Yes, it's that time of year. Time to perform a maintenance review of your website, especially if you've been putting off checking the basic aspects of your website due to more pressing priorities. To help you, we're publishing an updated version of our popular "Annual Website Maintenance Checklist".
I realize some of the items listed on this checklist should be performed more often than once a year. But, I also know it can be difficult to find the time to take care of these items, so suggest performing these activities at least annually. And, urge you to do so now to make sure there are no issues with your site as you go into the New Year.
1. Check Your Domain Name Record
Check your domain record once a year 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:
While you’re at it, you may want to check the status of domains
you’ve had your eye on to see if they’ve become available.
2. Review Your Website Email Addresses
If you don’t have a list of all the email addresses that appear
on your site, you should make one during your annual review.
Then confirm that they’re all still active and going to the
correct people.
3. Update Your Automated Email Messages
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 a while since you updated
the automated messages sent from your forms, or any other autoresponse emails you're using,
it's time to review them.
If you still aren't using automated messages for all of the forms
on your site, I strongly suggest adding this to your to-do list. Here are some good articles on
how to get the most out of your autoresponder messages:
Also, to help your emails get through to your visitors, be sure your site includes text asking them to whitelist your email address or, better yet, your entire domain. This request should be placed on any page of your site that has a form that will result in an email being sent to visitors or anywhere else on your site that would be appropriate to do so.
4. Test Your Forms & Check Your Error Messages
Chances are the software on your website server is frequently
upgraded or patched. These updates can impact the functionality
of your forms, so it’s a good idea to test them at a minimum of once a
year. And, if you ever see a sudden drop in activity from your
forms, you should check them immediately.
Also, be sure to review your error messages during this process to
make sure they’re friendly and helpful.
You should also put improving your forms on your to-do list, if you're not getting the desired results from them. These articles provide valuable information about how to do so:
5. Check Your Password Protected Areas
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
Do you know if old content that you thought had been
removed from your server are showing up in your site’s search
results? Have all of the most recent updates to your site been
indexed by your search application? We suggest checking your site
search feature to make sure it’s functioning effectively and that
it includes the right content as part of your annual review—and on a regular basis.
Also, if it has been a while since you reviewed your search functionality,
it might be time for a more in-depth look at it to make sure it is returning
the best results.
7. Check Your File Sizes and Download Times
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
If you still haven’t fully embraced web standards, cascading stylesheets (CSS) and accessibility, the annual review of your site is
the perfect time to revisit the topic. 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 site and make it more cost
effective to maintain. In addition, implementing your site using
web standards can make it much more accessible to those with
special browsing needs, such as relying on a screen reader. It will also enhance
your compatibility with mini-browsers (PDA browsers).
It’s also important to re-evaluate the browser compatibility
requirements of your site on an annual 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 IE8 Beta is available, with the final version to be released soon.
Here are a few of our favorite resources to help you determine
the best approach to standards compliance and browser
compatibility, and the appropriate requirements for your site
and visitors:
What Are Web Standards and Why Should I Use Them?[http://www.webstandards.org/learn/faq/]
Cascading Stylesheets (CSS):
- CSS Work
Eric Meyer
[http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/]
- CSS Topics
A List Apart
[http://alistapart.com/topics/code/css/]
XHTML:
Accessibility:
Browser Stats:
9. Validate Your Links
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. Here are a
couple of basic tools that can help:
10. Update Your Time References and Copyright Notice
If your website includes timeframe references (e.g. “for five years”),
historical timelines or lists of accomplishments, they should be
updated during your annual review.
You should also check your copyright dates to ensure they were
updated when your content was last updated. If you’re not sure
how your copyright should appear, here are some guidelines: You
can simply use the date that the content was first created, but
it's a good idea for your copyright to reflect when content was
created and when it was modified. This helps to protect your
work and avoid having visitors think that your content is
outdated. Below are some examples of the syntax:
Examples:
- Content created in 2009:
Copyright (c) 2009 POP Interactive Inc.
- Content created in 2007 and updated in 2009:
Copyright (c) 2007, 2009 POP Interactive Inc.
- Content created in 2007 and updated in 2008 and 2009:
Copyright (c) 2007-2009 POP Interactive Inc.
Learn more about copyrights as well as how to register your work:
11. Review Your Privacy Policy
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
As was true when we first created this checklist (back in 2002), more and more companies continue to recognize the value of search engine marketing and optimization. And, we continue to see changes in how search engines return results and offer paid listings.
Also as true today as it was at the start of search engine marketing, improving the visibility of a website
on the search engines is one of the most cost-effective ways to
attract targeted traffic. 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 annual review.
To see how your site is performing for any given term, try the
following tool:
For basic and in-depth information about Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine
Optimization (SEO), I suggest this site:
- Search Engine Watch
SearchEngineWatch.com (part of internet.com)[http://www.searchenginewatch.com]
Make a New Year’s Website Resolutions List
Since I know you're planning on completing this checklist quickly, I also have a suggestion for your New Year's Resolution: Conduct a content review of your website.
The start of the year is a great time to take a big-picture look at your website to make sure the content is not only up-to-date but that it reflects the current image and goals of your organization.
To help get you started, here’s our Site Evaluation Form: