Why Should I Care About Web Maintenance?

Your new website is finally live. You’re happy with how everything looks, and your customers seem to love it. You can mark this major component of marketing your business as “done” so you can move on with other things, right? Not necessarily. A website is never truly complete.

Think of your website as if it’s a new car. When you first get it, everything looks fantastic, runs as it should, and does exactly what you purchased it for. However, over time, you will need to provide regular web maintenance to keep it running as it should and in peak condition. If you don’t, you will eventually run into major issues and your car might stop working altogether. The same can be said for a website.

SEE ALSO: Everything You Should Look For In a Website Hosting Provider

Even though your site is alive and kicking, it isn’t immune to the hands of time. It can become susceptible to unwanted backend access. Plugins and scripts being used on your site will become outdated and need updating, causing some key components – such as contact forms, gallery showcases, and other site essentials – to stop working. Visitors may have trouble accessing certain pages and will be deterred from using your site, thus decreasing your website traffic and affecting your sales.

The way to combat these inevitable issues is to invest in a solid web maintenance plan. By ensuring your website is protected and constantly being monitored, your site will be in perfect working order for years to come.

Listed below are five reasons as to why web maintenance is an essential component to any business’ site.

1) Keep Your Site Secure

Security is, first and foremost, the biggest concern when it comes to anything existing on the internet. It is also the top reason to look into a web maintenance plan. Modern websites contain many elements that draw from outside sources. This can leave windows open for hackers to get into your site. With security breaches becoming more and more common on all sorts of sites, it’s wise to protect your site.
Good web maintenance plans can help you out. They can provide you with the peace of mind you need. Many plans will offer services like hardened firewalls, hack/infection cleanups, uptime monitoring, and DDoS attack protection. In the event something ever does happen to your site – whether it’s a security breach or someone trusted accidentally modified a page – regular backups are performed on local servers, remote servers, and off-server datacenters to ensure your site’s data will always be safe and recoverable.

2) Stay Up-To-Date

With the way the web is today, most web components and in an ever-changing state. With constant updates to frameworks, plugins, scripts, and anything else that your site relies on to function, there’s the chance that your site might stop working if it isn’t kept up to date. This can be avoided by investing in a web maintenance place that will tackle these constant updates for you. Good plans will provide you automatic updates for your CMS (content management system) version and all associated CMS extensions that are powering your site.

Keeping your site up to date doesn’t stop at just the backend. A great web maintenance plan will provide you with the option to update the frontend of your website as well as the backend. You can have access to web designers who will make updates to your site if you want images changed out, page redesigns, update site copy, new pages built, add new products or services your business is offering, and anything else you can think of to enhance your current site.

3) Save Time And Money

Your website was, most likely, a large investment for your company that took weeks or months to finish. You don’t want to throw all that effort and expense away if something goes wrong and your site is hacked or accidentally gets deleted without being backed up. While subscribing to a web maintenance plan does cost something, the fee is nominal compared to having to rebuild an entire site or fix major issues that arise on sites. It can take a lot of time to manually update or rebuild sites, so catching issues early on will save both time and money. Having a trusted, diligent source monitoring your site’s health is extremely beneficial and will ensure the longevity of your website.

4) Enhance Client Experience

By enrolling in a web maintenance plan, you will be providing your visitors with a satisfactory experience. Routine checks will assure everything is working properly and there aren’t any outstanding issues or potential threats on your website. This makes it a safe and accessible place for visitors. Regular web maintenance will prevent commons web errors like slow speeds, broken links, and page errors. If customers find that a site is hard to navigate because of slow loading time or the inability to access some content, they will not want to waste their time trying and will move onto another company whose site can provide them with a better, more user-friendly experience.

5) Drive More Traffic To Your Site

A good web maintenance plan can contribute to lead generation. Keeping up to date with your content will also help draw in potential customers and keep your SEO (search engine optimization) current and trending. Having fresh content and a site that works seamlessly for guests is a must. Current and new customers will stay interested and keep coming back if there is always something new for them and your site’s functionality is consistent.

We Are Here to Help You

One Firefly offers a variety of great web maintenance and hosting plans that can ensure your site will be safe, up to date, and help your business grow. Our web maintenance plans include all the services listed in this article and more.