Website Maintenance Checklist: 12 To Do's & How To's

Annual Website Maintenance Checklist

12 To Do’s & How To’s

Annual Website Maintenance Checklist: 12 To Do's & How To's By Deborah Christie, Partner & Senior Consultant POP Interactive (www.popinteractive.com) Update Published: February 13, 2009 Having provided website services to large and small companies for over 14 years, I know that some aspects of updating and maintaining your website often get put off due to more pressing priorities. So, if it’s been awhile since you performed a review of the more basic aspects of your website, it’s time to do so now. To help, here’s the latest update of our "Annual Website Maintenance Checklist", which has become popular with managers of websites of all sizes. Keep in mind, a number of the items listed below should be performed more often than once a year—but I will leave the appropriate frequency up to you. Just be sure to perform these tasks at least once a year. 1. Check Your Domain Name Record [Perform (select one): Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly ] Check your domain record to ensure the contact and address information for your organization is current. Otherwise important notices, such as domain renewal invoices, might not get to you. Use the below resources to review your domain record now: ▪

InterNIC [www.internic.net/whois.html]

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Network Solutions [www.networksolutions.com/whois]

2. Review Your Website Email Addresses [Perform: Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly ] If you don’t have a list of all the email addresses that appear on your site, you should make one during your maintenance review. Then use it to confirm that they’re all still active and going to the correct people. 3. Update Your Automated Email Messages [Perform: Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly ] Automated responses can greatly enhance your customers’ experience with your website, but only if they contain accurate and timely information. So, if it has been some time since you updated the automated messages sent from your forms, or any other autoresponse emails you're using, it's time to review them. And, if you don’t have all your forms setup with autoresponse messages, it’s time to add them. While you’re at it, you might want to refer to these articles to make sure you’re getting the most out of your automated emails: ▪

Transactional Email and Confirmation Messages [www.useit.com/alertbox/confirmation-email.html]

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Five Best Practices for Adding Transactional E-mail to your Marketing Mix [www.emarketingandcommerce.com/story/five-best-practices-adding-transactional-e-mail-yourmarketing-mix]

Also, to help your emails get through to your visitors, make sure your website includes text asking them to whitelist your email address or, better yet, your entire domain (i.e. domainname.com).

From POP INTERACTIVE (www.popinteractive.com)

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Annual Website Maintenance Checklist

12 To Do’s & How To’s

4. Test Your Forms & Check Your Error Messages [Perform: Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly ] Your forms may not be updated as often as other parts of your website. But, be aware that seemingly unrelated updates can impact the functionality of your forms. So, you want to make sure you test them at least once a year as well as whenever major updates are made to your site. And, if you ever see a sudden drop in activity from your forms, you should check them immediately. It’s also important to review the error messages on your site periodically to make sure they’re friendly and helpful. If you’re interested in conducting a more comprehensive review of your forms, you should add looking into how you can improve them to your to do list—especially if you're not getting the desired results from them. These articles provide valuable information about how to do so: ▪

7 tips for Boosting Web Form Conversions [grokdotcom.com/2008/01/17/web-forms]

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Web Form Design in the Wild Part 1: Web Form Design in the Wild [www.uie.com/articles/forms-fairmont-hotel] Part 2: Web Form Design in the Wild [www.uie.com/articles/form_design_wild]

5. Check Your Password Protected Areas [Perform: Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly ] While you’re testing your forms, you should also test any login areas on your site to make sure they’re functioning as they should. 6. Check Your Site's Search Feature [Perform: Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly ] Do you know if old content that you thought had been removed from your website is showing up in your search results? Or, if all your recent updates are showing up? If you are not sure of the answers to these questions, you’ll want to test your website's search feature to make sure it is functioning effectively and that it includes the right content. 7. Check Your File Sizes and Download Times [Perform: Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly ] It’s not unusual to find that your page file sizes have increased as updates have been made to your site over time. If it’s been a while since you’ve checked how well optimized your code and graphics are, add this task to your annual review. 8. Review Your Standards, Stylesheets, Accessibility and Compatibility [Perform: Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly ] If you still haven’t fully embraced web standards, cascading stylesheets (CSS) and accessibility, you will want to include revisiting these topics as part of the review of your site. Especially if you’re considering a redesign or plan to make extensive changes to your website in the near future. Taking full advantage of web standards and stylesheets can greatly enhance the performance of your website and make it more cost effective to maintain. And, implementing your site using web standards can make it more accessible to those with special browsing needs, such as relying on screen readers. It will also enhance your compatibility with mini-browsers (iPhone, PDA and smartphone browsers). It’s also important to re-evaluate the browser compatibility requirements of your website on a periodic basis. Over the last year new versions of Firefox (Version 3) and Safari (Version 3) were released. In addition, Google released its Chrome browser and Microsoft IE 8 Release Candidate is available, with the final version to be released soon. Here are a few of my firm’s website designers and developers favorite resources to help you determine the best approach to standards compliance, CSS, browser compatibility as well as the appropriate requirements for your website and visitors: From POP INTERACTIVE (www.popinteractive.com)

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Annual Website Maintenance Checklist

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What Are Web Standards and Why Should I Use Them? [www.webstandards.org/learn/faq]

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Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) & XHTML: CSS Work [www.meyerweb.com/eric/css] CSS Topics [www.alistapart.com/topics/code/css] XHTML Tutorial [www.w3schools.com/xhtml]

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Accessibility: WAI Resources [www.w3c.org/WAI/Resources]

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Browser Stats: Browser Stats & Trends [www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat_trends.htm]

12 To Do’s & How To’s

9. Validate Your Links [Perform: Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly ] Don’t let broken links make your site look like it’s poorly maintained or out-of-date. Make a point to check your internal and external links as part of your annual review, even if you already validate your links on a regular basis. 10. Update Your Time References and Copyright Notice [Perform: Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly ] If your website includes timeframe references (e.g. “for five years”), historical timelines or lists of accomplishments, they should definitely be updated annually. You should also check your copyright dates at the same time to ensure they have been updated. Keep in mind that your copyright can simply reflect the date that the content was first created, but it's better to reflect when content was created and when it was modified. This will help protect your work and avoid having visitors think that your content is outdated. Examples of Copyright Syntax: Content created in 2009: Copyright (c) 2009 POP Interactive Inc. Content created in 2007/updated in 2009: Copyright (c) 2007, 2009 POP Interactive Inc. Content created in 2007/updated in 2008 and 2009: Copyright (c) 2007-2009 POP Interactive Inc. 11. Review Your Privacy Policy [Perform: Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly ] It’s important to review your Privacy Policy with the appropriate members of your organization, to determine if it needs to be updated and ensure that it’s being adhered to, especially if you put this task off last year. Also, make sure your Privacy Policy is readily accessible from the pages on your site that ask your visitors for their email address or other personal information. 12. Check Your Search Engine Rankings [Perform: Annually / Semi-Annually / Quarterly / Monthly / Weekly / Daily ] Improving the visibility of your website on the search engines is one of the most cost-effective ways to attract targeted traffic. And, search engines are constantly changing how they return results and offer paid listings. So, if you don’t have a search engine marketing strategy in place, exploring the benefits of doing so should definitely be part of your website review. To see how your site is performing for any given term, try the following tool: ▪

Thumbshots Ranking [ranking.thumbshots.com]

For basic and in-depth information about Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), I suggest this site: ▪

Search Engine Watch [www.searchenginewatch.com]

From POP INTERACTIVE (www.popinteractive.com)

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Annual Website Maintenance Checklist

12 To Do’s & How To’s

Next Steps? If it has been over a year since you closely evaluated the content on your site, you should set aside time—as part of your maintenance review or as a separate project—to take a big-picture look at your website. As part of this process, you should not only include making sure your content is up-to-date but that it reflects the current image and goals of your organization. After all, you do know what they say about content. To help get you started, you can download our Site Evaluation Form: ▪

Website Evaluation Form [www.popinteractive.com/downloads/EvaluationDocument.pdf]

About The Author Deborah Christie is a partner and senior consultant at POP Interactive. POP Interactive, Inc. is ranked among the leading Web design firms in the San Francisco Bay Area and provides website design, development, marketing and maintenance services to large and small organizations throughout the US. For more information, visit www.popinteractive.com or call (415) 439-5900.

From POP INTERACTIVE (www.popinteractive.com)

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