Why is Website Maintenance Important?

Are you wondering whether you need a website for your business? Hint: Yes!

Contrary to popular belief, building a website for your business is more than just a one-time effort – it’s a work-in-progress that requires a lot of your time and attention. First impressions always count and your website acts as the face of your company. It takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like it or not and whether they’ll stay or leave.

Your website is one of the greatest assets you can have to build credibility to your business and match your products with your ideal customers. According to research, 84% of today’s consumers think a website makes your business more credible than companies who only have social media profiles. In the increasingly competitive digital landscape, there has never been a better time to invest in a professional website to showcase your products and services.

Regardless of size, website maintenance is an essential step you need to consider to ensure the success and smooth operation of your company. A well-maintained website can attract new clients, help position yourself as an industry leader within your niche and build trust amongst your target audience.

In this blog, we’ve got the answers to the most common questions about what exactly is a website maintenance plan and how you should optimise your website to create a smooth customer experience:

1. What is a website maintenance plan?

A website maintenance plan is an ongoing premium service to ensure that your website is kept up to date, secure and fast.

A website maintenance package can include things such as: WordPress core and plugin updates, backups, advanced monitoring, SMTP relay, number of support hours a month and many more.

2. What should I look for in my website maintenance plan?

• Site Monitoring and Tracking – Monitoring your website allows us to know your website is down before you do. Being alerted when a website goes down is invaluable if your business relies on having 99% uptime.

• Enhanced Security and Protection – A good web maintenance plan involves monitoring of your website for threats and attacks and it can perform security fixes if required.

It’s particularly important for eCommerce websites to stay on top of any security updates to keep the large amount of user data protected. Regular security checks are required to catch any loopholes or vulnerabilities.

• Fast Loading Speed – Fast site speed is important not only from your visitors point of few but also being an important metric to Google and correlated with higher search engine rankings & conversions.

The loading speed of your website also influences how the users are interacting with your content and regular maintenance can help increase your conversion rates.

3. How can a website maintenance plan help my business?

• Maintains your SERPs strong – From a SEO standpoint, updating your website regularly with new content, such as blog posts or case studies, helps your business to rank higher on the search engines. A routine website maintenance is the best opportunity to fine-tune your content, review your keywords and optimise your user experience.

• Creates a smooth user journey – Your website should reflect your business values and match your clients’ expectations. As part of your website maintenance plan, you should consider fixing any issues that might make your visitors go away from your landing page and you should aim to improve the overall performance of your website. 

 For instance, you should prioritise solving any technical difficulties, such as broken links, and proofreading your articles to ensure they contain good grammar and punctuation.

• Strengthens your brand image – The quality of your website has an impact on your clients’ perception of your brand. If your website is out of date and poorly maintained, your customers will lose their trust in purchasing your products and services.

On the other hand, a strong domain host, along with a fast-loading speed, a good security system and high-quality content with clear call-to-actions will convert your visitors into customers and increase your conversion rates.

4. How often should I perform a website maintenance?

Ideally, website maintenance should be done on a monthly basis to ensure you keep your customers updated with the latest news and new offerings or discounts.  

To avoid a cyber threat or security breach, we recommend having a professional web maintenance staff in place to protect your website and enhance your security system.

5. What happens if I don’t maintain and regularly curate my website?

If your website is not maintained, then parts will start to go out of date and will leave security vulnerabilities amongst other things.

If your website is built on a platform such as WordPress, then letting plugins get so out of date becomes problematic further down the line and becomes a much bigger job to update.

6. What is the average cost to maintain a website?

A support package can typically range from as little as £250 a month all the way to £1000+. The support costs per month depend on your business objectives. Here at Platform81, we want to support you on your business journey and we offer flexible and affordable website maintenance packages to ensure it suits your individual needs.

Why choose Platform81 for your website maintenance needs?

If you want to give your website the glow-up it deserves and enhance your branding, get in touch with our team today and let us do the hard work for you.

We’ll work together step-by-step to build and develop a fully optimised and functional website, as well as create a website maintenance plan that best matches your needs and fits your budget.