Benefits of Website Maintenance for Your Business
Maintenance allows you to improve security, boost site speed and performance while reducing the chances of potential errors that could lead to a complete shutdown of your website. It also allows you to fix any technical glitches in case they arise. The best part is that businesses themselves are able to carry out these tasks without worrying about incurring major costs or hiring web developers who can charge an arm and a leg for each assignment completed.
Website Maintenance Checklist to Avoid Technical Glitches
Use the following guidelines as your very own checklist for all types of maintenance checkups, including before launching it back into the market!
1 . Check Your Site's Load Speed
A fast-loading website is more likely to be visited by people. Use an online tool like Web Page Test to check how quickly your site loads in different browsers and on different devices. You can also use Google Page Speed Insights which will give you recommendations for making sure that your site is loading quickly enough so it isn't stopping people from wanting to stay on the site.
Speed is an essential factor that can seriously affect your SEO rankings, especially on mobile devices. Give yourself enough time to optimize the load speed of each web page of your site by implementing design changes, installing plugins, and boosting up performance with cloud hosting services. Also, try to check the speed of your website using Google PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom Tools which are both free tools readily available online.
Visitors will lose interest if pages take too long to load, so double check your load speed to make sure you are staying under 3 seconds.
2 . Fix Broken Links And 404 Errors
Broken links are more of an annoyance issue, but also show that there are problems with content on your website still being updated or maintained properly.
An important part of maintaining your website's content is to track down broken links and 404 errors. After all, you don't want users wasting their bandwidth by clicking on dead links that eventually lead them nowhere, don't you? Take some time out every or two weeks for this task since broken links may occur as a result of unauthorized website changes made by users. In case you have no idea how to find broken links on your website, just install this simple plugin for WordPress.
3 . Test Your Site On Multiple Devices
Testing Your Site On Multiple Devices is necessary in order to make sure that visitors using the most popular devices can actually view your website properly. Sometimes elements can look different on each version of a device, or sometimes certain platforms just don't display things correctly when it comes to websites. By checking your site with tools like BrowserStack, you can easily see layouts and preview how they will appear on various desktop and mobile devices.
There can be some pretty big differences between how a website looks on different devices, especially if it isn't properly optimized for mobile devices. You may need to consider whether or not some elements should be left out since they won't display properly across all browsers and screen sizes. Also, note that fonts might appear larger than expected depending on the type of device, so make sure to test font size and any other elements which might appear differently on different devices.
4 . Check That All Of Your Forms Are Running Properly
Forms are a crucial part of interacting with your visitors on the website, and this is why they need to be checked regularly to make sure that everything is working properly. There are various types of forms that can be used depending on what you want visitors to do, but the most common ones include contact forms, email subscription boxes for newsletters, surveys/polls, or even just basic pages that allow people to submit inquiries or feedback about your business. Make sure that all form elements are working properly using tools like Google Forms, which will check for any coding issues before submitting forms so you don't lose data because of misused tags. You should also test the way these forms look when filled out in different browsers and devices.
Another vital part of website maintenance is to ensure that all your forms are working properly. This includes your subscription form or contact form, as well as any other web applications designed to interact with users on the go. If you have installed a contact form plugin to receive messages from visitors, you might need to check the email settings and make sure the messages sent by users reach their destination (without getting lost in spam).
5 . Double-Check Your Backups For Disaster Recovery
Just like having an insurance plan for your car or home, it's also important not to neglect disaster recovery planning for your website – especially if it contains critical business information which can help you maintain your edge as a digital marketer. You don't want to lose the years of hard work and potential lost income that comes from technical snags, right? Make sure that you have a backup for all your website files and database stored on a separate server online through services such as Dropbox, Google Drive or any other cloud hosting provider. If you need additional assistance creating backups or restoring them after a disaster strikes, consider hiring a virtual webmaster to help with these tasks.
Double-checking your backups means making sure that all of your files are still being backed up regularly, and also testing the backups to make sure they are working properly by restoring them on a development server if one is available. This way you can be sure that none of your work has been lost due to backups becoming corrupt or not updated after changes have been made to the site.
6 . Check For Spam Comments And Posts
It's normal for some spam comments and posts to show up now and then on every site – no matter how active (or inactive) its blog is. The question is, do you really know what to do if spam comments start popping up on your website? For you to effectively keep track of all these spam messages, be sure to install the "NoSpamNX" plugin for WordPress. This simple but effective plugin helps manage and filter out blocked users quickly while preventing them from posting further spam messages in the future.
Finding spam comments and posts on your site can be annoying at best or time-consuming at worst, but it's important that you check these elements regularly so that visitors aren't seeing messages from unapproved sources appearing on pages. There are various programs available for doing this, or you can use something like Akismet which will save you time by filtering out spam before it has a chance to be displayed on your site.
Conclusion
Website maintenance is an important task that should not be neglected or overlooked. By following the above six steps, you can improve your site's performance while avoiding technical glitches which could potentially lead to heavy losses.
Website maintenance isn't just about making sure that there are no glitches or coding issues appearing on the site, but also about good customer relations and creating positive interactions with visitors. Some things like checking for broken links and forms that don't work properly may seem like small things, but they all add up to make your site look professional and easy to navigate through.
Hiring a professional web developer is the best way to have your own website designed and customized without spending too much. With Our Company, you'll never go wrong with our services since we provide high-quality standards throughout every step of the project from the initial consultation all the way up until providing clients their fully personalized websites at affordable prices!
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