How often should I update my website, and can I do it myself?
Key takeaways
- Fix anything that is no longer true as soon as it changes.
- A simple weekly, monthly and quarterly routine keeps a website fresh without becoming a burden.
- Content updates are yours to make in the CMS; technical upkeep is your web team's job.
- Customer questions and visitor numbers show you what needs updating next.
A website is not a printed brochure that you design once and forget. Customers notice when the latest news is two years old or a product they want is listed but no longer sold. The good news is that keeping a site fresh is mostly small, regular jobs, and most of them you can do yourself.
How often should a business website be updated?
Update anything that has changed as soon as it changes, and review the whole site at least every few months. Beyond that, the right rhythm depends on your type of business: a busy online store may change something every day, while a consulting firm may only need a few updates a month.
It helps to separate two kinds of updates:
- Content updates: text, photos, products, offers, news and events. These are frequent and usually yours to do.
- Technical upkeep: the software, hosting, security and backups behind the site. This is ongoing work for your web team, not for you.
What should I update, and how often?
A simple schedule keeps you on track without making the website a burden. Use the table as a starting point and adjust it to how fast your business changes.
| How often | What to do |
|---|---|
| Straight away | Change opening hours, phone numbers, addresses, sold-out or discontinued products, and anything that is no longer true |
| Weekly | Check new orders and enquiries, add new products, refresh the home page banner during offers |
| Monthly | Publish a news item or article, add recent photos to the gallery, review which promo codes are still active |
| Every three months | Read through your main pages as a customer would, fix outdated text, test your forms and check the site on your phone |
| Yearly | Review the whole site with your web team: what is working, what customers ask for, and what to improve next |
Can I update my website myself?
Yes, if your website has a CMS and you have been shown how to use it. A CMS is the admin panel where you log in and edit your site, and every website we build comes with our own CMS for exactly this reason.
From your admin panel you can change pages, menus, articles, galleries, banners, events, downloadable files and forms. If you run an online store, you can also manage products, categories, brands, sizes, colours, orders, delivery areas, promo codes and gift codes. If your site is in Arabic and English, you edit both languages in the same place.
What should I leave to my web team?
Leave anything that changes how the website works, rather than what it says, to your web team. As a rule of thumb: if you are filling in a form in the admin panel, it is yours; if it needs new screens, new features or a new look, it is ours.
- New features, such as a booking form type you have never had or a new delivery rule.
- Design changes to the layout, colours or overall look.
- Connecting the site to other systems, such as stock or accounting tools.
- Security, hosting, backups and software updates.
- Fixing anything that looks broken or behaves oddly.
Why do regular updates matter?
Regular updates build trust with customers and give search engines a reason to keep visiting your site. An outdated website quietly tells visitors that the business may be less active than it really is.
- Trust: current products, offers and news show the business is alive and paying attention.
- Search: fresh, useful content gives people more ways to find you; see do I need SEO for a new website.
- Fewer mistakes: fixing wrong information early avoids confused calls and lost orders.
- Better decisions: regular reviews show you what customers actually use.
How do I know when an update is needed?
Your customers and your numbers will tell you. Repeated questions by phone often mean the website is missing an answer, and pages that people leave quickly often need clearer text or better photos.
- Note the questions customers ask most, and make sure the website answers them.
- Look at which pages get visits and which get ignored.
- Check enquiries and orders after each change to see what helped.
Our guide on how to know if your website is working explains which simple signals to watch. When the answer is a bigger change, our article on whether a redesign is worth it can help.
What if I do not have time to update it?
Then keep updates small and scheduled. Ten minutes a week in the admin panel is usually enough for most company websites. Put it in the calendar like any other task, and ask us for help with larger content changes or new sections.
If your current website is hard to update, or you are not sure where to start, talk to us about a site your own team can keep up to date.
How Kensoftware approaches this
- Every site we build runs on our own CMS, so your team can update pages, articles, banners, products and offers without calling us.
- We train the person who will own the website on the updates they will make most often.
- We look after the technical side, such as software updates, security and backups, so you can focus on content.
- When your updates start to need new sections or features, we add them to your CMS.
Frequently asked questions
Does updating my website help with Google?
Useful, accurate content helps people find you and trust you. Changing pages just for the sake of it does not help; adding answers to real customer questions does.
How long do website updates take with a CMS?
Most everyday updates, such as changing text, adding a product or replacing a banner, take a few minutes. Larger content changes take longer but still need no technical knowledge.
What if I make a mistake while editing?
Most mistakes are fixed by simply editing the item again and saving. If something looks broken, contact your web team rather than trying to fix the layout yourself.