Website Checklist: 12 Tips for Keeping Your Site Fresh and Functional

Ensuring your website remains current is essential for sustaining its functionality, security, and visitor engagement. Here are 12 actionable tips to keep your site up to date and boost visitor conversion rates.

1. Post Fresh Content Regularly
   • Make updates to your site regularly and add new fresh content on a consistent basis. Content plays a vital role in what makes a website wonderful. It informs search engines that your website is active. Posting new content and updating older content on the site is a great way to stay relevant.
   • Fresh content builds the site’s credibility, it leads visits to your website and reduces the likelihood of customers leaving.
   • Check the content for broken links and resolve them promptly.
   • Remove any outdated information or pages on the site.
   • Utilize quality professional images on the site.
2. Ensure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly
   • Approximately 2/3 of website traffic is from mobile devices. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly by testing it on various devices (phones, tablets) and browsers. Modern sites are built using responsive design to make content accessible across various types of devices.
   • Adjust photos and videos to the correct size for web for the ability to quickly load on mobile devices.
3. Optimize Performance
   • Enhance user experience by optimizing images, scripts, and other media files to facilitate faster loading times. Slow load times may prompt users to explore alternative sites. Particularly for mobile users on slower internet connections, quick load times are vital. Prioritizing swift loading is essential for retaining mobile traffic on your site.
   • Reduce HTTP requests and implement browser caching to enhance user experience. This encourages users to remain engaged with your website pages and contributes to improved page load speed rankings on search engines such as Google.
   • Utilize tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to monitor website performance. This helps in identifying performance issues such as slow load times and provides valuable insights into your site's overall performance.
4. Take Proper Security Measures
   • Update your Content Management System (CMS), plugins, and themes regularly to patch vulnerabilities.
   • Use strong passwords and update them periodically.
   • Implement SSL encryption to secure data transmission. This is crucial for securing data transmissions on websites. This encrypts data exchanged between a user’s web browser and the website’s server, ensuring that any sensitive information remains private and protected from unauthorized access.
   • Regularly conduct security audits and vulnerability assessments to detect any weaknesses in your website's code, network infrastructure, or potential vulnerabilities. Vulnerability assessments utilize tools and techniques to scan the website for security flaws such as outdated software versions or missing security patches. Identifying these vulnerabilities helps pinpoint potential entry points for attackers.
5. Test the User Experience (UX)
   • Accessibility is key, ensuring your website is usable and navigable by people with disabilities. This involves designing sites to accommodate various disabilities, whether visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive impairments.
   • Conduct usability testing to identify and resolve any issues found.
   • Optimize forms and other interactive elements on the site for an ideal user experience.
   • Revise the navigation to be simple and user-friendly.
6. Cultivate Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
   • If necessary, submit an updated sitemap to search engines. This action helps enhance visibility by providing current information about your website's structure. Additionally, it ensures search engines accurately comprehend the relationships between pages, potentially boosting your site's ranking in search results.
   • Ensure proper header tags and keyword placement in content.
   • Make sure meta tags, descriptions for each page and title are updated.
7. Review Website Analytics and Tracking
   • Analyze user behavior and adapt accordingly using the data received. This practice enhances user experience by gaining insights into how customers interact with your website. By analyzing behaviors, you can pinpoint pain points, preferences, and areas for improvement, enabling you to optimize navigation, layout, and content. Ultimately, this results in a more engaging website that satisfies end users.
   • Monitoring site traffic with analytics is crucial for gaining deeper insights into user behavior, assessing site performance, and evaluating the effectiveness of marketing efforts. This practice is essential for optimizing user experience and identifying the most engaging content for your site audience.
8. Integrate Social Media
   • Make all your social media channels linked and is easy to share your content.
   • Add social media widgets to your website so new posts are visible and can be easily shared.
   • Share new content on social media platforms regularly.
   • Engage with your audience through social media channels.
9. Make it Easy to Contact You
   • Make certain that contact information, including email addresses and phone numbers, is up to date.
   • Test contact forms to verify they are working correctly.
   • Make sure contact info is easy to find in your website navigation, footer, and other key areas of the site.
10. Add Communication Channels & Monitor
    • Consider adding a chat feature, if possible. It’s a great way to interact with current and potential customers.
    • Update and monitor communication channels, such as chat support, customer service or phone number. Ensure everything is routing properly.
    • Address all customer inquiries and site feedback promptly. Client appreciates quick response.
11. Test, Test and Test Again
    • It’s critical to make sure your website is functioning properly, and your visitors aren’t hitting dead ends or dead links.
    • Regularly test your website on different browsers and various devices ensure all content loads.
    • Execute functionality testing for important features.
12. Observe Website Performance
• Set up website monitoring tools to receive alerts for downtime or performance issues.
• Identify reliable hosting providers, like Visionary, to monitor site performance for you and can more your experience worry free.

Regularly assessing your website's performance is crucial for maintaining user satisfaction. By adhering to this checklist and consistently updating your content, you can cultivate a technically proficient and visually appealing website, enhancing user experience and guiding potential clients toward conversion.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with trying to check everything off your website checklist, our team at Visionary can help. Contact us online or call (515) 369-3545, option 2.