Why is Website Maintenance Important?

Is your website well maintained?

To manage a successful website, you must be prepared to commit a significant amount of time to its maintenance – or, if you don’t have the time, pay a professional to do so.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that building the website is the hardest part. Building and putting a website live is just the beginning. 

Once your website is up and running and attracting visitors, its performance needs to be carefully monitored, and regular maintenance is required to keep it running smoothly and performing optimally.

In this article, we’ll explain more about website maintenance, why it is so important, and how our website maintenance packages can take the weight off your shoulders. We offer WooCommerce and WordPress maintenance packages as well as Shopify maintenance packages. Get in touch to find out more!

Now, let’s get to the bottom of why website maintenance is so important…

What is website maintenance?

Website maintenance is the practice of monitoring your website’s performance and regularly updating it to keep it up-to-date and functioning properly.

At its core, website maintenance keeps your website running smoothly and performing optimally. It can also help to improve user experience, boost your search engine rankings, and fuel business growth.

What are the typical tasks involved in maintaining a website?

Website maintenance involves a variety of tasks, some of which should be carried out weekly or monthly, whilst others only need to be performed quarterly or annually. The amount of time you need to spend on website maintenance depends on the size and complexity of your website.

• Site testing – Your website should be tested regularly to ensure that everything is in full working order. This includes checking forms, search functions, and eCommerce features to ensure they are all functioning correctly.
• Accessibility testing – Regular accessibility testing ensures that your website is inclusive and accessible to users of all abilities. This process involves checking that your website complies with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), which set out the global standard for web accessibility.
• Monitoring KPIs – Monitoring KPI metrics like page load time, bounce rate, and conversion rates will help you understand how your website is performing and identify any errors or areas for improvement.
• Update website software – Updating your website’s software whenever an update becomes available is vital for both security and performance. This includes updates for your website’s content management system, plugins, apps, and any other third-party software that it uses.
• Back-ups – It’s crucial that you perform frequent website backups and store them securely in the cloud. An up-to-date backup allows you to safely restore your website if you experience data loss or technical issues.
• Link audits – Conducting link audits helps with identifying and repairing broken website links which can otherwise negatively impact user experience and SEO. 
• Fix website issues – Monitoring and resolving errors, such as 404 errors and server issues, helps to maintain a smooth and positive user experience.
• Content updates – Regularly reviewing and updating outdated website content helps to keep it fresh and relevant to engage visitors and improve SEO. This could include posting new blogs, refreshing outdated content, and updating product information.
• Security monitoring – This involves regularly auditing your website’s security, addressing website security vulnerabilities, and implementing measures to protect it from threats like malware, hacking, and data breaches.

Keeping up with these maintenance tasks will help you maintain a high-functioning, secure, and user-friendly website that meets the needs of your visitors and helps you achieve your business goals.

Why is website maintenance so important?

Without proper website maintenance, you could soon run into problems. Your website may begin to slow down, conversion rates could drop, or website traffic could dry up altogether. The maintenance tasks listed in the previous section help keep your website running like a well-oiled machine. A high-performance website drives business growth, while a poorly maintained one will only hinder it. Let’s find out more about the importance of website maintenance and explore the key reasons why it should feature high on your priority list.

First impressions count

Your website is often the first point of content between your audience and your brand. A well-maintained and fully functional website will help make a professional and trustworthy first impression and encourage visitors to explore further and engage with your business.

Enhancing user experience

So, what is the impact of maintenance on user experience? Keeping up with website maintenance tasks helps to ensure that every aspect of your website functions smoothly, from its navigation to its page loading speeds. This helps to improve user experience and keeps visitors on your website for longer, improving your chances of converting visitors into paying customers or leads.

Security is key

Website maintenance and security go hand in hand. As cyber threats evolve, maintaining your website’s security is more important than ever. By regularly auditing and updating your security protocols and software, you can minimise the risk of a security breach and protect sensitive data.

Improve search engine rankings

Search engines favour websites that are frequently updated with fresh and relevant content. By regularly refreshing and updating your website’s content, you can enhance its visibility in SERPs and gain more organic traffic.

Speed and performance optimisation

Website visitors expect pages on your website to load within just a few seconds. To keep your site running quickly, it’s important to perform ongoing website optimisation, such as compressing images and streamlining code. Otherwise, your bounce rates could begin to rise.

Safeguarding your reputation

Your website reflects your brand. A site that is regularly updated and cared for demonstrates professionalism and commitment to quality, which can enhance your brand’s reputation and credibility.

What are the risks of neglecting website maintenance?

Failing to maintain your website could cause you a whole host of problems. Let’s find out the key risks of neglecting to maintain your website.

Losing customers

A poorly maintained website will soon become outdated, slow, and buggy, causing a variety of user experience issues. These issues can drive customers away, causing bounce rates to rise and conversion rates to fall. They could even result in the loss of previously loyal customers.

Increased security risks 

An unmaintained website is more vulnerable to cyber threats like malware, hacking, and cyberattacks. If you don’t keep up with security maintenance tasks, your business data and your customers’ data are at risk.

Reputational damage

The way your website is maintained reflects your business’s professional reputation. Frequent downtime, security breaches, or an outdated design can all tarnish your company’s image. This is especially true for security breaches, which can lead to a significant loss of customer trust and credibility.

Legal repercussions

If your website handles sensitive data, the stakes are even higher. A lack of maintenance could result in a security breach and data theft. Should sensitive data be compromised because of inadequate website maintenance, you could face serious legal repercussions.

Keeping up with regular website maintenance

Ok, so it’s clear just how important website maintenance is, but how are you supposed to keep up with so many maintenance tasks when you’re already busy running a business?

If you have a business website, it’s important to recognise that maintaining it is crucial to your business’s success. It is not optional or something that should be done as an afterthought.

To keep up with maintenance tasks, create a website maintenance checklist and schedule for reviewing different aspects of your website. You will need to schedule website maintenance tasks to be completed routinely, usually daily, weekly, monthly, or annually.

If you can set up routine tasks like back-ups, security scans, and software updates to happen automatically, then do so! This approach will help reduce your mental load, save you time, and reduce the risk of human error.

If you can’t find the hours in the day to carry out website maintenance yourself, or you are not confident in your technical abilities, then why not leave it to the professionals and hire website maintenance services? Investing in a professional website maintenance package gives you access to expertise and experience to ensure that all aspects of your website are maintained competently. Outsourcing website maintenance is often more cost-effective than doing it yourself or training or hiring someone in-house, and it provides you with peace of mind that your website is secure and performing optimally.

Let our experts handle your website maintenance

Whether you run a WooCommerce or WordPress website or manage a Shopify store, we have a website maintenance solution for you. 

Create8’s WooCommerce and WordPress maintenance packages

We offer hosting and maintenance packages for WooCommerce and WordPress websites, helping you to ensure that your website is always up-to-date, fast, and secure. 

Our WooCommerce and WordPress maintenance packages include the following:

• Hosting
• Up to 5Gb storage
• Secure servers
• Hourly cloud back-ups
• SSL certificate
• Litespeed caching
• Security updates
• Plugin updates
• PHP updates
• WooCommerce updates
• Live test check-over

Create8’s Shopify maintenance packages

For Shopify stores, we offer a bespoke maintenance retainer package designed to keep your store secure and competitive.

Our Shopify maintenance packages include the following:

• Dedicated hours per month
• Dedicated dev team
• Account management
• Troubleshooting and bug fixes
• Disaster recovery
• Broken page fixes
• Monthly performance review
• Help desk support
• Broken app fixes

So, don’t let technical issues or outdated content slow down your business growth. Contact us today to learn more about our website maintenance packages.