We are all aware of the significance of having a well-structured website. However, simply having the site up and running is insufficient. Regularly updating and maintaining your site is critical to ensuring that it is operating at peak efficiency. When you ignore your website after development, at some point, the code and the software will become outdated. This will affect the site’s loading time, will cause broken links, and will generate outdated content.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. Websites, require maintenance to function properly. Proper site maintenance helps to ensure site security, increase the number of new visitors, increase return traffic, and more. We’d like to share some of the main reasons why we believe it’s critical to keep your site up to date.
1- Security
Security is one of the biggest reasons any business owner should opt for support and maintenance. Maintenance is crucial for keeping your site secure. If you are using a CMS (content management system) like WordPress or Drupal, you probably know that this is the most targeted platform when it comes to hacking. Hackers usually get in by exploiting loopholes in outdated software and security patches. Old sites are an easier target. 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 Having too many or out-of-date plugins might cause issues, which is why we strongly advise you to make sure that the latest bug fixes and security patches are properly installed on your site.
For these reasons we highly suggest having strong security measures in place, always keeping your website up to date with the latest security updates, avoiding running on expired security certificates, always updating plugins, and running health and security check-ups regular basis.
2- Site Traffic and SEO
Search engines like Google prioritize websites that are updated on a regular basis in order to provide the best quality content to searchers. A higher ranking increases the visibility of your site, increasing the likelihood that your content will appear when your target audience searches for relevant keywords. Updating your site with useful information, repairing broken links, removing duplicate pages, and keeping your content up to date will help drive new and returning visitors.
In the end, a well-maintained website will always make a good first impression. We strongly advise installing the Google Analytics tool to monitor your traffic and user behavior in order to identify your top-performing pages and pages with high bounce rates. Users leaving certain pages faster than others can indicate performance issues, but this is your chance to fix them.
3- Visitor Experience
Updating your site with shareable content like upcoming events, image galleries, and blogs on a regular basis gives your audience an idea of who you are and what you do. Include actionable items such as a newsletter signup form and social media icons that link to your organization’s profile to engage your audience. A well-maintained website aids in the promotion of your brand, work, and mission. Remove outdated information and conduct a site audit to track issues and errors on your site. Do this on a regular basis to ensure that your visitors have the best possible user experience. Website maintenance is critical for all organizations, large and small. Maintaining your site on a regular basis will improve performance and provide a safe and secure environment for your visitors.
4- Website Backups
There will be times when a backup is required, whether for restorative or development purposes. Even if you have a standard backup solution in place, there is still a chance that your server will be hacked and unwanted users will gain access to your website data.
Hence, professional website maintenance teams usually back up two website elements: the source code (Javascript, PHP, HTML, CSS codes, and other plugins) after every update, and the website’s content – such as text, images, video, or audio files. This is necessary in order to prevent the loss of files, plugins, and/or content.
5- Take Advantage of New Features
Website technology is rapidly evolving. Because of the amount of traffic that social media can send your way, it has become increasingly important to have features on your site that integrate with it in recent years. Another rapidly evolving area is online security. To assure customers that their personal information is safe with you, you will need to invest in securing your site with an SSL certificate that will encrypt communications.
6- To Boost your Brand Reputation
How will your customers perceive your brand if your website is slow or down? Probably as unstable, unprofessional, and weak. As a result, you will have less business. Even a single minute of downtime can result in significant profit losses.
To avoid such issues, website maintenance plans can provide 24/7 website uptime, security, and performance monitoring.
7- Wasted Time and Money
When you fail to make updates when they become available, but then have to go back and make them later, the development and Q/A effort grows significantly. Because of the increased number of updates and module changes over time, the developer will need to spend significantly more time making the updates. Because of the increased functionality on the affected site, more time is required for QA. Implementing the update as soon as it is available provides you with the latest and greatest functionality right away, improving your site overall.
8- Customer Loyalty
Maintaining your website’s content will keep it relevant to current and potential customers. Customers who are pleased with your products and services will gladly return for more. By performing routine website maintenance, you are giving your customers reasons to take actions that will ultimately lead to the achievement of your business objectives. Incorporate a blog into your digital marketing and engagement strategy to increase organic traffic. We recommend that you create new content for each blog post and plan a monthly posting schedule. This will demonstrate to your customers that you care about them and value their participation.
9- Proper Monitory and Tracking
When you devote adequate time and resources to website maintenance, you can accurately track whether you are still on track with your online marketing objectives. Checking your website’s metrics gives you insight into the progress of your campaigns, allowing you to decide on the next strategy or plan to implement.
If you are falling behind on your website sales goals, it means you need to revamp your website development techniques and implement new strategies to help you meet your sales targets, but you may never know this unless you have website maintenance handled by a competent maintenance team.
10- To Keep in Business and Competition
A website is something that is never complete. Over the course of a year, there are a lot of things that regularly happen to your website that should be reviewed and looked at.
You probably invested a lot of money into your website; therefore, you should maintain that investment. From content to malware, to links that you need to get up to date, there are a host of things you need to get the most out of your website. Unless you have your own IT department including experienced coders and webmasters, it is crucial that you have a good website maintenance plan in place.
Put simply, website maintenance, much like car or house maintenance, is vital for keeping things safe and in good working order. With website problems affecting both your reputation and profit margins, the benefits of investing in a website maintenance plan almost always outweigh the costs.
We are here to help you with all your website maintenance and support needs. Contact our friendly team today contact and we will help you to maximise the potential of your website and your business.
Average costs of web maintenance services
The average cost of web maintenance services can range from $50-$250 per month. However, the actual cost will depend on the size and complexity of your website, as well as the number of pages that need to be updated on a regular basis.
We are here to help you!
We are a full stack software development agency with strong expertise on Web and Mobile Application Development (Our Services). Therefore, we understand the importance of maintenance packages that perfectly fit your business. We have a great development team with experience on the back end, front end, UX/UI, and digital marketing, that provide quality work on all possible web and mobile platform Technologies, no matter the industry or company size.
We are always hands-on deck when it comes to our partners. With the right plan and the right team, your online presence will always have a competitive advantage. We are dedicated to helping you even if you just launched your site or you’ve had one for some time now. Check out our portfolio, reach out Contact Us and let’s make together a perfectly tailored plan that better supports your business.
