Website owners routinely need to observe some website maintenance events to keep their websites online, safe and functional.

We have divided them into time periods – weekly, monthly, biannual, and annual events.

Outlined below are activities we recommend you observe every year to maintain your website.

1. Renew your domain name

Website owners can lose access to their domain names should they not resubscribe when the subscription expires, usually after a year.

Should you not resubscribe as at when due, your domain registrar will auction it off a few days after expiry for a new buyer.

Your domain name is the address of your website, if you lost access to it, you would need to look out for another domain, rebrand your website, and change virtually everything about your site.

It also means your SEO is gone, you would have to start all over again!

Domain registrars commonly send a notice to resubscribe a few days before the expiry, do not neglect this warning.

Resubscribe your domain before it expires.

It’s not a risk you want to take.

So at least once a year, check on your domain name renewal status.

The best way to keep your domain name safe is to set up auto-renew, an option many registrars offer.

2. Renew your website hosting

As with the domain name, you want to keep an eye on your hosting as well and make sure to resubscribe before expiry.

As much as common hosting providers would not delete your website files when the hosting expires, and would wait a while before doing so, you don’t want your site visitors to meet an empty screen when they visit your site, nor do you want to pay extra fees for late resubscription some providers might demand.

Hosting subscriptions are billed over a time period, usually over a year.

Ensure you resubscribe before your hosting expires to avoid interruptions to running your business.

As with domain subscriptions, there are auto-renewal options for hosting as well.

Contact your hosting providers to set it up.

3. Update other subscriptions

Website owners often opt for premium software and applications to introduce more functionality to their websites, many of which are billed annually.

Ensure you resubscribe to all your software subscriptions before their due date to avoid disconnection from such services which can confuse your visitors into thinking your site has a problem or has been hacked.

4. Perform user testing or a survey

At least once a year, bring in people who are not associated with your brand or do not use your website often, to test your website, navigating from page to page and testing the features.

Make sure your testing includes all browsers and device types your customers may use.

This gives you the opportunity to watch your website users in action so you can see when anything about their experience doesn’t go as expected.

Look out for issues like moments when it takes them longer to complete an action than it should when they have trouble finding something they’re looking for or fail to notice a key CTA or offer you want visitors to see.

Ask questions as they go and take comprehensive notes so you know what changes to make to improve the UX for future customers.

Listen to their concerns and take appropriate action.

Website header and footer are major sections of websites, they commonly contain important information about the business like business address, contact details, business hours, copyright, and legal policies.

They must make sure these details are correct and up-to-date.

Improve your website header navigation, and ensure your important pages are included here, the main menu especially.

Your categories too.

Your website footer likely includes the copyright information, especially the date of copyright, you want to keep that up to date.

Your footer links as well, ensure they are correct, and earmark the new important pages on your website.

6. Explore avenues for improvement

A year is a long time considering the daily improvements in website design and technology in the world today.

Review your site, how does it compare with the competition?

What added features would benefit your site?

Do you need a complete website overhaul or redesign?

In what ways can your website get more traffic and leads?

Conclusion

Website maintenance is vital for website success.

There are weekly, monthly, and biannual maintenance activities, added to these annual ones to do to keep your website up and running.

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