2023 is off to a flying start, and with the new year comes all the hustle and bustle of budgeting, forecasts, setting up new sales and marketing channels and strategies and ensuring that you’re shaping your business for growth in the next 12 months.
But there are also really simple ‘quick wins’ that you can take care of in the next few weeks to ensure that your 24/7 sales and marketing team member – your website – is working as hard and efficiently as it can be to add value to your bottom line.
To help you check this item off your ‘to do’ list we’ve put a handy set of pointers below…
Basic Housekeeping
These are quick items to update to ensure your customers know you’re open and ready for business, and ensure your website is functioning optimally.
- Update the current year on the footer of your website (if it’s not automatically updated)
- Removing holiday opening hours that you may have added to your site
- Adding bank holiday/other closure dates for the year
- Make sure that everyone’s out-of-office replies are switched off
- Ensuring that address, phone number and email address details are correct
- Check your Google Business Profile and Bing profile to make sure the details there are correct and up to date
- Check your social media pages to ensure they’re up to date
- Check all your website links including your site navigation, hyperlinks between pages, social media links and especially your e-commerce functions are all working as they should (do a test purchase, if necessary)
- Ensure your contact forms and links are all working correctly
Content Housekeeping
Your website and social media content is a mix of ‘fixed content’ and ‘flexible content’ – for example, home page and other site pages information can be fairly ‘fixed’ whereas your news section and social media is more fluid day-to-day/week-to-week content.
- Update your news section to wish your customers a happy new year, and highlight any plans you may have, promote any sales, marketing initiatives etc.
- Make sure any mentions of staff, offers, initiatives etc. on social media are still relevant
- Check for any messages and enquiries that came in over the festive period that you may have missed, and be sure to reply
- Check your product and service pages content to make sure it’s still relevant, applicable and as complete as possible – not only to help your customers navigate more easily, but because it’s an essential part of good Search Engine Optimisation.
- The same applies to your product pricing and descriptions – making sure that all details are correct, current and visible
Technical Housekeeping
These are more ‘back-end’ tasks that you may need some technical help with, but are just as important, even if your visitors may not be aware of them.
- Check your domain and hosting packages to make sure they are set to renew correctly
- Check that your secure hosting (https) is still in place
- Check spam filter and security settings
- Make sure your site’s plugins and APIs (for example, payment gateways) are up to date and current
- Ensure your Analytics packages are working properly and that reporting dashboards are working as they should
- Check your website’s performance using GTmetrix or Google Lighthouse to ensure crawlers don’t find any issues, or highlight anything that needs attention
- Check that your website’s back-ups are working correctly (or set that up if you don’t have back-ups in place!)
Legal Housekeeping
Your website should have a range of legal documents and links in place to ensure you and your visitors are correctly protected whilst interacting online. To ensure you are compliant, check the following items:
- Terms and conditions easily accessible and up to date
- Privacy policies and any other legal policies applicable to your business are accessible and up to date
- Your compliance and data officers are current and contact details are correct
- Any GDPR changes have been noted and updated on your website documentation
If you’d like any assistance checking through your website from any of the aspects above, please give us a call. We’re able to run a comprehensive review over your entire website including SEO, CMS, marketing, content, performance and more, and provide you with a full report of action items, suggested improvements and more.
Find out more about our digital marketing services
Give our experienced team a ring today on 01223 550800 or email us at info@realnet.co.uk.