Why Website Maintenance Plans Lead to Successful Websites
Yes, you can perform website maintenance on your own. Almost any business owner can learn the ins and outs of the software and set aside time each day to perform updates. The questions are, do you want to, and would you know what to do if something went wrong?
Why Website Maintenance Plans and Care are Important for Your Website Success
Website maintenance plans and care are now an integral part of website ownership. Because just like your iPhone or tablet, the software of your website needs to be updated. It requires care and maintenance to keep your website working properly. Hoping for the best where website maintenance and care is concerned is like hoping that your car won’t need an oil change. You wouldn’t be able to drive your car for very long if you didn’t take care of it and provide it with the regular maintenance that it needs. The same is true for your WordPress website. Your website should always be up and running, ready for customers and presenting your business at its best.
Websites Are Not “Set it and Forget It” Anymore
If your website isn’t being cared for every month, you may actually be wasting money by throwing it out the window. When potential customers come to your website and find that things are wrong with it, they usually do not stick around. Many website owners do not check their website on a regular basis. They do not know how it is functioning. Missed or overlooked issues or downtime can leave the wrong impression. Even worse, it could cost you a customer.
Benefits of Website Maintenance Plans and Care
Many people do not realize the benefits of site maintenance and care. For instance:
The website performance, downtime, and uptime, its load time, is all dependent on whether the software and plugins are functioning as they should (and if they are using the most recent updated versions).
Analytics monitoring, website growth, its fresh content, and design changes are all dependent on you having someone ensuring that all updates to the website are completed in an experienced and seamless fashion.
Care and Maintenance Workflow
At Studio Barn Creative, we take great care to execute these tasks and report on them (see a sample report).
Our first task, before we make any updates, is to create a full off-site backup of the website. Then we make the necessary updates, one plugin at a time. Then, we check the website after these updates to confirm that there are no errors, such as formatting issues.
Our software keeps a record of the plugins that we update for our clients. Therefore, if there is ever an issue we can target which version was changed and revert back to the previous version to restore functionality. We also include in our monthly maintenance and care report, the performance and security scans data.
In the event that there ever is a plugin issue, we create a support ticket and get to work repairing the problem. The support ticket enables us to address and repair it, hopefully before you ever know that there is a problem.
Dangers of Do It Yourself Maintenance
Maintaining your site yourself can feel like a great idea. However, it can cost you more than you may think at first blush. If you only update from your WordPress admin area, you would not have a record of what was completed. If an update to a plugin creates an issue a couple days or weeks later, it would be difficult for you to know what was changed and how you could revert back without restoring a now outdated backup (which could potentially cost you the loss of content changes, image updates, sales orders, contact entries, and so on).
It Will Cost More to Fix Than to Maintain
The approach of “I’ll get to it when I can” and a general lack of knowledge about website architecture can damage the look and functionality of your website. When that happens, you will be presented with a problem and two choices.
First, you could try to fix it yourself. In this approach, you may end up doing further damage.
Or, you can choose to pay someone experienced (a hefty price, now that your site is “broken”) to fix it. Just like most things, it costs more to fix it than it does to maintain it properly.
Regular oil changes help keep your car running in tip-top shape. Regular website care and maintenance will help to keep your website running in tip-top shape, too.
Time for a Professional
There is a direct correlation between regular website maintenance and care and successful websites.
Your business is what you know best. What we know best is websites.
Would you go into a courtroom without your lawyer? Why try to maintain your own website if you’re not a website professional?
By partnering with an experienced website professional you are actually saving valuable time, valuable money, and potential lost visitors. Lost visitors often times means lost revenue.
Therefore, if you are ready for a website care plan for your website, let’s start the conversation here, or email us directly at info@studiobarncreative.com to learn how we can get and keep your site in tip-top condition, or Sign-Up today.
Learn About Our Monthly Website Maintenance Plans
Studio Barn Creative offers three different website maintenance plans and website care plans that you can view here.
The Maintain Plan is our entry level plan and usually fits well for new business owners or small business models.
The Manage It All Plan takes it up a notch. It includes hosting costs, and is great for businesses with shops on their site.
The Stellar Plan is for the customer that has an established and growing business and needs someone to be available to make ongoing changes that are a priority.
Each of these plans can also be customized to meet your specific needs. Whether you’re a solopreneur or manage a busy team, knowing that your website is up and running is helpful. What’s more helpful is knowing there will be someone available to help if anything causes trouble or if you accidentally delete something.