The Importance Of Maintaining Your Website

Website Maintenance Ensures Your Site Is Performing at Its Best

What is the importance of maintaining your website? Just like any modern software, websites require maintenance to ensure the site is working correctly and performing. Bypassing website maintenance is like not changing the oil in your car. Your car would not last very long if you didn’t look after it, right? Well, the same rule goes for websites as well – they need to be looked after as well. Your business’s site should always be live, ready for customers and presenting your offerings at it’s best 24/7 – without any hiccups.

Websites Are Not “Set and Forget.”

The problem is a common one. We call it the “Set and forget” syndrome. You work hard on creating a beautiful and engaging website, but then get busy and move on to other things while letting your site fade and lose its functionality.

If you don’t have website maintenance carried out monthly, you may be throwing money away. When visitors go to websites and find things wrong and or outdated, they often don’t stick around for very long. Many website owners never check their site to see how it’s performing. Missed website issues or downtime can lose your business potential customers and therefore revenue.

The initial website project and launch is crucial to creating the right foundation, the ongoing maintenance and upkeep are where you’ll see your website shine. That is where you’ll start to maximise the return on your investment.

The Benefits of Maintenance

Many people don’t realise the advantages of site maintenance:

Website performance, load time, downtime and uptime, is all dependent on the WordPress software and plugins are functioning as they should be thanks to being up to date with the latest version.

With WordPress websites, it is vitally important to keep it updated with the latest security patches and bug fixes. One of the main ways hackers gain access to a site is through outdated software. So keeping your software up to date is key to keeping your website online.

In marketing, they say, it is easier to retain a customer than to find a new one. What is the best way to do this via your website? Make sure you are providing appropriate, up-to-date information that helps them achieve their goals. This could be your monthly blog, new testimonials, a new staff member bio or even the latest offer.

By keeping your content current and informative, you begin to develop a stable trust relationship with your customers and prospects.

Search engines such as Google, also love fresh content. The more often you update your website, the more often the search engines will visit your site and boost your SEO rankings – simple.

Software updates, fresh content, analytics monitoring and design changes are all dependent on having someone making sure all updates to the website are performed in a smooth and error-free fashion.

Maintenance Workflow

At We Build Ideas we take great care to first backup websites before updating and then check after updates for any issues. Our software keeps a history of plugins we update. So if there is ever an issue, we can see what plugin version was changed that caused the problem and revert to previous safer versions. Also included in our monthly maintenance reports are performance and security scans. If in the event we ever find a plugin issue, it becomes a support ticket with the developer, and we address it before you or your customers ever know there’s a problem.

Dangers of Doing It Yourself Maintenance

Maintaining your website yourself could cost you more than you may think. For example, if you just update from your WordPress admin, you wouldn’t have a history of what was updated. If an update to a plugin generates an issue a few weeks later, it would be tough to know what change caused the problem and how you should revert without restoring a very old backup. With this, possibly losing content changes, sales orders, contact entries and more!

It Costs More to Repair Than to Maintain

Inexperience and neglect can destroy the look and functionality of your site. When this happens, you have a choice to make. One, you try and repair it yourself – which may do further damage. Or you can then pay the (sometimes substantial) price for someone experienced to fix it. Just like your vehicle, it costs more to fix it than it does to maintain it correctly. Regular oil changes help keep your car going smoothly; routine site maintenance helps keeps your website running successfully.

Conclusion – Professional Website Maintenance Pays Off