The Importance of Website Maintenance

One of the greatest mistakes business owners can make is having a “set it and forget it” approach to their website and digital marketing. Websites are like living online beings – they need a lot of attention, monitoring and regular support to stay safe and in good health. And if you’re using your website to market your business, sell products via e-commerce, or connect with your customers, you need a good working site.

There’s a reason why you go to your trusted GP for regular check-ups. Even if there isn’t anything obviously wrong on the surface, it’s still important to make sure everything is working the way it’s meant to. The same goes for your website health. 

What is Website Health and Why Is It Important?

Website health and maintenance is the process of logging in to your website on a regular basis to check it for potential issues and perform software updates for all plugins, theme files and WordPress versions. A well maintained and attractive website is important to all businesses to encourage traffic growth, improve SEO and Google rankings, and so they can continue to engage and retain customers.

There are two common tasks associated with website maintenance that need to be done on a regular basis to keep any site running like a well-oiled machine: 

1. Core Software and Plugin Updates

Many business owners think websites don’t require updates after set-up. Technology moves so quickly that sites need updates to avoid any conflicts with new tech, devices and browsers. WordPress powers around 35% of all websites in the world. When a security vulnerability is reported,

WordPress addresses it in the next update. And yet, about 73% of websites are running outdated and vulnerable software, exposing them to all risks related to infection by malware, infiltration by hackers, and malfunction by unsupported software.

Plugins tend to be more problematic. The average business site has 5 to 20 plugins, and 98% of web vulnerabilities are related to them. Thus, if WordPress plugin updates are not run often, they can misbehave and potentially harm your website. 

2. Website Backup

Remember the time your computer crashed and you couldn’t recover any of your files afterwards? It’s not just documents and spreadsheets – it’s hours of work and brainstorming down the drain. So now you probably have regular computer backups in place, whether it’s automated or manual.

Do you do the same for website? Your website is even more susceptible to online threats than any of your devices. It’s not just about taking the necessary security precautions, it’s also about making backups of your website. This should be done on a monthly basis and especially after a major upgrade or change.

Should anything happen to your website, you’ll at least have all the data from the last backup that the developer can reinstate. If you don’t:

You lose all the work you’ve done.

You lose site revenue during recovery.

You lose time during the rebuild process.

The Benefits of Maintaining Your Website

There are benefits to website backups and maintenance other than saving your time, money and energy.

1. Prevention is Better Than Cure

The growth and update of your website, as well as gaining new traffic and maintaining your search engine ranking, depend on your website performance and load time. More than half of site visitors leave your website if the load speed is slower than three seconds. Every second reduces conversion by up to 20%.

You need the latest versions of WordPress and its plugins to ensure your site has the best chance of customer retention.

• WordPress and plugins are frequently updated to fix bugs and add features.
• Being proactive, preventative, and maintaining your site with a professional cost less in the long run than fixing it (or creating it all over again).
• It will give you peace of mind.

2. Online Backups

Backups are done by the developer where the entire process happens behind the scenes, saving your site’s files and folders securely on a remote server. Your website data is stored across multiple locations in case one of the files become corrupted or damaged.

3. Speedy Site Recovery

One of the biggest benefits of using a backup partner is being able to restore your site to the most recently saved version in an instant. Should anything happen, you have a backup that is no more than 30 days old that the developer can use to get your website back up and running. This is a much slower process when you’re managing your own backups, especially if you don’t have the necessary technical skills or proper backup processes in place.

The problem with updating WordPress and plugins yourself is that you won’t have a record of what has changed and what potential problems or conflicts it may cause. You could end up not being able to make edits to your website and spending more time, energy and finances on troubleshooting.

The Cost of Maintaining A Website

Affordable web maintenance is within reach. The cost of maintaining a website does not have to break the bank when you work with Tap.

We offer maintenance per website per month which includes monthly updates of plugins and backup of your website. We also offer repairs and technical assistance to plugin errors and changes (at additional charges) should it be required.

Contact me and let us look after your site and ensure that it is always up and running.