Budgeting for the Future Budgeting for the Future

Budgeting for Your Web Future

July 30, 2015
(Reading time: 2 - 3 minutes)

Budgeting for the future is a great way to ensure your business stays relevant in a changing online environment. While it isn’t necessary to keep up with every web design trend, it is a good idea to budget for future maintenance.

Here are 5 things to plan for when budgeting for future website maintenance. Be sure to talk to your web developer to get an estimate of what these common maintenance tasks will cost.

Design updates

Design updates are not the same as content updates. You’ll update content on your site as often as your audience requires, such as blog posts, calendar events or testimonials. Design updates mean you’re overhauling the entire look and usability of the site. Design updates are recommended if you answer “yes” to any of these questions:

Usability updates

Usability includes how visitors are able to navigate and consume content on your site, but that also includes “hidden” usability elements, such as page load times and mobile friendliness. As developers find ways to minimize files needed to display websites, your site may benefit from some data dieting to help it run more quickly and efficiently.

Browser incompatibilities

Browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari and Firefox, are routinely updated. Sometimes these updates can cause trouble when viewing your website, particularly when it comes to styles used to display content. Typically newer browsers cause less issues than older versions, but if a new browser is released and users have trouble viewing your site, you’ll need your developer to tweak the style sheet accordingly.

Content reviews

Once you’ve posted content to your site for a year or two, you’ll want to audit it for broken links and usability. Is it easy to find? Do you need to remap your navigation? Should you curate or archive some content to clean up how your site looks? These are all great questions to ask yourself, then discuss with your web developer.

Search Engine Optimization

Log into your tracking program, such as Google Analytics, and review how your site is doing in search engine results. Discuss these findings with your web developer and find out if there is anything you can do to your site to boost your page rankings in search results. This added traffic could be the difference between lackluster site performance and increased sales conversions.

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Written by:  |  July 30, 2015