It’d be easy to think that once you’ve chosen the right website designer and built a small business website, you’d be all set for online success. After all, what more could there be to it?
But even if you don’t sell products online, your company’s website operates much like your physical store does in that it provides a home for your business (albeit in the digital world). And, just like a physical store, it deserves some repeat attention.
You may sweep your office on a daily basis, clean your company kitchen, and revamp with new decor every now and then. But you have to do the same upkeep on your website. Here, we’d be talking about tasks like checking for security vulnerabilities, running updates, removing broken links, and adding some new features as and when required.
Maintaining your website isn’t just about the aesthetics of it all — it’s about ensuring your digital storefront operates as well as it can to help your business succeed. So let’s explore website maintenance and what it means for your business in more detail.
What Is Website Maintenance?
Web maintenance or website performance optimisation refers to the simple-but-ongoing task of ensuring a website operates at its optimal capacity.
In many ways, you can think of it as simple housework and DIY tasks, but for your online home.
Just like you would clean your home and check your locks, fix leaking taps, replace burnt-out lightbulbs, and repair broken items as and when required, so, too, you’d pay attention to your website, fix what wasn’t working, and repair things as and when they break.
Why Website Maintenance Matters For Small Businesses
Website maintenance matters for any size business, but larger companies usually have website maintenance services taken care of as a given. For small businesses, though, the importance of website maintenance is often overlooked. After all, does it really matter if you’re not selling items online and dealing with thousands of customers and financial details?
While improved web security is a massive factor when it comes to web maintenance, it actually goes far beyond this. Even sites that don’t sell online will benefit from website updates, as it allows for a better user experience and faster web performance.
In fact, not taking web maintenance seriously can lead to some inconvenient and potentially dangerous setbacks, like poor search rankings, hacking and cyber threats, and aspects of your site breaking, causing significant site breakdowns.
All of these negatively affect your business.
Common Tasks In Website Maintenance
We’ve teased some of this above, but in order to fully understand website performance optimisation and why it matters for your business, we’ll need to look at some of the common tasks that form part of website maintenance services.
- Software and plugin updates: Did you know that operating with outdated software and plugins is the number one way hackers get into your site, especially if you’re running on powerful CMS tools like WordPress? In fact, it’s estimated that 90% of WordPress vulnerabilities are due to outdated plugins. Developers are consistently working on advancing existing software and plugins, adding new features and security patches, so it’s important to update these regularly. Many CMS tools offer automatic updating of plugins, but even then, it’s important to re-check for compatibility issues and potential security threats.
- Regular backups: Even if you pay attention to security updates, there is always still a chance your site may be hacked, as seen from recent cyberattacks against Australia’s A$4.2 trillion retirement savings sector or the massive cyber-attack against M&S, one of the UK’s largest retailers, which is costing the company upward of £300 million (A$638 million) in lost profits. But even if we’re not talking about cyberattacks, sometimes simple software or plugin updates can cause something to break on your site, and you’ll need to be able to revert back to a previous version of your website. The best way to ensure your data is accessible even after a cyberthreat or malfunction is by doing regular backups of your website.
- Performance and speed optimisations: Site speed is one of the most significant search engine ranking factors, and it’s estimated that roughly 32% of visitors will leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. This means that your site has to be continuously optimised for fast loading times. Ways a web maintenance team might do this are by optimising images, minifying code files, lazy loading media, or upgrading your hosting as your site grows.
- Fixing broken links: While fixing broken links is certainly part of wider performance optimisations, it also negatively affects your user experience and search engine rankings. Broken links signal to search engines that your site is outdated and hence no longer relevant in search results, and it signals to users that you don’t care about the user experience. Unfortunately, broken links happen all the time. Even if you check that all links on your site are working when content is first uploaded, links are likely to break at some point, largely due to redirects not being set up correctly or pages and materials you’re linking to being moved or deleted.
- Security monitoring: Updating software and plugins is only one aspect of security monitoring. Other security tasks include real-time malware scans, firewall protection to block malicious traffic, login monitoring to flag unusual logins or brute-force attacks, and monitoring SSL certificates to ensure data transmission remains encrypted.
- Content updates: Of course, on a very basic level, website updates will also refer to simple content amendments, such as contact information, social media links, or services and pricing being updated.
As you can see, website maintenance services include a whole range of simple but important aspects of your site that need to be maintained for optimal and secure performance.
Signs Your Website Needs Maintenance
We’d say that your website always needs maintenance. After all, just like you wouldn’t wait for a breakdown before you take your car in for a service, you shouldn’t wait for anything to go wrong before you give your site some love and attention.
That said, if web maintenance hasn’t been a priority in the past, there are some tell-tale signs that you should be prioritising this.
Security warnings from either your browser or antivirus software are a big one, as this directly prevents users from visiting your site.
But you should also look out for broken links or missing images, which negatively affect the user experience, as well as outdated content, like the wrong address being shown or even your footer mentioning older dates.
Also, pay attention to slow loading times. If you’re visiting your site and it’s taking eons to load, users will likely have the same experience, which could negatively affect your bounce rates.
The best way to recognise red flags before they become a major issue is to test your site regularly on various devices. You may also want to set up alerts, if your CMS allows it, to catch any maintenance issues in real time.
But, of course, the very best way to prevent any major issues is by directly working with website maintenance services, where a team continuously checks and works on your site to ensure it’s always kept up to date.
Website Maintenance DIY Vs. Hiring A Professional
We’ve already hinted that hiring a professional web maintenance service would be the best route to go, but you may also choose to go the DIY route. Doing your website updates yourself is more cost effective, and it gives you the control you may want in ensuring that everything operates the way you’d like to.
But, going the DIY route does have significant downsides. For one, it can be incredibly time-consuming. Add in the fact that many web maintenance issues require technical knowledge and the ability to spot critical issues, like bugs and security vulnerabilities, and it’s easy to see why going DIY in web maintenance is probably a bad idea.
Hiring a professional will ensure you get access to the best security and performance monitoring to ensure your small business website runs smoothly. If costs are a major concern, it’s also worth noting that many website performance optimisation companies like PrecisionSEO offer very tailored solutions, so you only pay for the services you need.
Give Your Site The Optimisation Boost It Deserves
The importance of website maintenance cannot be overemphasised, and investing in this service should be a no-brainer.
Not optimising your site not only negatively affects your brand’s digital image, but it can lead to serious issues like cyberattacks and data breaches. This puts your business and your customers at risk, potentially leading to a loss of trust as well as serious financial setbacks.
To keep your site, business, and customers safe, contact PrecisionSEO for expert website maintenance services.
