Why you should be using the Inventory feature right now
If you’re a site editor and are responsible for updating content on your site, you probably know that it can be difficult to know exactly how much information is actually published on your site and what that is. Whether you’ve been doing this for years or are brand new to this role, it’s important to know what content can be found by your visitors. Luckily, Siteimprove has a site Inventory feature so you don’t have to do this yourself.
Within the Quality Assurance module you’ll see your Inventory. Here you’ll find several data fields and files that Siteimprove has found on your site, giving you a detailed report on exactly what you have out there for everyone to see.
While some fields will not carry the same weight of interest for you as others may, it’s a good idea to look through all of them to make sure your content is up-to-date and any files that are uploaded to your site are ones that you want your visitors to be able to access.
If you’re just getting started with the Inventory feature, here’s what we recommend you check for:
- Email addresses: Are all your emails up-to-date and formatted correctly? Incorrectly formatted emailed addresses don’t show up as broken links, so make sure they’re all correct.
- Pages: It’s not uncommon to remove a page from your site but not delete it or un-publish it. That means that this page can still be found by your visitors. Make sure only the pages you want to be seen are listed here.
- Documents: Make sure you know what external documents you’re linking to.
- Link Text: For accessibility reasons, make sure you’re not linking words or phrases such as “click here”. If you are, make sure you change these so the subject itself or action – as described in the content – is what is linked.
More information about Inventory can be found on the Quality Assurance: Inventory page.