If you manage multiple client websites, it can be challenging to keep track of what’s happening on each one. After all, there are often lots of people involved in site management — your client, their employees or contractors, and your own team members.
What if something goes wrong? How can you find a fix as quickly as possible, understand who caused the issue, and prevent future problems?
Jetpack Activity is an invaluable tool for digital agencies that want to understand what’s happening on their clients’ websites and improve their management process. Learn how to use Jetpack’s activity log to educate clients, train employees, troubleshoot website issues, and achieve organizational transparency.
1. Efficiently manage multiple client sites
Managing all of your clients’ sites efficiently and effectively is tricky. Keeping track of everything that happens on each website can be complex and often involves the time-consuming task of logging in and out of a variety of dashboards.
Jetpack Activity simplifies website management by providing an in-depth look at every action taken on each of your clients’ sites. Log in to your WordPress.com account to view Activity, and toggle in between every site you manage — no switching accounts or remembering multiple passwords!
The activity log lists site actions for a specific time period, depending on your Jetpack plan: Sites on Free plans show the last 20 actions; sites on Personal and Premium plans show all actions taken in the last 30 days; and sites on Professional plans show all actions from the past year. Here are some examples of the kinds of actions that are recorded:
- Submitted, approved, and deleted comments
- Uploaded and deleted media files
- Installed, activated, and deactivated plugins
- Published, updated, and deleted pages, posts, and widgets
- Logged in and logged out users
- Updated themes, plugins, and WordPress core
- Imported and exported site content
- Added, updated, and deleted menu items
Jetpack Activity shows you who performed each action and when it took place. To check a specific action, use the filter feature that’s included with all paid plans. Select a date range and choose which types of events you want to display. Filters include:
- Plugins
- Site settings
- Posts and pages
- Theme
- People
- Comments
If one of your tasks is to publish blog posts twice a week, you can filter by Posts and Pages and view published posts at a glance. If you’re charged with staying on top of comments, use the Comments filter to check for new ones. If you’re responsible for updating plugins and themes, you can do that directly from the activity log, with a click. And if multiple people in your agency are involved, you’ll know if tasks are completed and if maintenance work is being taken care of on time.
If you travel often, you can even check on your clients’ websites on the go — the WordPress mobile app shows Jetpack Activity on your phone or tablet.
2. Troubleshoot website problems
Issues on client sites are frustrating. You may not immediately understand the cause or who was responsible, and there’s usually pressure from clients to find a fix.
This is your agency’s opportunity to be a hero! If a client website is experiencing problems, they’re probably worried about losing sales or traffic. If you fix the issue quickly, you prove your expertise while providing excellent customer service that will help your client stick around for years to come.
Website errors and downtime stem from a variety of causes — broken code, a plugin or theme update, or a hacked website. Traditional troubleshooting is time-consuming. If you suspect a plugin is causing the issue, you’d usually manually deactivate every plugin and reactivate them one by one until you find the culprit.Â
Jetpack Activity speeds up the troubleshooting process. Use the activity log to view a list of all site actions during a specific time period — which plugins were updated, what page changes were made, and what settings were edited. The sooner you identify the problem, the sooner you can give clients a solution.
Jetpack real-time backups give you another way to restore a broken website. Select a backup taken right before the action that broke the site, and you restore a functional version of the site in a few clicks.
3. Educate clients and prevent downtime
It can be nerve-wracking to turn a website over to a client, especially if they don’t have much WordPress experience. They could make mistakes that cause issues or, even worse, blame those mistakes on you. Jetpack Activity is an excellent way to educate your clients while protecting your reputation.
Each action in the activity log shows who performed it and what time it took place. You can tactfully show your client the mistake that was made and let them know how to prevent it from happening again.
If your client regularly uploads large, uncompressed images that slow down their website, use the activity log to show them specific examples and then teach them how to properly resize each file. If they add a plugin that conflicts with existing functionality, use the data from the activity log to show them the error. Or if a blog post suddenly goes missing, check Jetpack Activity to see who deleted it — and then teach the client and how to edit and manage posts.
Being able to explain all of this to clients not only helps you identify who took each action and fix the problem, it also teaches your clients how to prevent future issues.
4. Train employees and take responsibility
What if someone from your agency caused the problem? Rather than trying to guess, Jetpack Activity shows you what really happened. If necessary, you can take full responsibility and find a solution as quickly as possible.
The activity log provides a level of transparency that’s critical for agencies with multiple employees. You can easily see which of your team members logged in, what actions they took on the site, and when they made changes.
If one of your employees makes a mistake that could be detrimental to a client’s site — like setting it to no-index or adding a plugin with known issues — you can correct them, explain an alternative solution, and immediately find a fix.
Improve your agency’s website management process
Full transparency over your clients’ website activity makes your agency more efficient, helps you manage employees, prevents errors and downtime, and educates the companies you work with. The tools available with Jetpack Activity provide all the details you need to understand website actions, who performs each one, and when it takes place.
Don’t manage websites in the dark any longer. Get started with Jetpack Activity today!
Jetpack 
Usability and utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site. Your blog provides a great information. Thanks for sharing.
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