Talking about your website safety and maintenance is not going to be the most fun topic, I’m well aware of that. However, it is something that is important to have going on so that you can feel confident that your website is working for you.
One time at a corporate job, our website crashed during our busiest season. The worst part was that we didn’t know about it until we came into the office the next day. In fact, we were supposed to have our highest traffic of the year and collecting payments. The website was down and complaints were rolling in. It was that event specifically that pushed our company into learning about and choosing a maintenance plan.
That website crashed for reasons that were out of our control and the only fault that was ours was that we didn’t have a plan for what to do if/when this happens. The biggest issue was that we were not aware of when it crashed and who knows how many sales we missed out on.
Websites break and there are people out there trying to hack anything on the internet. That is not something anyone can 100% block.
Below is what you can do as the owner of a website to make sure it stays safe.
Note: at the end of this post, I am going to let you know how I can help you with ALL of these tasks, so don’t get overwhelmed!
Weekly:
- Make a backup – This is by far the most useful thing to have when something goes wrong. You’ll be able to essentially delete your entire website, wipe it clean, and install a recent version that didn’t break on you.
- Update WordPress or any plug-ins that need it – While you need to have the most current plugin version to get the capabilities the plugin promises, sometimes the updated plugins fight with each other and can cause a headache or two.
- Remove spam form submissions and comments – You don’t want your legit users to feel like they are being spammed just by being on YOUR page.
- Check for broken links – Basically, if someone clicks on a link on your site and it goes to a deleted page, that looks bad on you! Of course, we don’t want that.
Quarterly:
- Make sure your website’s information is still true – so this might be more of a best practice, but having outdated information on your website looks BAD to readers.
- Make sure all photos and graphics are loading – A website really is only as good as its images, I whole-heartedly believe that.
- Make sure your website looks good on all devices – Someone reading on a phone should have as great of an experience as if they were looking on a desktop. Don’t forget about tablets!
- Test any form you have – Make sure your lead magnets and contact forms are working so you can respond to those that are interested in you.
Monthly:
- Check your analytics tool – Knowing how people are finding you is huge for knowing where to focus your efforts on.
- Test your website speed – Did you know that Google gives priority to fast websites? So even if you are the perfect answer for what you are searching for, if you have a slow website, you won’t even be shown.
Annually
- Renew your domain name so no one steals your URL
- Renew your hosting – prevent any down time by taking care of this promptly
- Bonus – Check through every page and make sure your branding is cohesive!
How to Maintain Your Website
Alright, I know that was a lot, but it is all SO important. Some was about the functionality of your website and others were more design-based. As you can see, there is so much that goes into maintaining this invaluable website of yours
This is why I offer a maintenance plan to anyone with a WordPress website. This is a unique offering because I also add in some time for you to be able to send me content updates that I can implement on your behalf. This way, every time you want to change some text or a photo on your site, you don’t have to log-in to the back end of your website and re-learn how to do everything.
- Website back-ups (saves your important content… super important!)
- Monthly website traffic/performance/SEO reporting
- Plugin updates and compatibility checks
- Security checks
- Spam comment filtering & deleting
- Monthly Analytics/traffic report
- Performance Check
- Link Monitoring
- Content updates (varies based on package selected)
You can use your design hour on website updates like changing photos, updating text and links, uploading files, etc. Additional hours can be purchased at a discounted rate added to your monthly invoice. Design time does not roll over.
As for the maintenance, I will monitor your site and complete all the tasks on this page as they are scheduled. I will be doing this from my premium-grade tools so you can be sure that you are getting the BEST level of service. The moment anything goes wrong, I will be alerted and able to fix it immediately.
