For most businesses, setting up a professional website is a strategic marketing strategy used to help promote their products and/or services to the widest client base possible. While plenty of time and energy is often poured into the initial set-up process, the ongoing maintenance of this newly created website often falls to the wayside. It’s up and running, what else needs to happen?
Next thing they know their products are outdated, information is no longer current, or worst-case scenario, the website is being hacked and their reputation has hit the rock bottom. By this point, it’s too late. The cost to recover and repair the site is more than it would be if the site had been maintained regularly. There are a lot of reasons why you should make sure that your website is well-maintained. We will run through all the benefits that come with regular maintenance, from performance and features, through to security and back-up.
Security
Arguably, the most-important detail when it comes to updating your website: security. You don’t walk out of your house and leave your front door wide open for anyone to enter, do you? WordPress powers more than 30% of all websites, making it the most-used content management system in the world. Due to its popularity, leaving even just a window open makes you a common target for hackers, data thieves and more.
Being an open-source platform means the code is constantly being tested and updated on a regular basis for performance improvements, along with security loopholes. The downside to this, hackers are also constantly looking for their own loopholes to access your website.
When a new version is released, if you haven’t updated your business website, you’re leaving yourself open to attacks. The vulnerabilities that come with the old version are known to anyone on the internet who goes on the hunt. The same principle applies to any plug-ins you have on your website, which all need to be managed individually to prevent any issues from arising.
Features
While security is the most important reason to regularly update to the latest version of WordPress or Drupal, there’s another key aspect you get to take advantage of in the process: the features. With each new release comes changes to the software and what it’s capable of. The improvement the updates bring to both you and your visitors is undeniable.
It changes your entire experience.
From UI updates to the new block editor to the improvement of functions within specific plug-ins, if you don’t update, you will never even know these key features even exist. These updates help you stay on top of the latest technology to truly optimise your website to provide best functionality and user experience.
Performance
Regularly updating your website also leads to better, overall performance. All software comes with bugs, which are effectively mistakes in the system that can make it operate in an unintended way. You might notice weird errors or even witness the site crash in front of your eyes.
If your website and all your plug-ins are operating on the latest version, it increases performance, which offers the following benefits.
Boosts SEO
If your website is maintained and the performance of the site (speed) is always at peak, Google will favour the site and maintain, or even increase, the site’s page ranking and search visibility. This boost in SEO will drive even more potential clients to the website and see it perform even better in search engine results.
Google penalises sites that are slow and unoptimised and favours the ones that are fast and optimised for speed/user experience.
Repeat customers
You know those bugs we mentioned above? It’s likely your customers will be the ones to come across them. Outdated files or themes also do not display well in some browsers. The user experience is essential to any website, ensuring potential clients can navigate pages with ease and find what they are looking for.
Website maintenance gives you assurance that all forms and links are updated, which makes it easier for your customer to access and retrieve the right information and increases the likelihood of them turning into repeat customers.
Back-up all files
Another key reason to regularly maintain your website is to ensure you always have the latest back-up available. It’s terrifying to think of losing all your data in the blink of an eye. in case of natural disasters or malware attacks, you won’t have to rebuild your site from scratch. If you have dynamic components in your website, you will have to do web maintenance more frequently.
If your website does get hacked, or you click on an update and something goes wrong, a back-up can be used to restore your website. Of course, it needs to be a current one, otherwise you lose any new articles, updates, etc., that have since been added.
Osky Care
No matter what type of business you run, as long as you have a website, you must take website maintenance into consideration. Keeping everything updated and optimised is a fantastic way to ensure you’re keeping on-top of your website. Like the old saying goes, prevention is better than cure. It will be beneficial for you to secure your site with regular website maintenance, or else, you might lose it all.
OSKY Care offers the perfect peace of mind with its set and forget maintenance plan starting from just $384 per month, keeping your website/plugins updated and maintained every month.
It’s a very popular service amongst our clients, offering peace of mind that their sites are being taken care of by a dedicated team of OSKY CARE engineers and allowing them to focus on their core business.
