Your website is a lot like a game of Jenga. Every form, every button, every link, and every app you have installed is a block, and all of those blocks are holding each other up. If you pull out the wrong piece, the whole thing falls down. The same risk shows up when you're adding new pieces or making updates.
Plus, things can break even when you never touched them. Let's say you leave your contact forms completely alone, but you go update something else on the website. That update can break your forms, and you won't have any idea it happened. Your site is an interconnected network, so when one piece goes, it can take the rest with it. That's why you should always be testing everything.
1. Test your contact forms and your chatbots
Set up a calendar reminder so that once a month, or at least on your preferred schedule, you go into your website and submit every single form on it.
You want to make sure you get a confirmation that the form has been submitted. Then go check your emails and make sure the confirmation actually landed there too. That's how you know you're not missing any leads.
If you have some sort of AI bot on your website, double check that it's still working the way it's supposed to. Have a few conversations with it and see how it responds.
2. Check your website on different devices
Phones, tablets, and computers are your three main device categories, so at minimum you should be looking at your website on one of each.
When you have spare time, go further than that. Check on Android phones and check on iPhones. Check on PCs and check on Macs. Things will look different everywhere, and you won't know until you look.
Check your font sizes on the different screens as well. Text that reads perfectly fine on your computer can end up way too small for somebody on their phone. Most importantly, make sure the critical parts are still accessible to your audience. People need to be able to submit forms, click buttons, and get in contact with you if they need to.
3. Click buttons on your website
Check randomly that your links are working and that your buttons are working. That really just means going and trying to click things.
Sometimes people don't realize that depending on how an image was uploaded, clicking on it makes something happen that you don't want to happen. You would never catch that unless you clicked it yourself.
So every once in a while, go click some things at random. That way you're continuously testing instead of assuming it's all fine.
4. Check your load times
When you go to your own website, ask yourself whether it takes a really long time to come up. If it does, start checking what's causing it.
Check your internet connection. If you're on a cell phone, figure out whether you're using cell signal or Wi-Fi. Checking those different things is how you verify that your website is as fast and optimized as it can be.
Obviously you don't have control over how good someone's cell phone signal is. But you do want your website as optimized as possible for whatever format they may be contacting you on.
5. Test your scheduling and purchasing
If people can schedule an appointment directly from your website, that's something you need to be testing regularly.
If people can purchase items from your website, run test purchases all the time. Actually go and purchase something from your own site every once in a while to make sure it's genuinely working. It might look completely okay on the front end while it's not.
At the end of the day, you just need to make sure you're regularly checking your own website.
If you work with a team, you can have somebody dedicated to that position who handles it for you. And honestly, if you ever get bored, just go check your own site and see what you find.
If you work by yourself, then whenever you get a second, work a day or an hour into your calendar and use that time to check on your stuff.