A website is like a digital address for any Business. Even offline businesses today are making their digital presence with the help of a website.

Websites can help a business in many ways like it can increase the reach and visibility of your business; it is like a digital business card for your new or old venture.

But, do you think just making a website on the internet is enough to sustain? If you think so, then you are mistaken, my friend. Creating a website for your business is not enough; you must bear the time, energy, and money to maintain your website to get output.

You must be wondering what website maintenance is. Why is there so much buzz related to website maintenance? In that case, you have landed on the correct page, as here we will clarify all your doubts and queries regarding website maintenance.

What is the importance of Website Maintenance?

Any technological product, be it hardware or software, has downtime. You always choose maintenance services for your tech-related hardware and software for their healthy functioning; the same applies to your website.

Your website is a digital product backed by software; hence it requires the same treatment as any other software, especially its maintenance.

So, coming to the question of what does website maintenance include? It includes regular website checks for any issues or updates. It ensures that your website is in a healthy state to function properly.

Benefits of Website Maintenance:

The health and functionality of your website play a very crucial role in building and maintaining your business’s digital presence.

If you want to achieve sustainable business standards and give tough competition to your peers, then you must have strict website maintenance plans. It will help you present yourself as superior to your competitors.

Some of the most vital factors that contribute to the importance of your website maintenance are,

1. Presentable Inside Out

As mentioned earlier, your website is a digital card for your business. Only if your card looks appealing to the customer will they want to visit and look at your products or services.

Every customer who hears about your business will first navigate your website and look at your products and services there. If they do not have a fruitful experience at your website, they might not want to try your products and services. The website maintenance services will help you provide the best end-user experience for your website.

2. Best First Impression

Creating your business’s website online will help you gain new customers. When you start generating good traffic, and when many people start viewing your website, if there is a sudden downtime or issue on your website, it will ruin your business’s first impression.

As we all know, “First impressions are the best impressions.” Once you fail your first impression, it isn’t easy to convince the customer to trust you. Hence investing in website maintenance and support services will help you combat such awkward situations.

3. Happy End-user Experience

The primary goal of any website is to provide the best end-user experience. If your user is satisfied with your website, he will automatically become your customer.

Customer conversion and retention are completely dependent on how satisfying is the user experience. Hence, to achieve all the above, the crucial thing is to opt for website maintenance as this will maintain a better website’s health.

4. Sustainable and Consistent Growth

Growth must become a relative to your business as it will decide your success. But, growth is always slow and steady. If you want to build sustainable and consistent business growth, then website maintenance is necessary.

Website maintenance plans will help you keep your website optimized and functional always. Whenever a user checks out your website, it will be ready to serve them according to their purpose.

5. Provides Security

The internet world is great, but it also has those bad guys who always try to put people down. Internet malware and threats are a nuisance for everyone, especially businesses.

However, if you opt for website maintenance, you can prevent any cyber attacks on your website and keep shining and growing your business.

6. Achieve Unbeatable Sales Figures

It is a self-explanatory point. A functional website will help you provide the best end-user experience, customer conversion, and retention. Hence, if you keenly invest in website maintenance, you can achieve unbeatable sales figures with the most genuine and loyal customer base.

What is the cost of Website Maintenance?

After understanding the importance of website maintenance, you must be wondering what is the cost of maintaining a website:

The cost of website maintenance varies between different service providers. But the approximate costs are as follows,

• A personal website maintenance cost ranges between $5 and $25 monthly.
• A local or smaller business website maintenance can cost up to $100 monthly.
• A corporate website maintenance cost ranges between $200 and $3500 monthly.
• An Ecommerce website’s maintenance cost ranges between $1500 and $2500 monthly.

The costs mentioned above incur every month for the business owners. However, some additional costs are also required in the website maintenance phase; they are:

• While creating your website initially, you would have bought a domain name. It has a subscription model where you must pay for your domain name monthly or yearly. So, the renewal of the domain name also comes under website maintenance services. The approximate cost of domain names ranges between $0.08 to $1 monthly or $2 to $20 yearly.

• As a website owner, you must pay for your Secure Sockets Locker (SSL) Certificate. It keeps your website secure and free from cyber attacks. Sometimes, you may get an SSL Certificate for free, but most times, you have to bear the cost. The cost of an SSL Certificate ranges from $0.80 to $125 monthly or $10 to $1500 yearly.

• Website maintenance costs also include website hosting charges. There is a provision to self-host your website or hire an outsource like a hosting provider.

A shared host will cost you $24 to $120 yearly. Website Builder’s cost ranges from $60 to $180 yearly. A Virtual Service Provider’s cost ranges from $240 to $600 yearly. The most expensive option is a dedicated server whose cost ranges from $1200 to $2400 yearly.

Finally, you would have got an answer to the burning question, what is the cost of maintaining a website?

What do website maintenance services include?

Your website is like your car; without frequent servicing, your car wouldn’t run long distances smoothly. Similarly, frequent maintenance of your website will help establish the superior functioning of your website.

Let’s understand the type of services required during the maintenance schedule of your website.

1. Annual Website Testing- For the proper functioning of your website, your website is tested annually after updating.

Any broken link or outdated information is corrected during the website maintenance services.

2. Browser Compatibility Testing- Your website is tested for proper functioning in different mainstream browsers yearly. It will improve the compatibility of your website and will also give the best end-user experience.

3. Investigation of Forms and Check-out process- Your website will have many sign-up forms and check-out processes that must be verified quarterly for proper functioning.

4. Software Updates- Outdated software can hamper the functions of your website, along with causing a risk of threat.

Hence, it is crucial to update your hosting provider, security provider, and other third-party functionalities on your website monthly for the smooth functioning of your website.

5. Website Back-up.

Back-ups are very important as they can save you from losing your data, time, and money. Some websites have an automatic backup feature, which is great. But, you have to check for its functioning every month. You must also complete a manual backup every month to safeguard your website.

6. Key Metrics Review.

Key Metrics are your performance indicators (KPIs). You must review KPIs every week to know where you stand and to up your game. It will also ensure that you meet your goals quickly.

7. Website Speed.

The speed of your website reduces with constant use. Hence, it is essential to review the speed of your website frequently and fix the issues to give your users the best experience on your website.

8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Search Engine Optimization is the key to ranking yourself at the top of search engines. Sometimes, it is critical to review the SEO of your website if there is any stagnancy with your website traffic. Hence, SEO is a big part of website maintenance plans.

9. Website Content.

Content is King, which is why it is very beneficial to review and update your website content frequently to engage more audiences with your products and services on your website.

10. Spam Checking.

Sometimes there can be spam that has crossed your security filters on your website to cause chaos on your site. Hence, scanning spam regularly will help prevent such malware and threats.

How to schedule the website maintenance process?

Website maintenance is not a one-time thing; you have to be continuously at it to get the best functioning of your website. Hence, it is always better to hire third-party website maintenance services who can take care of the maintenance of your website and perform the scheduled operations from time to time.

The website maintenance operations can be scheduled in four categories-

1. Weekly Basis

• You must check for all the 404 errors and correct them if they exist.

• You must plan on improving your SEO traffic by publishing one or more blogs or website content.

• You must review all the forms on your website weekly to check their functioning.

• If you want to increase your website traffic, you must create a blog article to promote in your community.

• Every week you must recheck broken links on your website and fix them to avoid future problems.

• Every Week you must update your website plugins and software, as they play a very important role in the proper functioning of your website.

2. Monthly Basis

• You must schedule a monthly security audit.

• You must verify your website’s loading speed, and if you find any errors, you must immediately resolve them.

• You must analyze the most important statistics and work accordingly on your website.

• You must ensure that your website is visible in local searches, and if not, you must build strategies to up your SEO game.

• It is essential to update your outdated content monthly,

• Every month you must review your website and analyze the most and least prevalent content on the website.

3. Quarterly Basis

• You must focus on your content and review it quarterly to assess and analyze any changes that can be made to your website’s content.

• You must also update your website’s graphics and images every quarter to give a fresh look to your website and also to your users’ attention.

• You must make alterations to the Meta descriptions and titles on your website blogs.

• Every quarter you must track your website’s backups to save your data, time, and energy.

• You must recheck all your popups, forms, and other features on your website; if there are issues with them, then you must plan to fix them immediately.

• Every quarter you must test your website on the most widely used browsers and devices.

• Every quarter you must also examine the uptime logs – if it’s less than 99.9%, take action.

• You should also check properly to see if your website is mobile-friendly.

4. Yearly Basis

• You must make it an yearly ritual to update your website’s design.

• You must also revise the copyright information in the footer, including references, if any.

• The yearly renewal of your domain name is a must.

• The validity and accuracy of your website content are crucial, and you must review it yearly.

• You must update your best-performing blogs once a year.

You must have noticed in the above list that your work reduces with a longer period. It is because once you have fulfilled your weekly and monthly tasks, your monthly and yearly tasks have no pile-up and are easier to perform comparatively.

Conclusion

By now, you would completely understand what is website maintenance? Most people think that purely digital businesses only require website maintenance services; it is false. Website maintenance is for every business or person who owns a website and wants to create their digital presence by increasing the reach and visibility of your business or brand.

Website maintenance may seem tedious and costly for most entrepreneurs but think of one thing; a website is giving you value worth millions by giving you traffic and customers. Hence, it is essential to invest in website maintenance. It follows the compounding effect. Once you start gaining customers and having customer retention, there is no looking back.

Entrepreneurs must consider themselves fortunate because these days, they have an opportunity to grow big faster using their websites and SEO. Imagine the ancient times when business known to people was only offline, and achieving growth and visibility required a lot of wealth and contacts. Today the times have changed, and you must look to embrace the ease and beauty of the digital world in all its forms. Investing in website maintenance will help you build a great customer end-user experience.