10 Things You Should Decide on Before Getting a New Website – 2017 Edition

Last Updated on Dec 18, 2017 by Jos

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Contents

    – Who will be updating the plugins/themes
    Websites like most things get updated with security patches, improvements to speed and functionality as time goes in. It’s important to ensure these stay up to date or you risk opening yourself up to vulnerabilities from hackers and simply sub par performance.

     

    – Backup, Backup, Backup!
    I can’t stress this one enough, so often I’ve heard of business owners who’s websites have gone down after having spend a considerable amount of time (and often money) building and creating content for it. Don’t let this happen to you. For me personally we ensure there’s a daily backup for client sites.

     

    – Security
    As mentioned above securing your site should be a top priority for business owners. For one if you do get hacked and become infected with malware only about 20% of websites that get warned by google recover their rankings from before the hack. This should be handled at a few levels. On the host itself by having a firewall and other measures in place. On the website through security plugins.

     

    – uptime monitoring
    If for some reason your website does go down do you (or your developer) have a system in place to alert you to this so it can be resolved ASAP.

     

    – Where will your website visitors be coming from?
    It’s important to know how you plan to get people to come to your site. This could be through SEO, Paid Ads, W.O.M or direct referrals. Ideally a mix of them all. Keep this in mind and where you want them to go and what actions you want them to take when they get there.

     

    – Track & Maximise Profit from visitors
    By setting up google analytics and facebook pixels you can track who’s visiting your site, what they’re doing and open up the opportunity to show ads to the people most likely to do business with you if presented with the opportunity.

     

    – Where will you host it?
    This is a big one in terms of performance and ranking ability. (Google rewards high speed sites.) You want a host that optimised the site loading ability and preferably with servers close to where your customers are.

     

    – Email
    The biggest mistake I often see people make here is hosting email in the same place as their website. Easy way to lose everything… not something you want to happen if you run a business + deliverability is a lot better with a service like Google GSuite. For $5 p/user p/mth this is a steal.

     

    – SSL Certificates
    Again one of those things that google is starting to enforce heavily as of Oct 2017. If you’re got a website with forms and no ssl certificates visitors will be warned the site is isn’t secure…. not great for trust. Most good hosts offer a free ssl through LetsEncrypt but depending on what you’re doing it may be worth investing in a paid SSL Certificate.

     

    – Support
    Do you have a support team in place to help you with those site changes and always keeping on top of latest best performance and marketing trends so that you don’t have to and can focus on what you do best!

     

    What now?
    If you don’t have the above happening and would like my help.

    Leave a comment below or send me a message to arrange a chat to see if we can help.