Best Practices for Website Maintenance

As an organization or even a sole business proprietor, you definitely want a business that is visible. The success of your business is often largely dependent on several factors, chief of which is its level of visibility and accessibility. This is why you should get your business a functional website – an online presence – that provides a non-restrictive platform for a global audience to access information about your services and also engage with you.

In the fast-paced digital era such as we’re in, the emergence of a “global village” means that you do not have to be physically present to pitch your business, land the big deal, and keep your business running, a functional, non-complicated, well-maintained website easily does the “magic”! Your website, whether static or dynamic, can be your business card, marketer, and also serve as your storefront.

That said, having built a functional website, you need to regularly keep it serviced so that it can continue to serve the purpose of representing your business ideals and converting to appreciable returns on investment. This article will enlighten you on all that you need to know about keeping your website functional and relevant.

Website Maintenance Explained

Consider website maintenance as the process of keeping your website functional, relevant and updated by constantly checking for and fixing any issue or glitch that can affect its smooth functioning, cause downtime and missed opportunities. The maintenance and optimization of web performance ensures that your site works well on any platform, either on web browsers or mobile devices. Website maintenance, whether automatic or manual, should be performed regularly, at least once a month depending on the purpose and complexity of the site. It is also better outsourced to a professional like Telliswall Inc. as the process is quite technical and you do not want to incur some unnecessary expenses on account of some error you may make while carrying out the process by yourself.

Types of Website Maintenance

Here are specific types of tasks included in the website maintenance process:

1. Website Contents Update: What’s a website without contents! It’s the reason anyone would visit your site in the first place, so, you want to ensure that the information you put up are regularly reviewed for corrections and updates.

2. Website Speed Optimization: The speed of your website load-time is crucial for a satisfactory user experience and improved SEO ranking. You can use tools like the Google PageSpeed Insights to identify areas that need be improved to optimize your web speed. This you can achieve by processes such as minimizing HTTP requests and leveraging browser caching.

3. Plugin Update and Integration: This improves the security and usability of your website. It also introduces new features and ensures optimum performance and compatibility with your Content Management Systems (CMS) such as an updated WordPress version.

4. Security Update: Performing constant security and vulnerability checks secures your website from cyber attacks, viruses and, malware. Keeping your site functioning with updated security measures such as password fortification, intrusion detection systems, firewalls and antivirus software, saves you the trouble and cost of cleaning your website in case of an attack.

5. Website Backup: Saving your data in an off-site backup system such as the cloud keeps them preserved and accessible in the event of a server crash or other forms of accident. Ensure a regular automatic backup of your website data.

6. Website Analytics Review: Analyzing key metrics such as page views, user behaviors, bounce rates and, conversion rank helps to figure out your website performance rate and identify parts of the website that require improvement.

7. Disaster Recovery Plan Setup: Website maintenance means being proactive in securing your site. An extensive disaster recovery plan entails setting up a contingency plan for data backup and recovery and, communication protocols in case of emergencies like server crash, data breach or any natural disaster.

8. Annual Website Testing: Constant website monitoring is the way to go to identify any problem, such as a broken link, and fix them to ascertain the functionality of your site. For instance, you can regularly scan your website for broken links  and fix them immediately by updating or removing the affected URLs (Jain, undated).

9. User-feedback Generation: Ensure that your web users can interact with you through comments and trackbacks. They can let you in on any issue with your website designs that you hadn’t observed initially so that you can promptly fix them and keep your website working optimally.

10. Legal Compliance: A functional website should comply with legal requirements, such as privacy policies, terms of service and accessibility standards (Blasbalg, 2023). Ensure that your site is regularly reviewed and updated to conform with global regulations.

Importance of Website Maintenance

The consistent maintenance of a website bears with it many advantages; it keeps you in business and retains the relevance and profitability of your business. Say for instance, you’re a chauffeur, imagine the losses you could incur from having your car stop working for lack of regular servicing, you could eventually be out of business if your car kept breaking down and clients got disappointed or disgruntled. A well-maintained website ensures that it is optimized and secured. It increases traffic, improves SEO and Google rankings and boosts user experience. Let’s have an in-depth look at why you should take website maintenance more seriously.

* Impressive Business Reputation: Your web page gives off a first impression about you and your business. A well-maintained website with attractive and up-to-date designs assures your website visitors of your site’s credibility, authenticity and relevance, helping them make the decision of patronizing and referring you.

* Continuous Relevance: Website maintenance allows you to review and update the information on your site. Your business expansion and relevance are hinged upon how current the details you provide on your website are which in turn enhances your SEO and Google search ranking. In the case of a large site with a collection of links, contact forms, textual and pictorial contents and widgets, among other things, web maintenance also prevents glitches and web design flaws (Chow, 2020).

* Enhanced Cybersecurity: Constantly monitoring and optimizing your website performance helps you to keep  your applications upgraded to newer versions for improved performance and prevention of cyber attacks.

* Improved User Experience: A functional, responsive and, accessible website offers your visitors a satisfactory experience and has the potential of converting your website visitors to repeat clients and customers. Martins (2024) opines that customers are easily disgruntled by a malfunctioning website and 57% of these customers will not recommend any business with a flawed website design on mobile devices. What’s more, keeping your website accessible means it is user inclusive.

* Website Speed Improvement: A delayed and slow-loading website speed can be quite frustrating and, can  result in customer and profit lose. Monitoring your web performance helps you identify the cause of the problem and figure out what you need to do, such as minimize render-blocking resources, limit redirects, or track the average load-time, to improve loading speed and achieve a positive user experience (Strikingly, 2023).

Here’s How Telliswall Inc. Comes In

Telliswall Inc. is a promise fulfilled for your website development, monitoring, and optimization. We realize how crucial an efficient website is to your personal and organizational growth and success so, we stop at nothing in delivering a custom, non-complicated, easy-to-navigate site that loads at lightning speed, offers a satisfactory customer experience, improves user engagement, and guarantees a high conversion rate.

More specifically with regards to your website maintenance, we offer such services as include but are not limited to both automatic and manual updates. We will also inspect your software, web hosting, DNS management, and domain registry to ensure the optimization of your website.

Conclusion

Today, many businesses thrive and enjoy relevance chiefly through a consistent and accessible online presence. However, it is not sufficient to merely build a website, it is even more expedient that the site is well-maintained regularly – a key part of running a successful business.

Establishing a standard web maintenance schedule and working with it for regular backups, content updates, security and software updates, website design improvement, speed optimization, mobile responsiveness, and user-friendly experience, among other tasks, will ensure an astute goal conversion, business growth, and profitability.

References

Blasbalg, C. L. (2023). Website Maintenance: What is it and What Does it Entail? https://www.wix.com/blog/website-maintenance

Chow, J. (2020). Why Website Maintenance? The Best Practices for Peak Site Performance https://www.websitepulse.com/blog/website-maintenance-best-practices#

Eluwa, E. (2023). Website Maintenance Best Practices For Businesses & Startups https://brela.agency/website-maintenance-best-practices-for-businesses-startups/

Jain, P. (Undated). The Ultimate Guide to Website Maintenance: What You Need to Know https://www.doubledome.com/blog/web-design/website-maintenance-guide/

Martins, M.(2024). What Is Website Maintenance? https://www.designrush.com/agency/website-design-development/trends/website-maintenance

Rouse, M. (2024). Website                         https://www.techopedia.com/definition/5411/website

Samaria (2024). 7 Useful Tips for Website Maintenance that You Must Know https://www.pixelcrayons.com/blog/digital-marketing/7-useful-tips-for-website-maintenance-that-you-must-know/

Strikingly (2023). 10 Fixes for a Slow Loading Website https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.strikingly.com/blog/posts/10-fixes-slow-loading-website.amp