What is Website Management and why do I need it?

When is the last time you did a thorough checkup on your website?

In order to make sure your website is healthy and productive, it is important to give your website a checkup on a regular basis. Just like technology, websites are quickly evolving and need to be updated to make sure everything is secure and functioning correctly. Website management checkups include a variety of things that are important and need updating on a regular basis such as website plugins, theme settings, programming languages, web servers, domain registrations and even the content on your website.

Usually any necessary updates can be done quickly if the website is maintained on a regular basis . However, if the website management isn’t being taken care of as needed, then it’s leaving the door open for serious problems and these problems can cause significant damage. Your website could be making it easy for hackers to get in and before you know it, your website is selling Viagra. Or maybe you’re not updating your website plugins and you find out weeks later that your website was down or showing major errors. Maybe your email or phone number on your website is incorrect or your contact form isn’t working, so you’re missing out on leads. You forgot to renew your domain name and someone has snapped it up now and you no longer own the domain. There are just a few of the many things that can happen if you don’t keep your website managed.

Below are some of the important things that should be checked when doing website management:

• Check and make sure all your links on your website are working and taking you to the correct page. Also check for any links to third party websites to make sure they are still functional as well.
• Read over your content and look for any misspelled or misplaced words.
• Check your website hosting and make sure no updates need to be done (programming/database version updates, backups, check speed of website, cleaning up storage, etc.)
• If you use any plugins or third party software, check and make sure everything is up to date.
• Make sure all the images on your website are showing.
• Check your website traffic and look for anything suspicious.
• Make sure you have analytical software installed on your website so you find things that are helping and hurting your business website.
• Make sure all your content on the website is up-to-date with the correct information. Also check phone numbers, email addresses, dates, prices, descriptions and any other content you provide. Make sure everything is correct.
• Make sure you contact information is correct and test out all contact forms to make sure you are receiving the emails.

These are just some of the main things to check when managing your website. Every business is different so you may have additional things that need to be checked. A good recommendation is to make a checklist to follow each month and make updates to it as needed. Just like most things is life, it’s better to be safe than sorry.