Website Maintenance Checklist for SMEs
It takes a lot of work and effort to build an online presence. After your website is up and running, it can be tempting to scale back your efforts. Depending on your online goals, you may be able to slow down. But you cannot just forget about your website and website maintenance entirely.
Implementing a website maintenance checklist will ensure your site is in top-notch condition at all times to help you achieve your business goals.
In this post, we will run through some crucial elements you should focus on for website maintenance.
Hosting and Domain Renewal. Checking the status of your hosting plan and domain renewal is essential. It is easy to forget that your domain is up for expiry, especially if you are busy with other aspects of your business. When this is taken care of periodically, you can eliminate the risk of losing your website’s content and domain authority on the web. Plus, with the technical aspects out of the way, you can now focus your effort on your business and content creation.
Website Backups. You’ve probably spent a lot of time and effort building your website. Therefore, it can be devastating to lose your website or email files from hacking attempts, malware, compatibility issues, unexpected errors, or data loss during an upgrade. Having a recent backup in place will help you avoid the time-consuming and rigorous process it takes to get your site back in shape.
Related; 5 Reasons why a Website Backup is Extremely Important
Security Updates. When it comes to website security, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for personal blogs to medium-sized businesses. So you have to consult with your web host and settle for the proper security measures to implement on your website.
Installing an SSL certificate is one of the ways you can stay on top of your site security. You can check with your web host to acquire one, or you can purchase an SSL certificate through a third-party service.
Related; Does your Web Host affect your site’s security?
Perform user testing. Ideally, you should test your customers’ experience on your website before launching it. But if you skipped this stage, you can always do it post-launch, after you’ve figured out the customer journey on your website. The idea is to provide a seamless experience to enable web users to accomplish various tasks on your site, such as filling forms, viewing images/pop-up displays, or clicking on links across multiple device types.
Related; How to make your Website Mobile Friendly
Test for Speed. Make sure you optimize your website for speed, and your choice of hosting plan can handle surges of traffic. Slow site speeds will affect your business negatively in higher bounce rates, lower conversions, and poor search rankings. There are many ways to speed up your website such as, choosing a robust hosting option, using quality plugins, image optimization, and using a content delivery network(CDN) to deliver large files.
Test for functionality. The best way to anticipate potential glitches is to test every stage of the customer journey. Test your tabs to ensure they go through and analyze responsiveness across different devices and browsers. If you require customers to fill out any signup or contact forms on your site, ensure they work correctly and have all the needed information. Check for broken links on your site and fix them by either removing them or replace them with updated links.
Having a website maintenance checklist will help you stay on track as your run your website to ensure you have covered the basics. While this checklist covers crucial aspects of your website maintenance, it is not conclusive. You can go deeper and make more improvements depending on your site’s goals.
When you host with us, we ensure the technical aspects of your website maintenance are covered so that you can focus on growing your brand and online presence.
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