So, your new site is complete. Congratulations! There are many moving parts to a build, from coding to design to content.

However, if you want to attract and retain customers, you can’t have a “set it and forget it” mentality once you’ve done the legwork: Marketing your business isn’t just about building a web presence.

It’s crucial that you make a website maintenance plan a priority for your small business. Here are 4 reasons why:

1. You want to offer a good user experience.

Broken links, 404 pages, half-baked landing pages, slow loading times… your visitors will go elsewhere if they don’t find what they’re looking for quickly. The last thing you want for your business is for customers to experience frustration.

Plus, you’re not going to build trust with shoppers if you don’t offer a good user experience – who’s going to want to enter their credit card or contact information when your online presence looks sloppy?

Your website is the face of your business, so invest time and energy in keeping it up to date. Monitor failures and focus on adding new content like blogs, articles, events, and testimonials as often as possible to provide a good user experience and reap the SEO benefits.

2. It is the key to security and protection.

You are not only responsible for protecting your own data, but you are also responsible for the information of your visitors. Security requirements are always changing and no one is safe, even big brands are targets of cyber attacks and data breaches.

In late 2016, Uber announced that cyber thieves had exposed the personal information of 57 million Uber users and 600,000 drivers. To make matters worse, the company tried to hide the breach instead of reporting it.

In November 2018, Marriott International submitted information that cybercriminals had stolen the data of approximately 500 million customers.

Since hackers are getting smarter all the time, you need a program you can trust to keep your online assets safe.

Being proactive and protecting your website is now much easier than dealing with the devastation, disruption and huge costs of a hacked site, data loss and the destruction of Google rankings.

The Safety and Maintenance Plan includes:

• Continuous next-generation monitoring and “next-generation application firewall” protection against spam, malware, and other malicious intent

• Continuous automatic backups of your site in case it ever needs to be restored

• The site checks for broken images and links to keep it running smoothly and fast.

• Regular updates to your WordPress site and plugins for optimal performance and security

• And much more…

3. A secure backup is a lifesaver.

A backup is a saved copy of your site, whether it’s from a day or a month ago. Backups are stored in files or in the cloud and can be restored if necessary.

If you don’t have a backup and your website gets hacked and wiped, you’ll need to start over from scratch. You wouldn’t want all your hard work to go away, would you?

A big part of your website maintenance plan is using reliable tools to keep your information safe.

4. Software updates won’t wait.

Software is constantly changing, be it plugins and themes that need updating or security programs.

Your site will not run smoothly and will also be vulnerable to hackers if you don’t keep up with software updates. The more often you update, the less likely you are to experience problems.

Keeping your software up to date also ensures that your site loads quickly when visitors arrive; Speed ​​has an impact on SEO.

Don’t lose leads or sales by neglecting content, security, backups, and regular software updates.

Remember: the cost to fix problems online will be more than the affordable maintenance costs you pay now!