5 common support issues for enterprise websites

Many enterprises and businesses pour their hearts and souls into the website design and development process, but fail to support their websites longterm. Many organizations feel that if we build it they will come. This hopeful approach does not work out well for website marketing. This article presents a list of 5 common support issues or areas of neglect for business websites. By allocating resources and energy to these common issues, an organization will improve how their website performs. Website support recommendation quick-list:

Support recommendation #1

Backup your website. This may be obvious, but many organizations do not make back-ups of their website. A back-up should include all the website files, user-generated images and content, as well as images. If your website uses third-party encoding and storage for video, images and media, you may need to make back-ups of multiple environments. Back-ups will allow an organization to restore their website if a server is corrupted or tampered with.

• Where is the back-up stored?
• When was the most recent back-up?
• What is being backed up?

Support recommendation #2

Uptime issues. Check to ensure that your website is prepped for a surge in traffic or usage. Perform a health check on your web server for it's current state and check back in the past during a period of increased traffic. Ensure that your system is running running smoothly before you begin any large campaigns that will result in a surge of traffic. Also, before common periods of heavy activity, run a quick health check on the system. Allocate more resources as your traffic and demand grows over time. This suggestion may seem obvious, but many organizations never check on their web server status and health.

Support recommendation #3

Web security standards. As your website's popularity and visibility on the web increases, so will the number of threats grow. Make a list of your security best-practices and tools. Put together a quick report of the practices that your organization has in place, and make a list of practices or tools that could increase the security of your organization's website. Consider running a penetration test against your website and server, and make the changes that will help guard against threats. These recommendations are not bullet-proof. New threats emerge everyday.

Support recommendation #4

Content strategy. Many organizations launch their website without having a plan as to how they will keep the content fresh and up-to-date. Many business websites lag with outdated information. A simple spreadsheet can be made to help organize this process for smaller organizations with simple websites. Doing quarterly website audits also helps root out problems with content for websites.  Most importantly, having a publishing strategy and schedule will help keep a website interesting to visitors and strong in search. Don't let your brand's blog get stale. This is bad for your organization's image, and hurts your visibility online. The blog SEO value is important. The reasons for businesses to blog are numerous, including the growth of search ranking, improving the sales conversion rates and building trust.

Support recommendation #5

Establish and measure website performance using KPIs. Many organizations do not properly measure and analyze their website performance. Additionally, organizations need to translate the abstract metrics into actionable strategy to grow a business. Setting up KPIs for website marketing must be part in parcel of owning a business or brand website. Websites should not be static entities. They need to have fresh, meaningful content and undergo continuous iteration with design, content, headlines and calls-to-action to help organizations achieve business goals.

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