The moment your website goes live and you see your business online is an exciting one. It feels good to know you are taking steps to be successful and can finally mark that big project off your to do list. What a relief!
But, going live is not the end of the story, because websites are not maintenance free.
If you used a marketing company or website developer to design your site and are now paying them monthly to maintain it, this post may not be for you.
But, many of you have websites that are not being regularly maintained and this can be risky. I see it often. Clients will ask me to make some changes on their site and when I sign in I find a large number of pending updates. This means that things like security, website functions, and backups may not be working properly and can put your entire website at risk. It’s like not doing any Windows updates on your computer for a year.
While I check my client’s websites weekly, monthly reviews and updates should be okay. You will need to have the sign in information to process updates or make changes. If you don’t have the time or are uncomfortable with the process, you can have someone else take care of it for you. It is usually relatively inexpensive to hire someone for this and worth every penny.
Monthly Website Review and Updates
Step 1
Look through the pages of the website:
- Make sure all content is there and the pages look the way they should
- Check for empty pages (for some reason I see this all the time)
- Make sure all information is up to date
- Check links to be sure that they are working correctly
- Test any “Contact Us” or other forms on the site by filling them out and then checking to make sure they are sent to your email account.
Step 2
Check your website on your cell phone:
- Make sure it is formatting correctly and working properly
- Check to see if the content fits the space available on your screen
You can test your website’s mobile friendly status by going here.
If it is an older website or not mobile-friendly, you will want to update it if at all possible. More and more people use their phones to look for services and they are likely to drop off your site if it looks old fashioned or the experience is not a smooth one. Also, Google is now penalizing websites that are not mobile friendly.
Step 3
Sign into your website and process any pending updates. In WordPress (the most used platform) you may see updates for themes, plugins, and the WordPress program.
Step 4
- Verify the website security is active and working (in WordPress this is a plugin).
- Verify backups are running on schedule and that there are several saved ones on file where they are being stored. Many backup programs save files to websites like google docs or Dropbox. You may also have the option of receiving emails whenever backups are completed.
If you cannot find website security or backups it is important to make sure you have them.
If you find that your website is in need of some edits that you are not comfortable doing yourself or step 3 and 4 scare you, it is time to find someone to help you with your website maintenance needs. The options include:
- Someone who can train you or a team member to do it in house. There is some risk with this as I have seen many good intentions for staying current with website maintenance fall aside when things get busy.
- Someone you can trust to do it for you.
If your website is important to you, protecting it with regular maintenance and updates is important too. It is like maintaining your car. It may keep going quite awhile without oil changes or maintenance, but one day it will catch up with you. And, you never know what day that will be.
It doesn’t make sense to leave your website vulnerable to crashing or malfunctioning when it is simple and inexpensive to keep it maintained.
If you would like to learn more about my website and online marketing services or get an estimate, you can contact me here.
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