5 Important Checks to perform on your Website this Christmas

Hey there my festive friends. As we have done in previous years, we like to remind everyone around Christmas time to ensure a few items have been checked before you wind down for the festive period.

So, as a website owner what exactly should you be checking? Here are the top five things that you must not forget to check, before your digital agency partner breaks up to eat mince pies and open presents.

Check your Contact Forms

This isn’t just a Xmas thing, this is something you should be checking all the time. If you get multiple daily enquiries then you will notice if they suddenly stop, but if your products/service is more niche and expensive and you only get a handful of enquiries per month it may not be immediatly obvious.

Set a reminder to check your contact forms work every month, and if you havent checked yours in time for Christmas yet, then go do it now. TIP: Dont send the form FROM the email you are sending to. EG If your contact form sends entries to yourname@yourdomain.com, then do not fill the form out with that email as this can often result in the email not delivering but its not a reflection on whether your contact forms work or not.

Check your Website Hosting

There is nothing worse than waking up on Christmas day, to find your website and/or emails are down. Its not good for you and your business, but its also a real pain for your digital agency partner. Everyone wants to be relaxing with family and enjoying the time off – not battling with servers to try and get websites back online.

Ensure your disk space is not over 70%, ensure your CPU isn’t maxing out and ensure you know who to contact and how to contact them if you do spot an issue. If you have followed these steps you should be fine but if you’re not – at least you can get in touch with someone quickly.

Pausing Paid Adverts

Many of you will run paid advertising campaigns, like on Google Ads or Facebook Ads, and whereas some of you may want to keep your adverts running indefinitely, others may be breaking up for Christmas themselves and therefore dont want to paying to make a phone ring that no one is there to answer.

So, turning daily budgets right down or pausing the campaigns all together may be sensible, but speak to your digital marketing company first to ensure this wont cause issues when to comes to restarting the advertising campaigns.

Opening Hours and Google Notices

Do you manage your own Google Business Listing? Or does your agency manage it for you? If you manage it yourself then dont forget to let Google know when you are open/closed over the festive period. Its also a good time to add an update onto your Google Business Listing to inform customers of your opening times and any other info they may find useful during the Christmas break.

You can also link a GMB listing update to your website, if you posted a Christmas message like we did;

This gives people instant updates but also drives traffic to your website, which is never a bad thing.

And finally…

Shipping Guarantees and Info

If you sell products that get shipped to your customers, be sure to add info about the fact shipping can be disrupted during this busy time. Due to next day (in some case same day) delivery offered by some of the largest retailers, people have stared to assume that everyone should be able to deliver things as quickly – but in reality the rest of the mail/courier world doesn’t work as quickly as the likes of Amazon.

Add a note to your shipping page, or a site-wide notice letting people know cut off times/dates and ensure you cover your back so that you dont let anyone down or cause headaches for yourself.

So there we have it, the 5 most important things to bear in mind this Christmas when it comes to setting expectations and keeping your customers informed and updated.

PS we are on limited support ourselves from 20th December till the 6th of Jan.

If you have any support requests please email support@dijitul.uk or if you want to speak to us about a new project or a continuation of a project then please book a time and date in 2025 with Olly our director.

From everyone at dijitul, we hope you have a great Christmas break and new years celebrations!