Similar to a car engine that needs regular maintenance to prevent breakdowns while driving on the highway, your website requires consistent upkeep to ensure it functions optimally.
As digital penetration and tech adoption grow rapidly in Nigeria, a functional website significantly enhances your business’s online visibility. In 2023, 75% of customers admitted to judging a company’s credibility based on its website. Therefore, your website should always be functional and accessible, which can only be achieved through regular, comprehensive maintenance. A website maintenance checklist ensures this process is consistent, effective, and organized.
It’s also estimated that 71% of Nigerian organizations suffered cyber-attacks in 2021, with 44% paying an average ransom of $3.43 million to protect their businesses and secure sensitive data. This highlights the importance of robust website maintenance to ensure security, prevent hacks, and safeguard business and customer data.
In this post, we provide a comprehensive website maintenance checklist for websites in Nigeria, outlining tasks to be executed weekly, monthly, and quarterly.
Weekly Website Maintenance Checklist
These tasks should be performed weekly as they directly impact user experience and business results. Weekly maintenance typically takes less than an hour to complete. The tasks include:
Fix Broken Links
A broken link is a hyperlink on your website—either to another website or to other pages on your site—that cannot be found or accessed by a user, often because the page has been moved or deleted. Broken links are usually accompanied by an error message.
These links signal to search engines that your website isn’t optimized for an optimal user experience. To fix broken links, follow these steps:
- Identify broken links manually by clicking every link on your website or automatically using tools like Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, SEMrush, or Dead Link Checker.
- Label the broken links correctly:
- Internal links: Links to other pages on your website.
- External links: Links to other websites or resources.
- Update the broken links by taking one of these actions:
- Fix typos if the URL was misspelt.
- Get the new URL and update the link if the linked page was moved or deleted.
- Implement 301 redirects for pages you’ve relocated.
- Remove links you no longer need from your website.
- Retest the fixed links to confirm they now work.
Tools needed: Google Search Console, Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Ahrefs, or Dead Link Checker.
Update Software & Plugins
If your website was built on a CMS like WordPress or Joomla, it likely uses a theme and multiple plugins. Plugins add specific features or enhance existing ones, while themes determine your website’s appearance.
Outdated plugins, themes, and software increase your website’s vulnerability to hacks and can cause it to malfunction or display incorrectly. Weekly updates are essential.
To update software and plugins on WordPress follow these steps:
Log in to WordPress admin > Navigate to the “Updates” tab> Review available updates for your website software, themes, or plugins > Select the updates you want to apply and click “Update.” > Test the site to ensure it looks and functions as expected.
Note: Back up your website before major updates, as they can sometimes lead to unexpected issues. Tools like UpdraftPlus or Duplicator can automatically back up and restore your site if necessary.
Make Sure Forms Work Properly
Forms allow users to input and submit information on your website and are often the most critical elements for businesses.
Imagine your website’s forms not working properly for 2–3 weeks—not only would you lose potential customers, but you’d also waste money if you’re actively advertising. Therefore, forms should be checked weekly to ensure they function correctly.
Test forms manually or use tools like Formstack for analytics. When testing manually don’t test on just one browser (e.g., Chrome); test across multiple browsers and devices to ensure compatibility.
Moderate Comments
Your website’s comment section should encourage constructive criticism and valuable feedback, and not be overrun with spam, promotional content, or harmful remarks. Weekly comment moderation maintains content quality and encourages user engagement.
The steps to moderate comments depend on your website’s technology, but for most CMS platforms:
- Access your website’s admin panel.
- Navigate to the “Comments” or “Discussion” settings.
- Manually approve comments before they appear publicly.
- Set filters to automatically flag problematic comments.
- Delete or edit comments as needed.
For WordPress sites, plugins like Akismet, Antispam Bee, and WP Armour can identify, flag, and block spam comments automatically.
Scan for Malware
Malware is harmful software designed to carry out malicious activities against your website’s visitors, such as stealing data, redirecting users to harmful sites, or damaging their devices.
Scanning for malware weekly ensures you catch it before it causes significant damage or detects attacks before they succeed. Since malware is often sophisticated and hidden, use security tools like Wordfence, Sucuri, or MalCare to scan your site. Additionally:
- Check your site’s content for entry points like unauthorized ads, pop-ups, or suspicious posts.
- Inspect website files for malicious files with suspicious names (e.g., jumbled words and numbers or misspelt site names).
- Review your website’s code for lines beginning with `<script src=>` or `<iframe src=>`, verifying if the URL is a recognizable script.
- Download website files and scan them with your computer’s antivirus software, then review the report.
- Browse your site using Google Safe Browsing in Google Chrome to check for unsafe content.
Weekly Maintenance Checklist Summary
Every week, for your website: find & fix broken links, update software and plugins, Test website forms to ensure they work properly, moderate comments & scan for malware.
Monthly Website Maintenance Checklist
Monthly maintenance tasks require more time to identify and resolve issues. These tasks include:
Review Website Performance
Each month, review key metrics most relevant to your business to identify what needs fixing. Common metrics across industries include:
- Bounce Rate: The percentage of users who land on your site and leave without engaging. A high or increasing bounce rate may indicate poor user experience due to technical issues, signalling the need to test and fix them.
- Traffic Sources: Monitor increases or decreases in traffic sources monthly to gauge overall site performance. For example, a sharp decline in search traffic may indicate an SEO issue or search bots struggling to crawl your site.
- Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who take desired actions.
When possible, compare your site’s metrics against industry benchmarks for a holistic view of performance.
Check Website Speed
Website speed—how quickly a browser loads and renders your site—significantly impacts user experience, search engine rankings, and conversion rates. Google research shows that 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if loading takes longer than 3 seconds. A fast website improves user impressions and reduces bounce rates.
Use free tools like Pingdom, Google PageSpeed Insights, or GTmetrix to check site speed. These tools also diagnose slow speed causes and provide guides to fix them.
General tips for improving speed include:
- Reduce redirects.
- Optimize image sizes.
- Enable browser caching.
- Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) like Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, or Google Cloud CDN.
Regular speed optimization is especially crucial in Nigeria due to slow and unstable internet connections in some areas.
Check Your Other Core Web Vitals
In addition to load speed, monitor these Core Web Vitals monthly:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)**: Measures loading performance.
- First Input Delay (FID)**: Measures interactivity.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)**: Measures visual stability.
While Google’s search advocate John Muller has stated these are not direct ranking factors, they affect user experience, influencing engagement and conversions. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to generate a free report and track these values monthly to identify trends.
Test Your Checkout Process
For e-commerce stores, test the checkout process monthly as a user (e.g., in incognito mode). Approximately 70.19% of users abandon carts for reasons like slow websites, lack of trust, or high delivery fees. A faulty checkout process shouldn’t deter the remaining ~30% who proceed.
Test across different browsers and devices, looking for failures and opportunities to improve flow. For high-end products, create a low-cost test product (e.g., ₦1,000–₦5,000) to verify the process.
Back-Up Your Site Data
After reviewing performance, speed, Core Web Vitals, and testing checkout, back up your site monthly. Regular backups mitigate the impact of unexpected events like security breaches, server crashes, or human errors (e.g., deleting critical files).
Monthly backups are recommended to avoid excessive server space usage, though daily or weekly backups are viable if space allows.
Monthly Maintenance Checklist Summary
Monthly, for your website in Nigeria: Review performance metrics, Check and optimize site load time., Monitor Core Web Vitals, Test the checkout process (for e-commerce) & Back up site data.
Quarterly Website Maintenance Checklist
Quarterly tasks are less urgent and focus on improving performance or preventing issues. These include:
Update Website Content
Conduct a content audit quarterly to ensure accuracy and relevance:
- Update outdated information (e.g., prices, contact details, team pages, or variable data).
- Refresh articles with new data, discoveries, or dates (e.g., update “Preparing for the 2024 company retreat” to “2025”).
- Delete irrelevant content.
Whether updating blog posts, service pages, or product descriptions, ensure the information is accurate.
Change Your Passwords
Cybersecurity experts recommend changing passwords quarterly to reduce data breach risks. Even if you’re unaware of a compromise, regular updates limit exposure. Use password managers like LastPass or 1Password for safer, easier management.
Delete Redundant Files, Plugins, and Themes
Each plugin or theme increases security risks. Quarterly, review and remove unused plugins, themes, and files (e.g., PDFs, Lottie files) to minimize vulnerabilities.
Quarterly Maintenance Checklist Summary
Every quarter, for your website: Update content, Change passwords & Delete unnecessary files, plugins, and themes.
Annual Website Maintenance Checklist
Annual maintenance tasks should be completed at the year’s end or beginning, ideally aligned with the calendar year for easy tracking. These include:
Review Your Domain and Hosting Renewals
Most Nigerian companies use annual hosting and domain plans. Ensure these are renewed before expiration to avoid downtime or data loss. If a domain expires, someone else could purchase it, as seen in 2016 when Sammy Ved bought google.com for $1 due to Google’s oversight.
Review Your Website Legal Policies Pages
Annually, have your legal team review privacy policies, cookie policies, terms of use, and other legal pages to ensure compliance with Nigeria’s laws (e.g., NDPR) and, if applicable, international regulations (e.g., GDPR for European users). The dev and legal teams should confirm the site collects only necessary data.
Review Your About Page
Leadership should annually review the About page to ensure the mission, vision, and details align with the company’s direction.
Annual Maintenance Checklist Summary
Every year, for your website; renew domain and hosting, update legal policies & review the About page.
How Do I Implement a Robust Maintenance Plan for My Website in Nigeria?
As cybersecurity threats rise and Nigerian users increasingly judge businesses by website performance and accessibility, a robust maintenance plan is no longer optional—it’s essential.
Kestrel Digital, the leading website maintenance agency in Nigeria, offers a team of skilled developers to maintain your site. We ensure all tasks are executed carefully and on schedule. Contact us today for tailored maintenance plans suited to your business needs.
Conclusion
In this comprehensive guide on website maintenance for Nigerian websites, we’ve discussed the importance of scheduled maintenance and outlined weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual tasks. For each, we explained their significance, execution steps, and necessary tools to streamline the process.
