The Importance of Website Maintenance and Support Services

When people think of websites, they tend to think about building their website. However, building a relevant, informative, and beautiful website for your business is just the beginning. There are many tasks that need to be performed on an ongoing basis to ensure the time and effort you put into building your website isn’t wasted. After all, a website can be so much more than just a representation of your company online. It can be an extra member of your sales team, driving traffic and revenue your way and providing a solid return on your investment.

Many people approach their website with a build it and forget it attitude. However, good SEO, growth, security, and a decent ROI requires a different attitude.

What are website maintenance and support services?

Website maintenance and support services encompass everything required to ensure your website is regularly checked and kept running smoothly. This requires maintenance of the back end and front facing website. It also incorporates aspects of search engine optimisation (SEO).

Keeping your website attractive to repeat visitors helps to stop it ever feeling stale. The regular updates also help your Google rankings, helping to increase traffic and growth.

What does ongoing website maintenance and support services involve?

There are many ongoing costs associated with a well-run website. Here’s a breakdown of the main areas you should consider:

• Content updates – Whether it’s a company blog, changing prices, or updating images, it’s beneficial to keep your website up to date and looking fresh.
• Managed website hosting – Most web specialists will use a super-fast server that suffers from as little down time as possible.
• Website back-ups – Regular back-ups ensures there is always a recent version of your website in case you need it.
• Security updates – Viruses and cyber attacks are evolving all the time. Your website security must update regularly to protect against the latest threats and provide any relevant patches.
• CMS updates – Whatever platform is used to build your website, WordPress, Joomla, Magento etc., there will be regular updates required to keep everything running smoothly.
• Issue monitoring – A professional service will provide monitoring that lets you know of any problems within a minute of the problem occurring.

There are other aspects that could be specific to your company, but these are generally the items that cover the most basic requirements of maintaining and running a professional website. Incorporated within many of these tasks are general housekeeping duties, such as checking all your pages are loading correctly, that there are no 404 errors, that all website plugins are up to date, and repairing any broken links.

However, this list isn’t exhaustive. In order to maximise your ROI, you need to ensure your SEO efforts are maintained.

Consistent SEO

Keeping your website up to date is an important aspect of SEO. While some content will be evergreen, there will be lots of things that will need to be updated periodically so your site stays relevant. Updating images, prices, delivery terms etc. is all important. After all, the whole point of your website is to be seen by customers, clients, or just as big an audience as possible.

If you have a company blog then you need to make regular additions in order to keep your customers engaged, provide fodder for your social media accounts, and to let Google and other search engines know your site is active and knowledgeable. Older blog posts can also be updated and refreshed to ensure all the articles are relevant.

An experienced company will ensure your blog posts don’t get repetitive and focus on keywords and topics that will help your company in the search engine rankings. They will perform regular updates to ensure Google knows you have up-to-date and relevant information.

Less frequent tasks

Many of the above tasks are either required continually or monthly. However, some tasks don’t need to be carried out quite as often. For example, a complete review of your sites structure can be performed quarterly or annually, depending on the site. This is required to ensure any evolution of your website keeps everything going in the right direction. Websites should always be tested on a variety of devices to ensure it always displays correctly. It’s a good idea to restore a previous version of your website occasionally to ensure your back-ups are healthy and usable if an emergency happens.

You can also keep one eye on tasks that can be automated. E-mail responses and sales funnels have been subject to a lot of innovation through automation in recent years. Could this save you any time, or even increase your conversion rates?

Taking a slightly longer view also sees tweaking website design, website domain renewal, updating top performing content to keep it relevant, also come into view.

A great web presence requires an ongoing commitment

You need to view your website as an ongoing project that needs attention consistently throughout the year to make the most of it. A lot of the aspects mentioned above require professional knowledge to make the most of them. The larger your website is, the more apparent this becomes. Newer businesses can also struggle to find the time to keep on top of everything required.

Outsourcing your website maintenance and support services to a trusted partner not only gives you peace of mind that everything is being done properly and on time, but it maximises your online presence in a way you would find very hard to achieve, and probably at a more affordable price than you’d imagine. Working in the field day in day out also means they will be aware of all the emerging trends and technologies that could benefit your company.

Why you should choose JUVO as your digital partner

At JUVO we do digital. Development, design, content creation, maintenance and support services. Using the right technology is just the first step, the right people are also a key ingredient in your success. Our team have decades of experience in all the areas required to deliver great websites and the ongoing support required to ensure you grow and succeed.