Business success requires website design and maintenance. If your website includes multiple files, pages, images, or videos, then your website’s functionality might suffer without proper care.
You are responsible for checking issues such as broken links, technical issues, website bugs, security issues, and load speed. Failure to address these issues could cause an increase in bounce rates and a decline in website traffic.
You can solve these website challenges with my 7 tips for business website maintenance.
7 Tips to Maintain Your Business Website
- Check the loading speed
- Perform a regular SEO audit
- Update copyrights and contracts
- Keep content current
- Troubleshoot CTA buttons
- Respond to feedback
- Provide a High-Quality User Experience
1. Check the Loading Speed
Page loading speed is the primary measure of your website’s functionality. According to one report on website user experience, 52% of website users will abandon a website permanently if it loads too slowly.
It should not take longer than 3 minutes for your website to load. If you suspect your load speed is in trouble, tools like GTmetrix, shown below, can provide performance reports for your website.
GTmetrix’s dashboard will give your website an overall page score and show you how long it takes for your website to load fully. The website in this example took 4.3 seconds to load.
The faster your website speed, the faster your customers will be able to make purchasing decisions about your products or services.
If your website loads at low speed, then there is a chance of a high bounce rate, which could lead to your website falling in search engine results pages.
2. Perform a Regular SEO Audit
Regular SEO audits make sure your website ranks on search engine results pages (SERPs).
A regular search engine optimization audit helps you to:
- Analyze the competition
- Know your website rankings
- Test your website’s speed
- Identify errors on your website
- See the status of indexing and crawling
- Check and fix broken links
Neil Patel’s resource for SEO audits is shown below. This tool assigns websites an on-page SEO score and analyses monthly traffic, keywords, and backlinks.
The audit’s results will help you understand issues on your website that need to be fixed. SEO consultants can also help businesses identify the next steps after performing an audit.
Along with an SEO audit, businesses should stay connected with audience preferences, emerging trends, and algorithm updates. SEO is not only important for ranking in SERPs but also for generating sales and revenue.
4. Keep Content Up-to-Date
Website content must be updated regularly to attract and retain website visitors. This content can include:
- Blogs
- Newsletters
- Event landing pages
- Images
- Contact information
- Legal information
Fresh content attracts more users. Including the date of publication at the beginning of the blog helps your customers find recent content. It also helps search engines to filter recent content when ranking websites.
Make sure that images are placed properly in the desired design on the page. In the case of e-commerce websites, discounts, deals, coupons, and special offers must be updated daily.
You should also update contact information, terms and conditions, current copyright information of your website, and disclaimers regularly.
Employing visual content with relevant and high-quality images can help increase website traffic and sales. Always prioritize the quality of work over quantity.
5. Troubleshoot CTA Buttons
Make sure that your call-to-action (CTA) buttons are bug-free since these will play a vital role in converting customers, which generates revenue for your business.
Similarly, if you are an e-commerce business, links to your shopping carts and payment gateways should be error-free.
6. Respond to Feedback
Create a space on your website for your customers and website visitors to comment and offer suggestions or feedback on the working functionality of your website.
Providing opportunities for customer feedback lets you know what customers value and alerts you to website bugs that could potentially impact your business. Doing so also signals to customers that you care about their needs.
7. Provide a High-Quality User Experience
People have come to expect more personalized customer experiences. Now is a good time to adjust your company's strategies to your current and potential customers’ preferences.
Most searches today come from mobile phones, which means your website must be mobile-responsive in order to have a good user experience (UX).
You should regularly monitor whether your website is compatible with various browsers such as Firefox and Chrome and make sure your website aligns with the mobile versions of those browsers as well.
Regular Website Maintenance is Key for Improving Engagement
Regular website maintenance is mandatory for every business regardless of size or industry. It not only empowers your business but also builds trust for your customers.
Make sure that your website is error-free and easily accessible to customers. Follow these tips to maintain your website to boost customer engagement and conversions.
