WHO monitors your website can be just as important as WHAT gets monitored
Make no mistake – today’s economy is driven by the Web. There is no more important a marketing tool than a properly built and maintained website filled with valuable, relevant, optimized content that draws in qualified customers.
To keep that finely-tuned marketing machine humming, it’s critical to monitor your website because a website that’s not firing on all cylinders will not only lose customers, it’ll lose money as well. A poorly-performing – or worse, non-functioning – website can quickly divert current and potential customers to competitors who are only a click away. To make matters worse, search engines will often penalize your search ranking if your website is slow or under-performing.
The primary components of Website Monitoring and Maintenance are:
- Proper website development including utilizing current coding practices, responsive design, software upgrades, code validation, and maintaining browser compatibility.
- Quality hosting that provides exceptional uptime, page loading, error reporting, 24/7 security monitoring, and daily backups for the site and your emails.
- Optimization components to grow traffic to your site such as content creation, calls to action, link building, traffic analytics, social media integration, and more.
Website monitoring is not only a valuable tool for maintaining the health of your website, it’s also good for gauging its performance against the competitive landscape. Website monitoring enables you to benchmark your website and track your results over time, providing insights into how effective the work on your site is and how your site is performing.
If you are considering the development of a new website be sure all the key development guidelines mentioned are being met. If you have a site that is older in nature than consider a full Site Analysis by a professional to give you an idea as to where your site stands. One thing is for sure, if your site is five years old or older it is highly likely the site is not mobile friendly, a big issue since Google’s recent algorithm changes.
In fact, there are five good reasons why you should be monitoring your website:
- To ensure optimal search results
- Protect your brand and its reputation
- Help provide a more-satisfying customer experience
- Prevent lost sales and revenue
- Detect and prevent website security issues (hacking, for example)
So what should you be monitoring? There are a number of things that can be vital to your website, depending on its function (information resource, marketing tool, e-commerce, etc.). Some of the basic metrics include:
- Uptime
- Page speed
- Page load time (including graphics)
- Error messages
- Customer log-in process
- Software upgrades
- Key phrase rankings
- Shopping cart and/or database performance
- Website visitors
- Broken links
- Form submissions
- Browser compatibility
- Site validation
Google Analytics is an excellent tool you can use that provides some good insights into your website traffic. It can give you a breakdown of where your traffic originated, why visitors came to your website, how long they stayed, and how quickly they left. But while Google Analytics provides an overview of your website’s traffic and other basic measures, it won’t monitor your website’s overall health. Truth be told, most people don’t have the time or interest to actively and regularly monitor their website. As a result, website monitoring – so important for maintaining your website’s value and protecting your investment – slips by the wayside.
If you’re a business that depends on your website as a critical component of your sales and marketing, it’s important to have expert website monitoring assistance. A professional website monitoring and maintenance service will go beyond the basic metrics to provide services such as:
- 24×7 web site and key component monitoring
- Comprehensive traffic analytics
- Immediate notification of problems
- Web-based real-time reports
- Quick and accurate problem diagnosis
- Scalable to meet growing business and e-commerce demands
Send us a message today if inConcert can help you monitor and maintain your website.