Now that your business is up and running in the digital world, it does not mean that the work is done. Websites need constant maintenance, especially when talking about custom web development. Maintenance service is definitely a must to keep your website up-to-date and secure. When you ignore your website after development, at some point, the code and the software will become outdated. This will affect the site’s loading time, will cause broken links, and will generate outdated content. The user experience will become sloppy and unpleasant.
Here are 5 reasons why you should include website maintenance in your website development budget and why you should ensure that you hire a working website maintenance team for your business.
1. Improves Security
Our top reason is the most evident one: security. From small to large scale business, maintenance is crucial for keeping your site secure. If you are using a CMS (content management system) like WordPress, you probably know that this is the most targeted platform when it comes to hacking. While there’s a variety of reasons your site could get hacked, such as mining Bitcoin, stealing bandwith, drive by downloads, or Blackhat SEO spam campaigns, there’s usually one common denominator: an older site. The likelihood of an older site getting hacked is a lot greater due to it having less secure coding and modules that are not up to date. All they have to do is click ‘view page source’ to see what WordPress version you are running. It’s that simple for the hackers to target outdated sites. Preventing security breaches before they happen is essential. Plugins are the vulnerable point of your website. Having too many or out of date plugins might cause issues, that is why we strongly advise you to make sure that latest bug fixes and security patches are properly installed on your site.
For these reasons we highly suggest to have strong security measures in place, always keep your website up to date with the latest security updates, avoid running on expired security certificates, always update plugins, run health and security check-ups on a regular basis.
2. Boosts Traffic through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the cornerstone of a great performing website. Google and other search engines repay websites that are always up to date, publish new, relevant content, and offer a seamless user experience. By maintaining your website, you will improve SEO rankings, boost online traffic, and increase conversion rate. We recommend you to pay attention to six key components of your SEO strategy: targeted keywords in your industry used on your site, dynamic content, mobile responsiveness, page speed, social media engagement, and link building (high-quality external websites that link to yours).
Bottom line is that a well-maintained website will always create a good first impression. We highly recommend installing Google Analytics tool, monitoring your traffic and user behaviour, to identify your top performance pages and pages with high bounce rates. Users leaving certain pages faster than others can be a sign of performance issues, but here stands your opportunity to improve them.
3. Improves User Experience
A layout that minimises frustration for the user (in finding information or getting to the page that they want) is a layout that has a good user experience. A bad user experience can have a negative impact and drive away traffic – and sales – from your website. Additionally, positive user experience also means designing your website to be accessible for visually impaired and handicapped users. If you’re using an older version of your mobile software, your overall experience is a lot different and slower than the latest version. It is the same with your website. According to different studies, over 39% of visitors drop off (leave the website), if it takes more than 3-4 seconds to load. Updates provide better speed, new features and functionality to your website.
4. Boost Brand Reputation
Imagine your website becomes very slow, broken or even hacked… How would your customer see your brand? Most likely as a weak, unstable, untrustworthy brand. A well-maintained website helps promote your brand, work, and mission. You must regularly update your site with sharable content such as upcoming events, image galleries, and blogs to give your audience an idea about who you are and what you do.
It is also important to engage with your audience. To do so, include actionable items such as a newsletter sign-up form, engaging blogs where people can leave their comments and social media icons that link to your profile. You must periodically review and keep your website development techniques up to date for visitors to be thrilled with your content and trust your business for integrity and accountability.
5. Saves Time and Money
If you own a website you need to diversify your expenses, efforts, and resources moderately. If you do it yourself or frequently contact your developer, it consumes a lot of your time to explain the issues and the fee you are charged keeps adding up quite fast. Improper site maintenance will lead to downtimes or complete loss of business. However, if you invest in web maintenance services and continually keep your website healthy and error-free, your business and your budget will thank you. With a dedicated maintenance team and plan, you will get predictable results with controlled expenses.
In a nutshell
Keeping site properly maintained and updated is more important than you think. Regular website maintenance makes sure that your site attracts, educates as well as expands your client base. It also helps improve customer satisfaction.
