Being proactive (instead of reactive) can help you avoid website problems you didn't even know you had. By understanding the importance of website maintenance and optimization, you can keep your website’s performance, user experience, and security in tip-top shape.
Think of it like a car: A car needs routine maintenance to keep everything running smoothly so that you can drive it for years to come. Taking your car to the mechanics for a service regularly is the best way to ensure any smaller problems don’t become bigger, more expensive problems later down the road. Well, websites are kind of the same — there’s just less oil and more pixels.
You can also enhance your car (or website) to better compete with others on the road, be more comfortable for your passengers, or attract the attention you’re looking for. Are heated leather seats the same thing as a mobile-optimized site? We can confidently say they are.
This blog will take you through:
Okay, your site isn’t actually alive. But if you treat it like it is by giving it proper care and maintenance, you’ll significantly enhance its effectiveness.
Darren Maher, Group Director of Web Services here at Major Tom, said it best, “Sites are launched, not done.”
The problem is that most companies view a website launch as the end of the journey.
Many companies mistakenly view the launch of a website as the final step. In reality, a website is never truly complete. It is a perpetual work in progress, much like a marketing campaign, where the real work begins post-launch. You continuously adapt and refine, aiming to boost performance and achieve your strategic goals.
Your business is dynamic, always advancing and adapting. Your website should mirror this, evolving to support your business's growth and changes. Regularly revisiting your site’s performance, user experience, functionalities, and content ensures it aligns with your business objectives and meets your audience’s changing needs.
While it might seem more cost-effective to leave your website as is in the short term, it can be problematic for your website’s long-term potential and your business’ growth.
Investing in a regular website maintenance cost is a small price to pay compared to doing a whole website refresh. It prevents small problems from becoming big ones — saving the cost of fixing a severely broken website or rebuilding your site from scratch. Work smarter, not harder.
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A website’s primary goal is to convert customers. Without regular maintenance, your website won’t be optimized to serve them. When user experience diminishes, and functionality fails to drive visitors toward a desired action, the chances of converting them drastically decrease. Lost lead generation is no good for sustained business growth.
Remember, much like your business, your customers are not static. Customer behaviors evolve over time, which is why optimization is an ongoing process and not a one-and-done deal.
The importance of website maintenance and optimization cannot be stressed enough. Paying attention to your website consistently over time can lead to:
Before we get into it, let’s talk about frequency. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this. It could be weekly, monthly, or quarterly. It depends on the size, complexity, and functionality of your website.
A good place to start is monthly website audits. But, again, it all depends on the evolving goals of your business.
Note: There will always be slight variations and specificities in custom, Squarespace, and WordPress website maintenance, but the following will always ring true. You can use this blog as your guiding north star.
There are a few notable benefits of performing proactive website maintenance and some sticky problems you can run into if your site isn’t maintained.
Let’s dive into the strategic approach you can take to website maintenance and the ways it can improve your bottom line.
Outdated, rarely updated, or never-updated websites don’t help those who matter most — your customers. Besides getting boring fast, a website that isn't updated regularly will be less appealing, difficult to use, and irrelevant to customers, causing it to fall in search engine rankings. Keeping your website up-to-date is crucial if you want it to work for you, not against you.
When it comes to the rapidly evolving world of web development, we like to stay ahead of the curve. This ensures we apply the latest technologies and web design trends to build custom website solutions — the kind of websites people love to engage with because they’re modern, visually appealing, functional, and user-friendly. All reasons for existing customers to return and new ones to explore. Discover our Copperleaf case study to show this in action.
To increase relevancy, we add fresh content that serves your customers and their changing needs. We strive for high quality and consistency here to increase your chances of reaching more potential customers.
Cybercrime is on the rise, and websites are prime targets. Hackers are always looking to exploit vulnerabilities for various malicious activities. It doesn’t matter the size or purpose of your business, it matters that there’s a path of least resistance for the hacker to achieve their goals.
A hacked website can mean downtime, lost customers, data theft, and legal trouble. All of which cost your business money.
With regular website maintenance, we take a proactive approach to defense. We identify and patch weak points, monitor suspicious activity, and update software and plugins to fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. Fortifying your website against potential attacks reduces the risk of security breaches.
A secure website not only protects your business and all of its data, it also fosters trust among your customers. This is key if you want to attract new customers, retain existing ones, and encourage them to engage with your content.
In addition to these security measures, regular data backup ensures you can quickly restore your website in case of an attack.
While website maintenance is a must to keep your site secure and functional, website optimization (through data-driven changes) will make the experience of visiting your site much better.
When it comes to websites, every second counts. The speed of a website and a seamless user experience cannot be overstated. When a website is not regularly maintained, it’s likely to become sluggish over time.
Besides being a huge ranking factor for Google, slow-loading times frustrate users, decrease satisfaction, and increase bounce rates, leading to lost revenue.
The elements that can negatively affect the speed and performance of your website are:
You will want to regularly monitor your website performance metrics and user interactions and analyze the above elements. This gives you the power to make informed adjustments to address any speed or performance issues.
When your website loads quickly, it enhances the user experience and positively impacts your search engine rankings. When visitors have a smooth, seamless experience on your website, you’re more likely to keep them engaged, reduce bounce rates, and increase conversion rates.
Speed and performance are not the only elements that affect user experience; functionality and responsiveness do too. A website that isn’t regularly maintained can quickly fall into the trap of poor functionality and unresponsiveness. This bad user experience can be detrimental to business growth.
Poor functionality means your site has complex navigation, broken links, and a lack of clear call-to-action buttons. Inaccessibility is a real problem, too. When your website doesn’t operate the way it should, it frustrates users, leading to high bounce rates and missed opportunities to convert them.
*Click on the frames to see them in action*
An unresponsive website has a fixed layout that doesn’t adjust or adapt to different screen sizes, devices or orientations. It might look great on a desktop, but it’s difficult to navigate on smaller devices. With 59% of global website traffic coming from mobile, an unresponsive website will lose you new customers and potentially existing ones too.
You should regularly check the effectiveness of your current website functionality to ensure your visitors are experiencing an error-free and seamless online journey. The better the user experience, the more likely visitors are to stay on your site, engage with content, and convert. Plus, when you go through this process, it allows you to review what new functionality to add to better serve your customers, like making it more accessible.
We also analyze how responsive your website is on different devices. A responsive website reflows design, content, and functionality to fit various screen sizes — it works on everything from desktop to tablet to mobile. This flexible design structure makes it easier for visitors to accomplish tasks on your site, no matter the device they’re using.
As the digital landscape evolves, user behaviors change, and algorithms update, it’s important to commit to the ongoing upkeep of your SEO, too. Especially if you want your website to continue ranking higher on search engines. And with 91% of online experiences starting with search, you’d be remiss to overlook it.
When users no longer think your website provides enough value, or worse, it doesn’t function how it’s supposed to, they bounce. That means high bounce rates are symptoms of a much deeper problem: Irrelevant content and poor user experience. The kind of factors that lead a website to a lower SERP ranking.
With lower search engine rankings, you lose out on coveted search engine placements. This negatively affects your website’s overall visibility online, reducing the share of traffic your website receives from organic search results. Fewer eyes on your website; fewer opportunities to convert customers.
Through a combination of on-page and off-page SEO best practices, we can increase your website’s visibility and drive organic traffic, improving your ranking performance.
Our SEO checklist helps us do this. It involves:
Staying on top of the above is crucial if you want your business to grow. Regular maintenance and audits ensure your website meets the changing objectives of your business and the evolving needs of your audience.
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Your audience likely isn’t the same as it was 5-10 years ago. The data your website collects is the best way to prove this. As the world constantly evolves, customer expectations increase. Not only do they demand more, but their preferences, values, and behaviors change too.
Regular website maintenance and optimization allow you to navigate the challenges of adapting to this reinvigorated audience as and when it happens. This way, your website can evolve with your customers.
We can’t stress this enough: Nothing is as valuable as real-life data and feedback to discover what’s working and what’s not.
By monitoring website performance metrics and conducting regular customer surveys, you can rethink, reprioritize, and redesign elements based on what the data is telling us. In other words, you can make data-driven decisions for the continuous improvement of your website.
Choose the KPIs that make sense for your business then track, analyze, and enhance your website. Just remember, and this is a really important point, if your customers don’t like your website, how happy you are with it is irrelevant.
Maintaining your website is one piece of the puzzle; having a website that’s built for longevity is another.
A flexible design system makes it easier to maintain the features and functions of your website without disrupting the overall user experience. While scalable information architecture allows your website to adapt to changing needs as your business grows. Together, they’re a force to be reckoned with.
By making website maintenance and optimization part of your ongoing website strategy, you can avoid the problems and costs that neglecting your website creates. Instead, you’ll reap the benefits a well-setup and strategized website offers: Faster performance, better user experience, higher lead generation, and more conversions.
Read next: Solving complex website usability issues for large-scale organizations.
It's much more fun to be interested than interesting.
