A well-designed website showcases your products and services, attracting new customers, increasing credibility, and building brand awareness. Every detail makes an impression: the colors you choose, the photos you share, and the product descriptions that bring your business to life. Just as important as these visual design feature are often neglected details like how slowly each page loads, browser errors, malware lurking in the depths of your website code, and website elements that no longer work properly because a plugin is out of date. Sadly, many business owners believe that website development is a one-time effort, but they are completely incorrect – a website is always a work-in-progress.
Whether you spend $100 and an hour of your own time using a DIY website builder or $10,000 hiring a professional designer, if you don’t maintain your website, your money has been wasted. Once your site has been designed, published, and launched, you are not finished. Your website needs frequent updates and maintenance to ensure site security, generate traffic, improve search engine results, and avoid penalties, among other things. Without regular maintenance, you risk having a website that runs slowly, stops driving traffic, is vulnerable to malware, or even stops working entirely. Consider the possible consequences of a poorly maintained website:
- Technology failures — plugins, themes, and your CMS all require regular updates to ensure functionality and security. Without these updates, plugins may stop working, site errors may occur, and your site may be vulnerable to hacking.
- Inadequate security – without regular site backups, if your website experiences a catastrophic error, becomes infected with malware, or goes down for any other reason, you will have to rebuild from the ground up. A damaged website, especially one that is down, costs you money, but it also takes time to fix the issue and repair your reputation.
- Declining traffic — Search engine optimization, or SEO, is focused on improving the performance and ranking of site pages in organic search results. Since organic search is the most frequent way for visitors to find your website, consistent SEO work is essential for boosting organic traffic, increasing brand awareness, and improving search engine rankings.
- Overlooked communications with hosting providers — Due to your busy schedule as a business owner, those emails from your hosting provider may fall to the bottom of the list. However, if you neglect to respond to the notification regarding hosting renewal, your website could be taken offline, making it impossible for you to access your files or database. If you don’t read the email about renewing your domain, it could expire, and when that happens, it will be up for sale to anyone, including your competitors.
Maintaining your website requires a lot of work, but you don’t have to handle it yourself. Use our new “Website Wellness Plan”, which includes the following services, to keep your website up to date and running smoothly:
- Checking and fixing broken site links
- Verifying contact form deliverability
- Checking and fixing site security errors
- Ensuring site backups are running
- Set up and link to necessary tracking tools such as Google Analytics
- Browser testing
- File clean-up and removal of old themes/files from your database
- Monthly page speed tests
- Plug-in updates
- Managing any hosting company needs
- Renewing domains
- SEO optimization
To sign-up or learn more about our “Website Wellness Plan”, click here.
Michelle, Equivity’s Assistant Marketing Director, brings over 20 years of marketing experience and holds a degree in International Business. For more insights and updates, connect with Michelle on LinkedIn.