By CONCAT — the first website design and development company solely led by refugees and women from countries of conflict.

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Website maintenance and support can be a luxury for nonprofits working on a tight budget. Here are 10 website maintenance tips that your nonprofit can do yourself to ensure that your website is healthy and running at its best — without needing to break the bank! 

1) Use a top-rated Content Management System (CMS) platform.

WordPress, Webflow, and Shopify are cost-effective and allow users to build a website quickly that can be easily edited without needing vast technical abilities. WordPress also offers easy-to-add plugins that add functionality to your website and it is worth noting that WordPress and its plugins need to be updated regularly to prevent potential crashes on the website.

2) Ensure that your website is responsive.

Is your nonprofit’s website responsive across all devices? Be sure to visit your website on a smartphone and tablet to see how it looks. Tablet and mobile website layouts should be similar and on mobile, blocks of text texts should be followed by an image rather than text and images being displayed side by side.

3) Use and monitor Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is an essential website analytics tool for nonprofits. If it is not installed on your website, this tutorial provides set up instructions. Google Analytics is free to use and its most recent upgrade is named GA4.

4) Prioritize SEO.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be an expensive and time-consuming because it requires on-going maintenance. However there are some basic checks that you can do on your own to increase your organization’s visibility. Is your content per page the right length and does it include relevant keywords? Publishing blogs and articles to your website helps increase SEO. Also, setting up a Google Business Profile for your nonprofit also helps.

5) Install SSL certificates on your website.

Installing a robust SSL certificate on your website helps protect confidential contact and financial information when when donors make an online donation and builds trust among users by assuring them that your site is secure. In addition, it’s worth noting that Google only indexes websites that have SSL certificates. To install SSL certificates on your website, contact your website hosting provider.

6) Schedule automatic daily updates of your website.

Confirm whether your website hosting provider offers daily back up options. If not, utilize platforms like Google Drive or Dropbox to safeguard your in case of any unexpected issues.

7) Provide safe and secure online donation pages.

Always use a trusted payment gateway, such as Stripe, for online donation pages even though fees may be higher.

8) Prioritize website speed.

The speed of your nonprofit’s website is incredibly important. Check the speed of your website using PageSpeed Insights. If the speed test fails, a good first step is to make sure your website’s images are optimized and host your videos on a third party website, such as YouTube, instead of directly on your website.

9) Add a reCAPTCHA to your “Contact us” form.

If you have a contact us form, add a Google reCAPTCHA to help stop spam emails. If you don’t, “Contact us” forms are good for funneling inbound requests and good for SEO.

10) Utilize Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).

Finally, it is important that your nonprofit 2FA set up for every user who has access to your website and social media accounts to protect your nonprofit from a cyberattack.