Imagine your website as your car or your backup generator. Though different, these machines require regular maintenance to perform optimally. And while it is easy to figure out how to maintain your car, maintaining your site can be complicated.
How do you maintain your website? Unlike your car, your site doesn’t require you to change its plugs, tires, or filters. Instead, it requires testing, backup, update, and a host of other essential things you’ll find out in this article.
Below, we have highlighted all you need to know about website maintenance.
What is Website Maintenance?
Website maintenance involves checking your website consistently to ensure that it is in good shape. You are required to carry our checks regularly to keep your site healthy, encourage continued traffic growth, and improve your SEO and Google ranking.
Indeed, failure to maintain your site will not lead to an accident or any life-threatening catastrophe, but it can leave your site prone to malware, and in the worst-case scenario, your site could stop working completely. Of course, no one wants such an issue to befall their site, hence the need for you to prioritize site maintenance.
Importance of Website Maintenance
We all know the importance of maintaining your car; it’s quite obvious. However, many business owners don’t know why they need to invest their time, effort, and money into maintaining their website.
Here are Five Reasons Why
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SEO
The aim of moving your business online is to draw attention to your business and attract customers. For such to happen, you need to ensure that your website is regularly updated.
Google often ranks sites that boast the most relevant information on their search engine result page. If you fail to update your blogs and other features, how do you compete with those who do? You’ll fall behind, and so will your business. Therefore, updating your site regularly is vital to your SEO strategy.
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Your Website Informs Users’ First Impressions
Website visitors enjoy a premium experience, which is why they often go for a website with the best user-friendliness. However, customers will bounce off your website if it takes minutes to load, appears outdated, or is riddled with several grammatical errors and technical glitches. Such a scenario isn’t good for your website and your business as a whole, as Google often takes note of how fast and often users exit from a website. If this happens regularly, Google will assume your website is irrelevant, and we bet you know what happens afterward.
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Your Website Helps Grow Your Sales
Your website is a virtual marketer. It helps you make sales even when you aren’t available physically. However, if your site has any glitches, customers will run away, and you’ll end up missing out on potential sales.
Of course, website glitches can be fixed. There are several website design Charlotte companies that you can contact to get the job done professionally. Contacting professional site designers is better than shouldering the task yourself, as they have the experience, coding skills, and tools required to identify the cause of your site problems and fix it effectively without delay.
These companies boast the tools and expertise required to help you get your site up and running.
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Site Visitors Value User Experience
Customers love sites that offer them amazing user experiences. However, the truth is, no one likes navigating a site that has multiple broken links or doesn’t load properly. So if your site offers customers anything less than what they love, they’ll leave and shop with a competitor instead. To ensure that such doesn’t happen, prioritize regular site maintenance to keep potential customers on your site while they ponder about making a purchase.
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Website Maintenance Enhances Security
Websites are often prone to cyber hackers who would stop at nothing to steal relevant customer data from a site when the opportunity presents itself.
In fact, based on statistics, cyber-attacks cost U.S. companies $15.4 million each year. Before you wrap your head around that insane figure, note thus: fixing the damage caused by cyber-attacks is often expensive. You may lose customers and, of course, have to pay a large amount of money to settle lawsuits that may arise from data theft.
Regular maintenance will make it hard for a cyber hacker to access your site easily by updating your firewalls and other security features. When you take the necessary steps to secure your site, customers will feel at ease making purchases on your site.
What does Website Maintenance Include?
Here are a few ways to carry out website maintenance
1. Testing Your Site Annually
Carry out a comprehensive test on your site at least once a year and after making updates. Ensure its features are functioning optimally, look for broken links, and keep an eye out for old or wrong information. Let a fresh eye go through your site to spot errors.
2. Testing Your Browser Compatibility
Visitors access sites via several browsers. To ensure that your site works well with these browsers, it makes sense to carry out a compatibility test at least once annually.
3. Testing Your Forms And Check Out Process Quarterly
If you run an e-commerce store, prioritize reviewing your checkout process at least once a quarter. The same applies to your forms as well. You want to ensure that these features function properly to boost your site user experience.
4. Check For Software Updates Monthly
Software updates are released often. Ensure you keep close tabs on monthly software update notifications from your hosting provider, security provider, including other third parties. These updates are key to the proper functioning and security of your website.
5. Backing Up Your Website
If you have a mobile device or a computer, the chances are that you know what a backup is, including its importance. If a backup plays a vital role in safeguarding important information on your phone and computer, you expect it to play a more significant role in protecting you from data loss should your site encounter a severe issue.
Activate the automatic backup feature on your website (if your website has such a feature), and always conduct monthly checks to ensure that it is working. For those who don’t, stick with manual backup (it should be done at least once a month).
Conclusion
A well-maintained website is like a well-kept home. You trust such a home to attract visitors any day, any time. Meanwhile, an unmaintained website is like an untidy home; it chases visitors away. So which would you prefer that your site be? The choice is yours.