website maintenance - what's involved?
Website maintenance – so what does this really involve?
Once your website is built, it is important to maintain it so that it runs smoothly. What does website maintenance involve? It simply means that you are checking your website regularly for issues and mistakes. A website that is not maintained properly can ruin your business. You will need to do the following to keep your website maintained properly.
1. Update your software
Update your plugins, themes and WordPress. Each week, I check all my websites and often find 2-3 plugins (per websites) that needs updating.
2. Backup your website
Backup your website regularly and especially before you update your theme and WordPress. We use WordPress to make all our websites. If something goes wrong, your website is safe. We make a copy of your website and keep it safe.
3. Monitor your website for security issues
We use software to guard websites against attacks. In addition to keeping your website safe, all our websites have an SSL Cert installed which helps to keep your website secure. This is especially important if you run an eCommerce website (selling products online) as sensitive information like bank details are kept secure,
4. Use Google Search Console
All our websites are signed up to this free service. It lets us know if there are any problems with any of the pages and so we can easily fix.
5. Check image size
Part of our maintenance service, includes making sure that your images are optimised. Large images take time to upload and this can slow down your website. This will increase your Bounce Rate and thus lower your ranking on Google. We resize and compress all images before uploading them. Optimise your images before you upload them.
6. Check your links
Do all the links on your website work properly? If not they will need fixing and/or redirects put in place.
7. Contact form
Check that your contact form is still working and any email addresses on your website. If any problems arise you may need to contact your domain name provider for assistance. This is a job I regularly do for clients so that don’t have to worry about contacting Domain Name companies and Hosting companies. It saves a lot of time and stress for them.
8. Have an eCommerce website?
As well as adding new products along with the correct metadata, make test purchases so that you know everything is working as it should.
9. Redesigns
If you have had your website for a few years, it may need a design refresh. The trend now is to add lots of white padding so that your website is restful on the eye and less cluttered.
10. Social Media Feeds
Many of my clients have social media feeds on their websites. In particular, instagram is a popular feed as it adds to the User Experience of the page. From time to time, these social media platforms update and the feature no longer works on the webpage. Website maintenance involves monitoring and fixing such issues.
11. Google Maps
Have you ever come across a website where the map is not working as it should. This can be an annoying and frustrating issues. The cause is most likely Google making updates. Alternatively, the cause can be a plugin that needs updating.
Your website and how it runs will have a direct effect on your business. If you have some time to learn and are patient, you could maintain your website yourself. Surrey Web Studio offer extremely affordable website maintenance plans to all our clients. This takes away a lot of the stress, saves you time and money in the long run and you know that your website is in safe hands.