Why Website Maintenance Will Make You More Successful

As technology evolves, website software is constantly being updated to make it more secure, faster, and more visible to search engines. Just like the software on your computer and your smartphone, your website software needs updating too.

Avoiding website maintenance is like deciding not to have regular oil changes done on your car. Your vehicle wouldn’t last very long if you didn’t look after it, and the same is true for your website. You need your website to always be live and representing your business effectively.

“Set it and forget it” is not a sound strategy

When’s the last time you checked to make sure your website is functioning properly?

Website care is not something you can afford to postpone! If someone visits your site and find something wrong with it, they probably won’t stick around, and unless they already know you, they’re not likely to bring it to your attention.

Missed issues or downtime can cost you potential business. To protect the time and money you’ve invested in your website, maintenance needs to be carried out on a regular basis.

Understand the benefits of website maintenance

If your website doesn’t display properly, is slow to load, or is down altogether, it won’t be able to do its job of bringing you leads and customers.?Its performance, load time, downtime and uptime depend on your WordPress software and plugins functioning the way they’re supposed to.

Your website’s growth, fresh content, analytics monitoring and design changes require all updates to be completed in a smooth and error-free fashion.

My website care workflow

My team and I take great care to back up every site and check for issues after updates have been completed. My system keeps track of the plugins we update, so if there’s ever a problem, we can see what changes were made and reverse them.

We also conduct regular performance and security scans, so we can address any issues before you even know about them.

The risks of “Do It Yourself” website maintenance

You might think you’ll save money by doing your own updates, but do you ever wonder?what could happen if something goes wrong?

If you simply click to apply all the available updates listed in your WordPress dashboard, you won’t have a record of what you did, and if an issue arises some time later, you won’t know what caused it.

Your only option might be to restore an old backup, and then you’ll lose any content changes, sales orders, contact form entries, or other updates that have been added since that backup was created.

Fixing costs more than maintaining

If neglect or lack of experience damage the look or functionality of your website, or if your website is hacked, you’ll have a big decision to make.

1. Try to fix it yourself, and hope you don’t do further damage.
2. Pay the (sometimes hefty) price for someone experienced to fix it.

Just like your car, it costs more to fix when things go wrong than it does to maintain it properly in the first place. You don’t wait for your car to break down to take it in for service, so why would you treat your website with any less care?

Call in a professional

Would you try to fight a court battle without a lawyer? Then why would you try to maintain your own website?

By having an experienced web professional update and maintain your site properly, you won’t be spending money; you’ll actually be saving potential lost sales and visitors.

Instead of putting your valuable investment at risk, check out my new?Website Care Plans, then choose the one that’s right for you.

Janet Barclay simplifies WordPress website ownership for women with service businesses by hosting, monitoring, and maintaining their sites so they can focus on what they do best.

Is your website getting the results you need? Should you be considering a change in strategy?

Download Janet's free e-book, 5 Things Every Small Business Owner Can Fix on Their Website in the Next Week to Attract More Clients.

?Originally published on Janet's Blog?