Reviewing a website periodically can eliminate the major shortcomings of a website and ensure that it is up to the mark in fulfilling its objective. During the review process, you need to consider multifaceted aspects that can affect its performance. The list may include content-review, hosting service, website improvements, updates, and various others. In this post, we will discuss a checklist you should make prior to the website review. Once the list is ready, you can check your website on the basis of the essential parameters you have stated on the list. Read the full post for reviewing a website efficiently.
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Factors To Keep In Mind When Reviewing A Website
To ensure that a website is running in an optimal shape, you need to confirm the below-given checklist:
1: Check Your Website’s Content
The main idea of having a website is to describe your products or services with the help of intelligible content. So reviewing content in the first place makes sense. When reviewing a website, you need to check if the content published on it serves its purpose or not. Besides, check if the important information such as names, addressed, or contacts are updated on the site or not. Furthermore, make sure that the offers, pricing, delivery charges, terms and conditions, and privacy policies described are correct and depict your business process accurately.
Also, navigate through the whole website and check if the content published on the site is relevant. For instance, the blogs and FAQs section listed on the post is still relevant and not showing any outdated information related to the site. While checking the content, you may find some piece of content that needs to be removed entirely from the site. Also, check if the website has no content that is offering mixed information to the customer. It may confuse them, resulting in lower conversion rates.
2: Make Sure That There Are No Broken Links
When reviewing a website, you should look out for the broken links on the site because then it can be a big mess. If the internal links on the pages are broken, your prospective customers may not be able to explore the pages they want to see. It can be annoying and results in higher bounce rates, which means they will be investing their money somewhere else. Also, every time you change the content of the website, make sure that all the links are working properly and redirect you to the intended pages.
In addition, when removing pages, you need to make sure that their links from the website are also removed. You can use plugins to look for the broken links to save your time and effort in finding and correcting them. When checking for the links, start with the menus.
After checking the internal linkings, you can jump to the external links. Sometimes, third-party websites remove your linked content, which creates a bad impression on your visitors. Also, it can hamper the ranking of your site on search engines.
3: Check If The Security Is Intact Or Not
Security is one of the most important things you need to consider when reviewing a website. If the site is hacked, it can pose some severe short and long-term consequences on the business. When checking the security, you need to check the below-given points:
- Use strong passwords that are not easy to crack.
- Keep the backup of your data on a regular basis.
- Protect the site from undesired intrusions.
- Scan emails for the malware before proceeding any further.
- Update all the software to the latest maintenance release.
- Keep them security settings to auto mode so that they can deal with any kind of attacks or vulnerabilities in no time.
A recommendation for websites used to be SSL certificates, which provide encryption for sending and receiving personal data to and from your site. It is imperative these days. Google will warn users that if you don’t have SSL, your site is not safe. Due to the KRACK weakness in Wi-Fi networks, antivirus teams have recently told their customers not to visit websites that don’t have SSL.
4: Check If The Theme Is Up To The Mark
The theme of the website plays an important role in the success of a website. Also, the theme should be responsive. A responsive website enables the users to access it on their preferred services such as phones, PC, or tablets. If the website is not responsive, it means you are limiting ways of your prospects to reach you out and look out for your offerings. Besides, the search engine also stops ranking your content if the website’s theme is not responsive, especially on mobile searches.
A responsive website that can be loaded faster on all the devices can boost SEO. With the advancement of the Internet, you need to update your website accordingly. Failing to do so, you have to face its disadvantages. Make sure that the site is user-friendly and comprehensive. It can help the users to navigate through the website with the utmost ease and find the desired products or services. When reviewing a website, you should also check the visual appeal of the site.
5: Keep Website’s Backend Clean
If your website is using a CMS platform (Magento, WordPress, etc.), then you are likely to have so much cleaning to do on your way when reviewing a website. Below are the points you need to think of when reviewing a website:
- If you have plugins or add-ons that are not in use anymore, uninstall them.
- Check if the site has unused pages, posts, or images. If yes, delete them.
- Track the spam comments and clean up your database.
- Remove users from the email lists who have unsubscribed to the site.
- Delete unnecessary personal information from the storage.
6: Make Assessment Of Your Hosting
Hosting underpins your whole existence online. A good web host will make sure that your website stays online and that the server works perfectly and remains stable. They should be there with technical assistance 24 hours a day for you as well, should anything go wrong. You will need to change your host if this does not happen.
Your website and traffic may have risen at the same time, and this may mean that your current hosting plan is no longer suitable for your needs. You may need to migrate to another package or to a more advanced form of hosting, such as from shared to VPS or from VPS to a dedicated server.
Final Words!
This post highlights some of the crucial parameters you need to keep in mind when reviewing a website. These thumb-rules of effective website auditing could keep you ahead in the competition. If you liked this post, hunt for more by visiting our blog section.
