Important Things You Need to Know About Website Maintenance

After you receive a beautiful, perfectly functional website from your design team, all of the hard work is over right? Not so fast. Even after your website is up and running, maintenance is essential. Website design doesn’t stop once you have a live site. Website maintenance is one of the most important, if not the most, aspects of having an online presence. Consistent monitoring and updating, when necessary, is essential to ensuring your company’s website is not only working properly but bringing you in the business you want.

The work of a web development firm never ends. In order to keep your custom website running smoothly, someone needs to manage its upkeep. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself with stale content, broken links, slow pages, and outdated features that could turn away valuable users.

While you might be able to get away with doing some of the maintenance yourself, it’s better, in the long run, to have your website design team handle it. Daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly tasks need to be taken care of on your website that requires certain technical skills, time, and knowledge that most business owners don’t possess. Besides, you should be paying attention to running a business rather than running a website. Here are some reasons why your website design team should take care of your website maintenance:

It saves you money
Keeping your web design team onboard to provide web maintenance services saves money compared to hiring an in-house employee. Professional web design and development companies usually include maintenance in their packages, which costs less than the salary and benefits of a full-time employee. This saved money can go toward growing your business and overall goals.

In case of emergency
If your website suddenly crashes, that could mean a loss of customers and money for as long as it’s down. If you stick with DIY web maintenance, you may find that certain problems take longer than others. That’s why having a website team on call can help. They know your website design inside and out, so it won’t take them too long to fix any bugs. Having a functioning website, with limited downtime, means more visitors, loyal customers, visibility, and growth.

Professional expertise
Doing website maintenance yourself means you probably don’t know the latest trends or important updates in web design. That means a lot when showcasing your business online. Luckily, it’s your website design team’s job to know all of these features. Therefore, you can expect the team to keep your website up-to-date with the best functions and usability out there.

Security
Successful web design relies on advanced security. Imagine if your website got hacked and users found that their sensitive information was stolen. Your business would lose credibility and loyal customers. With a professional team, you can be confident that they provide not only a secure hosting platform, but also keep your site updated with the latest security measures. Security breaches can be prevented with the right team of experts on your side.

Better user experience
It’s no surprise that website maintenance is for your customers. Users will continue coming back to a site that runs great while looking modern and professional. A web design team will work tirelessly to ensure you have the latest in features, updates, and content. This keeps users engaged and happy. A perfectly functional site encourages users to explore, convert, and return.

You can devote more time elsewhere
Employing a website design team for your business to handle we maintenance services means you can focus time and energy to other aspects of your business. While you focus on driving company success, the design team can focus on growing online success, with both sides contributing to overall growth and prosperity.

Website maintenance is just as important as developing a website. A modern, well-designed site tells visitors that your business is up-to-date and active. To keep it this way, it’s important to have your website design team handle the upkeep instead of doing it yourself. After all, they already have a relationship with you and your business, so you can trust them to make sure everything online runs smoothly, freeing up your time to do other tasks.

Having a website involves much more than its initial presentation online. WordPress sites need continual updating and scheduled maintenance to make sure they stay in tip-top shape. The ever-evolving nature of technology requires this. Staying up to date on the latest WordPress version gives peace of mind when it comes to eliminating vulnerabilities, outdated technology, and poor user experience.

Website maintenance should stand at the front of your website priorities. After all, so many things can go wrong. You need to understand the importance of updating and checking your website not only for your business but also for your customers. Let’s discuss some major issues you could run into by not having professionals handle your website maintenance.

Security Breach
Not updating your WordPress site invites trouble from hackers, viruses, and other bad guys. The popularity and open sources of WordPress means anyone can find its code online, making it great for beginners and experts alike to learn. Unfortunately, hackers can also see this code and they love finding holes to exploit. They can steal information, add or delete content, implant malicious viruses, and so much more. Possible attacks include backdoors, malicious redirects, pharma hacks, and drive-by downloads. These could lead to your site getting blacklisted by your hosting company, which means a lot of headaches and groveling on your end to make things right again. Your site might even come up against a brute force attack, which stems from weak passwords. Fortunately, the developers at WordPress track all of these issues and help out as fast as they can. That’s why you’ll find so many updates available. It’s all an attempt to protect you.

You could lose everything without a backup
WordPress offers a degree of stability and trust, however, bad things happen sometimes. In the event of a worst-case scenario, like losing all of your site files, backing up your site on a remote server will save you time and money. Every time you go to update the website, you’ll be prompted to back up your files. You’ll probably be fine most of the time, but on the off-chance something goes down, having a backup won’t throw you off your game. Sometimes hackers can get in and erase everything, leaving you to start from scratch. Having all of your database and files safely replicated elsewhere is a no-brainer.

Loss of trust from users
Site maintenance allows you to fix any and all bugs that might come up. These affect the user experience greatly. Have you ever been on a site that just doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to? You probably felt frustrated and left, losing respect for the site. A website that performs poorly, from inactive buttons to broken images, gives a poor impression to users. They might not want to register or subscribe, thinking a faulty website means a faulty business. Maintain your reputation by updating to the newest version of WordPress. Any bugs that occurred in the past will have been dealt with and fixed. Having an older version may make your site act dysfunctional for no reason.

A slow website
Are you tired of waiting and waiting and waiting for your website to load? Feeling like your Grandma could run a marathon faster?! Don’t worry, you are not alone. Many people struggle with the load speed of their website.

More importantly, Google has stated that website load speed is a factor in how your site will rank in the organic search results. So you don’t want to start with a mark against you since that could affect your business’ visibility online. You can check out your load speed by using the Google Page Speed Developer Tool. If you have questions about your results feel free to reach out to us and we can walk you through it.

Here are four reasons why your website could be running slow:

1. Image Size
The number one reason your site might be slow is because of the files size of your images. Images are a great way to visually represent your brand and vibe. However, large sliders can be a culprit for slowing down your site’s speed. You need to make sure and/or check that your file sizes aren’t too large. The images on your site should preferably be between 80kb and 120kb. WordPress has great plugins that can auto compress your images so you don’t even have to worry about it. Ask us today to find out more about it.

2. Videos
The latest trend in business is to have video animations which describe your business and product/services. The younger generations need to be visually stimulated and get the information quickly, which is why short animations describing your business are great! Click here to read about how video animations can help your business.

As awesome as videos are on your website, they sure can slow your website down significantly if they are hosted ON your website. The solution: YouTube! Your video should be hosted on a 3rd party like Vimeo or YouTube, which you can link to the video on your website. YouTube is also the second largest search engine and that can help boost your SEO efforts. But the main takeaway here, please host your video on YouTube.

3. Minify HTML/CSS
Depending upon who the developer was who build your website, they should minify and compress the CSS files as much as they can. It is important to have an experienced developer put your website together. Yes, more experience means more money, but in the long run, you will be better off and will have fewer headaches.

4. Content Served with HTTP Compression
This category circles back to the same issue with minifying HTML/CSS. You must have a good developer create the site for you. Would you go into a dark alley to have heart surgery? I hope you said no to that. Same goes for your website. Don’t go with Joe Shmo’s brother’s sister’s cousin who is in college just learning how to develop a website so you can save a few thousand. You are going to end up paying an experienced developer to make the corrections down the road anyway, so why not save yourself and do it right the first time?

Not only does a slow website harm the overall user experience, but it also affects search-engine optimization (SEO). Search engines love faster sites—both mobile and desktop—and even give them priority over the rest. In fact, 53% of users abandon a mobile site if it takes 3 or more seconds to load. People just don’t have the patience to wait, no matter how great the website. For you, that could mean losing a lot of potential customers. Save yourself a world of hurt by keeping your site updated and running at its best speed with great website maintenance.

Theme and plugin problems
WordPress themes make websites look the way they do and go through consistent updating for enhancement. Similarly, WordPress plugins make websites do cool things like offer forms and visual effects. They come from various developers or authors who update them regularly. However, if you don’t update with them, you’ll be missing out on better features. Plus, if a plugin breaks, it will mess up your whole site and could break entire pages. If they’re not compatible anymore, they’ll stop working while running a security risk. Updating WordPress but not your themes or plugins could also cause compatibility issues. You will find yourself with mobile-response problems, major vulnerabilities, broken captchas, and much more.

Fortunately, WordPress offers a few different ways for site owners to stay on top of updates. Here are a number of ways to update your WordPress site:

• Manual
  If you are tech-savvy, you can make the necessary updates yourself. Either through the Updates screen or via File Transfer Protocol (FTP). The latter involves fewer risks of the site breaking compared to the former. But don’t worry, WordPress will let you know when it’s time to update.
• Automatic
  Some hosts provide automatic WordPress updating. Every version release, big or small, promises bug fixes and better security. You can choose to have plugins and themes automatically updated, too.
• By a professional
  If none of these options work for you, then consider hiring a WordPress professional. A reputable pro can handle anything and everything including backups, testing, and regular maintenance. This way, you won’t have to worry about making a damaging mistake to your site.

Lucky for you, the above disasters can be avoided. With a little education, elbow grease, and the right team, your website site can run optimally without fear of hacking, breaking, or disappearing.

Remember, showing off your great business doesn’t stop at the front door, but continues online. Give users what they deserve, while providing a professional web presence they can trust. Putting time and effort into your website maintenance, by hiring professionals, means you’ll be well on your way to success online.

If you have any questions about web maintenance services, please feel free to contact our team today. We would be happy to help.