Why website maintenance is vital for online success

Launching a new website is a mammoth project. So much thought goes into design, development, user experience and more. Not to mention optimising for SEO, and crafting copy and messaging for conversion.

You've put everything into making sure your website is the best it can be. Showcasing your brand, providing an immersive experience for your users. So, once you hit publish on your new site, it can be tempting to kick back and cross your website off your list as 'done'. 

Ah. If only it were that simple. Think of your website as a vital ecosystem in your business. Each part forms an aspect of your sales, marketing and customer service delivery. 

If just one part of it falls down, it can throw the entire operation out of whack. This is where web maintenance comes in. 

Your website needs constant and ongoing attention. Sadly, it doesn’t bring the traffic you need and deliver a high-quality customer experience all by itself. It needs updates and monitoring to make sure everything is working in the best possible way.

It’s a long game. But the effort you put in today will pay dividends in the long term. If it’s done right…

That’s where web maintenance comes in. It’s vital to the success of your business online. And something you should factor into your overall website budget.

You're probably already aware that you need to renew your domain every year, so you don't lose your unique address. 

Yes, that can happen. Without a timely domain renewal process, you risk losing out on your preferred name. Which could be disastrous for your brand.

Equally, when choosing a developer, ask if they provide hosting alongside maintenance. Plus, you need to be sure and check that you’ll own your website and domain. Sometimes, less reputable website development companies take ownership of your domain and website. You definitely don’t want that. So, check the fine print.

When you choose us for your web hosting and maintenance, you always own your website and domain. We also partner with a reputable specialist WordPress hosting solution. 

Good hosting management sets the foundations for the best website performance. We track bandwidth, manage server space, and put in place a clear renewal procedure.

If you've been reading our other blogs, you'll already know that we're not keen on plugin overuse.

That said, there are some plugins that are very well respected and work incredibly well. The Yoast SEO plugin is one such example. 

If there's a plugin that works really well and will benefit our client, we always recommend it. But with plugin use comes the need to keep an eye on updates and maintenance. 

Your content management system (CMS) is the software you use to build and manage your website. Our team of developers is expert in the WordPress CMS. It’s the most popular CMS on the market with 63% of websites that have a CMS running WordPress. 

With millions of daily users, the WordPress CMS is updated super regularly. If you’re running an out-of-date version of your CMS, you’re opening your website up to security risks and errors. Regular web maintenance practice should include updates of scripts, software and plugins. To make sure you have the best performance and protection against security threats.

We can advise you on the best plugins to use for the functionality you need. Alternatively, a custom build might better suit your customers’ needs.

All web maintenance packages should include security monitoring and scanning as standard. Regular security scans and monitoring help protect your site from attacks and breaches. 

Your site should - at the very least - have the basic website security measures in place. These include firewalls, malware scans and making sure you have an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate helps keep your user data secure. It also verifies your ownership of the website. And it prevents attackers from creating a fake version of your site. It's essential for gaining user trust. All our clients' websites have SSL certificates as standard.

As well as regular scanning and monitoring, we use a reputable security plugin for clients’ sites. It adds that extra layer of security.

It’s worth noting though, that aside from a few well-regarded ones, we keep plugin use to an absolute minimum.

Less well-known and maintained plugins can cause security threats aside from WordPress updates. So, choosing an expert website maintenance developer can minimise unnecessary code. Which could otherwise expose you to threats. Get in touch with our team today to discuss how we can help keep your website and customer data safe.

Regular website backups are essential protection in case something drastic goes wrong. For peace of mind, have a robust disaster recovery plan in place. So, you can get back up and running quickly in the unlikely event of a major problem. For this reason, off-site, or cloud backups are essential. 

Businesses that suffer data loss and security breaches risk untold damage to reputation, revenue and operations.

You should always have a recent backup version of your site available just in case. File versioning can restore previous versions of your website. Our web maintenance developers use a version control that stores the previous version each time we adjust the code on your site. That way we can revert to it if we need to. 

Our teams are meticulous with our coding and maintenance services for clients. So, it’s extremely unlikely that we’ll ever need the backup version. But it’s always in place regardless as added protection for your peace of mind. 

Good website maintenance services also make sure that your site is performing well. We do this with regular plugin monitoring to make sure we're running the latest versions. This way they're not introducing errors and slowing down your site.

It's another reason why we keep plugins to a minimum on the sites we build. As too many can slow things down. Plus, if they're not regularly updated, they can introduce security threats.

We also make sure we regularly check image sizes, so we’re not slowing down loading. It’s a good idea to keep image sizes as low as you can for their purpose. Obviously, you wouldn’t want a tiny file size for the hero section of your website. As you might find the quality is too low, you don’t want the file size to be so small that you compromise quality. But with smaller images for blog posts or staff bios, you can stand to compress them to a much smaller size. 

Our website maintenance packages can also include checking your website across different browsers and devices. 

With around half of your visitors using mobile, the user experience must match the desktop standard. Plus, you don’t know which kind of browser even desktop visitors will use. So it’s important to make sure we test your website across a variety. 

Keeping your website's content relevant and up-to-date not only delights your visitors. It also pleases the search engine bots and crawlers. 

Regular updates to your content as part of your web maintenance plan means removing old content and refreshing old articles with up-to-date statistics, images and graphics. As well as, regularly adding new posts that give great value to your visitors, and that are optimised for SEO.

Here at Feel Created, we build your website with you in mind. The blocks we build make it easy to manage your content in-house. So anyone on your team can easily add and update content. 

If you don’t have the capacity to manage this in-house, we do offer a digital marketing support service. So we can handle all your content updates for you, saving you valuable admin time. 

Read up on the track record of the team you're looking to hire. What are their credentials? Do they specialise in your particular CMS or are they a jack of all trades?

As experts in WordPress, we've built and maintained engaging and high-performing websites across a range of industries. Check out some of our work for a taste of what we could create for your business. 

Another question you should ask when you’re getting help with managing website maintenance is: Do you use staging sites? In the early stages of development, we always use a staging area. So you can see progress, test your site out, and give us feedback. It’s a great way to review and make changes to aspects of your website before we deploy them to the live version.  

As part of your ongoing hosting and maintenance contract, we keep the staging site available even after your website goes live. That way, you can review any future developments safely. Or you can just use it as a testing area for new content ideas.

As your business and website grow, the last thing you want is to be locked into a rigid maintenance package. 

When choosing a website maintenance company, ask if you can customise the service.

You’ll also want to find out about options for scalability. How will the support grow and evolve with your website? This is something we’re happy to discuss. We can come up with a tailored plan to suit your specific requirements.

The third thing you'll want to consider is communication. Make sure you ask:

How quickly do you respond to inquiries?

Are you available outside office hours?

How often do you provide website status updates?

When you choose us for your web maintenance and hosting, you get a proactive maintenance service. Which can dramatically cut down support calls. Our in-depth knowledge of WordPress means we pre-empt and avoid potential problems before they happen.

So your website can carry on doing what it’s meant to: Provide an engaging and intuitive customer experience along with valuable and up-to-date content. 

Get in touch with our team today to discuss how we can help you with high-quality, adaptable website hosting and maintenance services.