If your company is a small to mid-sized business, or you are a startup and just launched your company’s website, you may think that you don’t have to worry about it for the foreseeable future, that would be a mistake. When you purchase a car, you don’t just drive it without any other action on your part. The car requires fuel to run and regular maintenance such as changing oil and putting air in the tires. It is the same concept with your company’s website, but its not something you can do yourself without the right education and training.
Websites on the internet were HTML only for the first decade of its existence and were simple to make adjustments; now, sites are lightyears away from those early days. Unfortunately, if you are a smaller business or startup, you most likely don’t have the capital to hire a staff member to tend to your website. Fortunately, web design agencies offer maintenance plans to manage your site. A maintenance plan is essential for your website to function smoothly. Still not convinced? Here is a closer look at why your company needs a website maintenance plan.
A Website Maintenance Plan Ensures Everything Functions
If you are an e-commerce site, it is crucial that everything must work as it should. Imagine your customer going through the process of shopping on your website, finding an item or items to purchase, and then being unable to complete the process because a form is faulty at checkout, or items can’t be placed in the shopping cart. A website maintenance plan guarantees that the functionality of your website is tested regularly to prevent any issues that could hurt sales.
Keeps Your Site Secure
We have all seen the stories on the news where large companies and even municipalities have been healed hostage by ransomware, and end up having to pay the ransom to get their data back. A lack of regular security updates being installed and too few backups left them vulnerable to attack. A website maintenance plan means that hackers won’t hijack your site, and your data will be safe.
A Website Maintenance Plan Optimizes Your Site
One of the things that Google and other search engine crawlers take into account with ranking websites are issues such as broken links, meta tags with little information, and slow site speeds all have adverse effects on your search engine optimization. A website maintenance plan keeps your website performing at its best, which in turn will enhance your company’s SEO efforts. Besides, the agency overseeing your website maintenance can give you a breakdown of your site’s analytics, which will help your marketing department to craft a more effective SEO campaign.
Higher Level of Support
If your website has any issues such as downtime or bugs that are crashing your site, you don’t have to spend an hour on the phone with someone in a call center in another country only to get the wrong solution to your problem. Having a website maintenance plan not only eliminates problems before they happen, but it also gives you swift support and resolutions. With a website maintenance plan, you get individual support that will make fixing any issues a priority.
So, if you can’t afford an IT department in your company, or don’t have one yet, a website maintenance plan is an ideal way to make sure that your website has minimal downtime and everything functions just as it should.