect, store, and use data? Does your cookie management tool align with GDPR, CCPA, or other relevant regulations?
- Accessibility Standards: Ensure your website meets the latest WCAG standards, such as providing alt text for images and enabling keyboard navigation. Use tools like WAVE or Lighthouse to identify and address accessibility gaps.
- Legal Oversight: While your marketing or web agency can assist with implementing technical tools for compliance, your organization’s legal team is ultimately responsible for ensuring regulatory alignment. Web professionals are not lawyers, so legal experts need to review and approve policies, disclaimers, and cookie consent frameworks.
- Third-Party Tools and Integrations: Audit plug-ins, analytics scripts, and third-party tracking tools to ensure they adhere to current privacy standards.
With a thorough review in these areas, you minimize legal risks and know that your website is both user-friendly and regulation-compliant.
Are You Telling Your Brand Story or Confusing Your Customers?
Over a year, it’s easy for your website’s messaging to stray from its original focus. Updates from various teams—whether it’s new product pages, HR announcements, or sales-driven tweaks—can dilute your core story. Take the time to refocus your website’s content so it reflects who you are today and why customers should choose you.
Does Your Website Accurately Reflect Your Business Today?
Your website is often the first impression potential customers have of your business. But as your company grows and evolves, so do your goals, offerings, and brand positioning. Has your site kept up?
Here’s why we believe regular content reviews are critical:
- Combat “Scope Creep”: Different stakeholders may have added content that pulls the site in conflicting directions. This can make your website feel disjointed or unclear to visitors.
- Maintain Clarity: Your messaging should be simple and compelling, making it easy for visitors to understand what you offer, who you serve, and how you stand out.
- Alignment: Does your website’s tone, imagery, and language align with your current branding and market positioning? If not, it’s time for an update.
Steps to Review Your Website From a Customer’s Perspective:
- Pretend you’re a potential customer visiting your site for the first time. Do you know what you’re selling? Is your value immediately clear?
- Assess navigation—can users find the information that matters most quickly and easily, or has your menu been cluttered with non-essential requirements?
- Look for inconsistencies in tone, design–icons are often the biggest offenders here–or messaging that could confuse or alienate visitors.
Crafting Clear and Compelling Messaging
Strong messaging is the foundation of a high-performing website. And depending on the role of your website, your messaging needs to impact visitors at all phases of the sales funnel. Here’s how to ensure your content delivers:
Refine Your Value Proposition:
- What problem does your product or service solve?
- Why should customers choose you over competitors?
- Write a concise statement that answers these questions and place it prominently on your homepage.
Simplify Product Descriptions:
- Are your offerings explained in terms your target audience can easily understand?
- What product information is truly essential to your audience?
- Avoid industry jargon and focus on the features, benefits, and outcomes customers care about most.
Tell Your Story:
- Share your company’s mission, values, and unique perspective in a way that resonates with your audience.
- Authentic storytelling builds trust and makes your brand memorable.
Focus on Actionable Content:
- Clearly defined user paths improve the user experience.
- Every page should guide visitors toward a clear next step, whether it’s to learn more, schedule a demo, or make a purchase.
- The “Path Exploration” feature in GA4 is a great tool for understanding if your intended user paths are working correctly.
Involve multiple team members in your review to gather diverse perspectives. Often, employees closer to customers (like sales or customer service) can identify gaps or misalignments that others might miss.
Does Your Website Run Like a Well-Oiled Machine?
Speed is everything. A slow website frustrates users and impacts your search engine rankings and conversion rates. Over time, an abundance of 3rd-party scripts, integrations, and large images can put a drag on site speed. Optimizing your website’s performance means that visitors can navigate easily, stay engaged, and take action.
Why Speed Matters More Than Ever in 2025
Page load speed has a direct impact on user experience and your bottom line:
- First Impressions Count: Users form an opinion about your site in seconds. If pages are slow to load, they’re more likely to bounce and look elsewhere.
- SEO Benefits: Search engines prioritize fast-loading, responsive websites, meaning speed can directly influence your search visibility.
- Boost Conversions: Studies consistently show that faster websites lead to higher engagement and more completed purchases or inquiries (Webleveling).
How to Perform a Website Speed Test
Testing your site’s speed is straightforward and can uncover areas for improvement:
Use Tools for Accurate Insights:
- Google PageSpeed Insights: Evaluate load times and receive actionable recommendations.
- GTmetrix: Offers a detailed breakdown of performance metrics, including loading, interactivity, and visual stability.
- Pingdom Website Speed Test: Analyze performance across different locations to understand global variations.
Test Multiple Pages:
- Don’t focus solely on your homepage. Test frequently visited pages like product pages, blogs, and your most popular landing pages.
Analyze Results:
- Look for opportunities to improve metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Total Blocking Time (TBT), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
Quick Fixes for Common Performance Issues
Improving website speed doesn’t always require a major overhaul, but it’s also not as easy as doing everything that Google recommends. You can start with these actionable steps, but consult your developer or web agency to better understand what is required by your website to still function properly:
Optimize Media Files:
- Compress large images and videos without sacrificing quality.
- Use modern file formats like WebP for faster loading.
Streamline Plug-ins:
- Audit your plug-ins to identify and remove unnecessary ones.
- Regularly update plug-ins to their latest versions for better performance and security.
Minimize JavaScript and CSS:
- Remove 3rd-party scripts you no longer need.
- Reduce render-blocking resources by deferring non-critical scripts.
- Combine and minify files to decrease load times.
Enable Browser Caching:
- Cache static files so returning visitors can load pages faster.
Choose a High-Performance Hosting Provider:
- Evaluate your hosting service to ensure it offers the speed and scalability your site needs.
Regular Maintenance Habits
Speed optimization isn’t a one-and-done task. You should incorporate these habits to keep your site running smoothly year-round:
- Perform quarterly speed tests to monitor changes over time.
- Regularly clean up outdated or unused files, assets, and plug-ins.
- Stay informed about new technologies and tools that can enhance performance.
Keep Your Website in Peak Condition Year-Round
Your website is like the engine of your digital presence—it keeps everything running smoothly when it’s in good shape. But just like any hardworking machine, it needs regular check-ups to stay at peak performance. It takes consistent care, thoughtful updates, and staying ahead of changes. By addressing key areas like your CMS, goal tracking, compliance, storytelling, and site speed, you can be confident your site isn’t just keeping up, but excelling, in 2025.
And if this all feels like a lot to tackle, don’t sweat it. A professional website health check can help uncover what’s working, what’s not, and what steps to take next. Not sure how to get started? Start a conversation with one of our project experts today.
Here’s to a website that works as hard as you do—cheers to a strong start in 2025!