A Monthly Website Check You Can Actually Finish

Your website may look fine while its contact form has stopped delivering notifications. Or the form works, but last month's offer still appears on the homepage. A maintenance routine should check the things customers use, not simply confirm that the homepage opens.

Use this list as a starting point for a small business site. Stores, customer portals and booking systems need extra checks for their own workflows.

Start with the enquiry route

Open the website on a phone and follow the main contact route. Check the destination of phone and WhatsApp links. If you test the form, agree on a clearly labelled submission with the owner and remove it from sales reporting as appropriate.

Confirm both storage and notification. The lead might exist in the dashboard while an email notification fails, or an email might arrive without a usable stored record. Write down who checks the actual lead queue when notifications are unavailable.

Review the pages customers are most likely to use

Check the homepage, main services, pricing and contact details. Look for expired promotions, old staff information, unavailable products and links to retired pages. Open a service page from its direct URL rather than always starting at the homepage.

Make the business owner responsible for approving facts such as prices, availability and opening hours. A developer can publish a correction, but should not invent the replacement information. Keep a small change log with the date and approved update.

Check renewals and account access

Record the domain registrar, hosting service and other essential subscriptions, their renewal dates and the account owner. Confirm the recovery contact still belongs to the business. Losing access to an old employee's email can make a routine renewal difficult.

Do not put passwords in the maintenance sheet. Use the business's approved access-sharing process and keep staff permissions appropriate to their role. When someone leaves, review the access they held rather than waiting for the next fault.

Ask what the backup actually covers

A copy of the source code may not include uploaded files, customer records or hosting configuration. List the parts that would be needed to restore the site and which service stores each backup. Agree how often they are copied and who can retrieve them.

A backup is more convincing after a restore has been tested in an isolated environment. Schedule that test according to the importance and complexity of the site. For a store or portal, include the database and uploads; keep test restores away from the live customer's records.

Review mobile layout and loading changes

Look for text running outside the screen, a menu covering the contact button and images that leave large empty spaces. Compare important pages under similar conditions when measuring changes. A fast load on an office laptop does not establish the experience of a customer using a slower phone connection.

If you use performance tools, record the page and test conditions with the result. Prioritise a regression that stops customers from reading or contacting you. Do not turn one test score into a promise of constant speed.

Keep search checks modest and consistent

Review the sitemap after adding or retiring pages. Check that important public pages use the intended canonical URLs and are not accidentally marked noindex. If Search Console is available, inspect new missing-page or indexing problems and compare them with the changes you made.

A sitemap lists pages for discovery; it does not guarantee that Google will index them. Do not change publication dates every month to make unchanged articles appear fresh. Correct outdated content when there is a real reason to update it.

End with an issue list and an owner

For each fault, record the URL, what happened, what should happen and who will handle it. A wrong contact number should take priority over a minor decorative adjustment. Agree what counts as urgent and how urgent faults are reported outside the monthly review.

A support arrangement should name the included work, excluded work and third-party responsibilities. See website maintenance and support or technical SEO checks. If you are replacing the site, keep our redesign URL checklist beside the launch plan.