While every one else is making a New Years resolution are you even ready to join the crowd. Before you jump into making resolutions for next year, make sure you have wrapped up 2013 nicely. By creating your own year-end checklist (or using ours) you are able to confidently wrap up 2013 and better prepare for 2014.
Below are 10 items that everyone should have on their year-end checklist to ensure a stronger website going into 2014:
1. Review your company information –If you have a staff listing or directory, is it up-to-date with correct names, titles, and other contact information? If you have an “About Us” page or something similar that discusses company history, make sure it’s updated—especially references such as “We’ve been in business for eight years.”2. Review your contact information – Are the phone and fax numbers, mailing and email addresses listed on your site all current? You’re obviously losing customers if the phone number has changed.
3. Review your email routing – If you list [email protected] as the main contact address on your site, is it being routed to the correct person? If your shopping cart sends order information to [email protected], is that going where it needs to go? Make sure your email routing reflects any organizational changes you’ve had.
4. Review and test your contact forms – If you have contact forms on your site, review them to make sure they work, they’re easy to use, and to see if they need to be updated. You might want to start asking people how they found your site or something else that your contact form doesn’t ask now. Also, be sure to “break” the form—submit it without the required information and see how understandable the resulting error message is.
5. Review your automated outgoing messages – Do you send an automated confirmation message or receipt after someone orders a product or uses your contact form? If so, review that outgoing automated message to make sure it says what you want it to say, and that it has the right contact information, etc.
6. Update your copyright and/or privacy policy statements – If you have a copyright notice on your site, make sure it’s not outdated. If you have a privacy policy, review it to make sure it accurately describes your current policy toward handling your customers’ personal information.
7. Test all outgoing links on your web site – Outdated or broken links make your site look stale. It’s also a source of frustration for your customers who click on links that don’t work. Check all links on your site to make they’re accurate and up-to-date. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) offers an online link checker that makes this easy to do.
8. Review the hidden sections of your web site – If you have any password-protected areas, do the passwords need to be changed? If you had staff changes during the year, this might be a good idea. It might be a good idea even if you didn’t!
9. Review your domain record – Make sure your domain registrar has current contact information for you. If they don’t, you might miss renewal notices and other important announcements about your domain. You might also want to read How to Protect Your Domain, which has some additional things to look for on your domain record.
10. Do an overall review of your web site – This is something you should really be thinking about on a regular basis, but web sites often get ignored in the daily grind of running a small business. Ask yourself: How fresh is the content on my site? Do any pages need to be updated? How does my site look? Is it time for a more professional or modern design? Does my site offer the kind of features or tools that let my customers get what they want when they visit?
Once you have marked off everything on your checklist then you can make a more rounded out New Years resolution with out leaving any lose ends from this last year. Doing this every single year will help you and your business when it comes to making money online.
Do you feel we left any important check list items out that you feel every small business owner should cover at the end of every year?
Article Source: Search Engine Land
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