As the days start to lengthen and it feels like we’re edging out of winter we all look forward to the new life and freshness of spring. Does your website feel the same or is this a good opportunity for a bit of housekeeping to make it spring fresh and ready for the summer?
Check your admin users
It is natural in business that staff will periodically move on, either to other roles within your business or elsewhere.
When did you last review the list of users with access to your website’s administration area to ensure that only staff with a current business need have access?
Leaving accounts active for staff no longer employed can lead to severe problems, The British Museum recently had a disgruntled ex-contractor return and use their, still active, access to shut down a number of exhibits ahead of a busy weekend. If their access been revoked promptly they would not have been able to do so. For e-commerce sites you also have a duty of care to the personal data of your customers, per the GDPR legislation.
For WordPress sites, this is as simple as viewing the Users list in the admin and checking that all those under the Administrator, Shop Manager or Editor tabs still need access, and revoking or deleting any who are no longer needed.
From a security point of view you should avoid sharing logins and each staff member should have their own username and unique password for each site.
Password housekeeping
When did you last change the password for your website admin? Could anyone else know what that password is or is it even in use elsewhere? It is good practice to rotate (i.e. re-generate) passwords periodically to avoid any old record of it escaping your control. Most importantly, ensure that any password you choose is strong and unique, i.e. never re-use the same password on more than one site. Most good password managers have a password generator and if you’re not using a password manager (why not?) then you can still generate a really good password using online tools – WordPress has a strong password generator built in for example.
If you don’t already have 2-factor authentication enabled you may wish to add that to keep your borders fortified.
Clean up your website features & content
Websites evolve over time, is yours still showing outdated features or content? Are there still references to COVID-19 precautions or does your contact form still ask for a fax number? All of these things can make your website seem dated and potentially lose business. In some cases, you may even find you have features, and plugins for those, which are no longer relevant and removing these would free up space for more valuable content. Removing redundant plugin(s) can also speed up your website and even make it more secure and easier to manage going forward.
Perhaps it’s time for your website to grow a new feature, some aspect of your business that isn’t already available or something that would make your life easier, it could be anything from a listing of clearance items, a newsletter sign-up form or even a customer management system to allow you to run your business more effectively?
Scrub up your mailing list
Do you send out newsletters to your customers regularly, if so when did you last check on your bounce rate and interactions, do you need to remove old recipients who’ve not engaged for years (or try to re-engage them), are there new active customers who you’re not sending to that might appreciate your newsletters, is your template on-brand and fitting with your website or a relic from previous seasons?
Dust off your marketing
Are you still running Google Ads campaigns using the same words & phrases as last year? The world moves on and so must your choice of terms to remain relevant and cost-effective rather than old and dusty.
With so many changes to online advertising is your website using the latest types of campaign to get the best conversion rates and lowest cost per lead? Are your landing pages fresh and inviting? A Digital Marketing review might be what you need to clean up your marketing efforts.
A fresh coat of paint
Ok, don’t try putting emulsion on your monitor, however your website’s design does age, is yours looking from the last decade? If so it might be time to speak to our designers about adding a bit of pizzazz back into things, and perhaps take that one step further with a full user experience review so that it is spring-fresh, sparkling and doing all it can to drive your business forward.
