Regular Website Maintenance – Why It’s A Big Deal For Businesses

Face it, we live in a digital age. That means that every business – regardless of size or industry – must have a website. And, because most customers will visit your business’s website before ever setting foot in your brick and mortar shop or contacting you for services, your website is the first opportunity you have to make a good impression. If you want people to give you their business, your company’s website must be professional looking as well as an authentic representation of your business and your brand.

But, did you know that in order to have a successful website, meaning one that draws in new customers, you need to make sure that your site is up-to-date. That’s right, regular website maintenance is an imperative part of running a successful business.

The Importance of Having an Up-To-Date Website

Like we mentioned above, if you want your business to be taken seriously and your website visitors to convert into customers, you have to have a professional looking website. In fact, a bad and unprofessional website is actually worse than no website at all. 

Think about it. At some point, you’ve probably been on a poorly-designed website. Maybe it wasn’t optimized for mobile use. Or, maybe it was way too slow to load its content or images. Or, maybe it was an all around mess and you weren’t able to locate the information you needed.

What did you do when you came across this site? You most likely clicked away and searched elsewhere, right? 

If you don’t want to lose potential customers before they’ve even seen what you have to offer, you must have a great and up-to-date website. And, in order to achieve this, you must conduct regular website maintenance. 

Here are some best practices for regular website maintenance that will help keep your business website up-to-date.

10 Important Regular Website Maintenance Tasks You Should Be Doing

1. Put it on your calendar.

It’s best to actually schedule your website maintenance so you don’t get behind. Conducting your website maintenance on a bi-monthly basis is a good minimum frequency. 

2. Make sure your contact information is current and correct. 

While this seems unbearably obvious, it may surprise you how frequently it happens that a change is made at a business and the website is never updated. Maybe the owners moved to a new office. Maybe someone got a new cell phone number. Maybe you hired a new salesperson. Whatever the case may be, take the time to review your site and make sure your contact information is up-to-date because incorrect contact information can damage your credibility before you’ve even had a chance to make a sale.

3. Add fresh content on a regular basis.

The search engines love new content. So, publishing high-quality industry relevant content is a great way to keep your website fresh and current as well as get new traffic your way. One way to get new content on your site is to publish blog posts at least once a month. Twice a month is even better! 

Another great thing about constantly having fresh content on your site is that it can help build trust between your brand and your potential customers, which will increase your sales. Website visitors are more likely to conduct business with companies that have useful and industry relevant content on their websites. 

4. Don’t forget to update any news or special offers. 

Did your special promotion expire? Is your “Recent News” not-so-recent? Don’t make your brand look bad by failing to update important news and offers. 

5. Install any necessary security updates. 

The security of your busines’s website should be one of your top priorities, especially in today’s day and age. We are constantly hearing about businesses who have been hacked, and compromising information, like customers’ credit card and social security numbers, leaked. You do not want this to happen because it can be detrimental to your business, so be sure to stay on top of any website security updates or patches. 

6. Make sure any software is up-to-date.

It is vitally important to the health of your website to keep software updated with the latest plugins or bug fixes. Failing to update software can lead to slow website and page load times. This can cause you to lose customers.  

7. Keep your SEO fresh.

When making sure your website is up-to-date by adding new content, you also need to make sure you add any new keywords you used so your SEO stays fresh. 

8. Backup your site on a regular basis.

Ideally, you should backup your site whenever you make an update. This will ensure that if anything happens to your site, like a power outage or a hacking incident, you will be able to get your site back up and running ASAP. 

9. Test your website’s loading speed.

Did you know that even a 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. Don’t lose that 7%! Make checking your website’s loading speed part of your regular maintenance plan. You can run your site and its pages through Google’s PageSpeed Insights to make sure everything is loading like it should.

10. Fix any dead links or page errors.

Broken links or page errors can cause potential customers to head on over to your competitor’s website. So, if you have any links to other pages on your business website, test them on a regular basis to make sure they go where they are supposed to go. Also, take a few minutes to double check that your internal links all work. 

The Importance of Regular Website Maintenance

Regular website maintenance is an imperative part of running a successful business, so at the end of the day, if you are not consistently updating and making changes to your website, in a few short years it’s going to require a pretty significant overhaul. And, this will cost you way more time and money than it takes to conduct regular website maintenance.  

EmoryDay’s Website Services

The EmoryDay team can not only build you a professional website, but we can also continue to refresh, optimize, and maintain your business website on your behalf.

We provide businesses of all sizes the marketing support needed to realize their full potential. And, our team is here to help you build a website for your business you can be proud of, and to help you maintain that website for years to come. Contact us today to learn more.