Everything About Website Maintenance And Support Services

Websites today are much more technologically complex than ever before. With the evolution of web technologies over the years, websites today are developed with various technologies and frameworks, making them difficult to maintain. Also, since more business processes have gone online today, it requires more business logic, workflows, and functionalities to be included in the websites.

Just building an advanced website according to your business requirements is not enough. Maintaining a website in top shape and good condition should be the primary objective. In addition, website maintenance and support services are crucial for every website. However, the extent of attention and focus you may need to dedicate depends on several factors.

As a fact, the type of maintenance support services depends on your website’s nature, complexity, and purpose. For example, if your website has a vast amount of content or a large amount of daily or monthly traffic, you will have to dedicate even more attention to making your website capable of handling that load. 

Simultaneously, you will also need to ensure your website assets’ appropriate safety and security and your customer’s data. However, if your website is small (more like a portfolio page), you could do with lesser but regular attention to ensure it optimally serves its purpose. So, before we move further, let’s look at what website maintenance actually is? 

What Is Website Maintenance?

Websites, eCommerce platforms, or web and mobile applications are essential for business today. And keeping websites in good shape and condition involves proactive maintenance support, just like maintaining your car. Security updates, Patch updates, CMS updates, Server checks, Performance checks, SEO, etc., are some areas that need ongoing monitoring and maintenance services.

Keeping a website well maintained and appealing is vital for companies to engage and retain customers. However, many don’t take it much seriously. Regular monitoring of your website is a necessity for keeping your business running smoothly, just like your health can fall apart if you go too long without a routine check-up, so can the health of your website.

Why Is It Important To Have Website Maintenance and Support Services?

Platform Updates

Today, websites are built using many open-source and licensed frameworks, 3rd party modules, plugins, extensions, etc. To keep the website operative optimally, all these pieces of software must be constantly updated and remain advanced. Any outdated module or plugins can disrupt a site’s functionality or even crash a site. Therefore, it is crucial to maintain a site proactively to keep up with all these platform updates.

Security

This is the most important reason to maintain and keep your website advanced. Your website could be developed on WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Shopify, AEM, Sitecore, Magento, or any other platform. These platforms need constant security updates to prevent hackers from targeting your websites. Failing to do these security updates on time could severely compromise the security of your website.

Read more about Mobile App Security

SEO

The whole point of starting a business is to have clients, users, or an audience. So you’ll need to keep it regularly updated to drive traffic to your website. Google ranks websites with the most relevant and latest information on their search engine results page. Google’s search ranking algorithms consider several things to rank a website in its search results. 

Parameters such as page loading time, site architecture, UX/UI are crucial areas that weigh heavily on the website’s overall SEO profile. Websites must follow all SEO best practices and be current in all areas, for constant improvement of your organic SEO rankings, 

Customer Engagement

A website needs to provide an excellent overall experience to the visitors. Without a good user experience, websites cannot engage or retain visitors for a long time. Customer engagement or user experience is a mixture of various factors like – site architecture, site performance, relevant and meaningful content, navigation, etc. All of these need continuous work and incremental enhancements.

Brand Image

Websites can have many purposes like informational, business process, revenue generation, marketing campaigns, etc. Whatever be the goal, company brand identity, image and reputation are a vital part of any website. Therefore, maintaining a good, smooth, and engaging website is essential for overall brand and goodwill.

Digital Trends and Renovation

Websites should use up-to-date and efficient digital tools and trends to remain relevant and competitive in their areas. Digital enablers can significantly help in driving business outcomes. Be it customer acquisition, revenue per customer or transactions, customer retention, and growth; digital enablers can help substantially. This can be possible only through a proactive website support and maintenance plan. 

How Much Does Website Maintenance and Support Cost?

Small Personal Blog

A small blog usually doesn’t have a lot of traffic and has very few requirements. This can be hosted for free on a blog site like Google Blogger. Or, it could be self-hosted using a platform like WordPress with low monthly costs reduced by domain name renewal and hosting service.

Medium-Large Sized Active Blog with an Extensive Audience

If you have an income-generating blog with an active audience, you probably want to be self-hosted with a few customizations. This will require more frequent web maintenance, updates, marketing, and backups, as well as a slightly higher monetary investment.

Company Website for Marketing Only

Unlike the medium-large blog, this will need to be hosted either on your premise or in the cloud. A good website design template or customized theme and business information, workflows, and functionalities could ask for a medium-high effort for web maintenance, regular updates, marketing modifications, and backups.

Large Customized eCommerce Websites

This will be a more considerable financial investment as you will need to be aware of web maintenance, accessibility, performance, security, and SEO. You manage a lot of content, code customization, and customer data, and the websites generate revenue. If you don’t have an IT team on your staff, you’ll want to find a website maintenance company to meet your website needs.

Custom Built Web Application

This will be your most significant financial investment. Your web application was custom built from scratch for a specific purpose and, it always requires you to be in top-notch working condition, or your company will suffer. This likely needs a dedicated staff of developers from a Web maintenance company to keep a close eye on the website maintenance and support.

Benefits of Having Website Maintenance and Support Services

Focus on your core business

Maintaining a business website is an uphill task requiring many technical and specialized skills. However, by hiring a good website maintenance company that can support and maintain your website in good condition, you can focus on other business areas and differentiate yourself from the competition.

Avoid losing revenue

Whenever your website is down, you lose customers. Did you know that 77% of users said they would quit trying to access a website if they encountered a 404 error? In addition, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. Therefore, by maintaining your website well, you will avoid losing revenue.

Keep reading importance of 404 error page

Robust Security of your Website

Website security is critical to safeguard your web assets and customer data. Regular website maintenance and support follow the essential steps to mitigate the risks of data attack or theft risks due to hacking. Timely renewal of SSL certificates, software updates, removal of an infecting virus, and restoration of order in case of attacks are ways by which maintenance helps protect the integrity of websites.

A hacked website severely ruins a brand or could even put the entire business at risk. A flawed or poorly built website can lead to the market’s slow adoption and acceptance of your products, solutions, and services. 

Business Growth

In Covid-19, businesses increasingly depend on online channels to fuel their growth. Website is essential to any business growth plan, be it small or big. Investing in maintenance services and support on the website is the right way to expand your business.

Incorporates the Technical Updates

Websites are usually developed using software and plugins. Plugins are like mini-apps that provide functionality. However, they regularly expire and need to be upgraded to the latest technology and ensure security. Sometimes these updates are not compatible with the existing website framework and can disrupt functionality. 

Maintains A Great Online User Experience

Non-functional elements, broken links, slow load speed, etc., discourage your potential customers from staying on your website or revisiting in the future. Moreover, the divergence in design and content could also hamper their on-site experience.

Regular website maintenance and support ensure that all of the elements that make up the overall user experience are in order. In addition, the regular analytical review also helps personalize and improve web pages based on customer response and provides them with the best experience.

Conclusion

As per the recent study, 50 percent of users discover a new company, product, or service, with every online search. They visit your website, explore your products, browse your services, and get a first impression of your business. That first impression can create or break your company’s next sale.

Therefore, website maintenance and support are the fuel you need to keep your website running smoothly. It might seem like an expense, but it’s actually an investment in getting the most out of your website. The key to appropriate maintenance and support is a regular and dedicated intervention. That’s best-taken care of by outsourcing the task to a reliable Website maintenance company.