Web Optimization

A Well-Oiled Machine: Website Maintenance for Small Business Success

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small biz website maintenance - blog cover

Even shiny new vehicles eventually experience wear and tear, and the best way to keep them from conking out is to stick with a regular maintenance schedule. The same efforts apply to your business website, which sets the tone for <a href="https://www.podium.com/article/brand-management/">your brand</a> and inspires customers to take action. 
That’s why website maintenance for small businesses is an absolute must. If you delay minor nuisances long enough, they can sputter into significant setbacks. The regrettable result? Investing more time and money into resolving these problems, or missing out on enough sales to cripple your bottom line.
Ensure a smooth ride by radiating a great first impression at every mile marker. We’ve compiled a handy checklist of tips to help you navigate creating a small business website maintenance plan, from essential content audits to amplifying <a href="https://www.podium.com/guides/convert-more-leads/">conversion rates</a>.
<h2>Show Some Love to Your Content </h2>
Perhaps your website’s content felt solid 5 years ago, but if you never drop by your own URL, you might not notice just how stagnant it’s become. Static sites don’t gain repeat visitors. Give your customers a reason to keep coming back with fresh offerings, ensuring there’s always something new and interesting to check out. 
Hot-off-the-press products and services are wonderful additions, but if an updated catalog isn’t on the horizon, you can still gain traction with some enticing blog content. Tie your brand into helpful posts and add these to your content marketing schedule. Regular updates will also extend your SEO reach, so try to stick with it.
<h2>Check for Broken Images and Links</h2>
A website riddled with broken images and links to 404s might look like an abandoned tomb. Viewers will wonder if your business is defunct, and that’s never a good look. This problem is even more likely if you migrate your website to a new server, rearrange directories, or make other significant changes to your sitemap. 
Look for images that refuse to load as expected, then search the image directory to see if those files exist. You might need to change the file paths on your page or re-upload images to the correct location. This process will differ if you use a website builder or content management system.
Broken links throughout your content can also drive down your site’s SEO. Fortunately, there are tools for uncovering these dead ends, such as <a href="https://ahrefs.com/broken-link-checker">Ahrefs’ Broken Link Checker</a>. Either reconnect broken links or use a <a href="https://www.semrush.com/blog/redirects/">URL redirect</a> to get your viewers where they need to go.
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-24598 size-large" src="https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/two-people-working-on-a-website-1024x896.png" alt=" two people working on a website" width="640" height="560" srcset="https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/two-people-working-on-a-website-1024x896.png 1024w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/two-people-working-on-a-website-300x263.png 300w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/two-people-working-on-a-website-768x672.png 768w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/two-people-working-on-a-website-571x500.png 571w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/two-people-working-on-a-website-360x315.png 360w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/two-people-working-on-a-website-160x140.png 160w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/two-people-working-on-a-website-350x306.png 350w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/two-people-working-on-a-website-100x88.png 100w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/two-people-working-on-a-website-392x343.png 392w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/two-people-working-on-a-website.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
<h2>Perform a Thorough Content Audit </h2>
If it’s been a few months since you’ve clicked through the pages on your website, consider performing a full content audit. This means ensuring everything displayed is still solid and relevant. You won’t win any points with readers if you’re caught peddling woefully outdated and inaccurate information.
Peruse through your content and evaluate the language used throughout. If it’s full of slang or jargon, make sure they match current trends within your audience and your industry. This matters because being behind the times may lead to losing credibility and desirability.
Is there anything you can add or improve to make your existing content more valuable to future audiences? Just because you publish something doesn’t mean there isn’t room for continuous improvement. Consider refreshing your website with updated images, videos, and text. 
<h2>Update Your Deals and Sales Regularly </h2>
Have you ever come across an astounding deal directly on a shop’s website, only to find that it’s no longer valid? Yikes! What a way to enrage would-be customers. Providing timely information is essential to small business website maintenance.
While there’s little you can do about expired coupon codes on other websites, your own corner of the internet should only display current promotions. Remove sales from your shop or service site the moment they expire. Even better, let customers know the clock is ticking down ahead of time to encourage quicker decisions. 
<h2>Incorporate Current SEO Best Practices</h2>
<a href="https://www.podium.com/article/driving-brand-recognition/">Search engine optimization (SEO)</a> carries a lot of weight, and you can’t just set it and forget it. Best practices shift over time, especially whenever Google releases a major algorithm update. You also may have new competitors vying for the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), so don’t get too comfortable.
Auditing SEO goes hand-in-hand with your content updates. Follow high-authority SEO blogs and newsletters to remain in the know, and then look for opportunities to add more SEO juice to your business website. 
<h2>Some tried-and-true best practices for SEO to keep in mind:</h2>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Write high-quality, unique descriptions and content</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Optimize all your title tags and alt image text</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Seek additional opportunities for internal linking</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Implement keywords appropriately throughout your site</li>
</ul>
<h2>View Your Website Like A Customer</h2>
Who’s ready for a roleplaying game? Pretend you’re a customer visiting your business website for the first time. What are your impressions? Even better, ask others to help you perform some insightful user testing and analyze the feedback. 
Website maintenance for small businesses requires dedication to gain more site visitors, but we think you’ll love the payoff. Try asking the following questions to eliminate unnecessary barriers between your customers and conversion.

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<h2>Is Your Website Mobile-Friendly?</h2>
If you don’t have a responsive website, you’re well behind the times and missing out on the huge portion of internet users glued to mobile devices. Providing a mobile-friendly experience is nonnegotiable with nearly <a href="https://www.podium.com/guides/retail-review-trends/">75% of consumers</a> likely to engage with retail businesses using a mobile device. 
Responsive designs are fluid and will adjust based on different screen sizes and other criteria expressed through a website’s style sheet. A well-designed website won’t cut off menus or hide content, no matter how or where users choose to view it. Images and other design elements grow or shrink as necessary to fill the space properly.
Solid web development is an essential website maintenance cost, so consider working it into your next budget to ensure a flawless mobile experience.
<h2>Is Your Website Easy to Navigate? </h2>
Familiarity can obscure colossal navigation issues. Does your website’s layout make sense? How would your customer get from point A to B? Is it difficult to accomplish basic tasks? Awkward navigation can discourage visitors, so these questions are important to ask and resolve if necessary.
Most user experience (UX) advice will recommend organizing your menus logically to avoid confusion and lengthy click journeys. It’s also important to consider the expected behavior on a website. 
For example, mobile websites often use hamburger menus, an icon with 3 stacked horizontal lines. If clicking on this menu symbol opened a video instead, your customers would be quite confused!
<h2>Does Your Website Load Quickly? </h2>
We all have itty-bitty online attention spans. Blame social media, the paradox of choice, or fast-paced modern lifestyles, but whatever the reason for our lack of patience, websites need to load almost instantly. 
A Digital.com survey found that <a href="https://digital.com/1-in-2-visitors-abandon-a-website-that-takes-more-than-6-seconds-to-load/">50% of online shoppers</a> expect websites to load within 3 seconds. The same report revealed 50% would also abandon those sluggish sites and anything in their carts. Consider auditing your business website with a tool like <a href="https://pagespeed.web.dev/">PageSpeed Insights</a> to find out where you stand.
What’s dragging down your website’s loading time? 
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Problems with your web hosting server or bandwidth</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Super-sized, unoptimized image files and other media</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Inefficient and cluttered website coding or poor design</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Lack of a CDN service if catering to worldwide audiences</li>
</ul>
This is not an exhaustive list of everything that could affect your loading speed. You may need to <a href="https://www.podium.com/article/website-designers-and-developers/">hire a professional web developer</a> to fully resolve a website that constantly lags, but it&#8217;s worth the web maintenance costs. 
<h2>How Easy is it to Contact You?</h2>
It shouldn&#8217;t be a struggle to uncover your business’s contact information. Ideally, at least one method for getting in touch should be visible on every page. You might think this is unnecessary, but any time a customer wants to communicate, there’s something valuable at stake. 
Answer questions and concerns or gather critical data by opening communication channels. One way to make it easy for customers to get in touch is by installing<a href="https://www.podium.com/webchat/"> Podium’s Webchat</a> directly on your website. Webchat connects visitors with your support team, either as a live chat during your business hours or as a message system, with responses provided when possible. 
<h2>Is There Friction in the Checkout Experience? </h2>
Don’t let customers stumble around when they’re close to conversion. Make the last steps a cinch to complete. Once you’ve got your navigation fine-tuned, it’s wise to inspect your checkout experience to find out whether it’s effective enough.
Your customer has reached the last hurdle if they’re gazing upon the checkout page, but how often do they abandon their cart? Remove obstacles that stand between your customer and a completed transaction. 
Some checkout tips to improve your customer experience:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Enable guest checkout so your customers don’t have to sign up or log in</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Offer convenient and flexible payment options like Buy Now, Pay Later</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Make all shipping information crystal clear, including estimated timelines </li>
</ul>
If you’ve streamlined the checkout process but are still getting ghosted, try sending abandoned cart reminders and surveys.
<h2><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-24599 size-large" src="https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/woman-working-on-her-website-1024x896.png" alt="woman working on her website" width="640" height="560" srcset="https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/woman-working-on-her-website-1024x896.png 1024w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/woman-working-on-her-website-300x263.png 300w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/woman-working-on-her-website-768x672.png 768w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/woman-working-on-her-website-571x500.png 571w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/woman-working-on-her-website-360x315.png 360w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/woman-working-on-her-website-160x140.png 160w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/woman-working-on-her-website-350x306.png 350w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/woman-working-on-her-website-100x88.png 100w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/woman-working-on-her-website-392x343.png 392w, https://cmsaustralia.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/woman-working-on-her-website.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></h2>
<h2>Don&#8217;t Neglect the Rest of Your Online Presence</h2>
We hope this website maintenance plan for small businesses helps, though your website is just one part of a healthy online presence. Keep your Google Business Profile up-to-date, streamline your review process, remain active on social media, and continue showing up for your customers.
Ready to put your best face forward online? Sign up for a <a href="https://www.podium.com/free-trial">free 14-day trial</a> of Podium to add our tools to your professional website maintenance services.

A Well-Oiled Machine: Website Maintenance for Small Business Success

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