Benefits of Website Maintenance Services

Benefits of Website Maintenance Services

Every business, no matter how small or big needs a website to survive in a highly competitive environment. While it may seem unnecessary now, a website pays off in the end. Website design and development costs a lot of money. Once you have a website up and running, you cannot afford to leave it at that. The logical thing is to keep the website up-to-date in all the important aspects.

That is where website maintenance comes into play. The thing about website maintenance is that it isn’t going to be easy. It will cost you money, time, and other resources, especially if you are not up to the task. That’s the reason you should consider outsourcing website maintenance services to be assured of greater business growth in the long-run.

What Is Website Maintenance?

Website maintenance is a function of website management. It refers to the act of checking your website for issues, mistakes, and updating it on a regular basis. This needs to be done consistently to have an up-to-date website that keeps experiencing growth in traffic. However, that’s only possible if the website is able to rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Clearly, website management is important for both small and big businesses. When done properly, it makes it possible for a business to attract and retain customers. While at it, avoid cutting corners. Since there are no immediate issues, very many people erroneously overlook taking care of their websites. That is a big mistake. When neglected, a website could suddenly fail to work, costing you a lot of money in profits. Which is the reason you need to regularly monitor your business website to ensure no disruption of business processes?

What Does Website Maintenance Entail?

Website maintenance is not as simple and straightforward as you might think. It involves carrying out all kinds of tasks on a regular basis to ensure the smooth running of the website. Of all the necessary tasks, you should never forget to carry out security patches and updates. That’s unless you want to expose visitors to your website to the dangers of the internet. Below are website maintenance activities you need to complete regularly. We have broken them down in terms of when they need to have been completed.

Weekly Tasks

• Checking that all web pages load without errors.
• Running a backup and ensuring you store the previous version of the site.
• Updating website plugins and software.
• Checking all forms and ensure they are running as expected.
• Removing spam comments from posts and pages.
• Checking pages for broken links.
• Searching for and fixing or redirecting 404 errors.
• Writing at least one blog post to drive SEO traffic and engage your community.

Monthly Tasks

• Checking the website’s load speed and removing anything that could bog it down.
• Reviewing security scans to make sure that everything is in place.
• Analyzing website statistics for the last month.
• Checking the blog for articles that need updating.

Quarterly Tasks

• Reviewing the design and structure of the website to see if it needs improvement.
• Checking images and graphics to see if updates are necessary.
• Reviewing SEO in terms of the Meta titles and Meta descriptions to make them as effective as can be.
• Testing and tweaking popups, calls to action, and forms.
• Reviewing your workload and identifying things to automate to make it more efficient.
• Testing your website on different browsers and devices to make sure the display is just fine.
• Reviewing marketing and advertising campaigns to identify changes and updates you need to make.
• Restoring your website’s previous version to check if your backups are done properly.

Yearly Tasks

• Updating references to be in line with the current year.
• Reviewing each of your pages for content correctness, typos, grammar, and relevancy.
• Checking active email addresses to identify those that are excessive and need to be deleted.
• Ensuring the renewal of your website domain subscription.
• Considering whether you need to carry out an update on the website design.
• Reviewing all the top-performing articles and considering updating them with fresh, and new content.

As you can see, website maintenance is an intricate task that involves different activities to be carried out in different time periods. It enables you to ensure proper health for your website all the time. Clearly, it is not as easy as you might think. It might have taken you a short time to build and add pages to your website – thanks to the availability of easy-to-use tools – but maintaining it is a totally different ball game.

Benefits of Website Maintenance Services

Having looked at the various activities that go into website maintenance, it is clear that you need the help of a professional to properly carry it out. If you fail to maintain it, the website might just break down leading to losses to the business. When it comes to maintaining your website, doing it yourself would mean neglecting other tasks that go into properly running the business. Do not despair. Our team of professionals will help you with all that’s required to keep your website up-to-date and properly maintained.

Here are some of the most obvious benefits of hiring a dedicated website maintenance service.

1. Staying Updated

Ever since its inception, the internet has undergone a lot of changes and it continues to be so. Since your website is on the internet, it also needs to be updated on a regular basis. For instance, you need to make quick edits and updates to the site or postings. As part of the updates, you should ensure that the website can easily be accessed on multiple devices. A website maintenance service provider will help you to make the website capable of loading on mobile phones and tablets.

Another aspect that needs editing and updating is web content. Whether blog articles, images or graphics, regular updates aim at providing relevant content to the users all the time. If anything, users like visiting sites with updated, relevant content.

However, relevance doesn’t just refer to the content but also to the website’s look and functionality. In that case, the different elements of the site should be attractive and functional. No need for a website with a funny display and frustrating loading times. There are so many websites out there that people won’t stick with you. So, why don’t you ask for help to have your site updated?

2. Having Up-To-Date Security

Having an online presence opens up your business to potential customers from all over the world. But as the customer numbers increase, the risk of falling prey to hackers and other malicious characters also becomes a reality. Hackers are known to breach different websites including small and big ones. Part of the breaches may involve stealing and leaking confidential data or simply endangering your visitor’s security. For example, they may steal bank card details from your customers and defraud them of their money.

Luckily, you can secure your website through dedicated website maintenance services. We will help you buy and install an SSL certificate, update the code behind the website, and so on. Additionally, simply keeping your website in all the relevant aspects helps ward off hackers. After all, hackers like attacking sites with outdated systems. As part of their work, website maintenance service provider helps to keep up-to-date the elements that are at risk to ensure the site meets the latest security standards.

3. Protecting the Brand

When you have a business website, you should ensure that it is up and running all the time. If it keeps experiencing frequenting frequent outages and 404 errors, the website will communicate to the customers that you aren’t serious with what you do. Before you know it, the business will get a bad reputation for being unreliable. Customers will stop visiting and will talk negatively about your brand.

Also, a website with outdated plugins tends to look worn out. To potential customers, you will look more like a business amateur. Such seemingly small things can easily make customers lose trust in your brand.

Since the website is the face of your business online, you need to properly maintain it. You will keep it modern, responsive, and good looking. Also, you will secure the site’s uptime. In short, maintenance will ensure that you have a good looking website that portrays your brand positively. Potential customers will learn to trust your brand and pay up for the products and services on offer.

4. Providing Consistency to Customers

Most customers like dealing with reliable businesses. Existing statistics suggest that 75 percent of customers expect consistent services. Customers should be confident that they will get the services they need whenever they do. Take Amazon.com. If it was to go down for a day or two, it wouldn’t be considered a leader in the e-commerce industry.

If you have an unreliable website, you will not just lose your current customers but you are also likely to block off new ones that need to join in. Previous customers will also lose access to support services. Think about a customer with a complaint about your services. Will he or she really view you in a positive light if they cannot access your website?

Which is the reason you need to hire a website maintenance service? You will be able to reduce the incidence of downtime and provide consistent services to your customers. If customers find you to be reliable, they will keep buying your products or services. With time, you will be able to retain large numbers of customers and build a large customer base in the long-term. Your reputation will grow and attract even more clients.

5. Curtailing Lost Business

On top of making you look inconsistent, website outages lead to an eventual loss of business. That’s especially if you have an e-commerce website. In that case, downtime means a lack of sales and lost revenue. If the downtime persists, your losses will be even greater. Is it good when customers tell friends, family, and acquaintances about the difficulties they are having accessing the site? Would such people want to buy anything from you?

To ensure the site is reliable, hire a reliable website maintenance services provider. You will be able to reduce downtime and stop lost business. Your site will be protected and the structural aspects of the business secured. If something was to happen to the site, the website maintenance services provider will know how to go about it. He or she will stop lost business before the situation becomes worse.

6. Having Peace of Mind

It is easy to become depressed when your business is going through major issues. As we have seen, one of the biggest issues that could affect a business is a website that is always experiencing downtime. A website maintenance services provider is going to give you peace of mind. You will rest assured that your business website is in the right hands. If anything, you won’t have to worry about the aspects of the website.

The website maintenance service provider will be able to handle any attacks to the site, even in the dead of the night. Additionally, they will help automate processes on the site so that it keeps working, even when you are not watching.

Since you will not be worried about what’s going on with your site, it will be possible for you to have a healthy work-life balance. With the resultant clarity of purpose, it will be easier to scale up the business and watch it grow to greater heights.

7. Opportunity to Focus on Core Business Tasks

Small business owners often have to juggle different tasks to keep the business running. They have to market their products, manage the workers, mage finances and so on. If the business owns a website, then all tasks that go into its management and maintenance also falls in the hands of the owner. Yet, having to grapple with that may ways you from the core business tasks. In the end, it will not be possible to function properly.

If you have a website maintenance service working for you, it will be possible to concentrate on other aspects of the business that really matter. Also, your employees will concentrate on their core tasks without having to worry about implementing the latest trends in web design. The good thing is that you will have a well-running website, which is then able to complement your other efforts to grow the business. This will give you an obvious advantage over your competitors since you are able to implement new strategies to grow the business.

8. Getting Expert Help

As a small business owner, it is foolhardy to think you can handle all aspects of the business yourself. For a business to get up and running, it requires the implementation of several support services. No matter how hard you try, it is not possible to do everything that needs to be done. Even if you are able to pull it off, it will be impossible for you to operate to the highest levels of efficiency expected of the business. After all, you cannot be an expert in everything.

This applies to website maintenance as well as the other aspects of the business. Instead of wasting money and time researching how to fix a given issue with the website, you should leave it to the experts. Ask a dedicated website maintenance service provider to help you manage issues with your site. While it will cost you some money, this can easily be recovered when the website starts working for you.

Talking about expertise, website maintenance service providers have the training and experience to handle any issues with the site. They know how to use technology to prevent downtimes and can protect the site in ways that you couldn’t manage on your own. They are also capable of covering everything that goes into website maintenance.

9. Stronger SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an integral aspect of a business website. When handled properly, it has the ability to make the site visible to potential customers. Like other things that go into making your website better, SEO isn’t a one-off. Rather, it is an ongoing activity that aims at keeping your site on top of the SERPs.

As part of their work, a website maintenance service will ensure that the site and its content are in line with SEO best practices. They will check aspects such as content, URLs, and images to ensure they are geared for SEO. Since search engines keep updating their algorithms, the service provider will keep changing your site’s SEO in line with the prevailing trends.

When your SEO is strong, your business will have higher chances of being discovered by potential customers. This will increase the number of organic hits to your website, resulting in more conversions. The more the number of people reaching your website, the higher the sales you will make. In the end, your business will be more profitable, thanks to the efforts of website maintenance services to make your SEO more effective.

10. Saving Money

This point might sound counterintuitive, given that you will have to pay a website maintenance service provider a fee on a regular basis. However, the costs you will incur when you have a full-time team of employees working on the website will be much more. It will have to be a team of several people manning the website around the clock. Each of these staff will draw a regular salary, which cumulatively could cost your business a lot of money in the long run. That is before you factor in additional bonuses, leave days, and so on.

Clearly, it is much affordable when you have an agency maintaining the business website on your behalf. All you will have to pay is an annual fee. Together with that, a well-maintained website will save your business a lot of money. First, the website will remain operational throughout. In case of a crash, it will be restored quickly enough. With that, you will not have to lose money just because the website is down or has remained crashed for prolonged periods of time.

11. Accessing Backup and Rescue

Even with the advances being made in technology, websites still remain vulnerable to crashes and hacks. If anything was to happen to your website, you need to restore it within the shortest time possible. But that is only possible with a good backup and rescue plan. While employing best practices can help you to reduce the risks, you need to be prepared for any eventuality.

A website maintenance service will be able to provide regular backups to the website so that in case of a crash, you can recover without affecting your business. They will implement backups using the right technology and explain to you what to do in case of an emergency. Using the backed up data, they will help you to bounce back and keep the website up and running.

What Is The Cost Of Website Maintenance Services?

Depending on the agency you choose to work with, you will get website maintenance services in several packages. For a simpler website, you will be better off with a starter plan which will provide one hour of website maintenance once a month. It is ideal for small business websites with just a few pages. More advanced packages will vary in terms of the services offered and are charged by the hour. If you choose premium packages, you will get full website support around the clock.

When procuring website maintenance services, pay attention to more than just the number of support hours on offer. Check that the agency is capable of providing additional services such as domain management, web hosting, website backups & restores, content creation, product additions or changes, graphic optimization and so on. In short, you need to be clear that the agency will help your business run optimally.

Regardless of the cost of website maintenance services, you will certainly benefit in many ways than one. First, you will have at your disposal a team of experts to handle the important tasks. You will focus more on the core functions of the business and help your business to grow to even greater heights. So, buy a package based on the size and purpose of the website.

Conclusion

It is no longer necessary to discuss whether you need to hire website maintenance services or not. If you want your business to grow, you need a website that remains operational around the clock. On your own, it might be impossible to guarantee that. Make sure to talk to us with the view of asking for our help in maintaining your business website. We have a professional team of experts who will provide your business with the much needed competitive advantage. Talk to us today!