A Quick Website Checkup from Market Vantage
New Years Website CheckupThe presents have been opened, the ball has dropped, 
the confetti has been swept away – now back to reality! Before you start working on taxes, bookkeeping reports, and your goals for 2015, why not spend a few minutes on a website checkup. After all, your website is the public face of your business — you don’t want to take any chances on something going wrong. Print out this checklist, put it on your calendar, and set aside some time to follow our suggestions.
- Resolve to be attentive. Check your domain name registration(s). They do expire, and you don’t want to find out too late. Take a moment to log into your registration account and make sure your domain names have plenty of runway left. Domain name registration for a dot-com domain shouldn’t cost you much more than $10 per year. Paying it up for the next few years is cheap insurance against the nightmare of losing your domain name to someone else.
- Resolve to be current. Is your website software up to date? These days, more and more sites are being built on open source platforms like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. These platforms are great for website owners because they are essentially “free” but with a price. They don’t get updated automatically the way your Windows or Macintosh operating system on your computer does. Those handy plugins don’t get updated on their own either. Software updates help plug security holes. Websites that are running on old software versions or plugins are vulnerable to attack. Now is a good time to make sure your site won’t be one of them.
- Resolve to be up to date. Speaking of website software, if you’re using Google Analytics, now would be a good time to check and make sure that code is up to date. We’re talking about the snippet of JavaScript that Google gives you to post on your website that makes Google Analytics work. The code has been updated often over the years and you will need the latest version to take advantage of the latest features.
- Resolve to use your tools. Check your Google Webmaster Tools account. If you have a website, you have a Webmaster Tools account. You do have access to it, right? If you haven’t been in there lately, today is a good day to check it for messages and notifications of any problems that need attention.
Watch this space for more useful tips to set you up for success in the next year, or sign up for free email alerts here.
