Having a business website is no longer optional for companies seeking to maintain competitiveness in the 21st century. However, that’s not where it ends.
With a plethora of websites and competitors just a mouse click away for consumers and target audiences, it’s important that your website maintenance is up to date, current and effective.
The importance of a smoothly running website
Consider this: 87% of all website visitors will abandon a website that doesn’t load or run smoothly!
No matter how much money, time and effort you invest into a fancy website, excellent Search Engine Optimisation and other digital marketing, you could be pushing website traffic away from your website for no other reason than the fact that the experience browsing or visiting your website is subpar. Or that your website is malfunctioning and isn’t even up at all!
User experience (UX)
One of the critical factors in web design services is the user experience, often abbreviated to UX. Like user experience in other contexts, website UX is focused on what it is like for a visitor to spend time on your website.
The easier your website is to use, the better it loads and operates, and the more enhanced the experience for potential visitors, the better your website will perform and even convert.
Website maintenance
One of the key ways in which to ensure that your website is operating smoothly is by carrying out some (fairly) basic website maintenance.
There are a wide variety of strategies and methodologies in which you can keep a finger on the pulse of your digital presence and an eye on the performance of your website. While we highly recommend using a professional website maintenance provider (more on that later), many of the tips and tricks we’ve included in this handy list can be performed by anyone with moderate computer literacy.
As a leading Brisbane website developer, the team here at GO Creative know just how busy and stressful life can be for a successful company. To help break down the ABCs of maintaining your online presence, here are the top tips for keeping your website running smoothly.
Website management: how to keep it running smoothly
1. Ongoing maintenance
As with most aspects of life, ongoing attention and maintenance are the best ways to keep your website running at maximum capacity. Being constantly on the lookout for everything from broken links to missing images will help ensure you catch issues as soon as possible and minimise disruption, downtime, or inefficient operation.
2. Keep track of it
Part of ongoing maintenance is tracking your website’s performance. Using free tools, such as Google Analytics, and internal website tracking features, you can ensure that website activity is normal. Regularly putting together website traffic reports will help you identify changes to normal patterns and bring a problem to your attention before uptime is disrupted.
3. Update software
Software and plugins are constantly being improved for security and operational improvements. Keeping your website as safe and operational as possible requires you to keep your website as updated as possible.
4. Back-up your website
Fortunately, this tip can be automated. With scheduled backups, you can rest assured that anything that happens to disrupt or bring down your website will only be a temporary blip, as you can quickly resolve even large-scale issues with a recent backup.
5. Think about design
In 2023, the rates of people using smartphones and even tablets to surf through websites are only increasing. Make sure that your website uses a responsive design so that anyone who visits the site will have as smooth an experience as possible.
6. Scan for viruses
Scanning your website for viruses actively is another important method for identifying issues as soon as possible so you prevent the expensive cost of getting hacked. The longer a virus remains undetected the worse the potential damage. Professional website management companies in Brisbane and beyond can help you do this, or you can upskill yourself.
7. Take security seriously
While we’re on the subject, there’s a reason web development companies are taking cyber security more and more seriously. Suspicious online activity, hackers, and data breach threats are unfortunately becoming more common, so it’s essential that you attribute top priority to security and threat management.
8. Use notifications
Even the most diligent and organised of us could do with some help. To keep an eye on the general operation of your website, make sure you’re set up to receive email notifications if your website’s operation is disrupted or brought down.
9. Keep code clean
You might need to rely on a professional provider of web design services for this one, unless you’re a coder in your spare time. Clean, organised and concise coding behind your website will ensure improved operational performance and make ongoing maintenance much easier.
10. Increase speed
Increasing the speed of your website is one tangible and front-facing way to improve its operational performance. Optimising loading speed is not just essential for the experience of your website visitors but also important in helping your site rank well on search engine results.
11. Seek professional support
Our last strategy for maximising your website’s uptime is probably the most important but also the easiest: Outsource the work (and worry) to the top company providing website maintenance Brisbane wide! Using professional local web developers will give you peace of mind and extra time to focus on what you do best: running your business!
Let’s arrange a free web design services audit and quote today!
The GO Creative team offers local, reliable and reputable website maintenance services.
In fact, we’re so confident in the value-for-money of our offerings that we’ll complete a 100% free website audit for you!
Just get in touch with our team today to get started.
