By Andrew Schulkind January 15, 2020
No need
to abandon all hope if your New Year’s resolutions have already fallen by the
wayside. You can still pledge to get the most from your website in 2020. This
website performance checklist can help.
None of
these topics are particularly sexy. Nor are they likely to have the kind of
top-line impact (read: massive increases in revenue) that lead to promotions
and bonuses. But they can save you a ton of pain and regret throughout the
year. And without a doubt, they will make those revenue-spiking initiatives
that much more successful.
Security Review
Having
your domain blacklisted is nobody’s idea of fun. Because there’s no “Undo”
button, once you’re in trouble, it’s time-consuming to get out. So, it is well
worth reviewing your site’s security to ensure that no evil lurks in the heart
of your coding.
Check
your traffic logs and firewall settings to make sure you’re still keeping as
much malicious activity off your site as possible.
If your
site is custom coded, confirm with your developers that the code base is being
updated regularly to guard against malware and other attacks. (Even fully
customized sites generally rely on code libraries or frameworks that can be the
target of attacks.)
If you
use a commercial CMS, do a similar check with the vendor. It can be helpful to
also do a web search for “[my CMS name]
vulnerabilities” and other phrases to find reports of attacks.
An
open-source CMS requires a similar review:
·
Do you have the most recent version installed?
·
Are all of the plugins, modules, widgets, and other helper
programs up to date?
In all of
these cases, you should be on a regularly scheduled maintenance plan with your
development team. Now is the time to make sure you have the most appropriate
level of protection.
Don’t
forget the basics. A quick review is all that should be required to make sure
that your registrar and hosting accounts are secure and your domain name and
SSL certificate are in order and not at risk of cancellation. If you host
internally, review server access to eliminate the chance of former employees
making mischief.
Privacy Review
If GDPR
and CCPA sound like alphabet soup to you, it’s definitely time to review your
site’s privacy policy and things like data retention. This is now true even for non-transactional sites. GDPR
may apply only to those of us who work with E.U. residents, but CCPA applies to
most firms who interact with California residents. The Shield law applies to
every firm in New York State.
That’s a
lot to keep track of and understanding your responsibilities can be overwhelming.
Given the potential fines involved, this is not an area where you want to take
all of your advice from a marketer, coder, or (ahem) digital strategist. Be
sure to have a knowledgeable lawyer review your privacy policies and practices.
Accessibility Review
Making
websites accessible to people with disabilities is an area that has grown in
importance over the past 18 months or so because of an increase in legal
actions, even though the relevant regulations aren’t new.
The good
news is that building new websites to be accessible isn’t particularly
difficult, nor is maintaining that accessibility as new content is added. Both
require an understanding of the requirements and a shift in approach.
The story
is not quite as rosy for bringing existing sites into compliance, which tends
to be more labor-intensive. Adjustments may include changes to branding and
in-depth review of content (image alt tags, for example), as well as less
visible coding changes.
There are
a number of excellent assessment tools that can help you get an understanding
of the effort required to make the site compliant. But a deeper, manual scan
will also be required to uncover everything.
Analytics Review
Finally,
don’t forget to review your analytics. This is one area that just may uncover
insights that can lead to revenue growth that and a move closer to the corner
office, though more likely those improvements will be incremental.
·
Compare statistics year-over-year to see where you’ve improved and
where performance has fallen off.
·
Determine whether your mobile audience is growing or holding
steady. (It’s probably not shrinking.)
·
Review traffic sources to see how visitors are finding you. That
can guide adjustments to your marketing efforts.
You may
be doing quite a bit of this on a monthly or quarterly basis as part of your
marketing efforts. Still, it’s worth it to expand beyond that scope to look at
broader performance and strive for continual improvement throughout 2020 and
beyond.
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