Websites age faster without a maintenance plan.
Your website does not live in a time capsule. Things outside of your control are constantly evolving. Things like:
- User expectations
- Devices and technology upgrades
- Resource updates
- Standards and best practices
Regular maintenance allows your website to evolve along with these changes.
It does not take dramatic or rapid change to age your website. Minor alterations over a year can quickly age a new site into becoming a relic far before its time.
In this post, we’ll talk about:
- How your site should be updated safely to prevent downtime.
- The types of updates that benefit your site on a regular, semi-regular, and as-needed basis.
- How maintenance prevents a last-minute scramble in the event it all hits the fan.
Let’s get started!
Maintenance should not be done to an audience. Use a staging environment.
At worst, you should schedule your updates to be made during times when traffic to your site is low. A quick view of your usage statistics can help pinpoint the right time.
At best, your entire website should be copied and uploaded to a separate location. This second location, or staging environment, is where the magic happens. It allows your website to continue to serve your visitors while the updates are being implemented and tested behind the scenes. Once approved and ready, the switch to your visitors is immediate and often goes unnoticed.
When should updates be made, and by whom?
Many of the updates your site will see are regular, or recurring, updates. These are typically small when viewed individually, and can easily be bundled together into a single, monthly update. They include:
- Updating your platform core (e.g. WordPress) and associated plugins.
- Reviewing and optimizing code quality.
- Compressing any new media and images for performance.
- Retesting on devices and browsers (after all updates have been made).
New devices hit the market throughout the year, typically at regular intervals.
You should be reviewing your site user statistics to see how new technology has affected visits (if at all). The goal is to ensure your site is as compatible with new devices as it was with the old. At times, it may be deemed worthwhile to invest in a newer piece of technology in order to test your site. Keep in mind, however, that accurate testing can be achieved without owning every device used on your site.
These reviews do not need to be done immediately after a new device has hit the market. Schedule them for a few months after any major release. Re-examine the data 6 months to a year later to see trends created by a new device’s market saturation and use.
Your company’s overall messaging and campaign focus will shift as time goes on.
Scheduling major enhancements a couple times a year allows for planning, design and implementation. These updates coincide with major marketing, sales or product shifts. These include:
- Examining and updating pages that are underperforming.
- Rolling out new features.
- Incorporating new campaigns.
Immediately: Technological errors and usability issues.
Every site will, at some point, experience technical difficulties. These include both issues that users experience and ones that affect search engine performance. Correcting these is a high priority, and can not wait out the process of finding the right developer.
Having a maintenance plan means you have the players, environment, and systems in place to act quickly when your site needs it most.
As we say in sports, the best offense is a good defense. That is exactly what a maintenance plan provides for your website. It’s a defensive strategy that, for the most part, ensures everything continues to run smoothly as time marches on. In the worst cases, you can rest assured that your team is already in place and knows how to handle technological emergencies as they arise.