Life after your website build – what’s next?
So, you’ve got a great website that’s optimised to your needs. Fabulous! Now you need to think about life after your website build – what’s next? What needs maintaining? And what are your options for the management of your website? We’ll explain everything in this 5-minute read.
Weekly website maintenance tasks
Review KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
You want to be looking at your stats every week. How much traffic are you seeing, where is it coming from and is it converting? Do you notice any worrying trends? You’ll want to step in quickly to review and fix any issues that might be hurting your sales, leads or user journey.
Monthly website maintenance tasks
Check for updates
No matter what platform your website is built on, the chances are that some plugins and services will need updating or patching at least once a month. Make sure these fixes are applied to prevent security vulnerabilities and broken website functions.
Backup your website
Make a backup and keep it up to date at least once per month, more if you make regular changes. You can automate this function, thankfully. But it’s a good idea to check that the backups are actually happening (and contain the right recovery information) for your peace of mind.
Test the speed
There are lots of tools to check the load times of your website and suggest ways to make it faster. Use these every month to gain incremental improvements to your SEO ranking and customer satisfaction.
Quarterly website maintenance tasks
Make test sales
If someone can’t buy or contact you easily because of a bug on your site, they’ll never tell you. They’ll just go somewhere else. So, make sure that each month you make test sales, click to calls or fill in your own contact form from different devices and locations to ensure your site’s user journey is working well.
Test all web forms
No one likes a broken form. From the contact page to the newsletter signup, make sure the forms are correctly collecting data and that data is being actioned by the right teams.
Fix broken links
Sometimes, you link to a page and it disappears. That’s not your fault. But broken links can damage your SEO ranking, so you need to remove them regularly.
Yearly website maintenance tasks
Perform usability testing
You need your website to perform well for every single visitor that comes to your page. So, once a year, it’s a great idea to perform user testing. This will provide you with valuable insights into how people do (and want to) interact with your website.
Ensure domain name renewal
Don’t lose your domain name. (Even banks have forgotten.) Check the renewal has been processed every year.
Update legal
Lastly, update the T&Cs, cookie policy, legal info, GDPR and data protection notices, contact info, header, footer and general FAQs on your website once a year to keep them up to date.
How we help after your website build
If this sounds like a lot to keep track of, well, it is. However, at WiserWeb, we offer a Pay As You Go maintenance support service for most of these website maintenance tasks. This doesn’t tie you into any expensive contracts. Instead, it lets you buy the time you need for website support upfront. When you make a request for one of these tasks, we’ll tell you how long it will take and deduct it from this prepaid balance. This way you’re never caught unawares on cost and you don’t need to look after your own website maintenance either. Win-win!
Not sure if that’s something you’ve already signed up for or how to get the most out of it? Let’s talk about your PAYG support today.