If your website was a risk of going down, you would probably go into a panic. Your business relies on your website for so much, and downtime can cause you to lose sales and potential clients that will be difficult to get back. No matter how you use your website, if a customer can’t access it, it’s useless.
It would be pretty stressful if your website stopped working, right?
It’s actually one of the most common things that prospects say when reaching out! If your website isn’t properly maintained, you run the risk of getting hacked or dealing with other issues like site slowdowns or functionality problems.
Think of it like your car. What happens if you decided to stop getting an oil change? I’m no mechanic, but pretty sure you’d be hearing all sorts of noises coming out of your engine.
Your website can make “noises” too. They may look like:
– Slow loading pages
– Little issues that are getting more and more frequent
– Drop in marketing performance
Many issues come without warning. Hackers are constantly looking for vulnerable websites to break into. Here are the 5 biggest mistakes around website maintenance and how to avoid them:
Mistake 1: Ignoring Or Avoiding Website Maintenance
When you avoid your website maintenance altogether, you are just asking for problems! But shockingly, this is the most common mistake that business owners make. Some don’t see the value in website maintenance, mistakenly believing website errors are rare. Think about how you feel as a customer when you try to visit a broken website. That frustration is how your customers feel when your website is not working properly. Avoiding the problems won’t make them go away, and it can increase your downtime when the problems come.
Mistake 2: Relying On The Hosting Company
Do you purchase your website hosting directly from the hosting company? Many times these are shared servers that do nothing to protect your website. In fact, on a poor shared hosting server, if another website gets hacked or runs into problems, it could open up your website to issues or potentially take your site down! It happens frequently. When you only have hosting and no maintenance, you are missing out on performance and security. If your hosting company offers website care plans, ask them how they backup, what kind of security they use, and how often they perform updates. If you aren’t satisfied with their answers, it’s okay to look in another direction.
Mistake 3: Forgetting Content
Nothing is more important on your website than your content. Content is the material that makes up your website, including text, photos, and videos. Regular maintenance can find issues with your content and correct them, and new content can be added. Customers love to see new, interesting photos, videos, and fresh and exciting text when they log on to your site, so give them what they are looking for. Regular maintenance can make sure your promotions are up to date, can showcase new products or services, and can remove irrelevant information from your website. It’s also a great time to take customer feedback about your site and make those user-friendly changes. Website maintenance can help increase your visibility on search engines, too. And what business owner doesn’t want that?
Mistake 4: No Backup
Think back to when you were in school. Did you ever write a paper on the computer, only to forget to hit “save”? Not having frequent backups for your website is similar, only this mistake could cost you a lot of money and wasted downtime. Without a backup you can lose your whole website, forcing you to start over. If you do have backups, make sure you aren’t backing up to the same server that your website is on. If it goes down, so does your backup. This could cost you much more than if you had invested in a care plan in the beginning. If you have a backup you can get back to work quicker, and save a lot of stress and money!
Mistake 5: Going Solo
You run a business, you manage employees, and you keep your costs low and profits high. Surely you can manage your website maintenance, right? Wrong. Unless you run a tech company chances are you do not have the expertise or the equipment necessary to successfully manage your own website maintenance. It may be hard to admit you can’t do it all, but in the long run, trusting website maintenance to the experts can save you tons of stress and a massive headache, which is something all business owners can appreciate.
Your website is how the world finds you, and how your customers connect with you. It’s how they find information about your products or services, and how you complete orders. Your website is the hub of your business, so protect it the right way. A website care plan can provide you with peace of mind, can reduce the stress of taking care of it on your own, and can ensure your content stays fresh and relevant. You have so much to do during the day. Managing site maintenance doesn’t have to be one of your obligations. For more information on our website care plan, or to schedule a consultation with one of our experts, contact Eviva Media. With decades of experience, the team at Eviva Media loves to help businesses succeed through strong, secure websites.
