Time for a tune-up? Tips for keeping your website fresh and functional

During spring-cleaning, homeowners perform annual maintenance on their homes that often go unnoticed. This might include changing furnace air filters, cleaning ducts, and washing exterior windows. This process is a necessary evil to ensure your investment is in good working order and nothing has slipped through the cracks.

Just like spring-cleaning, companies should perform regular tune-ups on their website – after all, it’s an investment. When you launch a new website, you package it perfectly, ensuring that all of the images, downloads and content are perfect, but companies rarely maintain them on an ongoing basis. The result – broken links that lead their customers to 504 error pages, outdated resources, and unnecessary bugs that affect your customers’ user experience.

Here’s just a few things you can do to keep your website looking and performing like new:

Repair broken links

There’s nothing worse than cruising your favourite website and clicking on links that lead to this page cannot be found. Not only are your customers not getting what they’re looking for, they’ve also changed their impression about the quality of your brand.

At least once a year, go through all of the pages of content on your website (don’t cry) and make sure that all links are in good working order. Replace broken links with new, active links to make your customers happy.

Buy a product

Ever had a poor online shopping experience? Maybe the size options aren’t working or products go missing from your shopping cart? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that translates into lost revenue.

Try viewing your website through the eyes of your customer and spend some cash! Not a lot, just buy a test product or two to ensure that your e-commerce store is bug-free and working as it did when you launched. Eliminate any products you no longer carry or ones that are out of stock – the less clutter the better.

Test your web forms

Have you ever submitted a Request a Quote or Contact Us form and waited and waited, to not hear back? It’s possible your request never made it to the right person.

Regularly test your web forms to verify that your prospect’s request is sent to the appropriate person. Simply do this by filling in all required fields and hitting send. Follow up with the department or individual the forms should be sent to and ensure the request is received as you entered it. This will allow for prompt and accurate follow up with your customers.

Maintaining your links, online store and web forms regularly is the first step to getting the best possible return on your website investment. Get in touch with us to discuss your options for updating your website design for higher performance to help achieve your sales goals.

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