Like any business tool, websites require maintenance. Site management is essential for any online business in Nigeria to operate at its utmost potential. These activities are designed to keep your website safe and running smoothly.

A website that runs smoothly creates a smooth experience for its visitors and thus makes them keep coming back.

Best Practices to Keep Your Website Running Smoothly

There’s more to a website than just its aesthetics. You could have the best-looking website but if it’s unresponsive, slow, or generally not run smoothly, you could lose out on customers in a matter of seconds.

Keeping your website running smoothly requires maintenance. These tasks are diverse, depending on the size and nature of your website. Let us take a look at some of the basic best practices that any website in Nigeria should undergo.

Security checks

The internet is a space where cyber threats such as data breaches, hacking attempts, and malware are always present. Cybercriminals are always on the lookout to exploit vulnerable websites. The slightest security breach can damage your reputation. So, ensuring the security of your website is never something you want to leave to chance. Regularly running security checks helps to identify any potential risk or suspicious activity and eliminate them as soon as possible.

Regular Backups

Loss of data can be catastrophic to any business in Nigeria and regular backups can help prevent that from happening. With an up-to-date backup in place, even if your website is infiltrated, you can quickly recover lost data. There are software available out there that can help you do this automatically.

Broken Link Checks

Broken links are often frustrating for website visitors. When users encounter broken links on your site, it potentially drives them away. This is bad for business and is often an indication of poor-quality content to search engines. As often as possible, website owners should check all links (both internal and external) and ensure they are not broken. Ensure all links are fully functional and active.

Speed Optimization

How fast your website loads is an important indicator of online success. Attention spans of your website’s users are short, and so the speed at which your website loads can (make or break your business) significantly impact user engagement and satisfaction. Visitors will leave a slow-loading website in a hurry, even if it is good-looking.

Make sure that whatever element you infuse in your website, you don’t compromise on the speed. Some tips to help optimize your site speed include:

• Compressing images
• Avoid too many animations
• Avoid hosting your videos internally
• Avoid too many redirects
• Take advantage of browsing caching

Content Optimization

Content may be king, but no one likes it boring or stale. Your content should be regularly updated and optimized so that your audience always finds it relevant and valuable. This way, they are always coming back for more. Search engines also have a way of favouring updated and optimized content; which makes it good for SEO.

Last Words

It is one thing to get a website up and running and another thing for it to run smoothly.

This post strips the best practices of site management to its basics. However, it can get pretty tricky doing the in-depth site management tasks to ensure your website runs smoothly. This is where you need a professional partner like AdHang.

AdHang is an award-winning digital marketing company in Nigeria with over 15 years of setting up and managing amazing websites for clients. At AdHang, our website maintenance services are tailored to your specific business needs.