Website maintenance services are important to protect your online business and to ensure that your website is running at optimal levels for the benefit of your customers and site users.
If you’ve been sitting on the fence thinking about signing up your website for maintenance services, sign up now. Yes, you’ll have to pay for the service but the monthly costs are justifiable if you consider the repercussions on your business if your website gets compromised.
In this article, we’ll discuss the 6 benefits of securing your online business with website maintenance services. But first, let’s find out what this type of service is all about.
What Is Website Maintenance Service?
Website maintenance service encompasses a list of functions/responsibilities that a web design agency will undertake to oversee the performance, security, and management of a website within a specified period.
Among the services included in a website maintenance plan are the following:
- System and plugin updates
- Daily website backups
- Email support services
- Database optimization
- Spam cleanup
- Security monitoring
- Performance scans
- Scan and repair broken links
- Comment moderation
- Google Analytics report
- Keyword Reporting
- Submission of monthly reports
Remember, your website runs 24/7 and 365 days a year. These services are intended to keep your website in tip-top shape and performing in optimal condition every time it’s accessed by a user.
The 6 Benefits Of Securing Your Online Business With Website Design Services
If you have a brick-and-mortar or physical location of your business, you hire managers, supervisors, and staff employees to run its day-to-day operations, right?
Likewise, you invest in software programs that manage inventory, keep track of cash flows, record employee attendance, and organize documents. You might even secure your business with insurance policies.
Of course, you’ll have security systems installed in key areas of the store and probably hire a 9-to-5 security guard.
You do all of these things so that your business can run efficiently, remain protected from theft and other criminal activities, and for you to allocate your time to managing the core functions of your business.
Your website is your business address on the Internet. It’s where you find opportunities that you can potentially convert into income. Like your physical location, you want site users to have a wonderful experience on your website.
And you want your assets and customers protected from the malicious acts of cyber-criminals.
Compared to your physical location, a website would need to be more assured of efficiency and security because it’s accessible to anyone in the world with an Internet connection and is open 24/7.
“More” doesn’t mean hiring more managers, supervisors, and staff employees. There’s no need to acquire security hardware or hire personnel to watch your website.
All you need to do is sign up for website maintenance services.
1. Update Website Technology
Technology evolves so fast that today’s innovations might be obsolete tomorrow. While that statement is an exaggeration, our point is that you need to keep website technology updated to keep pace with the demands of your customers and the industry.
Here are 3 reasons why you should update your website technology.
A. Innovations in Mobile Technology
Mobile phones are currently using 5G technology. Before you know it, phones are running on faster, more powerful technology with greatly enhanced visuals, and features that are light years ahead.
Your website has to be able to adapt to the latest innovations in mobile technology because the numbers show consumers prefer to use mobile devices to access the Internet:
- Mobile devices account for 58.3% of online traffic;
- 92.3% of consumers use mobile devices to access the Internet;
- Of the 4.9 billion people who use the Internet on a daily basis, 4.32 billion use a mobile phone.
If your website isn’t mobile responsive, you’ll lose prospective customers and leave sales on the table.
A web design agency can schedule a website audit to track and measure its level of mobile responsiveness and implement changes to ensure it can accommodate the latest innovations in mobile technology.
B. User Experience
You want your website to consistently provide its users with an excellent user experience.
As your business grows, so will the demands on your website. You’ll have to upload more content about new products and offerings. You might add new features that make shopping easier and more convenient.
Regular website maintenance services can ensure that your site is on-point when it comes to:
- Download speed;
- Accessibility;
- Mobile-responsiveness;
- Quality of content;
- Ease of navigation;
- Functionality;
- Site security.
And you have to stay ahead of the competition. Your website must offer a better, more memorable user experience than others in the industry.
C. Site Security
We’ll discuss the importance of regularly updating your website’s security protocols in the next section.
One of the keys to keeping cybercriminals off your website is to frequently update its system and plugins. An outdated system and set of plugins are like doors without locks in your physical location.
They provide an entryway for cybercriminals to infiltrate your website because the old programs can easily be overridden.
Updating the system and plugins of a WordPress website is easy but as an entrepreneur, you won’t have the time to do this whenever they’re required. Also, it’s not just updating old plugins. You must also remove plugins that are unused or hardly used.
2. Security and Protection of Your Assets
Every day, billions of people are scouring the Internet for information. They could be looking for solutions to problems, answers to questions, products to buy, services to acquire, how their friends are doing, and networking for jobs or business contacts.
There are also people looking to steal personal information, run money-making scams, damage public networks, carry out blackmail, infiltrate bank accounts, manipulate corporate decision-makers, influence political outcomes, and do other malicious acts.
When your website gets hacked, your online business shuts down. You stop earning money. Income opportunities from that day on, are foregone. And the losses don’t end there.
- High-value assets such as customers’ confidential information and content are stolen;
- Your business brand gets tarnished;
- Customers might file a class suit against your business for having their confidential information stolen.
According to a study on cybercrime, 60% of small businesses don’t survive a hacking attack and shut down within 6 months of the incident.
Signing up for website maintenance services assures your website’s security features are updated and that you have IT experts monitoring for suspicious activities 24/7.
3. Regularly Update Website Content
Every day, your website receives visitors who are either first-timers or existing customers. They want to learn more about your business and if you have new products and services to offer.
If you recently introduced products that sold above targets and you want these items to be part of your regular list, your website should publish their high-resolution images and comprehensive descriptions.
Since consumer behavior could have changed, there might be new high-ranking keywords you can use to optimize your website. The website maintenance team can replace the old keywords with new ones and improve its visibility on the Internet.
And if you have a blog page, you must also update figures, statistics, and information in your previous articles to keep them current. The website maintenance team can also monitor your website for broken links and have them removed.
Updating content keeps your website fresh for users. Every time they enter your website, they have a unique, interesting, and productive experience.
4. Daily Website Backup
You had a solid 8 hours of sleep. You wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and are eager to seize the day. With a mug in hand, you head over to your home office, open the PC, sit on a comfortable chair, and click on your website.
Then… nothing. Or a blank screen appears because data isn’t loading. A “404 Error” warning might show up on the screen.
Your eyes go wide, your heart races and sweat starts to form on your forehead.
Your website is down. Either it’s crashed or worse – hacked.
That’s a scenario of every online entrepreneur’s worst nightmare. You’ll see images of dollar signs with wings in your mind. Or angry customers threatening you with a lawsuit.
If you’re covered by a website maintenance services agreement, you won’t have much to worry about because a standard plan includes daily website backups.
The website platform’s system, its assets, and programs are saved and backed up daily so that in the event your website crashes, it will be easier to rebuild than to start again from scratch.
5. Track Performance
Do you want to know if your digital marketing campaigns are on track to meet their goals? Having a website for your online business removes guesswork because it gathers data about its performance.
These website analytics measure if your digital marketing strategies are driving traffic and how users are responding to your site’s contents and features. Analytics will show you which strategies are delivering results, generating the highest ROI, and which aren’t.
However, reviewing and analyzing the data takes time. With a website maintenance team onboard, you’ll receive the interpretation of your site’s analytics in report form complete with recommendations.
6. Reduce Costs
If something goes wrong with your website – some features don’t work, it loads slowly, it won’t accommodate mobile devices, or it crashes – not only will you forgo opportunities to grow your business but you’ll have to spend more on another website.
Technology is in a constant state of evolution. As a technological innovation, your website has to keep up. If your website isn’t regularly maintained, you won’t know what the potential pain points are and how to fix them.
If a website’s system and plugins aren’t updated, it won’t function properly and the risk of getting hacked will be higher. Outdated security software and expired SSL certificates will leave your website vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Is your website downloading fast enough or is it being weighed down by content that was added in the last few months? There might be issues with your web host service provider that are negatively impacting user experience.
And as we mentioned, if your website does get hacked and your assets aren’t backed up, you’ll have to build from scratch.
Signing up for website maintenance services will add to your monthly recurring expenses but the extra cost is minimal. For sure, having your website undergo frequent maintenance services plus daily monitoring will reduce the risk of incurring more expensive repairs in the future.
Conclusion
Lastly, by securing your online business with website maintenance services, you’ll get restful sleep every night. You’ll have peace of mind knowing that someone is watching over your website and your customers while you’re asleep or attending to other matters.
And if something goes awry with your website, you have someone to call and make things right again. Website maintenance service is like having a mobile car mechanic on speed dial. You’ll never have to worry if your car breaks down anywhere you are in the city.
So what are you waiting for? Get off the fence and sign up for our website maintenance services right now! We’ll keep your website humming in fine working condition every time.
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