Website maintenance plans are critical to your website’s success. Every WordPress website needs routine maintenance and there are two ways to go about it; 1. Do it yourself or 2. Have a team of professionals do it for you. We strongly suggest the latter. But why? Why shouldn’t you just do it yourself?
We’re going to address the common questions that people are asking about website maintenance plans and why they need them. We want to help by explaining why you should outsource your maintenance plan and why it should be the number one priority for your business.
What is a website maintenance plan?
First, let’s start with the basics in case you’re not sure what a maintenance plan is or, more importantly, what it involves. A website maintenance plan is much like an oil change for your car, it keeps your site protected, updated and running like a well-oiled machine. So why is this important?
Well, think of yourself as a race car driver. Your primary job is to race the car, not to manage all the technical aspects of it at the same time. This is why you would have an engineer in your ear giving you feedback at every turn. All you need at that moment is clear instruction on exactly what to do in order to win the race. Managing your website is very similar. You need to focus on driving revenue for your business and let professional web ‘engineers’ give you feedback and make the necessary adjustments to your site.
Security for both you and your customers
The ultimate reason why it’s important your website needs a maintenance plan is because of security. Your WordPress site is an open-source Content Management System (CMS). It essentially allows anyone to build a website utilizing a variety of themes and plugins. You can add endless functionality, which is why WordPress is so popular! The downside is that these tools and features require maintenance. If you fall behind, your site will be exposed to vulnerabilities and/or hackers who can crash it or even worse, steal valuable data from your business and your customers.
The 5 questions you should be asking yourself
1. Why should maintenance plans be important to me?
We have already touched on security as a predominant function of website maintenance, but it is so much more. A maintenance plan can significantly boost your site traffic by performing regular updates to valuable information, broken or missing links, and your content. These are all factors that Google and other search engines will consider when ranking your website in search results.
On a daily basis, these threaten the integrity of your website having a consequential effect on website security. The importance of this protection is not only to provide security for your website and information but especially that of your customer’s whose data can be accessed through your site.
Your security checklist
- Daily automatic deep scans to detect malware, viruses and malicious code
- Malware cleanup if detected
- Powerful Website Application Firewall (WAF) to keep the bad guys out
Aside from losing out on great positioning in search results, your customers will be directly affected by a lack of updates. Broken or missing links, in particular, can lead to frustrating situations for your potential customers who are seeking information. A non-functional website is a huge turn-off and with the sheer volume of competition, you could be losing out on valuable business opportunities as would-be customers look elsewhere.
2. My website isn’t that big or complicated, do I still need a maintenance plan?
Even the most basic websites require a maintenance plan. Simply put, the quantity of content your website has will not have an impact on its vulnerabilities, because the issue of security and maintenance is more dependent on host servers and your website platform. Failing to update your site regularly will result in putting your potential customers and their confidential information at risk.
3. Can’t I just run the updates myself?
Having knowledge of website security and maintenance can be beneficial for you and that is why we always aim to provide you with the data in an easy-to-digest format. Your understanding of the information empowers you to make better decisions with your website.
These days, technology updates are becoming more and more frequent, and ensuring that you are on top of this constantly shifting landscape is vital in providing the best possible user experience for your customers. With your WordPress site often running multiple plugins, themes, and core updates, it’s not uncommon to experience a negative chain reaction caused by one or more of the updates. You can trust our experience when we say that staying on top of these updates and solving the inevitable technical hiccups is a full-time job.
We want to enable you to focus on what really matters, running and growing your business successfully.
4. It doesn’t seem that complicated, so what’s included in a maintenance plan?
Our maintenance plan is comprised of six parts:
- Plugin Updates are a core functioning component of WordPress and we will ensure they are executed as and when available while tracking and managing how they affect the rest of your website.
- Our 24/7 Support Team are dedicated WordPress professionals and are on constant standby to carry out content updates to your site. From uploading new content to making changes to existing content, we’ve got you covered.
- Daily Off-Site Backups are performed for when the unthinkable happens and your host fails. We create daily backups and store them securely off-site so that, in the case of a failure, we can have your website back up and running quickly.
- Visual Validation Checks help in maintaining consistency with your website and design layout which can often be disrupted by plugin and core updates notoriously not working together. Our visual check process will alert our team if any inconsistencies are found.
- Security Monitoring is fundamental. Your site requires security monitoring to protect it from inevitable attacks from hackers and malware. We will keep your site safe, secure and clear up any malware issues we find.
- Our Monthly Reports will keep you up to speed with all things maintenance that goes on behind the scenes. This way you’ll know all the value you’re getting without ever needing to ask!
5. Doesn’t my hosting company do that?
Website hosting and website maintenance may seem similar but they have very different functions.
Website hosting is the space that your site occupies on the internet. There are two types of hosting, shared and dedicated. Shared means you share a server with other websites and dedicated hosting means that the server is all yours. Effectively, you are renting server space which is where your website lives. The hosting providers will take care of all of the maintenance regarding the server, but your website is your responsibility.
Website maintenance is essentially everything that is required to maintain the functionality of your website itself and has nothing to do with the server. This includes content changes, design updates, development coding, security and technology updates.
Some website hosting companies do offer maintenance plans, which while appealing, tend to be a one-size-fits-all package covering general backups and updates. The significant downside of this is that each website and business has specific requirements. Having a dedicated team of specialists to monitor and maintain your website is worth its weight in gold to offer the best experience for you and your customers.
If you’re looking to take the next step in protecting your website, our highly professional team is waiting to hear from you! To get started, take a look at our website maintenance plan options here.
We look forward to helping you keep your website on the road to success.
