Why is Website Maintenance Important?

Why is Website Maintenance Important?

Print and Website Designer -  Website Maintenance Importance

A well-designed website is essential to the success of any business or organization. It is the first impression that many people have of your business, so it is crucial to make sure it is designed right. 

Now, you may think that the job is done after you have designed and launched your new website — but this is not the case. Though your website is live, there is still work to be done to ensure everything runs smoothly. This means regularly checking in on what pages are doing well and which ones need improvement, as well as keeping up with any new features or tools that could improve how customers interact with your site.

A comprehensive article about the basics of website maintenance to better understand the process.

Here are 8 aspects to keep in the back of your mind while designing and maintaining your website:

Keep your site secure 

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS), powering almost 40% of all websites. Unfortunately, this also makes it the most targeted platform when it comes to hacking. Hackers are constantly looking for vulnerabilities in WordPress websites; if your site is not properly maintained, it could be an easy target. 

When you neglect website maintenance, your site becomes more vulnerable to security threats. Outdated software can leave you open to attack, and expired security certificates can make it easy for hackers to access your site. By staying on top of the latest security patches and software updates, you can help prevent security breaches before they happen and keep your site secure. 

You should also create backups of your website so that you can restore it if it is hacked or taken offline.

Keep the downtime to a minimum

Downtime is inevitable, but you can minimize it by creating a maintenance schedule and sticking to it. Regular site maintenance will help ensure that your website is always up and running. If you neglect to maintain your site, it could eventually become inaccessible to your users. This could lead to lost customers and revenue. 

Improve your SEO rankings 

Your website is the cornerstone of your online presence, and SEO is the key to ensuring it performs well. Search engine optimization is an inbound marketing strategy that ensures that your site is visible to potential customers when they search for keywords related to your business. A well-optimized website will attract more visitors, leading to more customers and sales.

If you want your website to rank well in search engines, you need to focus on these factors:

  • Targeted keywords
  • Dynamic (or adaptive) content
  • Responsive design 
  • Page load time
  • Social media engagement 
  • Link building

One of the best ways to ensure your website is SEO-friendly is to use the Google Analytics tool. This tool will help you monitor your traffic and user behavior, so you can identify your best-performing pages as well as find and fix landing pages with high bounce rates. 

Improve user experience 

Failure to keep your site well-maintained can result in several issues, including 404 error pages, broken and malicious links, slow load time, incorrect information, and more. All of these things can lead to a poor user experience, which can, in turn, lead to lost customers and revenue.

Establish a professional image 

Your website is often the first impression potential customers have of your business. You want that first impression to be a good one! A well-maintained website conveys that you are a professional, reliable business. On the other hand, an outdated or neglected website can give visitors the impression that you don’t care about your business or are not keeping up with the times.

Build customer loyalty

A website that is well-maintained and up-to-date builds customer trust and loyalty. If your website looks outdated, customers may question the quality of your products or services. Furthermore, if you have an eCommerce website, customers need to know that their personal information will be safe on your site. Regularly updating your website shows that you are keeping up with the latest trends and technologies, which can only improve customer confidence in your business.

Always have a backup

Losing your website can be a nightmare. If you don’t have backups of your files, you could lose everything — all your hard work, content, and images. That’s why it is important to regularly backup your files. You never know when something could happen to your website, so it is better to be safe than sorry.

Choose the right website maintenance partner

Just because your website is up and running does not mean the work is done. In fact, now the real work begins. To ensure your website continues running smoothly and efficiently, you will need to perform regular maintenance. 

But how do you choose the right partner to help you with this crucial task? 

Here are a few things to look for: 

  • Look for a company that offers around-the-clock support.
  • Make sure they have experience with your type of website and platform. 
  • Find out what kind of monitoring they do on their end. There are many options, including checking for potential vulnerabilities or scanning your site’s code to find any issues. 
  • See if they offer any training or education opportunities. The more knowledgeable your in-house team is, the better off you will be when something goes wrong and you need assistance from someone who understands what needs to be done to fix it.
  • And last but not least, consider the rates associated with their services and the length of time each package lasts before expiring (typically ranging from monthly packages to annual ones). 

With all these considerations in mind, finding a reliable partner will hopefully be much easier than you expected!

Conclusion

A website may be one of the most critical tools in your business arsenal, but that does not mean it will take care of itself. Website maintenance tasks can be time-consuming, but they are necessary to keep your site secure and running smoothly. 

Contact Print And Web Designer (PWD) today!

Print And Web Designer provides businesses in North Carolina with a comprehensive array of website/print design and marketing services, including Triangle/Durham/Cary web design, content marketing, brand design, brochure design, and magazine design. We have the knowledge and experience to keep your website up-to-date and running smoothly. We can also help you troubleshoot any problems that may arise. 

Contact us at (336) 684-6505 or through this online form to learn more about our web maintenance services! 

What is Website Maintenance?

What is Website Maintenance?

What is Website Maintenance

Website maintenance can be defined as the process of ensuring that your website stays clean, secure, and working properly at all times. A website maintenance plan ensures that your site will not break down and that you always have support when you need it — without any hassle or added costs of long-term contracts or upgrades that may not benefit your needs right now.

Why is a website maintenance plan important?

  • Your website shapes visitors’ first impressions: As businesses continue to use their website as an essential marketing tool, it is crucial to have a clear plan for maintenance and upgrades. When changes or improvements are made, website visitors may encounter disruptions in service. While these issues can be unavoidable from time to time, having a dedicated website maintenance plan will reduce downtime and improve your users’ first impressions of your brand. A well-maintained and modern site conveys a commitment to users that demonstrates that you are serious about your business. 

  • Your website ramps up your sales: Your website is an integral part of your business; it allows you to connect with existing and future customers, share information about your company, and, most importantly, help you make sales. 85% of customers perform online research before making an online purchase. So, without a website, you are losing out on potential clients who may be searching for a product or service like yours. Maintaining your website is the best way to keep all of these connections alive and growing. When done correctly, maintenance can add many new potential sales leads every month — which is why it is an indispensable part of your online presence.

  • Site visitors value user experience: How often do you visit a website, only to have it take forever to load? Site visitors value user experience so much that some will simply leave your site if they feel like it takes too long to load. This can happen even if they are interested in your services or products. It is a shame to think about how many potential sales were lost because of a slow-loading site! Invest in ongoing maintenance for your site to ensure that does not happen. This way, you know everything will run smoothly, and customers will not lose patience while waiting for pages to load.

  • A website maintenance plan improves security: A website maintenance plan enhances security by allowing you to identify potential security issues quickly. The earlier you know about a potential threat, the faster you can address it and keep hackers out of your site. Moreover, keeping up with patches lets your users trust that their information is secure when using your service or buying products from your store.

  • Website maintenance supports your SEO strategy: Having a website maintenance plan in place helps ensure search engines have fresh, relevant content to index, and your site will not become stale if you cannot maintain it yourself. It also supports your overall SEO strategy because many businesses that do not invest in maintenance lose rankings and traffic over time. (Related Blog: SEO Benefits of Blogging)

What does a website maintenance plan include?

  • Reviewing key metrics: Many website owners think that because they do not have a ton of traffic, they do not need to pay attention to their website metrics. This could not be further from the truth. Paying attention to these metrics and reviewing them weekly is critical for small business websites. For example, if you start seeing an increase in bounce rate, it might mean there are changes you can make to your pages that will improve it — and ultimately help your business grow.  

  • Software updates: A vital step to keeping your website safe and secure is ensuring that all of your software (including web applications, server software, and operating systems) has been updated with any security/performance fixes that may have come out since you first installed it.  

  • Site backups: At its core, maintenance simply means keeping things working. To properly maintain your website, you will want to back up all of your files regularly. Backing up your site does not have to be complicated. While more comprehensive solutions are available, basic backups involve using file-syncing services like Dropbox or OneDrive and updating these synced folders each time you make changes on your website. Ideally, you should perform basic backups each time you publish new content or update your existing content.

  • Testing your forms and checkout process quarterly: Doing so will ensure your website is running smoothly and give you confidence that your e-commerce site will not go down when it is time to close a sale. Making sure your site can handle traffic spikes at peak shopping times will also ensure you have a smooth run during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other busy shopping periods.

  • Browser compatibility testing: Just because your site works on one browser does not mean it will work on others. Specifically, making sure your site works on older browsers that support outdated features can be challenging.  

  • Annual testing: Some people think that site maintenance should be something that is done only once and forgotten about — that is not true at all. Instead, you should check your website regularly to ensure everything works properly, making any needed adjustments as soon as possible. By testing your whole website annually, you can fix potential problems before they grow into bigger issues that cost even more money to address.

To Wrap Things Up

Just like a doctor’s appointment, website maintenance requires planning and scheduling. Just because you do not see something wrong with your site now does not mean nothing needs to be fixed! To help avoid hiccups with your site, you should schedule routine maintenance on your calendar.

Contact Print And Web Designer (PWD) today!

Print and Web Designer provides businesses in North Carolina with a comprehensive array of website/print design and marketing services, including content marketing, brand design, brochure design, magazine design, and web design. Contact us today at (336) 684-6505 or by filling out this online form.

3 Signs you Need to Invest in web Maintenance

3 Signs you Need to Invest in web Maintenance

Magazine and Website MaintenanceSo you created an engaging website for your business, showcasing remarkable web design skills, and you are oh-so-excited to get heavy traffic on your page. Fast forward to a few months later, and you are stumped as to why the brilliantly crafted web design of your website is not generating leads? To ease your all-consuming confusion, we’ll tell you why you are not getting the results you expected.

The reason your website is not doing well is the lack of maintenance. Sure, you have an appealing online presence, your website beautifully incorporates your company’s brand design, the font and colors are perfect, but all that only gives a glimpse of your enterprise to a visitor. All they see is that you have an exquisite glass building, but they are not urged to enter it because it seems abandoned.

A poorly maintained or unmaintained website is not enough to hook a potential client. Think of it this way, you enter a website and see that the last post on it is from two years ago; what will you do? You’ll exit out because why would you waste time on a resource that’s not even cared for by its creators? And that is precisely why entrepreneurs should actively work on their websites to hold on to the online traffic they get.

Although a business owner should always be on top of their web maintenance game, they should especially pay attention to it when the following red flags show up.

Slow Processing
If your website is taking forever to process, know that it’s time for putting in money in some good old web maintenance. Frequent and prolonged bouts of buffering are an indication that your website is due for some overhauling. Nothing irks an internet user more than a website that wouldn’t load. That means if your webpage doesn’t process fast enough, you will lose out on many potential customers.

Getting Spammed
If your website keeps getting spammed, then it’s a sign of technical wear and tear, which you must address right away. Spamming makes an online portable susceptible to hacking. If you don’t want to have to deal with encroachers taking over your website, you should maintain it well and keep it safe from getting spammed.

Periodic Updating
If you last updated your webpage a while back, then you should know to do it again as soon as possible. If you wait any longer, you’ll be jeopardizing your website’s security. Therefore, you must take action immediately.

Web maintenance is essential for all kinds of businesses; whether you need inbound marketing, brochure design, magazine design, or even print design, you should always keep your collateral up-to-date. Because if not, then you’ll lose out on clients.

If you want to make sure you are doing a good job of web maintenance, hire a professional team to do the job for you. Speaking of professionals, if you are looking for expert web designers, reach out to us at Print and Web Designer today.