HOW TO MAINTAIN YOUR WEBSITE – AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
Getting a great-looking website built is just the beginning. For you to keep delivering a worthwhile experience to your readers and users, you are going to need to keep a close eye on your online presence for various reasons. The web is an ever-changing place – and for that reason alone, you need to make sure that your site is always fresh with ideas, facilities, and design features. It’s a good idea to keep things secure, too. Let’s take a look at why you should be maintaining your website regularly – and how.
Keeping Your Readers Up to Date
For general websites, keeping your readers updated on what you are doing, features you are working on and more besides will keep them engaged and happy. For e-commerce sites, just keeping your customers abreast on new product lines and services is a good idea! What’s more, you should always check the presentation and security of your website on a regular basis. How professional or inspiring is your site going to appear if it is full of dead links which go nowhere? What’s more, you need to make sure you’re not at risk of nasty hacking attempts or data leaks – and if you’re accepting payments online, don’t risk your customers losing their financial security.
Find New Readers
One of the best reasons to keep your website maintained and up to date is to focus on appealing to new customers and readers. By regularly updating, via blog or product catalogue, Google will look upon you favourably – and what’s more, you’ll inspire visitors more by showing them that you are regularly keeping your site and catalogue up to speed and in check. Leaving your website to go to seed is hardly going to build and inspiring or engaging presence. Blog and update regularly and you’ll steadily build interest.
Run Regular Audits
Whether for security or promotion, it never hurts to do a regular sweep of your website. You’ll always need to make sure that the software you are using and that the certificates you have installed are up to date and are safe to use. When it comes to your content, regularly check to see how it is engaging with your prospective readers and customers. Is it performing well compared to your rivals? If not, it may be time to improve what’s written, and what’s on display. Don’t ever settle with your original content and setup, particularly when it comes to appealing to a changing marketplace and online climate.
Backup and Monitor
Backing up your website is simple and should be one of the first things you tackle. Backups are now easy to arrange through site management software such as WordPress. Backing up regularly will allow you to prepare for the worst effectively should it ever occur. You’ll also need to monitor your website for outages. If you leave your site to its own devices, you could risk days or weeks without your visitors having access to you, and your online store – that’s nothing you ever want to leave to chance.
Test Your Speed and Links
The appearance and usability of your website should always be something you bear in mind. Visitors’ experiences are going to be based around how quickly they can use your site, and how easily they can obtain information. Are all your links up to date? Does your site load quickly from browser to browser? It only takes a few seconds for the average web traveller to decide whether or not to click ‘back’ – so don’t leave anything to chance.
Go Mobile
Finally, do always make sure you consider your mobile audience. There is a growing spike in mobile web users and, therefore, you should make sure your site is ready to be viewed and used through phones and tablets alike. What’s more, Google are set to actively promote mobile sites first over desktop standards in search results.
