Although most business owners understand the importance of having a website, the vast majority tend to launch one and then forget about it, ignoring website maintenance completely. Your business will suffer if your site is not properly maintained, which is going to cost you valuable clients and customers.
A website is not only a vital tool for advertising the products and services that your company offers, but it is also a tool for building your brand image and receiving customer reviews and feedback. Website development is often seen as a one-time process for business owners. However, they are greatly mistaken—a website will always remain a work in progress.
94% of companies suffering a catastrophic data loss never reopen and 51% shut down within two years.
Source: University of Texas
What is Website Maintenance?
Website maintenance involves constantly checking your site for errors and updates to keep it effective and relevant. This step should be performed continually to keep your website healthy and running smoothly. As a result, you’ll see increased traffic and SEO (search engine optimization) enhancements, and your website will rank highly on search engines.
No matter how large or small your business is, having an attractive, well-maintained website is critical to avoiding problems, engaging and retaining your customers, and ultimately converting them into buyers.
To maintain the smooth running of your business, we recommend a regular check-up on your website. Ensure that your business’s website is professionally maintained by including a website maintenance budget in your budget and hiring a team of website maintenance experts.
Here are the top reasons why you should include website maintenance in your website development budget.
Security and Protection
Business owners should opt for maintenance if they want to maintain their business’ security. Maintaining your site is imperative to keep it secure, whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise.
Cybercriminals often exploit software vulnerabilities and security patches to gain access to the website. The older the site, the easier it is to hack. An important part of preventing security breaches is preventing them before they happen.
More than 70% of WordPress websites are vulnerable to hacker attacks.
Source: WPWhitesecurity
It is important to make sure that your site has the latest bug fixes and security patches installed. Having too many or out-of-date plugins and themes may cause issues.
For these reasons, make sure you have strong security measures in place, run regular health and security checks, and always keep your website updated with the latest security updates.
Enhance SEO results
Website performance is directly related to search engine optimization. A website that is constantly updated, publishes new, relevant content, and provides a seamless user experience will rank higher on Google and other search engines. With proper website maintenance, you can increase your ranking, increase online traffic, and increase conversions.
Google blacklists around 70,000 websites for malware and phishing each week.
Source: Google Safe Browsing
Ultimately, a well-maintained website can always give an improved first impression. To identify your top-performing pages and pages with high bounce rates, we strongly recommend installing the Google Analytics tool. There can be performance issues if users leave certain pages faster than others, but here’s your chance to fix them.
User Experience
Websites need to respond quickly to users and offer a pleasant experience for them. No one enjoys visiting a website and finding no useful information, missing pages, or broken links. The theme and template files on a website that have not been maintained may not display correctly on mobile devices and in newer versions of web browsers. It is important to perform regular website maintenance to make sure that your website’s theme and template are up-to-date, and everything works properly.
Make sure all the links and contact forms work as well, another aspect that should be on your to-do list. Information about contact information, phone numbers, pricing lists, etc. must also be included.
79% of those who dislike the website are unlikely to purchase anything from it again.
Source: KISSMetrics
If your company has physical stores, make sure that they perfectly align with the content people see on your website. Make sure all your data is consistent across all of the platforms your business uses. With this strategy, the online and offline experiences will be great.
Multiple Offsite Backups
Backing up all the files is one of the primary tasks of a website maintenance team. One way to accomplish this is by performing a manual backup, and the other way is to perform an automatic backup. Malware attacks can happen if you don’t back up your files. If you miss this step, you will have to start building your website all over again.
93% of companies that lost their data for 10 days filed for bankruptcy within one year.
Source: NARA, Washington DC
Daily, multiple offsite backups are recommended for informational websites. However, if you have an eCommerce website or any website with dynamic images and content that changes frequently, you might consider making more frequent backups.
Adaptability to new technologies
There is a rapid evolution taking place on the Internet as new technologies and techniques are developed and implemented for better user experiences. To ensure that their websites are compatible with the latest technologies, companies that have an online presence must regularly review them. It is also important that the web hosting server of your website is well equipped to handle the latest technologies.
41% of attacks are caused by a vulnerability on the hosting platform.
Source: WP Template
If your website is not mobile-friendly, users may have trouble accessing it. Websites need to be consistently updated with the latest technologies and techniques so that they will be compatible and will work smoothly on all devices.
Efficient Cost Management
The same is true for your car: if you delay fixing small problems too long, they can grow into big, expensive ones. Your business website is no different. You can reduce the chances that something drastic goes wrong and costs you a lot of money to fix your website by regularly maintaining and updating it.
In the aftermath of the attacks, 29% of revenue was lost.
Source: Cisco
In the end, it’s your decision. Rather than having to rebuild your entire site, you could choose ongoing monthly fees to support and protect it.
Proper Monitoring and Tracking
Maintaining your website properly will allow you to identify if you are on track with your online marketing objectives. The optimum performance of your website can be determined by evaluating the metrics, so you can take appropriate action.
More than 50% won’t even know they were attacked.
Source: Gartner Group
If your website is not helping you reach your sales targets, this implies that you need to change your web development techniques and figure out new strategies to help. Without a competent team to handle website maintenance, you may never know this.
Improve Brand Value
Websites that look professionally designed and well-developed are becoming more and more accessible. It is expected that professional companies have a professional web presence. Professionalism is essential to a website’s success; otherwise, your customers will stay away.
Online buyers share a bad experience with their friends over 44% of the time.
KISSMetrics
The fact remains that despite our best efforts to preach the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, people are still likely to make snap judgments about websites, affecting their perception of credibility. You might not even know that you’ve created issues if you do not check your website regularly and if you do not perform regular maintenance tasks. You might lose business as a result.
Right Decision is Important
There is never the wrong time to implement a comprehensive website maintenance plan for your company or organization. It is important to monitor and maintain your website after it has been launched if you want it to succeed. You should plan for the upkeep of your website the moment it is launched so that it will be easy to keep track of it, create an excellent online identity, and increase sales.
Keeping your site running and making it more noticeable among all your competition is best achieved by hiring a professional WordPress maintenance provider. Having professional website support will allow you to rest easy if something happens to your company’s website.
Let Us Help You
At WP Dial, our website maintenance services come at a reasonable price with no long-term commitment. We offer an all-in-one website maintenance and support service that includes regular updates, security enhancement with malware removal, performance improvement, fully managed high-end cloud VPS hosting, Premium Email with 1 TB cloud storage, team collaboration tools, multiple offsite cloud backups, unmatched support, and peace of mind.
