As the year winds down it’s time to start thinking about the New Year. You’ve got lots of plans and goals for the coming year, but have you thought about your website? Your website is your workhorse, it’s there for you and your business 24/7 but it needs help from you to be its best. Now is the perfect time to do some annual website maintenance! Get your site into its best shape for the New Year with annual website maintenance! Here’s everything you need to do to ensure your website is up to the task, plus a free printable annual website maintenance checklist to help you stay on top of everything!
Website Design Review
Design trends come and go, but your website is here for the long haul! Now is the time to review the design of your website. Is it still on brand? Are there any design features that have become outdated, or aren’t great for user experience (UX)? Review your website, page by page and go over its design choices and refer back to your own branding. Make sure it’s still on brand! Part of being on brand includes your site copy. Review the tone and language used on your site, is that on brand too?
Content Review
Your site’s content is the entire reason people are coming to your site! Be sure it’s giving them what they need! Review your site’s content for accuracy, are your prices, services, and contact information still accurate? Look for typos, misspellings, and all around inaccurate content. Improve your content and copy if you need to. Don’t forget about those images! Are they still working and on brand?
Website Performance Review
Take a look at how your site performs. Navigate around it, is it easy to navigate? Is anything confusing or not working? Be sure to check on your tablet and mobile device too! Giving your mobile users a good experience is essential! They make up a large part of your traffic so your sit needs to work as well for them as it does for your desktop users. Once you’ve done that give your site’s speed a check. My favorite tools to do this are Pingdom tools and GTmetrix. Both will give you an informative overview of what’s slowing down your site. From there you can optimize it to ensure your site is loading quickly. Remember, slow sites will lose your visitors and potential clients!
Disclaimer: The following contains affiliate links. That means that if you make a purchase by using the links I will recieve monetary compensation. This does not impact my opion of the products or services I share with you. I only share products/services that I believe in. Read my full disclosure statement here.
Site still slow? Try my absolute favorite WordPress caching plugin, Swift Performance! Hands down the best cache plugin I’ve ever used!
Hosting Review
How’s your host working out for you? Do you still like it? Is support responsive to you, and does your site have a lot of downtimes? Is your current plan giving you enough bandwidth, what about if your traffic grows, can it support that? Think about your hosting now, before it’s time to renew it. Outgrowing hosts is natural as your site changes and grows, and as your host does the same. Don’t feel obligated to stay with a host you aren’t wild about just because “everyone” else loves them, or you’ve been with them forever.
Need an amazing host? I love Namecheap! They have affordable prices and great support, and you can’t beat their domain name pricing! Want one of the best WordPress specialized hosts around so you don’t need to worry about it? WPEngine is for you!
WordPress Updates
If you haven’t been keeping up with your WordPress updates, it’s time to do that! Update all of your themes, plugins and WordPress core files! But before you do that, make sure you backup your site! This is so important to keep your site secure and running well, plus gain access to the latest feature updates that your themes, plugins and WordPress offer. If you only do one thing on this list, make it these important updates.
Download Your Free Annual Website Maintenance Checklist
It’s yours absolutely free! No email needed!
Make sure your site is ready for the New Year by performing these annual website maintenance tasks. Head into the New Year knowing your site is ready to be there for your business to help you reach your web design business goals. Too busy serving your clients to spend time updating your site? I can help! Let me handle all your updates and website maintenance for one monthly fee or have your very own developer on a monthly retainer ready to help you make site changes or updates or handle any other website tasks you need to be handled so you can spend your time doing what you do best: designing. Send me a message and learn how I can help you spend more time designing and less time maintaining your website.
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