If you think you must have a comprehensive understanding of web development to manage your website, rest assured that this is not the case. If your website is a car, then website management is the car’s maintenance.
Like your vehicle, your website will break down or crash if you don’t do regular management. However, managing a website is very important.
However, managing a website is not always easy. Depending on the duration of the service and the type of business, it can be an extensive process that involves several steps.
This article will cover the steps you need to perform them.
Regular maintenance
As part of managing your website, you will need to perform several actions regularly.
1. Backup website and data
Just like the information on your computer hard drive, your website needs to be backed up from time to time. One of the main reasons for this is that your website is vulnerable to cyber-attacks, server-side glitches, or other network malfunctions. With a backup, you can get your website back up and running in no time.
You need to back up your website to:
Prevent data loss You or one of your employees might accidentally delete some data from your website. If there is a backup, such accidents won’t be a significant setback to the smooth operation of your website.
Minimize revenue loss If your website brings in revenue through sales, then every second, your website is down, cutting into your profits. With an up-to-date backup, you can keep this downtime to a minimum.
Reduce downtime while your website is being rebuilt or renovated. If your website has been energetic for years, you certainly have a lot of information stored. This consists of product pages, edited images, and content developed from ideas that took you hours or even days to create.
When it comes to rebuilding your website or even just renovating part of it, having a recent backup of your website at hand is a big help. Otherwise, the years of effort will be in vain as you will have to develop your website from scratch.
There are hundreds of website backup services, and finding the right one for you will take some research.
2. Database optimization
If your website is subscription-based (e.g., a blog) or an online store where you can add and update products, your website has a database. Your website’s database contains all the information you enter on your website.
Each database comes with a set of responsibilities. That is if you don’t want it to interfere with the operation of your website. These responsibilities are called database optimization.
Why should you optimize your website’s database?
- Your website will load faster.
- You save space in your website’s database.
- You will improve the data security of your website.
So how should you optimize your website database?
There are several ways, but the fastest and easiest is to use a particular software.
3. Review the landing pages
This step is significant if you regularly run paid ads on social media or search engine landing pages.
The landing page is the initial page visitors are directed to from your sponsored social media posts or search engine ads, so it needs to work and be optimized.
When it concerns your landing pages, several problems can develop.
- Slowdown due to heavy traffic.
- New visitors don’t get a clear idea of what you offer.
- Your web server is experiencing a glitch.
4. Prepare and manage downtime
Downtime is the time when your website is inaccessible. This can be for some reasons, but some of the most common are:
Hardware malfunctions For most small and medium businesses, 50% of downtime is due to hardware malfunctions. Despite all the safeguards, the hardware that supports your website may fail at some point. The processor on the server-side can overheat, your ISP’s network cables can be cut, or a city-wide power outage can occur.
Website Hosting Problems Every website must be hosted on a server. These servers belong to internet service providers that charge you a fee for hosting your website.
5. Check the website loading time
One of the essential parts of website management is checking the loading time of your website. Over time, your website will be filled with content, resulting in a more extensive database. This causes your website to make more requests to your server and therefore take longer to load.
There are many reasons why your website may slow down. Some of the most common ones are listed below:
A lot of plugins mean more lines of code in the backend of your website. Loading these extra lines of code means making more requests to the server hosting your website. The result is a longer load time.
Extensive Graphics If you have an e-commerce website, it’s probably very image-heavy. You can probably guess what too many images mean: extra HTTP requests that your server has to handle. This means your website will load slowly.
Server performance is especially true for shared servers. A shared server hosts multiple websites. This means that it has to manage HTTP requests to multiple paths. As a result, your website takes longer to load. If your server’s performance is poor, it won’t handle traffic to so many websites smoothly.
High traffic volume For business owners, this is quite ironic. You work hard and spend a lot of money on advertising to drive traffic to your website. But when traffic increases, your server has to handle many requests, which drives up your website load time.
Slow load times increase your website’s bounce rate, leading to a drop in traffic and conversion rates. Checking your load times regularly will help you stay informed about the factors that could be slowing down your website.
6. Remove unnecessary elements
A website is loaded with many elements that are not essential for running smoothly. There are even elements that slow it down. These include spam comments, changes to the website’s content, and more.
When a visitor logs into your website, these unnecessary elements are loaded along with the necessary ones. Therefore, managing your website requires cleaning from time to time.
7. Check website forms for vulnerabilities
Most likely, your website has a login form, a search bar, and, in the case of e-commerce, a checkout form as well.
Many malicious hackers use a technique called “SQL Injection” to gain unauthorized access to your website’s database. Therefore, it is highly recommended to regularly check your website’s forms to ensure that your user data is protected from attacks.
8. Check the website’s performance in all browsers and on all devices.
After your website was developed, it was undoubtedly tested for browser and device compatibility. Since then, however, you’ve installed plugins, uploaded content, added new lines of code to optimize the site, and made various other changes. If any of these changes don’t match a particular browser (or version), it will affect how the site displays. This can lead to a negative customer experience and ultimately hurt your website’s conversion rate.
9. Customers are the lifeblood of your website
They are the ones for whom you have invested so much time and money in creating your website. They are also the ones who keep your business running. Therefore, you should work hard to resolve issues with your customers.
Respond to customer reviews As you continue to adapt and optimize your business to offer better products and services, more and more people will hear about them. That’s great, but as a result, your website will experience a more significant number of positive reviews. These reviews can include images and videos.
Therefore, an essential part of website management is responding to these positive reviews. Not only does this make these people feel special and improve your company’s customer loyalty, but it can also improve your SEO rankings. So why not respond to them regularly?
Keeping the “website being maintained” pages creative and valuable Website downtime can’t be avoided, so a smart business owner prepares for it.
One widely used method is to set up a page that informs visitors that there are problems on the website and that it is temporarily unavailable. This page offers a lot of room for creativity and added value.
Managing a website is like managing any other aspect of your life. There are no set procedures as we have described above. The more new and innovative elements are added to your website, the more procedures are required to manage it.
It means that whoever is tasked with managing your website must evolve with it. Since your website is the primary medium you interact with your audience, it must be well maintained. A properly maintained website will serve you longer and save you from significant mishaps over the years.
If you are looking for a good website with a very strong infrastructure get in touch with us at WP Maintenance Service
Read More: The Future Of Web Development And Why You Must Focus On It