Why Website Maintenance Is Important
Launching a website is a huge milestone for your business – you’ve invested time, money and effort into it all – from creating your website and adding content to driving traffic and ensuring visitors can find what they’re looking for. So, what next? Does all of that work finish once the website is launched? Certainly not! Your website needs to be well maintained to ensure it remains secure, speedy and fit for purpose.
Treat your website like a real business. Imagine opening a shop, shutting the doors for a year or two and then expecting hordes of customers to visit. Well it’s the same online. Plugins become obsolete, software security weaknesses are exposed, links corrode and the website itself becomes a little unkempt. And all it takes is a small technical slip up for someone to be put off and stop a lead from completing an enquiry or even buying.
That is why your business’s website maintenance plan should be high up on your list. Instead of waiting until you encounter problems with your site, you can take a proactive and planned approach, ensuring that they will be detected and resolved much faster.
No matter if you’re a business website, e-Commerce portal or a corporate mega-site, periodic website maintenance is what guards the ability of your website. It also provides peace of mind to your team that the major items are addressed in a scheduled manner as opposed to the crunch.
In this guide we will be covering the topic of Website Maintenance, what it should entail, how often certain things should be done and how your website’s overall performance can be improved the more consistent your website maintenance.
What is a website maintenance plan?
A website maintenance plan is a list of actions needed to keep a website safe, current, available and functional. The plan will include all work from updates and security scans to content updates, database maintenance and performance monitoring.
Easy really: Don’t wait until the visitors are telling you about the problem, but have a routine to stop that problem happening in the first place.
A good example of a website management plan could include monitoring the backups on a weekly basis, reviewing the security alerts on a weekly or monthly basis, updating the plugins on a monthly basis and performing a quarterly performance audit.
The schedule will, of course, differ depending upon the size of the website, nature of the software application as well as hosting service, website traffic, and the business details demands. A commerce site that handles deals will have to be inspected far regularly than an easy corporate site.
A good website maintenance plan will outline roles and responsibilities, identify the tools used, what is to be done when something breaks and how the work that has been done is to be recorded.
Why Every Business Needs Regular Website Maintenance
Your website is generally the first impression a potential customer will get of your business. If your pages load slow, the contact forms don’t work or your relevant information is out of date then your customers are going to think you’re a bit of a joke.
Of course, consistent site maintenance will mitigate everything. It keeps the site open so the business can center on taking care of the clients.
This give you many legitimate reasons for making maintenance your top priority.
Security: sites can be made insecure through outdated plugins, themes, software or hosting configuration, which increases the risk of security exposures. Ensuring a site is reviewed regularly and everything is kept up to date will mitigate this risk.
UX: users want to be able to browse the website on their desktops, tablets and smartphones. You need to test the navigation, the forms, the buttons etc to make sure that the experience is good.
Consistent site performance: massive images, unnecessary scripts, database size etc can affect the speed of your site. Ongoing optimisation enables you to monitor your site performance to identify any problems early.
If you have a website full of broken links, technical faults, or pages that don’t load, it will affect how search engines can discover and interpret your website content. A well maintained website will stay on top of the foundation works.
Long term: it’s much cheaper to fix a problem in the beginning than it is to recover from a huge security breach, data loss or website crash.
Key Components of a Well-Crafted Website Maintenance Strategy
Before you go and construct a website maintenance plan you should have a good idea of the areas that you are going to look at. A website is a collection of web pages that have a relationship with each other, and if you neglect one aspect it can impact the rest of the website.
Security and Protection for your Website
Security also needs to be a major factor in your website maintenance plan. As your website will be gathering all sorts of information (customer questions, accounts details and occasionally payment info), this information must be secured as part of your customer confidence plan.
Begin by making sure the site is on HTTPS with an SSL/TLS certificate. Look at the admin accounts, remove some users if necessary and make sure all users have only the access they need.
Some of the other things to consider are your login attempts, malware notifications, something strange happening to files, and the security alerts that your host is giving you. If you’re using WordPress you should be running frequent checks on the security of the plugins and themes that you’re using.
Rather, Don’t simply test and install an extension because it appears to be something you could potentially find useful. Remember that every additional extension you choose to install is yet another element that will need updating and security oversight eventually.
Regular. Recovery
Consider this: You’ve been working on building your content and launching a website for months, then suddenly the server crashes and you are locked out, or, worse, a security incident occurs. You are unable to access your site without having a backup.
Website backup is another important part of website maintenance. The backups must be automated and it is better to backup the files and database on regular interval. The backup copies must be saved at safe place rather than on hosting server.
The frequency of backups should be based on the nature of your website. A busy ecommerce site receiving updates throughout the day would likely require backups whereas a relatively simple information site could probably do with a far less demanding backup process.
Don’t just assume you are making backups. Test the restore function occasionally. A backup that you cannot restore is a waste of time.
Software, Plugin and CMS Updates
Content management systems, themes, plugins and all the other parts that create a website get patched to include security updates, new features, and increased compatibility.
Failing to keep up with updates can open up a host of issues. Conversely updating everything without testing can cause a whole host of conflicts.
A more cautious method would be to create a backup, read the update information and where possible test any major changes in a staging area. After the update has been performed you should check all the websites pages, forms, navigation and other important elements.
De-activate plugins and themes you no longer require. Having more software activated than necessary can lead to increased levels of maintenance.
Website Speed/Performance Optimization
If visitors to your site have to wait too long for images, product listings and other things to load, the browsing experience is impacted.
In the maintenance check, we examined page load speed and found a lot of things that were causing the site to load more slowly. Large image files, lots of scripts, many animations and badly set up caching were all things we would have expected to be checked.
Reduce the size of images, and use image formats where possible. Check the third party scripts and remove the resource that you no longer need.
What appears to be a stunning design on desktop may have too many overlapping elements and issues with navigation and loading on a mobile device.
A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Create a Website Maintenance Plan
One question I get all the time – how do you write a maintenance plan? Creating a maintenance plan really doesn’t have to be difficult at all. All you have to do is make sure you understand where your site is at today and then develop a plan your team will be able to stick to.
Audit Your Current Website
Begin at the website. Read each page, browse through the navigation, forms, images, plugins, integrations and the technical setup.
Test that all important pages are working. If there are any contact forms, buttons, search options, login sections and/or checkout pages then these should also be tested.
Check for internal links, inaccurate content, images that are missing or broken and pages that don’t look right when viewed on a mobile device.
Take note of the hosting resources, what version of the website software they’re running, the SSL config, the backup plans and any security monitoring that exists.
Note down any issues you find. That gives you a starting point and helps you determine which issues you need to fix now.
Determine Maintenance Objectives and Priorities
After the audit is finished, determine what your maintenance plan is going to accomplish.
For instance the priorities might be to cut downtime, speed up website loading, keep security up to the mark, avoid data loss and provide accurate business information.
Not all jobs are urgent.
Divide maintenance activities, into three categories:
Priority: Security flaws, website outages, busted checkout, broken backups.
Medium priority: Performance improvements, plugin updates, testing for broken links and forms.
Low priority: design adjustments, refines to existing content, all other non-essential visual updates.
Create a Maintenance Schedule
A maintenance schedule turns plan into something
You can divide the activities into weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly activities.
For example:
| Frequency | Maintenance Activities |
|---|---|
| Daily | Verify website performance, send out alerts related to security, and analyze transactional failure important failures. |
| Weekly | Check the backups, review the website errors and test the forms and functions. |
| Do this every month. | Update the CMS bits, check the site speed, locate the links and run the analytics. |
| Do this each quarter. | Security check, Backup recovery test, Content quality evaluation, Usability audit. |
| Do it once a year. | Check hosting needs, review the site architecture, examine accessibility and plan the enhancements. |
Assign Responsibilities
A good maintenance plan is one where all can clearly identify what is expected of him or her.
For example, in one company, one person might handle content updates and the QA checks and the developer would do the technical work. In another company, you might have distinct groups for infrastructure, security, SEO and content.
Clarify the responsibilities. Who is responsible when they should be used or delivered and how should problems be reported.
If your team aren’t skilled then think about bringing in a professional website maintenance company.
Test Website Functionality Regularly
Your site can look absolutely fantastic but still have the essentials all going wrong in the background.
That’s why functional testing should be routine maintenance.
Test the contact forms with test messages. Make sure the confirmation e-mails are arriving. Test the menus, the search, the account creation and the payment procedure.
The entire buyer journey from discovery through to checkout confirmation for those store.
Now you have completed the updates, test the site across a variety of browsers and screen sizes. Focus on the menus, interactive areas of the site and the main conversion pages.
The purpose is to identify issues based on visitor perception, rather than to determine if the page will open.
Website Maintenance Checklist for Businesses
A checklist can help you stay on top of your routine and make sure you don’t miss any crucial steps.
Here is a good starting point:
Security
Review security notifications and suspicious activity.
Update website. Extensions.
Review admin. Their permissions.
Confirm the SSL/TLS certificate is valid.
Check security settings.
Backups
Make automated backups run.
Store copies in a safe off site place.
Review backup completion reports.
Test backup restoration steps.
Performance
Check how fast the site loads.
Reduce images.
Check scripts and plugins you don’t need.
Check responsiveness.
Watch server performance.
Content and SEO
Repair broken links.
Update information.
Check landing pages.
Check page. Meta descriptions.
Watch out for indexing and crawl issues.
Functionality
Test. Inquiry forms.
Check menus and buttons.
Test checkout steps.
Check key thirdparty integrations.
Look into error messages.
Adapt that list to your business. A service business will be interested in lead forms and bookings. A retail business will be interested in inventory, payments and customer accounts.
The Role of Website Maintenance in SEO
Website content is clearly essential and a website needs to be up and running without any technical issues to visitors and search engines.
For example if a link is broken navigation will be blocked. Redirects to the wrong destination will send people to the wrong place. Server errors will simply not load a page.
Regular technical checks pick up these issues.
Utilise Google Search Console to track indexing, page issues and performance in search. Review your XML sitemap to ensure all your critical pages are being crawled.
And monitor speed of loading pages – Google said server performance and how the pages load impact crawling.
Don’t let change of URLs or moving your domains leave you having to start all over again. If you need redirects then plan them very carefully. Google tell us to use server side redirects (301 or 308s) when possible, use no redirect chains and ensure your old URLs point to the right place.
Remember, ranking alone won’t win the battle. Great content, SEO intentions, usability and relevance still matter. A solid technical base will mean your SEO can dodge all the traditional considerations!
Most Typical Website Upkeep Errors to Keep away from
Those who understand that maintenance matters, might decide to do things that will create more work later on.
Very common mistake-wait for something to break Reactive maintenance is buying time for the repair to be made after the customer has noticed the problem. Routine checks will highlight the signs of imminent failure well before the break actually occurs.
The other mistake is to simply update all of the plugins willy-nilly with no testing at all. Updating one plugin can actually be in conflict with another plugin. It can break a critical website feature. Both backups and staging sites can obviously help reduce the risk of site disruption.
Others completely neglect to test backups. The saving of the files is only part of the equation. You need to ensure those files are even usable to restore your site.
Another problem is negligence towards usability. With so many visitors to your website using their smartphones to access it you must be at testing to some degree as part of your website maintenance routine and less on the desktop version.
Finally remove the requirement to install plugins, turn off security warnings and allow the content to become stale. Your planned maintenance should include the health of your site and the experience your visitors are receiving.
How to Choose the Right Website Maintenance Approach
Not all companies will require the maintenance package. Your decision should be made depending on the level of frequency needed by your sites, your finances, ability to understand/knowledge of technology and the criticality of continuous availability.
Some sites will be maintenance managed by their own staff. That can be a very good option if you have the backroom support team who has the time and expertise to perform the updates, backups, content adjustments and other checks.
Some would opt for professional site maintenance. This might be a reasonable choice if your site requires custom development, ecommerce functionality, extensive integrations or indeed any sort of business critical application.
| Maintenance Approach | Advantages | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|
| Inhouse maintenance | control and internal coordination | Businesses with technical staff |
| Professional maintenance services | Availability of specialized technical expertise | Businesses without dedicated developers |
| Managed hosting support | Hostinglevel monitoring and infrastructure assistance | Websites that need reliable hosting support |
| Hybrid maintenance | Integrates in-house content management with on-demand technical assistance | Expanding companies with various needs |
Before you go shopping for a provider, you will have to decide what precisely is included. You need to determine how often it is to be achieved, what the security monitoring goes to be, what the software updates are going to be, what the emergency support is to be, what the performance checks are to be, and what the reporting goes to be.
Don’t necessarily answer with a low monthly price if major maintenance isn’t being included.
How Digicleft Solution Can Help Improve Your Website
A good website should be more than just online. It should be a communication tool that build trust with your business and turns traffic into customers.
It’s really about value, solid design, useful content and a constant improvement cycle.
Digicleft Solution helps companies to step into website development and digital improvements with a desire to shape the online experience. It’s equally as important because it is about web page functionality and effectiveness as it is about end user focused design. The target is to construct a website that allows the company reach its objectives.
This is the exact point of ‘How to Create: Engaging and Intuitive Websites for Maximum Impact’ The simple fact is your website should be easy for the visitor to understand, easy for them to find the information they are after and easy for them to know what next action to take. There should be nothing to confuse them.
Maintaining a website underpins this goal for the long term. Through continued testing, you will detect problems with navigation, slow loading web pages, stale content and various technical errors which can all potentially create a poor customer experience.
For any business considering developing a website or indeed updating an existing one, a clear maintenance programme should be considered. This makes long term management so much easier and helps to ensure the website is able to keep pace with the ever changing business environment.
Conclusion:
Developing a website maintenance plan is one of the most practical steps you can take to safeguard your online asset. Your website isn’t just a project you launch and walk away from. To maintain the security, performance, speed and usability of your website, it needs to be maintained.
Begin with a website audit, to determine what your priorities should be, and compile a realistic maintenance schedule. This can involve backup procedures, updating programs, security checks, enhancement of site performance, content review and testing of functions.
You don’t have to handle all the duties personally. You can distribute the workload between your team and the professional maintenance experts, based on your websites’ needs.
The main thing is consistency. Minor ongoing upkeep can help avoid issues and can assist your site to produce an improved experience for the long haul.
Treat your website as a business asset not just an item you’ll think of only when the problem pops up. With the maintenance plan you will have it prepared for your clients, engines, and your upcoming business opportunities.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
1. How often should you keep your site?
They can be scheduled but there should be at least a maintenance schedule or list to go along with it, this way ongoing jobs are accounted for. Availability and critical security alerts should be looked at weekly, backups should be looked at once a week, software updates should be checked on once a month, and performance and security audits should be checked on once every quarter. Of course for high traffic websites or e-commerce sites there will be a significantly higher need for a monitoring service.
2. What are the key website maintenance tasks?
The main website maintenance jobs are: checking on security, making regular backups, updating all software, optimising performance, testing for broken links and maintaining content and testing all features. I have seen these sorts of things help keep information secure, minimise problems and sustain a great visitor experience.
3. How much does it cost to maintain a website?
The cost of website maintenance will depend on the complexity of the website, the technology platform used, the services needed, and the type of support arrangement you prefer. A relatively simple business website demands significantly fewer resources for maintenance compared to an e-commerce platform or a complex web application. Always ask for a breakdown of services before choosing a maintainer.
4. Does web site upkeep optimize for SEO?
All the maintenance will do is stop things breaking such as links, loads of images that take forever to load, indexing problems and server errors. This alone won’t ensure you’re ranking though. I’ve always seen sites for SEO rankings work purely on the quality, relevance, competition and all the other factors of SEO.
5. Can I maintain my site without hiring a developer?
Yes, much of the more basic monitoring and maintenance of a website can be handled internally (content updating, backup checking, analytics monitoring, basic troubleshooting). More complicated issues such as server configuration, server file troubleshooting, custom coding, complex troubleshooting and the like would be a case for specialist technical support.
