Launching your new website can be daunting but the real challenge is to keep it in top-notch condition and here’s how you can achieve it.
Launching a new website does take a lot of effort and time. However, it certainly doesn’t mean that it’s time to relax if you want your website to grow and succeed. You’ll need to put even more time and energy into your website maintenance.
So, let’s discuss a comprehensive website management and maintenance plan that you can follow to maintain and improve your website.
Website Maintenance Strategy
We have divided this strategy into 4 different parts. If you’ve just launched your website then consider following all four parts. However, if it has been up and running for a while then you can start following this guide from the second part.
Part 1: Post Launch Tasks
Generally, the website launch is a stressful and challenging time. If you had to follow a strict deadline then your team might have glossed over some critical areas. So, the first step is to get all such areas fixed.
Check the Website Speed
According to the latest stats, if your website takes more than 5 seconds to load then 38 percent of the visitors will bounce back. That’s why it’s critical to have a fast-loading website. Not only will it increase the overall user experience but it’ll also help your website to rank higher.
You can use different tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights to see how your website is performing.
Check All the Available Images
One of the biggest culprits that reduce your website speed is the wrong size or duplicate images. Make sure that each image you’ve used on your website has the right size. You can use different tools to compress the used images.
Create High-Quality Content
Usually, people don’t use high-quality content while launching a website, especially when in a hurry. If you had to do the same then consider creating at least 5 to 10 pieces of high-quality content. Make sure they’re error-free, have high-converting headlines, and offer useful information regarding the products or services you offer.
You’ll also need to add the most relevant keywords to optimize your content against search engines. Here’s a list of some most helpful ideas to create inaugural content pieces.
- How-to posts
- Tutorials
- Expert roundups or advice on certain topics
- Content with actionable tips to solve a particular problem
- Industry definition list about your niche
- FAQs about your product or services
Responsiveness
According to Statista, more than 54 percent of people use smartphones to access websites. That’s why your website must perform perfectly across all available screen sizes. You don’t want your website to appear disoriented when someone accesses it from a smaller screen.
The best way to make sure your website is responsive is to use multiple devices with different screen sizes in your office. If it fails to load properly then consider asking your web developers to fix it as soon as possible.
Go Through All the Functions
Chances are your website will have multiple functions and engagement pathways that your visitors will use. It includes different elements such as navigation links, buttons, contact forms, email sign-up forms, and so on.
In short, you must check every function that requires user input from start to end. Additionally, you’ll also need to make sure that theirs is no single link or page that shows the dreaded 404 error. Take your time and check every single link and make sure it leads to the intended page.
Create XML Sitemap
The primary reason why you launched a website is that you want to be seen and the XML site map ensures it. This file contains all the website URLs and web pages with proper organization and helps the Google web Crawler to identify your website’s structure.
In simple words, the XML sitemap provides Google with the URLs that you want to rank for in the Google search engine. It’s one of the most critical steps to maintain your website and it also improves your onsite SEO.
Part 2: Marketing Strategy
Once you have made sure that your website is performing as it should, the next step is to tell your targeted audience about it. After all, you want to bring the necessary traffic that’ll generate revenue. Here’s how you can step up your marketing strategy.
Social Media
The recent stats show that about 4.5 billion people across the globe are connected to social media. It’s a staggering number that only explains the potential of social media that you must harness.
Consider creating your brand’s pages and profiles on the most popular social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It’ll allow you to create your brand’s following and keep them engaged all the time.
The goal is to redirect them to your website to generate business. So, get started with social media marketing for your business as soon as possible to bring more traffic to your website.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most powerful ways to increase your website traffic. For this method, you’ll first need to generate lists of email addresses through online forms, free tutorial videos, hosting contests, and more.
Once you have the lists, you can start sending personalized emails to draw the attention of people. You can also automate your email campaigns using different tools to save time and effort.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Perhaps the most important part of your website marketing is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Most probably you would have already considered it while developing your website. After the website launch, you need to make sure that all the SEO components, especially title tags, meta description, and keywords, are in place.
It’s important to note that SEO is an ongoing task and it doesn’t work on the basis of “set it and forget it”. You might even need to wait for several weeks to start seeing the results. The main purpose of SEO is to rank your website higher in search engine results. The higher the rank, the more visitors your website will have.
Set Up Analytics
You want to keep track of your website performance all the time. You can use Google Analytics for this purpose that allows you to monitor the total number of your visitors, the time they spent on your website, the source they used to reach one of your web pages, and so on.
The analytics software solutions provide you with insightful data that you can use to make the most informed decisions. Not only does it allow you to offer a more personalized user experience but it also improves your website traffic.
You can also create customized dashboards and analytics reports. It will allow you to monitor the most important and relevant data that you need for a specific task. You would also want to use tools to monitor your sales performance.
For example, you can use the Whatagraph sales performance dashboard that provides you with sales analytics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). This way you can find out your best performing marketing channels and also pain points to improve your marketing strategy.
You want to start monitoring the performance of your website as soon as you launch it. So, ideally setting up an analytics tool should be one of the first things to do.
Set Up GSC (Google Search Console)
GSC is yet another important factor for website maintenance that you must not overlook. It allows you to understand how your website actually appears in the Google search engine and how you can troubleshoot it.
If you can evaluate how the Google search engine sees your site, you’ll be able to take the right steps to improve it. In addition, you can also find out internal errors as well as other sources linking back to your site.
PPC (Pay Per Click)
Generating organic traffic for your website takes time and before getting there, looking into PPC is a good idea. You can use Google Ads for PPC advertising in order to generate more immediate results. You can also use Facebook Ads for your Facebook page.
The working mechanism of PPC is simple. You’ll need to pay a certain amount of money each time someone clicks on one of your ads. Bear in mind that your website must be optimized properly before you jump into this method.
Part 3: Continuous Optimization and Improvement
Most of the time, the version of the website that people first launch is much different from the best-performing one. Initially, you don’t have enough traffic and data to start upgrading and optimizing your brand-new website right away.
However, once you have set up everything mentioned above, you’ll have valuable insights to start improving your website. Here’s how you can achieve it.
Figure Out What to Test and Improve!
As we have mentioned earlier, you must test every component and function of your website. It even includes the size of the font to the color of the link. However, the most critical areas that directly impact your bottom line are:
- Headline
- Design
- CTA (Click to Action)
- Displayed social proof
At this point, you might already be using Google Analytics. If that’s the case then consider using Google Content Experiments located in Google Analytics to test the performance of your website.
You can run content experiments using this free tool and tweak different elements to optimize your website. The data that you’ll get from this tool will allow you to make more informed decisions to improve your website design.
Make it Secure
You want to make sure that all the customer data your website collects is completely secure and safe. It’s also important to inform your customers about it as well. The best way to do so is to use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer).
If your website uses this security protocol then your customers will automatically know about it. That’s because all popular browsers show a small lock icon right before the URL if a website is using SSL.
Other than that using SSL, you should also use a firewall to take the website’s security up a notch. It works as an additional security layer to keep your website from hackers and cybercriminals. You should also place a policy that asks the customers to create complex passwords and reset them every once in a while.
Add More Features
With time you would also need to add more features to your website depending upon your customer needs. For example, you might need to add another payment method that a significant number of your potential/real customers use.
The best way to identify new features that you should add is to ask your customers for feedback. You can also monitor your competitors to find out what’s working for them the best that your website doesn’t offer. The focal point of your upgrades must be your customers.
Part 4: General Ongoing Maintenance
Maintenance is an ongoing process and taking it casually will increase the chances of ending up with a slow or even dead (in worst cases) website. Here’s how you can avoid it.
- Use Common Maintenance Protocols
- In order to avoid unnecessary and unwanted problems, stick to your website maintenance strategy and:
- Take regular website backups, especially before and after each update, and store all the data in a fully secure and safe location.
- Make sure all the security protocols, plugins, and themes are up to date to keep it from being vulnerable to cyberattacks.
- Keep your database organized and prevent it from being overcrowded.
- Run regular website tests to keep track of your website data and performance and resolve all the problems on the go.
Final Words
There you have it. We hope this comprehensive maintenance guide will help you to keep your website in the best condition. Follow all the practices and give it some time to see the positive results.
