Why should I maintain my website? Part 2

To follow on from last week’s blog regarding content maintenance of your website, I’m going to talk about maintenance of the site itself.

Website Maintenance

The first thing is to check the site is up and running, I know this is blatantly obvious, but how would you know if it went down? You can set up software to track this on a daily/hourly basis and alert you should it be unreachable, what you don’t want is somebody, especially a client, informing you. It is important to have the error dealt with before it has caused too much trouble.

Website backup is essential to insure yourself against losing your data, whether from a virus or a hardware failure. Ask your hosting provider what would happen to your data if you were hacked or their servers crashed, ask how often your files are backed up, are they stored somewhere safe, you could even ask for a monthly updated version of your site if your site is changing regularly as an e-Commerce site often does.

One you know your site is available to view, and backed up, you need to check its health. These show load times, server requests and link checking. There are many free online tools that will check these for you, they can show how long it takes to load an image. Use this info to reduce file sizes where appropriate, what’s the point in having a large image when it will only ever be shown as a 100 pixel by 75 pixel image on your page.   

Use link checking to see how they are performing, what is more annoying than using a link on a page and finding it broken? This could be because it wasn’t set up properly in the first place or you have changed the page content and forgotten to update the link, or it could be the page you are linking to is not there anymore. Whatever the reason you need find and correct these as soon as possible. Try running your site through validator.w3.org/checklink to find any errors within your site, and make the time to correct them.

These are just a few of the things you can do to keep on top of the health of your site If you need any help, or just some general advice on what to do to maintain your site, just email me at Media City Way any time.

Why should I maintain my website? Part 1

Think about it, we maintain our house, car, garden etc because we don’t want it to look neglected and start to fail, or look old and tired, so why should we neglect our website? It still needs looking after, it still needs some care, and if things start to look old it starts to look neglected. Ask yourself this, would you visit a site or blog that didn’t have something different to offer? I’m sure I wouldn’t.

Maintenance comes in two colours, content maintenance and website maintenance. The first one refers to keeping on top of content and keeping the content fresh; the second one I’m referring to is the actual upkeep and inner workings.

Content Maintenance

Keeping your content up to date should be high on your ‘to do’ list, it includes images, written text, free downloads, in fact it’s what is needed to create and keep visitors wanting to return. It shows your audience that you are not only up to date with your site it shows that you are up to date on your subject.

If you have an e-Commerce site think about your products, announce when new ones will be arriving, any discounts on the old ones before the new arrivals. Tell about any price changes that are about to happen, it could actually push your visitors to buy now instead of later.

Talk about any news within your company; shout about your new staff arrivals, this tells the world how well you are doing. Have you any articles about you in the newspaper regarding your products or website? Have you had any articles published in any journals?

Think about the features on your site, can you afford any new ones that you couldn’t when you had it built? What are your competitors doing? What is working for them? Can you be the first to do something a little different? Remember that guy who was first to do a book of faces in his university, he isn’t doing too badly is he?

Have you a blog? if not then blogging about your subject is a great way to engage with your visitors and also to keep your content changing. All search engines love this, it goes hand in hand with your search position. For more info on blogging view one of our older posts on Tips to improve your marketing strategy

Its important to keep your regular visitors happy and to engage the new ones with informative content. Keep changing, adding and updating you content on a regular basis or visitors will find somebody who is.

The other colour I mentioned earlier will be posted next week.

If you need any help with the upkeep of your site, or just some general advice on what to do, just email me at Media City Way any time.