With Christmas right around the corner, we thought it would be sensible to put up a top five list of things you should be doing to your website before Christmas hits and you’re out of the office enjoying the festivities.
Backup your website before Christmas
Your website is precious to your business. What would you do if it went offline or got hacked into and you don’t have a copy of your site to reinstate? Well, that’s when disaster recovery hits and you need that backup. If your web company doesn’t already backup your site feel free to get in touch with us for help as it can be tricky for non-technical users, unfamiliar with databases and FTP.
Update your WordPress, Drupal and Magento sites for Christmas
If you haven’t already done so, it’s important you update the software on your website to avoid finding your website hacked. The holiday season always seem to have more attacks online than normal, so rather than be a victim update your WordPress content management system to the latest version 4.4 if you haven’t already. Drupal is now in version 8 but there have been recent security updates to Drupal versions 6 & 7 in the last couple of months. Magento has also launched a major new package called Magento 2 but Magento version 1.9.x has had security releases in the last month.
Ensure your online advertising campaigns still run through Christmas
You may be advertising heavily online to catch the Christmas traffic, so make sure that your Google AdWords and Bing Ads budgets are set appropriately to accommodate the increased click-throughs. There’s nothing worse than finding your major online ad campaign for Christmas and New Year is not running due to your limited budget. Also, don’t make the error of forgetting to update your bank or credit card details for the advertising campaign – the New Year might signal your card’s expiry date for example.
Set news or blog content to publish over the Christmas holidays
Search engines never sleep, so it’s important that your website’s content doesn’t too over Christmas, so your rankings don’t slip. Write a few drafts blog or news articles in preparation for the season and set them to go live at frequent intervals to match your online strategy – if you’re blogging every week, set an article to go live for each week you’re away. Many systems now have an automated process to set a blog post live at a set date. Publicise those news and blog articles on social networks too to get maximum exposure. You’ll be amazed how many people are online come Christmas Day after they’ve opened their presents and been left disappointed!
Email a Christmas message to your clients or customers
What better way to thank your customers and clients for all of their support than to email them a message. Christmas e-cards are very popular now and with the post deadlines looming you may not have enough time anyway to get them in the mail. Whether you prefer to use charitable email templates or get one designed yourself, you can be sure that an email will be delivered on time before Christmas. If you run an ecommerce shop, what not offer a special discount code or free delivery offer as an incentive to open the email and draw customers back to your website and increase sales?
Merry Christmas from Design for Digital
