by Matt McGee
One World Telecommunications
posted: December 20, 2004
Great thanks to Deborah Christie of POP
INTERACTIVE and Bob Browning of Textor
Webmasters for inspiration on this article.
You know your car needs a tune-up to keep it running at its best.
At certain milestones (15,000 miles, 30,000 miles, etc.) there's
a checklist of items that need to be examined as part of the car's
regular maintenance. Your web site also deserves regular checkups
-- certainly at least once a year -- to make sure the information
is up-to-date and that the site is running as well as it can.
With that in mind, here's a maintenance checklist for your web
site that we think will help keep it running in great shape.
1. Review your contact information
Are the phone and fax numbers, mailing and email addresses listed
on your site all current? You're obviously losing customers if
the phone number has changed.
2. Review your corporate information
If you have a staff listing
or directory, is it up-to-date with correct names, titles, and
other
contact
information? If you have an "About Us" page or something similar
that discusses company history, make sure it's updated -- especially
references such as "we've been in business for 8 years".
3. Review your virtual email routing
If you list info@yourdomain.com as the main contact address
on your site, is it being routed to the correct person? If your
shopping cart sends order information to orders@yourdomain.com,
is that going to the correct person? Make sure your virtual email
routing reflects any organizational changes you've had.
Readers whose web sites are hosted here at OWT can email us at
any time to request a list of your current virtual email routing.
4. Review and test your contact forms
If you have contact or order forms on your site, review them to
make sure they work, they're easy to use, and to see if they need
to be updated. Perhaps you want to start asking people how they
found
your site or something else that your contact form doesn't ask
now. Be sure to also "break" the form -- submit it without
necessary information and see how understandable the resulting "error" message
is.
5. Review your automated outgoing messages
Do you send an automated confirmation message after a user orders
a product or uses your contact form? If so, review that outgoing
automated message to make sure it says what you want it to say.
6. Update your copyright and/or privacy policy statements
If you have a copyright notice on your site, make sure it's not
outdated. If you have a privacy policy, review it to make sure
it accurately describes your current policy toward handling your
customers' personal information.
7. Test all links on your web site
Outdated or broken links make your site look stale. It's also
a source of frustration for your customers who click on links that
don't work. Check all links on your site to make they're accurate
and up-to-date. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) offers an online
link checker that makes this easy to do.
8. Review the hidden sections of your web site
If you have any password-protected areas, do the passwords need
to be changed? If you had staff changes during the year, this
might be a good idea. It might be a good idea even if you didn't! 9. Review your domain record
Make sure your domain registrar has current contact information
for you. If they don't, you might miss renewal notices and other
important announcements about your domain. Here are two places
to see your domain record:
- WhoIs Source
- Network
Solutions - if your domain is registered with N.S.,
you have to use their WhoIs lookup to see the domain record
(and we recommend the domain be transferred away
from N.S. as soon as possible)
10. Do an overall review of your web site
This is something you should really be thinking about on a regular
basis, but web sites often get ignored in the daily grind of
running a business.
- Is your site serving your existing customers
and attracting new ones?
- Do you need to add to or update the content on your web site?
- Does your site need a more modern
or professional design?
- Does your site offer appropriate features
or tools that allow your customers to interact with
you?
If your site is hosted here at OWT, please check with us for
any recommendations we might have. Our programmers are regularly
expanding our capabilities and developing new tools that
help our clients succeed online.
Great thanks to Deborah Christie of POP
INTERACTIVE and Bob
Browning of Textor
Webmasters for inspiration
on this article.
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