Most businesses consider their website to be a crucial part of promoting their brand. An online presence helps a business enhance its credibility, promote its services and generate leads. Some organisations also use their website for the direct processing of sales.
The content and appearance of your website will therefore be very important to you – it is a worldwide window into your business.
However, once you have designed and published your website (or engaged someone to do that for you), how regularly do you check that everything is as it should be? A website that isn’t functioning properly can damage the perception of your business in the eyes of customers or potential customers, and you could be missing out on leads.
Some points to consider:
- Keep the appearance of the site under review to ensure that it doesn’t look dated or contain obsolete information.
- Make sure that you (or someone acting on your behalf, such as your website designer) logs in to the admin area of the site regularly to check that no errors are reported in the admin panel.
- If your site includes an enquiry form, send regular test messages to check that notifications are working, so that potential customers are not missed, and so they receive a prompt response.
- Make sure that updates to the website software (eg. WordPress / Drupal) are actioned promptly, to maintain functionality and to ensure that the site displays properly in all browsers.
- Don’t overlook updates to any third party plug-ins – for example those which handle the emailing of completed enquiry forms, or which display a gallery.
- Keep control! Make sure you have log-in credentials, as well as your website designer.
- Keep the hosting of the site separate from the design work. If someone else manages the hosting (your IT support company, for example) then they will be able to help you access the admin areas of the site when you need to.
To discuss these points further, please give us a call or enter your contact details here.