Four Pillars of Website Maintenance, Part III

by Andrew Schulkind

With two of our four pillars already in place, it’s time to turn our attention to the technical side of website maintenance – the behind-the-scenes stuff that makes most marketers’ eyes glaze over.

3278049248_d8b1c0dbbe_z (Quick side note: it’s fine that this isn’t really exciting stuff to you if you’re a marketer though I’d argue that being a marketer today requires some technical knowledge – in the same way that a marketer a generation ago needed to know what was and wasn’t possible with printing, die cutting and coatings. You don’t need to be an expert; you just need to know what tools you have at your disposal.)

Back to the technical side of things: there are three main issues with a site’s technical performance: basic technical “cleanliness,” changing expectations from users and search engines, and how a site’s growth is managed over time. (AKA, “The Frankenstein Effect.”)

The most basic pieces of technical maintenance are things like up-time monitoring, hosting environment updates, and of course, the security-related technology issues discussed in our last post. As with compatibility, much of this will be addressed in the course of keeping the site secure. Still you’ll want to be sure you’re monitoring the things that matter to your users and the search engines.

Those things will change over time. For example, the search engines have long been measuring site speed as a signal of how highly a site should be ranked. More recently, they’ve included mobile friendliness as an indicator of a site’s worthiness. And they’re beginning to consider SSL Certificate protection, even for sites that are not transactional and are not transmitting sensitive credit card data or other personal information. Your maintenance team should be aware of how these affect the site’s performance in the eyes of your visitors and the search engine gods.

Finally, we have the Frankenstein’s Effect, which comes about as a website morphs over time. Marketing needs change, exceptions and use cases that weren’t considered during development become vitally important, and features are added to address those needs. If that process is not managed well, what had been a well-conceived, tightly executed code-base becomes bloated to the point that site performance is affected. (As is the ability to maintain the site and even to easily make content adjustments.)

It’s easy to say that you’ll always guard against this, but in reality there are times when expedience wins the day and sub-optimal solutions are put in place because they need to be in place yesterday. A regular yearly review can keep issues contained and manageable.

--- Strategy, Research & Planning ---

Is WordPress the Right Web Marketing Platform for Your Business?

Your mother was right about your choice for the best platform to host your business’ marketing website, even if she never opined on WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace. At some point, though, she probably did as you if you’d jump off the Brooklyn Bridge just because “Billy” did. The same idea holds true on the marketing…MORE >
--- Strategy, Research & Planning ---

Do You Really Need a New Website? – Now with Video!

I’ve written any number of times in the past on the idea that you may not really need a new website as often as you think you do: here, here, and here, for example. Do you really need a new website? No really, do you really need a new website? Seriously, you don’t think you…MORE >
--- Strategy, Research & Planning ---

Website Marketing Effectiveness Checklist for 2020

If you’ve already missed two days at the gym and the wine bottle is calling your name even though you promised yourself a Dry January, you may be feeling a little blue. Cheer up! I’ve got just the New Year’s resolution to get you back on track. It won’t help you lose weight or get…MORE >

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-non-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Non Necessary".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Cookie	Type	Duration	Description
_ga	0	2 years	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, camapign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assigns a randoly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gid	0	1 day	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.
.ASPXANONYMOUS	1	2 months	This cookie is used by sites using the .NET technology platform from Microsoft. It enables the site to maintain an anonymous user-id to track unique users within a session without them logging in or otherwise identifying themselves.
GPS	0	30 minutes	This cookie is set by Youtube and registers a unique ID for tracking users based on their geographical location
uvc	0	1 year	The cookie is set by addthis.com to determine the usage of Addthis.com service.

Cookie	Type	Duration	Description
di2	0	1 year	This cookie is set by addthis.com on sites that allows sharing on social media. The cookie is used to track user behavior anonymously to generate usage trends to improve relevance to their services and advertising.
IDE	1	2 years	Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
loc	0	1 year	This cookie is set by Addthis. This is a geolocation cookie to understand where the users sharing the information are located.
NID	1	6 months	This cookie is used to a profile based on user's interest and display personalized ads to the users.
uid	0	1 year	This cookie is used to measure the number and behavior of the visitors to the website anonymously. The data includes the number of visits, average duration of the visit on the website, pages visited, etc. for the purpose of better understanding user preferences for targeted advertisments.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	1	5 months	This cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website.

Cookie	Type	Duration	Description
__utma	0	2 years	This cookie is set by Google Analytics and is used to distinguish users and sessions. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and there are no existing __utma cookies. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics.
__utmb	0	30 minutes	The cookie is set by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to determine new sessions/visits. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and there are no existing __utma cookies. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics.
__utmc	0		The cookie is set by Google Analytics and is deleted when the user closes the browser. The cookie is not used by ga.js. The cookie is used to enable interoperability with urchin.js which is an older version of Google analytics and used in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine new sessions/visits.
__utmt	0	10 minutes	The cookie is set by Google Analytics and is used to throttle the request rate.
__utmz	0	6 months	This cookie is set by Google analytics and is used to store the traffic source or campaign through which the visitor reached your site.
YSC	1		This cookies is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos.

Cookie	Duration	Description
__atuvc	1 year	This cookie is set by Addthis to make sure you see the updated count if you share a page and return to it before our share count cache is updated.
__atuvs	30 minutes	This cookie is set by Addthis to make sure you see the updated count if you share a page and return to it before our share count cache is updated.
na_id	1 year	This cookie is set by Addthis.com to enable sharing of links on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter
ouid	1 year	The cookie is set by Addthis which enables the content of the website to be shared across different networking and social sharing websites.
um	1 year	Set by addthis.com.(Purpose not known)
vc	1 year	This cookie is set by addthis.com on sites that allow sharing on social media.