The Year-End Website Checklist: 10 Things to Fix Before January

December is quiet for a lot of Las Vegas businesses — which makes it the perfect month to give your website the once-over it’s been waiting for all year. Here’s the checklist I run for my own clients every January, free for you to steal.

The 10-point year-end website checklist

• 1. Test every form. Submit your own contact form and make sure the email actually arrives. You’d be amazed how often it doesn’t.
• 2. Call your own tracking numbers and click your phone links. Tap-to-call links break when numbers change.
• 3. Update your copyright year and any stale dates. “© 2021” in the footer whispers “nobody’s home.”
• 4. Check your hours everywhere. Website, Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook. Holiday hours too.
• 5. Read your homepage out loud. Prices changed? Services added or dropped? Team members who left still pictured?
• 6. Run a speed test. Google PageSpeed Insights, mobile tab. Below 70? Put performance on the new year’s list.
• 7. Click every menu item. Broken links and 404s erode trust and rankings alike.
• 8. Verify your backups exist. Not “the host probably does it” — actually confirm you can restore.
• 9. Update WordPress, themes, and plugins. Outdated software is the #1 way small business sites get hacked.
• 10. Renew your domain and SSL early. Set them to auto-renew with a current credit card. Expired domains have ended businesses.

Then ask the bigger question

With the housekeeping done, look at the year’s numbers: How many leads did the website produce? Which pages did visitors actually read? If you can’t answer those questions, your first project for the new year is analytics. If you can — and the answer is “not enough” — it might be time for more than a checklist.

Want help with any item on this list? That’s literally what our maintenance and hosting plans cover. Call (702) 608-0002.