Digital hoarding is real. When websites are a cluttered, hot mess, users can’t figure out what’s important—and neither can Google. Learn how to diagnose and treat digital hoarding, so that you can focus on your content, optimize your site for search engines, and improve conversion rates. Understand how digital hoarding affects SEO and conversion rates. Determine what content belongs on your website, and what can go. Learn best practices for archiving content on your current website.

1. Digital hoarding is driving away
users and killing conversion
By Christy Deines and Kate Wehner
Tuesday, November 15, 2016

2. Digital hoarding: what
are the symptoms?

3. Would you answer yes to any of the
following?

4. Have people told you that your site is hard
to use?

5. Have you ever gotten an email asking
where something is on your site?

6. Do you manage a website for each unit in
your organization?

7. Do you feel like you’re managing a landfill?

8. Are you spending all of your time updating
a site instead of more important parts of
your job?

9. Have you ever gotten into an argument
about getting rid of stuff on your site?

10. Have you ever heard (or said) the phrase,
“but we might need it someday!”?

11. Does the thought of managing your
website make you anxious?

12. Does your website have an archive of
press releases, meeting minutes, or past
events?

13. Does your website display old photos that
make you cringe?

14. Does your website feature students who
graduated more than five years ago?

15. Does your website look the same as it did
in 2006?

16. Are you often asked to add new pages to
your website?

17. Do you have to bookmark pages on your
website to find them later?

18. If you’ve answered yes to any of these,
you might be a digital hoarder.

19. Ways digital hoarding
is hurting both you and
your users

20. Nobody can find you.
Your site is so big, or cluttered, that the
amount of information is meaningless.
Which Google hates.

21. The most important information is lost.
Without clear hierarchy and streamlined
content, users can’t figure out what’s
important and what’s trivial.

22. Users can’t complete tasks.
Need users to walk through steps in a
process? How about find a form to fill out?
Too much or distracting content gets in the
way.

23. Conversion killer.
What role does your site play in recruiting
students, or promoting events, research, or
donations? Hoarded content will get in the
way of accomplishing your goals.

24. People judge you.
Your site, whether you like it or not, is a
reflection of the entire organization. How
do you want your users to see you? Is that
what’s happening on your site?

25. Management nightmare.
How many hundreds of PDFs do you have
to keep track of? Are they up to date? What
about staff profiles? News? Events?

26. Accessibility liability.
How much of your old content can be
accessed by users with hearing or vision
impairments? Are those old PDFs
accessible?

27. The proof in the pudding

28. Protect IU website redesign:
Then
1254 pages
68.64% bounce rate
Now
302 pages
50.78% bounce rate

29. IU Bloomington website redesign:
Then
76 pages
11.1% of events led
to the site’s goal
conversion
Now
54 pages
21.05% of events
lead to the site’s goal
conversion

30. What are some of the
challenges you face?
It’s confession time.
(No judgement!)

31. Treatment for the
symptoms

32. Start with a thorough content audit.
Crawl your site and determine what’s
redundant, outdated, or trivial. Then decide
what to keep, edit, and delete.

33. Use the right platform (website, blog,
social media) to deliver your content.
Not every platform is ideal for every piece of
content.

34. Determine what is appropriate for the
web, and what can be stored elsewhere.
Use other solutions for internal-facing
information. Dropbox and Box are great.
Intranets work. So do network drives.

35. You are not an expert in everything. And
that’s okay.
Link to sites that are the subject matter
experts on the issue. It’s what we call
“content liability.”

36. Archive.
Always be on the lookout for things that can
be archived. Put that archive in a place your
users can’t find.

37. Put course information in a learning
management system.
Course information isn’t managed well on
the web, so put it in Canvas, Blackboard, or
wherever your university recommends.

38. Don’t duplicate content.
Having the same, or similar information, on
multiple pages, brings about a multitude of
issues.

39. Use a content management system.
It helps with archiving and managing assets,
and can alert you when content is stale or
orphaned.

40. Thank you
Christy: cdeines@iu.edu
Kate: kmessing@iu.edu
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