A twenty minute monthly routine

Websites do not fail suddenly. They drift: a form stops delivering, a price goes stale, a competitor publishes something better. A short monthly habit catches all of it while it is still small.

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Each month: record enquiries, calls and work won; submit a test enquiry to confirm the form still delivers; check the pages producing enquiries; scan for anything out of date; and note any changes you made with the date. Twenty minutes, done consistently, prevents most of the expensive surprises.

Record the numbers first

Open your sheet and fill in one row: enquiries received, calls, work won, and what it was worth. Do it on the same day each month so the habit survives busy periods.

This takes three minutes and is the single most valuable part of the routine. After a year it is the most useful document your business has about its own marketing, and it cannot be reconstructed later.

Test the contact path

Submit a real enquiry from a phone, using an address unconnected to your business, and confirm it arrives where a person will see it. Then tap the phone number and check it dials.

Silent form failures are the most expensive fault a website can develop, and this test is the only reliable way to catch one early rather than three months later.

Look at the pages that produce enquiries

Check which pages produced the month's enquiries. Over time you will see a small group carrying the business, and that group deserves your attention when you have any to spare.

If a page that normally produces enquiries has gone quiet, look at it: something may have changed, on your site or in the search results around it.

Scan for things that have gone stale

A quick pass over the parts that age: prices, services you no longer offer, staff who have left, offers that have expired, and any figure with a year attached.

This is a two minute job monthly and a project annually, which is a good argument for doing it monthly.

  • Prices and anything implying cost.
  • Services and staff.
  • Expired offers and past events.
  • Any statistic, with its source and date.

Note what changed

Write down anything you altered on the site this month, with the date. It costs seconds and it is what makes future comparisons meaningful.

Without it, every movement in your numbers becomes a debate. With it, you can usually see immediately whether a change lines up with something you did.

What to deliberately leave alone

Resist redesigning anything on a monthly rhythm. Resist reacting to a single quiet month, especially in a business with seasons. Resist chasing a ranking that moved a place or two.

The monthly routine exists to keep the site healthy and to build a record. Decisions belong to the quarterly review, when there is enough evidence to justify one.

The quarterly version

Once a quarter, spend an hour rather than twenty minutes. Compare against the same quarter last year, read the customer-source answers you have collected, and pick the one or two improvements worth making.

That rhythm, monthly upkeep and quarterly decisions, keeps a website improving without turning it into a permanent project.

How Licheo handles the routine

The upkeep is part of the ongoing work rather than something the owner has to remember, and the monthly report is written in plain language with the figures traceable.

The point of the routine is that nothing drifts unnoticed, which is precisely what happens to most websites in the year after they are built.

Part of a larger guide

This page is one part of Website ROI. The other parts:

Questions people ask

What should I check on my website every month?
Record enquiries, calls and work won; submit a test enquiry to confirm the form delivers; look at which pages produced enquiries; scan for anything out of date; and note any changes with the date. Twenty minutes is enough.
Why test the contact form every month?
Because forms fail silently and nothing tells you. A changed address, a spam filter or an updated plugin can stop delivery while the page still shows a thank you message. The only reliable check is to send one yourself.
Should I make changes every month?
Do upkeep monthly and make decisions quarterly. Reacting to a single quiet month, particularly in a seasonal business, produces changes that make things worse and then get blamed on the wrong thing.
What is the most valuable part of the routine?
Recording the numbers, because that record cannot be reconstructed later. After a year it becomes the most useful document your business has about where its work comes from.
How long should the quarterly review take?
About an hour. Compare against the same quarter last year, read what customers said about how they found you, and choose one or two improvements worth making before the next review.

Keep it healthy without thinking about it

The upkeep, the testing and the reporting are part of the ongoing work, so nothing drifts unnoticed in the year after launch.

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