Do you find it difficult to keep up with your WordPress website when you have a business to manage and personal projects?
If so, you should consider using the downturn at the start of the first trimester as a chance to progress. In other words, as businesses (i.e. your customers) freeze their budgets while assessing the needs of the coming year, now is a good time to work on your own website.
What does this mean exactly?
Well, that means you can work on identifying areas for improvement in your WordPress website and then implementing them. The same goes for any client who seeks your help to start their year on a high note.
By boosting your website's performance and automating processes now, you will have less to worry about growing your customer base and advancing projects throughout the year.
Although we are entering a new year, take advantage of whatever “calm” you have to get your WordPress website in order.
The following checklist suggests 5 ways to give your WordPress website a fresh start this year.
But before, if you have never installed WordPress discover How to Install a WordPress Blog in 7 Steps et How to search, install and activate a WordPress theme on your blog
Then back to why we are here.
1. Look for trends in the data
The first thing to do is to look at your website data from last year. Specifically, pay close attention to the time spent on it, conversion rates, bounce rates, and how those trends correlate with the various changes you've made to the website.
Read also: 5 plugins to create events & Calendars
This is your chance to identify trends in traffic and conversions which in turn will help you plan your website for different scenarios that you think will happen again.
For example:
- Traffic increases during the holidays or other big selling days.
- Increased conversion rate when certain promotional offers are executed.
- Higher engagement rates when a specific topic is covered on your blog.
The better you understand how visitors react to your website, the more prepared you will be to not only deal with these responses, but also to deal with them better as you work on your website throughout the year.
Although you may not be able to see the trends as they occur, the data Google Analytics of a full year will surely help you spot them.
2. Review your processes
You have created processes for everything: WordPress development stages, customer integration. But is each of your processes working as well as you would like?
Of course, they help you get the job done, but are you working as fast, efficiently and seeing the best results every time you reach the end of a project?
Evaluating your business strategies and WordPress web development processes every year is a critical part of growing your business. If you've repeated these processes before, you should have a good idea of which parts are working well and which parts need to be revamped.
Discover also our 10 WordPress plugins to improve the appearance of your website
To get started, look at the profits and losses on every website you've built in the past year. Have there been any projects where you didn't make as much money as you expected and, therefore, can you attribute this loss to a specific part of your process?
If you're using time tracking software, check to see if you can identify parts of your process that are taking a lot longer than you usually do for your budget. Perhaps you need to increase your costs to adjust for the difference, or you need to change the process.
See also our 6 WordPress plugins to ensure GDPR compliance of a blog
Whatever changes you need to make, don't forget to update the corresponding checklist.
3. Store your documents in the correct order
« Paperwork Is kind of a vague term these days, most of it being digital now. No matter what form you keep your documentation in, now is the time to make sure everything is up to date, starting with your customer contract.
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Start by reviewing your standard model. EHas anything changed over the past year that is worth updating?
Next, review each of your open accounts against their contracts. Look for outdated information and upcoming contract expirations. Correct the erroneous information and send it to your client for review and signature update.
4. Do some cleaning in the early spring
Think of your WordPress website as your home ... or a hotel room that you visit every now and then. The last thing you want to see when you open the door and walk inside is a big mess and you especially don't want your visitors to feel like you aren't keeping things tidy either.
Also read these Some htaccess tricks you probably do not know
Rather than wait until spring to tackle your website cleanup, give it a good scrub right now. Then schedule time throughout the year to go through the checklist again.
Joe Foley suggests the following steps to clean up your WordPress website:
- Remove old plugins and themes.
- Delete inactive short codes from your content
- Delete old post and page revisions you don't need.
- Media files in the recycle bin that you are not using.
- Clean up tags and categories.
- Delete pending comments
- Delete nonessential HTML.
- Scrub the header code.
- Repair broken links.
- Clean the database.
In addition, consider adding the following tasks to your cleaning strategy:
- Delete draft articles or pages that have never been published.
- Get rid of users who should no longer have access to the website and force password resets for everyone
5. Refresh your design
There is no need to be intimidated by this one, as I am not suggesting that your website undergo a total overhaul (unless you feel it necessary). Instead, think about how you could do some design touch ups to give your website a refreshed feel.
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Maybe you can change your WordPress theme to the one you wanted to try.
You might also consider adopting a new web design trend and applying it to some key parts of the website.
Or you could go with a more subtle change as give your police a facelift.
Discover also some premium WordPress plugins
You can use other WordPress plugins to give a modern appearance and to optimize the handling of your blog or website.
We offer you here some premium WordPress plugins that will help you do that.
1. Slider Revolution
Slider Revolution is a WordPress Plugin premium, innovative and responsive carousel that beautifully displays your content. Whether it's a slider or a carousel, its drag and drop visual editor will allow you to tell the story of your company, for example, to highlight your best products, your best articles and much more.
Discover also our 10 WordPress plugins to easily create a popup
Its main features are: an excellent slide creation interface, drag and drop slide design, fully responsive layout, perfect management of multimedia content, optimized performance, Multilingual support, excellent customer support, support for touch screens, free and regular updates, documentation and tutorial videos available and much more.
Download | Demo | Web hosting
2. EventOn
Le WordPress Plugin premium EventOn is the best-selling calendar plugin on CodeCanyon, with more than 7000 sales. It has a ton of useful features such as the top-of-the-line footage for events, shortcodes, unlimited creation of event calendars, customizable metadata fields and event characteristics.
Its main extensions are among others: the possibility of selling tickets, import / export of events in CSV format, free integration with Google Map, sorting and filtering on the event list, fully responsive layout, Multilingual support, and easy customization of the calendar.
See also our 15 WordPress themes to create a wedding website
Some features are already available for free in other plugins, but the value is an effective compromise.
Download | Demo | Web hosting
3.SMS Contact Form
Ce WordPress Plugin premium allows you to add confirmations and SMS messages to all your contact forms, even to the payment gateway.
Discover 6 best marketing tools on Facebook Messenger
This SMS and email notification creation tool comes with a Contact form which has powerful SMS certification.
Other recommended resources
We also invite you to consult the resources below to go further in the grip and control of your website and blog.
- 13 WordPress plugins to customize your login page
- 5 excellent premium WordPress plugins to add a slider
- 6 WordPress plugins to create a list of email addresses
- 5 tips for better web design
Conclusion
Here ! That's it for this tutorial. We hope that it will allow you to refresh your WordPress blog. Feel free to share the tip with your friends on your social networks.
However, you will also be able to consult our resources, if you need more elements to carry out your projects of creation of Internet sites, by consulting our guide on the WordPress blog creation.
But, in the meantime, tell us about your Comments and suggestions in the dedicated section.
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