Why Website Maintenance is Vital to Any Successful Online Business

Similar to any other software on your phone or computer, the software that comprises your website also needs updating. Avoiding this website maintenance would be like driving your car every day with your fingers crossed and never changing the oil…or rotating the tires…or replacing light bulbs; soon this would end up with you having a very bad day. The same holds true for your website. Your website at the very least needs general routine maintenance so it’s up and running for your visitors and sheds your business in the best light possible.

Websites Are No Longer a “One and Done” Deal

If website maintenance isn’t carried out regularly, you could be throwing money away through lost opportunities and unnecessary website repairs. It looks bad when your website visitors (potential new customers) visit your website and are met with errors. Things like broken links that result in 404 errors (page not found), coding errors from broken plugins, slow page loading, etc., lead to a significantly higher bounce rate (that’s the sound of your prospects leaving). Not only did you just lose new customers, but this really hurts your ranking in the search engines. Many site owners fail to check their website to see if it’s working properly. This can lead to many issues and downtime, which will cost you greatly in the long run.

The Benefits of Keeping Your Website Up to Date (and the Pitfalls of Not)

Many business owners just don’t realize the advantages of preventative maintenance. All of the details that go into maintaining a website can either positively (or negatively) affect the overall performance of your site. Things like loading speed, error pages, broken links, uptime (or downtime), search rankings, etc. all rely upon the WordPress core and plugins being up to date. Your online success depends on the upkeep of your online tools. Fresh content, monitoring analytics (your users’ behavior on the site) are also just a couple more factors that play a big part in ensuring your business’s website is a success.

“Alright, I got this. Hold My Latte…”

While maintaining your website is possible, in theory, it’s certainly always a gamble. At some point or another, something is not going to go according to plan and will break your site. If you don’t have a record of what updates took place, and when, it would be very difficult to pinpoint the problem (think needle in a haystack without a magnet). As a last-ditch effort, you’d have to rely upon restoring a very old backup and potentially lose all of your content changes, web inquiries, sales orders, you name it.

“Well, I Can Just Call You if I Break It, Right?”

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes of your website and if you’re not familiar with the inner-workings of PHP and the Relational Database Management System that is MySQL, things tend to get a bit messy when the “tables” turn (sorry, bad dad joke). When this does happen, you’re faced with a decision. You could end up trying to fix it yourself (and possibly do even more damage) or ultimately end up paying the (sometimes hefty) price for an experienced person to fix it. Going back to the car analogy, does it make more sense to perform regularly scheduled oil changes or to replace the engine when it seizes up? Alas, it costs more to fix it than to maintain it.

MediaStorm’s Maintenance Method (With a Little Alliteration to Boot)

Our workflow consists of first making a backup of your site before moving forward with any software updates. After backing up and updating, we check for any issues on your site that may have arisen as a result. In the event an issue does occur, we automatically create a support ticket and address the situation, probably before you’re even aware there’s a problem. All of this generated activity is then included in our monthly maintenance report we provide to our clients.

Better Leave It to the Pros

You’re great at what you do and we’re great at what we do. Your time is precious, in and outside of your business. Being mindful of where you apply your efforts is paramount to you meeting your short term and long term goals. Focus on what’s important in growing your business and the relationships that secure it, not on small, tedious tasks that are better suited to a professional skillset. 

Save yourself the headaches and hassle. MediaStorm takes the guesswork out of caring for your website. With Care Plans starting at only $77 a month, our expert team has everything covered so you can relax and focus on the things that nurture your successes, not prolong them.

Click here to view our Client Care Plans and compare the value each has to offer.