Spring Clean Your Site: A Checklist for Auditing Your Online Business
No matter where your business is in its lifecycle, one thing remains true: The foundation is important. When cracks appear in the foundation of a structure, they threaten the very survival of the whole thing.
As spring approaches and the days get longer, it’s time to let some of that light shine into the nooks & crannies of your business and attend to the details that matter to keep your foundation intact.
In this post, we’re sharing checklists to help you:
- Keep your website online and brand protected.
- Prepare your business for online growth.
- Focus your time and expertise where they're most valuable.
- Learn what tasks can be automated or outsourced for peak efficiency.
A Spring-Cleaning Checklist for Your Online Business
Maintaining an online presence involves a great number of things. Any of which, on its own, runs the risk of seeming small and unimportant.
But as American basketball coach John Wooden said, “It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” And that belief, that attitude, is what led him and his team to multiple national wins.
Wondering what details to focus on so your online business is set up to win? We’ll start by addressing the necessary housekeeping for your Network Solutions account, cover any domain name-related tasks, and provide ideas for spring cleaning your website, too.
Network Solutions Account Checklist
Ensure your business is set up for uninterrupted success by addressing these elements in your account:
- Contact information.
- As seasons change and staff come and go, it’s important to make sure you’re keeping your account contact information up to date. If not, important notices could be missed, like domain renewal notices.
- Billing information.
- Don’t risk losing your domain or having your website go down because of outdated billing information.
- Privacy and Security.
- Your login password should be difficult for others to guess and different from passwords you use on other sites. Repeating passwords across multiple sites is a recipe for disaster — one data breach can lead to hackers trying that password for your other accounts… and if it’s the same? Not good.
Domains Checklist
- Brand protection.
- Consider registering additional domain names to protect your brand. You can also use Adultblock to ensure that your brand isn’t compromised. It provides trademark protection, keeping your name out of adult-themed spaces, and blocks the registration of your trademark from domains like .XXX and .SEX.
- Auto-renew.
- Don’t risk losing your domain name(s). Keep auto-renew on in your account.
- Transferring domains.
Website Checklist
- Update software and plugins.
- Outdated plugins and software can cause performance issues on your site and harm its security.
- Review website performance.
- Using an analytics tool like Google Analytics gives you deeper insight into your website and its efficacy. Once you know how your site is performing, you can identify areas in which to improve. Reviewing site analytics helps you know where to:
- Fix broken links.
- Update outdated content.
- Check your site's loading time.
- A free tool like Google PageSpeed Insights can help you understand what needs to be optimized on your site for faster loading.
- Pretend you’re a customer and go through your purchase flow.
- When was the last time you put yourself in your customer’s shoes? Enter your purchase flow like a customer would to identify pain points and areas needing improvement.
- Back up your data.
- You should be backing up your website data on a regular basis. But if you haven’t, this is your reminder.
- SEO and content updates.
- Now is the time to perform content and keyword analysis to make sure your site content is still resonating with your audience and driving the conversions you want.
Spring clean your website and account to maintain business success
If you don’t know where your business stands, you won’t know how to improve. This spring, use these checklists to keep your online business tidy and thriving.
Need a hand with account management? Our teams can help! Reach out to us here.