Web Maintenance: Why It Should Be Top Priority

Your website represents your entire business online. You must have regular web maintenance, or your business faces serious negative consequences. Your website’s role is to support and maintain your company’s online presence, gain new leads, increase revenue, and more.

Through your website, people learn about your business and eventually purchase the products and services that you offer. However, you could miss out on significant opportunities if something goes wrong with your site.

That being said, you can prevent website problems with regular website maintenance. In this blog post, we’ll discuss what you need to know about web maintenance, why you need it, and where to get web maintenance services.

What is Web Maintenance?

Web maintenance are tasks done regularly to keep your website running correctly, maintain relevance, and keep it updated. A well-maintained website undergoes regular checkups to identify loading issues, coding errors, or any other problems. These types of maintenance checkups help ensure the following:

• Increased traffic and growth
• Improved search engine rankings
• Optimal SEO health
• Fast loading times
• Fixed coding errors

Whether you have a small or big company, your website must be well maintained and updated so you can engage and retain customers effectively. In some cases, startups can cut corners and let a couple of tasks slide. This is because website issues don’t always present themselves immediately.

However, going too long without a regular check-up takes its toll on your website’s health. And thus, website maintenance is a must if you want to keep your website and business running smoothly.

Why is Website Maintenance Important?

Many businesses don’t have time to regularly check in on their website. It’s tempting to purchase a domain name, build something temporary in a hurry, and worry about it later.

This strategy will hurt your business both in the short and long run. Keeping your website updated, active, and healthy is essential for several reasons.

SEO

One of the main reasons you started a website could be to help clients, serve customers, or grow an audience. You need to keep your website updated so it can efficiently drive traffic and convert visitors into customers.

Google and other search engines rank websites with the most up-to-date and relevant content on their search engine results page (SERP). Google might de-index your website if it hasn’t been recently updated or if they think it’s infected with malware. This will cause you to lose your ranking, and it could take months to recover.

You must update your website regularly with company news, relevant keywords, interesting articles, and other forms of content to help it rank well on SERPs. Accordingly, web maintenance is invaluable for your website’s SEO strategy.

Customer Engagement/Attraction

When your website gains traction and traffic, make sure to retain those clients or customers. If they can’t find what they’re looking for, they’re more likely to lose interest and leave your site. Generally, most website visitors often look for relevant content and current information.

If you want people to perceive your website as a helpful tool, you need to make sure it doesn’t have typos and grammar issues. Moreover, it should look engaging, consistent, and has all the information that customers want.

Security

Your website’s security is the most important reason for making website maintenance your top priority. This is particularly essential if your website stores all of your customers’ information.

Ensure that current security patches and software updates are installed if you use WordPress, Wix, and other website-building platforms. Websites that are not active and have not been updated for some time are attractive and easy targets for hackers.

Corporate Image

These days, creating a well-designed and professional-looking website is easy to do. However, maintaining it is a different story. Without regular updates, your website can quickly become outdated.

Some companies are even conducting website redesigns on an annual basis. Performing web maintenance regularly can help you keep up with the competition and maintain a positive corporate image.

Your Sanity

A vital element of your business is your website. It can be a valuable asset and support if it is up-to-date and operating smoothly. That said, it can cost you dearly if it’s not in a good state.

Once your website falls behind on its maintenance needs, bringing it back up to speed can be a long process. Often, if you haven’t done any maintenance on your website for quite some time, it would be better to dispose of it altogether and rebuild it from scratch.

You can make your life easier by regularly maintaining your website. Keeping it running smoothly, making sure it’s up-to-date and relevant to your industry can give you peace of mind.

 

Keep Up with the Trends in Website Design and Technology

A website with a sleeker design can help you convince potential customers that you are the best option available. If you practice website maintenance, you’ll become an early adopter of the latest website technologies.

If you have been installing updates regularly, you can also take advantage of the latest features that come along with the updates.

Moreover, you can tweak your website’s look to keep up with the latest trends in website design. Many people trust websites with a more polished and modern look than those that look as if they were made in 2001.

Why Do You Need a Website Maintenance Plan?

A website maintenance plan is an ongoing procedure aimed at maintaining and supporting your website. This maintenance plan requires a heavy workload and requires a team rather than an individual. Many business owners turn to outside digital marketing companies or vendors for web maintenance services.

If the web maintenance plan is not correctly implemented, severe problems and setbacks can arise that may harm your potential growth and business health. Here are the main reasons why a website maintenance plan is essential for your business:

1. Most customers perform their research online

About 87% of people who are looking for products or services tend to conduct online research before making a purchase.

With that in mind, those looking for the products or services you offer are more likely to end up on your website.

If your website gives a negative impression of your company, visitors will more likely continue their research on a competitor’s website. As a result, you could miss out on a sale.

2. Your website exhibits users’ first impressions

 

Again, if your website looks outdated or doesn’t run properly, it will create a bad impression of your company. Many people might think your business is unprofessional if your site itself looks unprofessional. For this reason, customers will often leave and look to your competitors.

3. Your website maintenance plan helps increase your sales

Your website plays a vital role in leading your customers to make a purchase. For instance, an e-commerce website specializes in facilitating purchases. If your site is not in a good state, you’ll lose your chances of potential sales.

4. Website visitors appreciate a good user experience

Studies show that among consumers who are shopping online, 89% will go to competitors instead if they have a poor user experience on a certain site.

With regular website maintenance, you can avoid giving a poor user experience to your customers and instead encourage them to stay on your site. The longer they stay, the more likely they will make a purchase or contact your business.

5. A website maintenance plan enhances security

In the U.S. alone, the total cost of losses from companies as a result of cyberattacks is around $15.4 million per year.

Repairing a cyberattack’s damages is even more costly. You may end up losing customers because they no longer trust you with their personal information or your business altogether.

Website maintenance done regularly keeps your security systems updated and helps protect your website from cyber threats. When customers realize that you have maintained your security protections, they will feel more comfortable doing business with you.

6.  A web maintenance plan helps to reinforce your SEO strategy

When internet users don’t stay on your website for long, Google might think it is not user-friendly, does not provide value, or is irrelevant to your industry.

This increase in bounce rate is alarming for your site as it can lead to a decrease in your Google search rankings. Meaning, there will be less organic traffic coming to your site.

Outdated website design, irrelevant content, poor structure, and technical issues contribute to your website’s plummeting search engine rankings.

What Should Website Maintenance Include?

Here are some essential website maintenance tasks to ensure your site runs smoothly:

Annual testing of your entire website

You should test your whole website annually, particularly after receiving an update. Check to ensure that all the features that came with the update are working correctly.

Watch out for outdated or incorrect information and look for broken links. Moreover, make sure to renew your site’s domain name.

It’s also a great idea to bring in experts who are not from your company. They could provide a fresh perspective of your site’s usability.

Annual testing for browser compatibility

There are a handful of mainstream browsers on the internet. It is imperative to check if your website runs smoothly on each of those web browsers.

Quarterly testing of your forms and checkout process

All of your online forms and checkout processes should be checked. You should do the testing once every four months. A quarterly test also includes testing and tweaking pop-ups and calls-to-action.

Monthly checking for software updates

Check for software updates with your hosting provider once a month. Whenever possible, you should install patches as soon as they are released. Updates like these help ensure proper site functionality.

Monthly checking for security updates

Updates and patches that help secure your site are the most time-sensitive of all website maintenance tasks. Monthly checkups will ensure that nothing is out of place and that security scans have been reviewed.

Monthly completion of website backup

If something goes wrong with your site, backups can save you from losing a lot of time and money. Whether you are doing it manually or you have an automatic backup feature, make sure to check once a month if website backups have been completed.

Weekly check-ups for key metrics

Weekly reviews of your website’s performance are a must if you want to make sure your site is supporting you in meeting your goals. You can use online tools like Google Analytics to help in your review. Additionally, you need to check your KPIs or key performance indicators at least once a week.

If you can, make updates to web software and plugins. Then, check if your site’s performance has improved in the following weekly review of key metrics.

Included in this list of website maintenance services are the most critical web maintenance tasks. However, this is not the complete list of all the web maintenance work you need to do.

That said, this info gives you the option to create a more extensive website maintenance plan. Or you can choose to work with a professional digital marketing company to help you maintain your website.

How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost?

The costs to maintain websites may vary depending on:

• What your site is used for
• How much content is hosted and
• The size of your audience

Below are examples of website maintenance costs for different types of websites:

Personal Websites

A blog or a personal website is a low-cost maintenance website that typically ranges from $5 to $25 per month.

Small Businesses

Web maintenance for a small business may cost up to $100 per month.

Corporate Websites

Monthly website maintenance costs for big businesses or large corporations typically range from $200 to $3500.

eCommerce Websites

The cost for an e-commerce site web maintenance will start at $1500 up to $2500 per month.

Other Web Maintenance Costs

Additional web maintenance costs may include:

Domain name renewal

The renewal cost of domain names typically ranges from $4 to $20 annually. WordPress offers both hosting and domain name renewal services that are inexpensive.

Web hosting plans

The cost of a shared hosting plan is only $24 to $120 per year. WordPress, Wix, and other website builders offer hosting plans costing $60 to up to $180 per year.

With regular web maintenance, your service provider will advise you if you need to increase your hosting plan to maintain your web page’s optimal loading speed, lest you risk your site shutting down because of heavy use of resources (visuals, etc.).

Let Digital Delane Help You With Web Maintenance

The repercussions can be costly if you don’t have a professional perform web maintenance. Working with a full-service digital marketing agency helps ensure all your bases are covered. We offer a range of online marketing services including SEO, Web Design, Pay-per-click (PPC) ads management, Security scans and updates, Support, Backups, and peace of mind.

Digital Delane offers web maintenance packages that help your site function properly and remain secure. Contact us today and we’ll help your site run properly so you don’t miss out on new leads and sales.