How to keep your website up to date yourself

Why small updates matter

Most small business websites are built, published and then left alone. A year later the opening hours are wrong, a service you stopped offering is still listed, the newest photo is from three vans ago and the prices no longer match your quotes. None of this is dramatic, but each mismatch costs a little trust. A customer who rings about a service you no longer do, or turns up when you are closed, will not give you the benefit of the doubt next time.

Keeping a site current does not take much time if you do it regularly. It mainly takes a routine and the ability to make changes yourself without waiting for a web designer.

What to check, and how often

How often	What to check or update
Every week	New enquiries answered; any urgent notices such as holiday closures
Every month	Add new photos of recent work; test the contact form; check prices and availability
Every quarter	Review each service page; add or remove services; refresh the home page headline
Every year	Legal pages, insurance and accreditation details, domain renewal, a full read-through

Put these in your calendar as recurring reminders. Fifteen minutes on the first Monday of the month is enough for most sites.

The monthly fifteen-minute routine

1. Send yourself a test enquiry through your contact form and check it arrives. Forms break silently more often than people realise, and you will not know until someone mentions they never heard back.
2. Add two or three photos of recent jobs to your gallery or the relevant service page. Our guide to website photos for tradespeople covers what to shoot and permissions.
3. Read your home page on your phone as if you were a customer. Is the phone number right? Is the first thing you see still true?
4. Check your prices or "from" prices still match what you charge.
5. Look at any dates on the site, such as "Booking now for spring", and remove anything that has passed.

The quarterly review

Every three months, take a slightly longer look. Set aside an hour, ideally at a quieter time of year for your trade.

• Services. Have you started offering something new? Give it its own page with a clear description, photos and area covered. Stopped doing something? Remove it or say where to go instead.
• Areas covered. If you now work in a wider area, say so.
• Reviews. Add recent customer feedback, with permission. Our guide to showing reviews on your website explains how.
• Frequently asked questions. Look at the questions customers asked by phone recently. If the same one comes up three times, answer it on the site.
• Blog or news. If you have one, a short post about a recent project is better than nothing. If you do not, that is fine; an outdated news page looks worse than none.

The yearly check

• Insurance, accreditation and trade body details are current, and logos are only shown for memberships you still hold.
• Your privacy notice and cookie information still describe what the site actually does. See our guide to cookies and UK GDPR.
• If you are a limited company, the required company details are still correct. The official requirements are on gov.uk.
• Your domain is set to auto-renew with a payment card that has not expired.
• Every page has been read through once, start to finish, ideally by someone who does not know the business and will notice anything confusing.
• Your opening hours, area covered and contact details match your Google Business Profile and any directory listings.

How to update without breaking things

Make one change at a time

Change something, publish, check it on a phone and a computer, then move on. If something looks wrong, you know exactly what caused it.

Write like you talk to customers

Short sentences, the words customers use, and the answer to the question they actually have. "We fit new boilers across Leeds, usually within a week of your quote" is more useful than a paragraph about passion and quality.

Keep photos sensible

Photos straight from a phone are often far larger than a website needs. Most builders resize them automatically; if yours does not, resize before uploading so pages stay quick to load.

Keep a simple change log

Write a line in a notebook or a note on your phone each time you change something: the date, the page and what changed. If an enquiry dries up or a customer quotes an old price, you can see what changed and when. It also reminds you which pages have not been touched for a while.

Save logins somewhere safe

Store the login for your website, domain and email in a password manager, not on a sticky note. If someone else helps with the site, give them their own login rather than sharing yours.

Do not delete pages that rank

If a page brings in visitors from Google, update it rather than deleting it and making a new one. Changing its address loses some of what it has built up.

If updating is too hard, that is a problem in itself

Many people stop updating their site because it is a chore: they have forgotten the login, the editor is confusing, or every change means emailing a designer and waiting. That is worth fixing, because a site you cannot change will drift out of date however good your intentions. It is one of the clearest signs your website is outdated.

The most useful test is simple: can you change your phone number, add a photo and edit a service description from your phone in five minutes? If not, look at a platform where you can. Site Shifter lets you edit any page, add unlimited pages and blog posts and publish straight away, so keeping the site current fits around the rest of the week.

Frequently asked