The Complete Guide on How to Manage a Website

Did you know 85% of consumers check a business online before purchasing something? Even 75% of those who plan to buy in-store do the same.

That doesn’t mean customers will flock to you just because you have a website.

Visitors will unlikely want to keep engaging with your site if it isn’t attractive enough. According to statistics, this applies to 38% of people.

Beyond aesthetics, your site’s speed and content also affect its attractiveness. So if it’s slow or outdated, expect visitors to leave pronto.

For those reasons, learning how to manage a website should be at the top of your priorities. Proper site management ensures your site is appealing, professional, up-to-date, and functional.

If you’re at a loss, don’t worry. We’ll teach you the basics of website management, so keep reading.

Track Your Site Speed

Website speed is the length of time it takes for a website to load. Ideally, it should be one second or less. A good enough reason is that almost half of site visitors expect sites to load in under two seconds.

One of the factors that can make your website load longer is its multimedia content. These include numerous high-resolution photos and videos.

Let’s say you bought the domain for Newest Today for your store that carries the latest gadgets. With its intended use as an e-commerce site, it’ll likely have loads of photos and videos. After all, you must showcase each product from various angles and how users can operate them.

Each photo or video you add to your website can reduce its speed. This can lead to slow, even non-loading sections of your site. Visitors don’t like that and will likely leave your site if it takes forever to give them what they want.

That makes regular speed tests crucial to managing and running a website. Fortunately, many site testing tools exist, including Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, and GTMetrix.

Use one or more of those tools to test your site speed monthly or whenever you add many photos and videos.

Verify Page Speed

Properly managing a website also involves testing individual page speeds.

Page speed differs from site speed because it pertains to the speed of a specific page on your site. But like a slow-loading website, a slow-loading page can make visitors leave.

You must run page speed tests, as you can have a fast site overall but have slow pages. This is because a factor that influences site speed is the average of numerous page speeds.

Suppose you have 75% fast-loading pages, with the rest being slow. Because there are more quick-loading pages, their average may come out passable. So if you only measure your site speed, it may seem like all your pages are okay.

That can give you a false sense of security that your entire site is fast. The problem is if your site visitors land on a specific page that takes forever to load.

So, use the same tools above to test the speed of individual pages. Do this whenever you add new pages, especially if they contain multimedia.

Assess Your Hosting Needs

Most problems with slow site and page speeds are on the website’s side. However, there are times wherein the web host is the cause. A perfect example is when a host’s server performance drops.

Poor server performance often stems from a lack of resources. This is common in shared servers, as each website on that server shares space and resources. So if one site hogs the resources, the others suffer.

Shared servers are okay for small sites but not those needing hefty resources (e.g., an online store). Thus, if you have an e-commerce site, it would be best hosted by a VPS or a dedicated server.

To assess your hosting needs, consider the growth of your website. It may have been okay on a shared server when it started with only a few pages. But if it has grown considerably since then, it may be time to switch to a VPS or dedicated server.

Create Backups

Website backups can be a lifesaver if you accidentally make changes you don’t want. An example is if you deleted several pages without intending to do so. A backup lets you revert those modifications.

Another way backups can save your website is if the storage medium holding its files crashes. For instance, the computer hard drive that contains the site database breaks down.

You can create website backups by manually downloading its files and database. You can also use a backup plugin or a backup service your site’s host provides.

Regardless of your chosen method, you should abide by the 3-2-1 backup strategy.

The “3” refers to always having three copies, one being the original and two being backups. The “2” means using two different storage media for the backups (e.g., the cloud and a hard drive). The “1” pertains to having one of the backups in an off-site location.

You should also create backups whenever you’re about to revise or update your website. Do the same when you’ve finished modifying your site.

Monitor Your Site

Open each web page on your site to confirm they’re working as they should. If they load slowly, optimize their content, such as resizing or reformatting images. You can also have your videos hosted on another platform and then embedded on your page.

Update any outdated information on your site, such as old to new contact info or addresses. Do the same with blog posts; you may want to put them down if they’re no longer relevant. If they’re still helpful, update them with new information or recent statistics.

Never delay updating plugins, either, since these can make parts of your website fail. Outdated plugins can also be security risks, as they can provide cybercriminals loopholes.

You should also look at the website styles used by your competitors. This can give you insights on what to do with yours to make it more appealing to visitors.

That’s How to Manage a Website Like a Pro

When you know how to manage a website, you’ll find it easier to spot issues that make it less appealing to visitors. This allows you to make the necessary changes to address them immediately. You don’t have to wait for someone else to fix them because, to site visitors, every second counts.

For more website-related guides and ideas like this, browse our site’s Tech category!