Maintenance is important to running a website; a checklist can help you remember everything necessary. Specific routine tasks ensure your website performs optimally, much like an oil change for a car. It is critical to keep it up to date to protect customer data and keep your company running smoothly.
Your site is the first point of contact your customers will have with you. So, if it’s slow, unresponsive, or full of errors, you’ll lose good and even ready customers in seconds. After creating a site, please keep track of the maintenance tasks by making a list and performing them regularly.
Website maintenance is an important part of keeping your website up and running. This article will discuss how to maintain the sites of Web Development Philadelphia and the essential checklist for weekly to yearly tasks.
Why is Website Maintenance Important?
Just like you should keep an eye on how your website functions, so must be the case of regular site maintenance. Website maintenance is important to detect technical deficiencies in the early stages, increase user experience, and make the best website for search engines (ease of use), as well as mobile-friendly, which helps improve conversion rates, increasing sales.
Weekly Website Maintenance Tasks:
Table of Contents
Review your key metrics
Google Analytics provides a large amount of data on how users find and engage with your site. By analyzing the analytics on your website at least one time per week, you will be able to ensure that it meets its goals and discovers what works well but still needs enhancement.
Some of the companies that are involved in website development in Philadelphia should review it more often than is mentioned here; also, new firms can expect their traffic to be slow initially. However, tracking your website’s growth and performance as you do is essential.
The best way to do it is through Google Analytics, which is also a crucial resource for learning how to better site engagement and SEO.
Update software or plugins (Only for site builders)
With the aid of a website builder such as WordPress, you should perform this important task every week. Updating your site is essential to ensure that maximum security and speed are achieved. For this reason, you should keep your software and plugins up to date. Most of the plugins you use will have to be updated as developers work on making them better.
It is especially important to update the software or plugin of your site with a new version as soon as it appears.
This is particularly relevant in the case of WordPress websites as this platform updates its versions constantly. Fortunately, if you keep your software and plugins up to date, then this will ensure that your website runs smoothly and safely so make sure it is a priority.
Check your website for broken links
A small modification on our website can easily give rise to very wide-ranging effects.
For instance, should you decide to change the name of your About page from About to About Us. It also rewrites the page URL from www.yourwebsite.com/about to https://www. yourwebsite.com about us. You will subsequently need to modify all links to that web page.
Otherwise, one of two things could happen:
Google will not crawl your new About Us page. If a page does not have links to it, Google’s web crawlers cannot identify and index this web page.
Otherwise, one of two things could happen:
Google will not crawl your new About Us page. If a page does not have links to it, Google’s web crawlers cannot identify and index this web page. This will result in a potential money and loss of traffic for you.
Users will have a bad experience on your site. Our sites serve as online marketplaces. It’s important to make a positive first impression on potential clients; broken links won’t help your case. Broken links indicate to potential customers that you are not thorough, organized, or detailed enough.
View your website in different browsers
Browsers like Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer are constantly updated. It would help to learn how such browser changes affect your website’s look.
According to a recent survey, Chrome is used by 59.69% of all users globally. The remaining percentages are spread among browsers like Firefox, Safari, and others.
Like millions of other users, you may only use Chrome for professional and personal purposes. You tend to forget that only some use the same browser as you.
Your site layout may seem weird and uneven on Safari. The text’s fonts are more significant than those for the blog post titles. It’s a disaster.
When a potential Safari consumer sees this, you’ll make a wrong first impression.
Yearly Website Maintenance Tasks:
1. Review Domain and Hosting Renewals
Hosting contracts typically renew once a year, so now is an excellent time to review them. Your site performance and uptime checks should indicate whether your current provider meets your needs. If not, looking for alternatives before the renewal begins is best.
If you want to switch providers, Verpex offers managed and unmanaged hosting options to meet various requirements. We also offer a 60-day money-back guarantee and full migration assistance from any other provider.
2. Review your About Page
The About page is where you can tell visitors who you are and what you can do for them. However, the information provided here is subject to change. Your website development Philadelphia company goal and personnel change, or you gain impressive new clients. All of this should be made known, so check once a year to see if the page accurately reflects your identity.
3. Do a Content and Design Audit
Like the About page, the rest of your site should updated. Once a year, evaluate whether it still represents your company and, if not, what you can do about it. This may necessitate a rewrite or redesign, but it is often worthwhile in the long run.
Updating older content has numerous advantages, especially in terms of SEO.
4. Update Legal Policies and Requirements
Nowadays, running a website requires a great deal of red tape. Check in at least once a year to see if you’re still doing it, particularly if you:
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service
- Cookie banners
- Site copyright notice
Conclusion
Website maintenance entails various tasks that will help your website run smoothly. Initially, website maintenance may appear daunting, but hiring a professional maintenance service provider will make it easier.
Regular maintenance can protect your website from threats and improve user experience, increasing conversions and sales. SoftCircles has been providing excellent website maintenance services for over two decades.
