Update the year in the footer, remove seasonal messaging, correct details that changed, test the form and the 404 page, and check the pages nobody looks at.

Small things that read as neglect

None of what follows affects how a site performs in any measurable way.

All of it affects the impression a visitor forms about whether anybody is looking after the business, which is a judgement people make quickly and rarely articulate.

A copyright year two years out of date, a banner about an offer that ended in October, and a team page listing somebody who left in 2019 all say the same thing.

They take an hour between them, which is why they are worth doing on a quiet afternoon rather than deferred into a project.

The list

The sixth is the one that hides. Phrases like this year and recently were accurate when written and quietly become wrong, and they never appear on anybody's checklist.

Take the December messaging down

The most visible item and the one most often left up.

Cutoff dates, holiday hours, closure notices, and extended returns messaging are all correct now and wrong in ten days.

Diarise the removal for the first working day rather than trusting anybody to notice, and write down where each one is while you still remember.

The same applies to any automatic reply mentioning the holiday period, which will continue telling people you are closed until somebody changes it.

A site still advertising Christmas delivery in the third week of January undoes a good deal of the impression the rest of the year created.

Check the pages nobody looks at

Where inaccuracy accumulates, precisely because nobody visits them.

The about page, the terms, the privacy policy, the team page, and any page describing a process or a guarantee.

Those were written once, are rarely opened internally, and are read by exactly the cautious visitors you most want to reassure.

Read each one and check whether it still describes the business: the services listed, the people named, the promises made, and the providers mentioned.

Ten minutes each is sufficient, and it is the closest thing to free improvement available at this time of year.

Test the things that fail silently

Two items with no symptom until somebody tells you.

Submit your own contact form and confirm it arrives where somebody will read it in January, and check what the customer receives in reply.

Visit an address on your site that does not exist, to see the page a visitor gets when a link is wrong or a page has been removed. On many sites it is a bare error with no navigation and no way back.

A useful version says something has moved, offers the main pages, and gives a way to contact you, which takes ten minutes to build once.

Both of those are invisible from ordinary use and both are experienced by real visitors.

A worked example

A business spent an hour on this at the end of December.

They found a copyright year two behind, a banner promoting a September offer, two people on the team page who had left, an old telephone number in the footer of one template, and a sentence beginning since we started in 2019 which had been written in 2019.

The contact form worked. The error page was a blank error with no navigation.

Everything except the error page was fixed in about forty minutes.

The owner's remark was that the old telephone number had been there for at least eight months and that they had looked at that page many times without seeing it, which is the whole reason this list exists.

Search your own site

The technique that finds what reading does not.

Use a search restricted to your own domain to look for the things that go stale: an old phone number, a former address, a year, a discontinued service, or a supplier you no longer use.

That surfaces pages you had forgotten, including ones not reachable from the navigation, which is where the worst inaccuracies usually are.

It takes a few minutes and it consistently finds something, particularly on any site more than three years old.

Do the same for any document you have published, since old PDFs frequently carry details that were corrected on the pages years ago.

Write next year's list while you are here

The step that makes this shorter next December.

As you fix each item, note where it was, since the value is knowing there is a year in that template and a banner in that setting.

That turns an hour of searching into fifteen minutes of checking next time.

Keep it with your other annual notes, and add anything you had to hunt for.

A business that has done this three times has a list that makes the whole thing routine, which is the difference between a habit and an annual rediscovery.

The counter-case

None of this is important, and it is worth keeping that in proportion.

A copyright year does not affect rankings, does not stop anybody buying, and is not noticed by most visitors, so a business with limited time should do the review of what it sells before the review of its footer.

There is also a risk in spending a quiet afternoon on tidying while the substantive things from a year-end review go undone.

Do this if the hour is genuinely spare, and do it after the harder questions rather than instead of them.

It is the last item on the list for a reason, and it is still worth an hour.

The hour

  1. Update the year in the footer and anywhere in copy.
  2. Diarise removing the December messaging.
  3. Check contact details in every template.
  4. Read the pages nobody opens.
  5. Submit your own form.
  6. Visit an address that does not exist.
  7. Note where everything was, for next year.

Step seven is what turns this into fifteen minutes next December, and it costs nothing while you are already there.

What expires in the new year is covered in certificates and domains expiring in Q1.

Frequently asked questions

Do these small items actually matter?

Not for rankings or conversion directly. They affect whether a visitor thinks anybody is looking after the business, which is a judgement people make quickly and rarely articulate.

What is most often missed?

Years written into the copy: phrases like this year, recently, or since we started in 2019. They were accurate when written and never appear on anybody's checklist.

When should December messaging come down?

The first working day of January, diarised rather than left to somebody noticing. That includes any automatic reply still telling people you are closed.

Which pages should I read?

The ones nobody opens: about, terms, privacy, the team page, and anything describing a process or guarantee. They are read by exactly the cautious visitors you want to reassure.

What fails silently?

The contact form and the error page. Submit your own form and check what arrives, and visit an address that does not exist to see what a visitor gets.

How do I find stale details?

Search restricted to your own domain for an old phone number, a former address, a year, or a discontinued service. It consistently finds something on any site over three years old.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Got a spare hour before the new year?

Search your own site for your old phone number. It is usually still on a page you forgot existed.

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