Your Website Maintenance Needs

Website maintenance encompasses all the activities needed to guarantee the operational integrity of a site.

Whether you have an internal web team or are exploring outsourced website maintenance services, it is necessary to determine the service needed for the various updates required to keep your content fresh and relevant. In short the why, how and where of your website maintenance.

The first step is to ensure that your web sites remain useful and functional.

• You must promote your web site constantly; on a daily basis add something, anything, which attracts people to your site. This is vital in order to ensure that people continue to visit your site day after day.
• If your site is static and unchanging there will be no reason for people to come back again. So to get them to come back it is imperative to change the content constantly and to be sure that your visitors know it is changing.
• On a regular basis review your statistics. You should check your page counts to be sure that your site is being viewed. At best, you need to know where people are coming from, which browsers they are using and what they visited while they were at your site.
• Review your site; check your grammar, spelling and accuracy. As time progresses your articles may become stale, so be sure and recheck an archive conclusions and facts.
• Learn as much as you can about web site security, and ensure that, to the best of your abilities and knowledge, that your site is secure for your customers and your web host.
• Post a privacy policy and adhere to it without exception. Review your practices occasionally against your policy to ensure you are following it to the letter.

The next step need is to determine the frequency and nature of updates and improvements you want regularly and periodically.

Regularly check

• Simple text edits such as updates to published event schedules e.g. training schedules, seminars, conference appearances
• Implementation of search engine optimization
• Addition of content such as client testimonials, case studies/success stories, press releases and news stories
• Design and creation of sales announcements/promotions
• Creation and testing of forms for sales lead generation, white paper downloads, customer support, client surveys and feedback
• Conversion of file formats, for example: Word Doc to PDF
• Design and creation of client newsletters
• Provisioning and monitoring for website link integrity checking
• Archiving content as it becomes old or outdated
• Auditing website for browser compatibility
• Obtaining Technical Consulting such as: preparation and assistance with moving to a new hosting service; server administration and maintenance; technical liaison to ISP/hosting service.

Periodically check

• Redesigning pages or sections to improve look and feel
• Creation of entirely new pages or sections
• Conducting usability assessments
• Website accessibility retrofit
• Reorganizing site structure for ease of future website maintenance
• Adding new functionality such as a local search function
• Developing custom tools such as a store or dealer locator

Sahil Kumar, is a development expert working with a website development company well-known by the name Web Design India.