Often in small business, employees (and owners) wear many hats. A person who is in customer service may handle customer inquiries from the website. Another person who is in sales may also have some marketing duties. To help people who may have the unofficial title of “webmaster” somewhere in their job description, we have come up with a very basic webmaster checklist to help you manage the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly tasks. Following these recommendations will put you ahead of your competition and on track for having a remarkable website that generates sales.
Daily
Check your website or inbox for form entries or customer inquiries. A common call to action is to have your client fill out a form. Make sure you not only check your email box, but even better than that, insist that your website also saves all form data into a database. That way you know you did not miss an email (or an email got caught in a spam filter.)
Pay attention to how many completed forms to expect on average, and if you see a sudden drop off or trend, investigate. Changes in your customer inquiries from the web could indicate a technical problem, communication problem, or an opportunity to improve your marketing.
Weekly
Check your website for broken links. Installing a broken link checker on your website can make locating and fixing broken links 
practically automatic. It will tell you what links are broken so you can redirect or remove the broken link.
Write at least one blog post or website update.The true value of having a WordPress website comes with being able to continually and easily update your website with new or updated content. If you have a blog, update it at least weekly. If you set aside some time to brainstorm and write, it can make a significant impact to your search engine optimization and customer relations overall.
Adaptable Blog Topic Ideas:
- New products or service offerings, product changes or updates
- Business milestones, news, or events
- Community or industry involvement
- Employee, partner, or customer recognition
- Explanations to commonly asked questions or concerns
- Industry trends or hot topics
- Recent events that affect your business or customers
- Customer stories, case studies, testimonials
- Topics based around interesting videos or photos
- Checklists, reviews, how-to’s, re-caps, etc.
So far, I gave you 3 tasks:
- Login to WordPress daily to check for completed customer forms.
- Fix any broken links weekly.
- Write one blog post or website update weekly.
Can you do the 3 tasks? Can you assign it to someone in your business who can do it?
Doing the 3 simple tasks above will help you:
- Respond to customers faster
- Maintain a professional website appearance
- Keep customers and search engines happy with new web content
What other items that you would add to the Webmaster Daily and Weekly checklists to keep your website running smoothly? How do you keep all those hats balanced neatly on your head? Stay tuned in the weeks ahead for monthly, quarterly, and yearly webmaster checklists to keep your site running in tip top condition.
Photo Credit: SashaW
About Jackie Kaufenberg
Thank you so much for the tips – we have only had a website for less than a year, and I have other responsibilities too. I am trying to set some kind of schedule on when and how often to do things on the website and this list will help! Thank you.
Monette, I am glad it is helpful! I was also in a similar role, where managing our website was just part of many duties. But with a good system in place, and a website that is easily manageable, you will be all set! Good luck, and watch for the next blog post with things to do monthly!