Here is a conversation that many businesses dodge, but one that can have a material impact on your bottom line: website maintenance. I’m talking about website updates, monitoring and testing.
Granted, it’s not the most glamourous topic, but it is a hugely important one as things can and do go wrong. Many Gold Coast website designers offer packages for website maintenance. While the cost varies significantly, basic plans are very affordable and typically start at less than $100 per month. At this price point, they generally include:
To be clear, completing the above tasks will never totally eliminate the possibility of running into website issues…but it does dramatically reduce the likelihood (and the frustrated customers this predicament brings). Importantly however, avoiding downtime is not the only benefit of website maintenance.
The following is a list of the top 5 reasons why your website needs monthly maintenance.
Regardless of industry, no customer likes a frustrating website experience. Making it more challenging is that expectations continue to rise among internet users. What we thought was a good user experience in 2012 is not comparable to 2022.
Keeping your WordPress website up to date and issue free (along with a fast-loading time) is a great way to keep both your clients and potential clients happy. They will stay on your website (or even return to it later) and are far more likely to engage with your business on the back of a positive user experience. Scenarios like this will ensure positive outcomes for your business.
With a name like SEO Web Logistics, it’s no surprise that we are passionate about search engine optimisation (SEO). And we know first-hand that Google tends to reward well maintained websites. If you do not maintain your website (in addition to limiting new content and other company updates), Google will notice.
After almost a decade in the business, we rave about the value of SEO for all industries. We’ve seen businesses scale quickly on the back of SEO success, but the opposite can ring true when SEO outcomes deteriorate. Even a small drop in rankings, can mean a significant hit to the bottom line. In this sense, website maintenance is more than likely to be a sound investment for your business.
We’re all super internet impatient these days, if you make websites visitors wait, they will be gone in a flash. According to Kissmetrics, 47 per cent of consumers expect a page to load in only two seconds or less…and 40 per cent say they will leave the website if they have to wait more than three seconds.
Of course, there could be numerous reasons as to why your website is slow. And sometimes it is not your website’s fault (for example if there is a poor server performance). However, what is beyond doubt is that optimising your website performance, including completing updates for WordPress and plugins, will improve your business site performance and speed. Improved speed will bring less frustration and reduced bounce rates among your website visitors.
Approximately 30,000 websites are hacked every day. It happens. All. The. Time.
There are plenty of reasons why your website could be targeted – stealing bandwidth, spam campaigns and stealing personal details, including credit card numbers. And although there are multiple reasons for hackers to do what they do, for the overwhelming majority of the time there is one common denominator: an older website (or at least one that is not updated).
Older plugins are super vulnerable to hacking. In fact, this is one of the reasons why plugins are updated regularly – to stay ahead of hackers. If your website does not update regularly with new plugin versions, it will be left vulnerable.
Because hackers are always at large looking for websites vulnerabilities to exploit, it is recommended that you have a capable website maintenance team to perform regular maintenance so they can identify and fix security gaps site and promptly fix them. Beyond providing updates to the plugins that provide website functionality, website maintenance will also typically include providing security plugins with the sole purpose of protecting and monitoring the website.
Website maintenance is comparable to car maintenance. The money saved on maintenance, is always less than the money spent scrambling for fast repairs. The price of monthly maintenance and security (starting at less than $100), will inevitably be cheaper than the cost of a crashed website that needs emergency updates and fixes.
It is also worth considering that if your website breaks, what impact will the downtime have on your business? Will you lose customers and/or frustrate existing ones? Even if you are only down for a few hours, losing customers and your reputation during this period can have long term implications and costs thousands of dollars.
No website is designed to as a ‘set-and-forget’. In order to be reliable and secure, as well as evolve as your business evolves, websites need to be maintained regularly. The cost of not doing so, could result in frustrated users as well as having a material financial impact on your business.
If you do not have a regular maintenance program, we’d encourage you to contact us to find out how we can help.
To learn more about website design, check out our website 101 page.
SEO Web Logistics has put together a 30 page booklet called Your Gold Coast Marketing Guide 2022 (COVID edition), which is full of marketing ideas, explanations and insights. We know COVID has been tough on many local businesses and hopefully our booklet can provide your business with some marketing inspiration!
