There’s more to executing a world-class digital strategy than a one-time design cycle. After you’ve built an award winning website, website updates and maintenance keep your business on top – delivering a consistent, high-quality experience and winning over the hearts and minds of your audience. Web design and maintenance go hand-in-hand.
Website upkeep plays a key role in how search engines (and your audience) perceive your brand authority, as well as how visible your business will be long-term.
Site maintenance is the way we make sure your website continually functions well and wins the hearts of your target audience. The internet is continually updated, which means your pages must be as well. You want to make sure your users are getting the optimal experience, that you’re protected against security threats, and regular updates are being made.
What is Website Maintenance?
The digital extension of your brand is not a static asset. Just like any of your brick-and-mortar locations, things can break and need repair. Sites can be hacked, spammed, or crash. A plugin providing a crucial function on your website can run behind on updates, and become incompatible with your hosting platform.
If you’re not on top of these things, your business can be competing with one hand tied behind it’s back.
How much new business would you be losing if your contact form was broken, and it took months to realize it? That’s why regular monitoring and maintenance is a necessary component of any digital marketing strategy.
Web Maintenance Plans
A website maintenance plan is a way to stay on top of these issues and pull them out at the root, before they become long-standing issues for the business. Many companies rely on their online portals for customer service, and something as simple as long page load times can cause serious decreases in engagement.
Increased retention is one of the main benefits of web maintenance. By continually reviewing analytics, you will be able to determine what elements of your site are working (and which can use an update). One of the advantages afforded in digital analytics is getting to truly see what your audience is reacting to, and then leverage that data to inform future objectives.
If you know one of your bread and butter services is performing less well than a loss leader, you can then update the page and track improvements. There are situations where your in-person conversations reveal users are simply not aware of a section of the website, and adding links to relevant pages would improve their experience.
By regularly updating and maintaining your website, you make sure that you have the best digital experience in the region. If you’ve ever quickly browsed for a service or larger purchase, you know how easy it is to write off a site if you can’t find what you need.
If your users are running into broken links, buggy customer portals, or have to comb through disorganized pages to find educational content, they will quickly open a new tab and find what they need elsewhere. At the same time, such opportunities are always present. Regular website maintenance allows you to capitalize on these scenarios and win over those considering your competition.
Monthly Website Maintenance Packages
Website maintenance for mid-sized businesses is often neglected, to no fault of the business owner. There simply isn’t enough time to run the actual business, and also monitor your website for issues (let alone troubleshoot).
Creating consistent content, maintaining fast site speed, and using analytics to determine potential strategic updates are requirements to stay competitive online. Yet too often these issues are pushed aside in favor of revenue-generating tasks and not given a second thought. If you’re wondering why you have a superior offering or experience than your competitor, but they’re outpacing you online, it may be time to add web page maintenance to your arsenal.
Monthly Website Maintenance Plans
We recommend web maintenance be conducted on a monthly basis. This allows our team to be on top of everything that happens with your site, and respond to issues the moment they present themselves.
Having hours allocated to reviewing site performance leads to faster implementation of on-site optimizations, which can make an important difference in a given quarter. Leaving this cycle of monitoring and adjusting “for later” can result in unrealized gains, and frustration when realizing wins could have been realized months beforehand.
Reach out to discuss what methods we can use to keep your site running at peak performance, and provide ongoing insights into growth opportunities.