Is a Website Maintenance Plan Worth Investing In?
Your website is the backbone of your online presence. It helps increase your credibility, promote your business, engage with your audience and boost your conversion rates.
Today, about 71 percent of small businesses have a website.
However, apart from having a professional and well-structured website, proper care and routine maintenance are necessary if you are to thrive and stay ahead of the competition.
But why exactly should you consider investing in a website maintenance plan?
What Is a Website Maintenance Plan?
Simply put, a website maintenance plan is an ongoing service to maintain and support the overall health of your website. This ensures that the online site is running at full capacity.
By keeping the site up to date and relevant, the service also helps maintain the value of your website as time goes on.
A good small business web maintenance plan should include:
• Routine website and server maintenance
• Continuous improvements to fix bugs and compatibility issues
• Website coding
• Digital marketing assistance
• Emergencies
• Analytics, reporting, and analysis
Why Website Maintenance Is Important
Your website is a significant investment. Unlike your employees, it works for you around the clock. However, a website is never truly complete. Here is why your online site needs some care and looking after.
1. Enhanced Security
Hackers attack more than 30,000 websites each day. As such, businesses can no longer take online security lightly. To protect your business from cyber threats and keep sensitive data secure, constantly monitor your website and invest in the latest security updates.
When your website is not well-maintained, it will be vulnerable to a host of online attacks. A comprehensive website maintenance plan will go a long way in helping to keep your website secure. This will in turn protect your business, customers, and reputation.
2. Better User Experience
A well-maintained website not only attracts online visitors but also maintains their interest levels. If your website does not provide a satisfactory experience, about 88 percent of users are less likely to return to the site. This is why you should ensure your website is user-friendly and provides a personalized shopping experience.
A competent maintenance team will focus on fixing any issues that may compromise the user experience. This includes addressing slow speeds, page errors, and broken links as well as implementing updates that provide new features and enhance the functionality of your site. This will help you to compete favorably in the market.
3. Beneficial for SEO
Search engine optimization plays an important part in getting your content in front of the right people. However, SEO is a continuous process that requires sustained efforts. Part of this involves making sure your website meets the mark with search engines.
Good site maintenance can boost your SEO efforts. Regular maintenance and updates will ensure your site is compatible with the latest algorithms and tools. This will help to improve your search engine rankings, making it easier for your business to be found online.
4. Regular Updates
The digital world is fast-paced. To ensure you deliver value to users, you need to keep your site up to date and improve your services. Regular updates will help to boost the performance of your website, keep it fresh and make it more efficient.
A website maintenance plan will include updates to plugins, frameworks, and scripts. The updates will also cover other components that your website relies on to function. Website maintenance teams will use the latest techniques to ensure your site is compatible with new technology and works properly on all devices.
5. Reliable Website Backups
A good maintenance plan offers website backups. A backup is a copy of your website files and the related databases which are then kept in a secure location. This allows you to restore your website to a previous state after a security incident.
By ensuring your data is easily retrievable, backups can prevent data loss and serve as a safeguard in case of human error. This helps to minimize business disruption and gives you peace of mind, effectively allowing you to focus on your core business.
6. Strengthens Your Business Reputation
Your website is the first point of contact for both existing and prospective customers. The site says a lot about your business and its values. A well-maintained and optimized site will make you come across as innovative, secure, and relevant.
Professional web maintenance helps to inspire customer trust. When your website meets the standards expected of a professional site, people will perceive your business as one that emphasizes quality. A strong brand image will in turn help to attract new customers and retain the existing ones.
7. Proper Monitoring and Tracking
Once you dedicate time and money to maintenance, you will definitely want to know how your website is performing. When working on your site, the maintenance team will gather valuable data and provide you with reports that will help guide future changes.
This information will give you insights into the progress of your campaign and help you determine whether you are on track to achieving your online marketing goals. The experts will make recommendations on what you need to improve, something that will enable you to develop a solid online marketing strategy.
8. More Conversions
One of the main goals of any business is to make profits. To do this successfully, you have to attract new customers and keep the existing ones coming back. Your website is your shop window; this is why you have to ensure it helps to convert visitors into buyers.
Good web maintenance can contribute to lead generation.
Fresh content, search engine optimization, improved site speed, and consistent site functionality will help to drive more traffic to your website. This will go a long way in increasing conversions and contributing to your bottom line.
9. Save Time and Money
Without proper maintenance, problems and issues on your site will accumulate and get worse over time. This can result in downtime and loss of revenue. It may also cost a lot more to repair the problems.
A website maintenance plan includes continuous monitoring that helps to detect and address issues early. This ensures your website runs smoothly, something that will help you to avoid stressful emergencies and save you time and money.
We Help You Achieve Success
Are you looking for a reliable website maintenance company?
LocalBizGuru is an online marketing company that is committed to helping boost your web presence so you can get found by customers.
We have the knowledge and experience required to enable you to achieve success.
Contact us today to book a meeting to discuss which website care plan is best for your business goals.
