Your website is the most important part of your business. It’s where you generate leads, communicate with customers and potential customers, and present a professional image to the world. However, that doesn’t mean it can be perfect 24/7.
It’s not uncommon for websites to experience bugs or glitches from time to time. Bugs on your website can be an embarrassing, frustrating, and costly experience. From design errors to code bugs, the impact of a bug varies in severity depending on the type and how it is handled.
These problems could range anywhere from something as minor as an error message popping up on the screen for a second before disappearing like nothing ever happened, all the way down to major issues like pages redirecting in an infinite loop.
As a business owner or webmaster, you’ll want to take steps that prevent these problems from happening in the first place and are sure to mitigate them if they do happen.
In this post, we’ll cover ways you can prevent these sorts of problems from happening on your site, so you don’t have anything stopping you from growing your business.
Updates
Updates on almost everything can be found on the internet, so keeping your website up-to-date is essential.
Updates come in a few different forms; for example, they can be small additions and changes to existing programs or an entirely new program to replace an old one. A good rule of thumb is updating anything (including flash updates) at least once a week.
Tips-
a) Update your website regularly: Updating your website is a great way to keep it secure, but updating is important for many other reasons as well.
Not only can you fix bugs in the code and prevent them from breaking your site, but you can also avoid broken links or other inconveniences created by outdated software or plugins. Updates make your site easier to use and more appealing to visitors.
b)Update browser plugins, software, and extensions often: Plugins, extensions, and programs for your browser are some culprits when it comes to bugs.
c) Update browsers- Old browsers are more likely to have security vulnerabilities. It’s important to update your browser regularly, which will help you avoid bugs.
d) Update antivirus software installed on all devices connected to the internet: Keeping your antivirus up-to-date and using strong passwords are important ways to keep your data secure.
e)Keep all of your web pages updated with new content regularly: It takes time and money to keep your website updated, but it’s a necessary part of the job.
Codes and coding
Coding problems often result from not using a proper coding language. Make sure you’re using the correct code for your particular platform, and make sure that you have used a free code validator to check for errors.
a) Be sure to use the appropriate coding language: JavaScript is not HTML and vice versa. Mixing up the two will result in a lot of issues (like broken pages).
You might experience problems with fonts or images as well. It is because there are tags for each language that may have the same names but do something different in each.
The best option for coding web pages would be to use HTML and CSS so you can avoid JavaScript altogether (JavaScript is often used to format contents on a page, uncheckable boxes, etc.).
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, which codes the contents of your page/content. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to code styles like colors and font sizes (among other things).
b) Use a free code validator to check for errors: It’s easy to miss something, especially if you’ve written a lot of CSS. Use the W3C Markup Validation Service to check for errors in your code.
It will save you from losing a lot of visitors/customers due to cross-browser compatibility issues that can be easily resolved! Test, test, and test again (and then once more).
Create an easy way to contact
Any site should have a contact page where you show your address, telephone number, and email. The following tips should help in this:
a. Add social media sharing buttons to each webpage: the more ways visitors can share your stuff, the more people will see it.
b. Add a “live chat” or instant messenger icon on your website and encourage customers to use it. This will make them feel they are talking to an actual human being, not just some robot automated site that doesn’t care about their feelings.
c. Include a contact form on every page in case visitors want more information or have questions. It’s also a good idea to collect the email address of each new visitor.
d. Create an email list and send out emails regularly, letting subscribers know about anything new happening on the site so they will be aware of any changes.
e. Respond promptly when anyone contacts you about your site’s bugs. Even if the request is unreasonable, do not get defensive but find a solution that will work for both of you.
Be sure to acknowledge their assistance in fixing the problem and reward them with a free gift certificate or coupon code for their future purchases next time around.
Check for broken links and errors
The next tip is to check all the pages on your site, specifically looking out for broken links and errors. Often scripts and programming errors can cause a large number of your links to stop working.
That’s why it’s essential to check on them frequently. Owners and developers don’t often realize a problem with their site until they actually see it and attempt to use it. Detecting broken links and errors as soon as possible is important to the proper operation of your website.
If you have various pages on your site, it can be challenging to keep up with all parts of the site to keep them running smoothly.
Use secure passwords
The next step that owners and developers can take is to use strong passwords to prevent account takeovers. If possible, you should use a unique password for each account.
This can be a time-consuming task, but it will pay off in the end. If that is not possible, try using different characters and numbers as much as possible.
You may want to consider using a program like KeePass or LastPass to keep track of your passwords and minimize the amount of typing you need to do to log into a website.
Test your website thoroughly
It is a significant step in the process of preventing bugs from occurring on your site, but many owners and developers forget to do this until after their site is live.
The problem with waiting until after you have launched your site is that most problems are harder to fix you have launched your site.
Also, bugs often only show up when there are actual users on the site, and you may not realize that your software is having problems until it’s too late. For these reasons, this step should be done as early in the development process as possible for the best results.
Use third party software or plugins
Often, developers and web owners use third-party software or plugins to help customize the look of their website. While this can be an excellent thing when used properly, there is a downside to using too many.
Third-party programs add more code to your site, which can make it take longer to load. It can lead to people getting impatient and leaving your site before it even loads, or they may just not come back because of the slow loading time.
Another downside is that you will have less control over these third-party programs or web development tools while using third-party software, which could mean that a bug you discover will be challenging to fix.
For best results, only use third-party software or plugins if they are crucial for your website development. Also, try to keep the number of different programs used on your site as small as possible.
The idea of preventing bugs is to maintain your website safe and clean. You should check to ensure that everything is working smoothly regularly, including updating browsers, plugins, antivirus, and content on your website.
Owners and developers must stay on top of their websites and check for any bugs as early in the development process as possible. It will provide you with the best chance of discovering problems before they get out of hand.
Also, be diligent about using secure passwords with your accounts and only use third-party software or plugins if they are crucial for your website. Similarly, if you use third-party software or plugins, try to keep the number of them as small as possible.
MEWS is a full service web development Internet marketing company and technology integrator founded in 2003, by leading industry consultants with previous technology experience.MEWS is an Internet services and solutions company with interests in website development – Mobile applications– domain name registrations - web hosting.