How to Determine if You Should Pay for Website Maintenance

Cease to maintain your website, and it will vanish. I am not kidding! Compare this to having a car, or maybe a bike. There are numerous maintenance tasks that ensure the smooth operation of its engine.

Let’s say you don’t change oil even after driving for 70-80 thousand miles. Your engine will start to die on you. This scary situation could have been solved easily by simply taking it to the mechanic for a routine checkup.

Similarly, your website needs to be maintained with care. It is the face of your business, and a face is the most important thing when it comes to creating first impressions. So how do you determine if this face needs work? Let’s find out.

Downsides of Poor Website Maintenance

Not paying attention to regular maintenance, your website will eventually become outdated and lose its popularity. There are a number of things that happen to a poorly maintained site.

Domain Expiration

When you don’t update the registration annually, you lose control, and your identity faces a crisis. You will end up with broken links, and you may just lose valuable data.

Fewer Visitors

Nobody wants to visit a site that takes forever to load. Trust me, when a user clicks on a site and does not load within 10 seconds, he will most likely leave and move on to the next site on the list.

Risk of Hacking

Websites can often be lost to hackers if the security is not strong enough. This is because hackers always look for holes in websites.

Poor Ranking

A poorly maintained site brings in poor rankings only. To have a good place on search engines, you must keep the website updated with the necessary features and content.

Can You Maintain a Website by Yourself?

In short, yes, you can do most of it yourself. There are a number of free tools that make things easier for the average user to build, update and maintain their site. But the free tools do have limitations, and also, they do not include security services necessary for a professional site.

Many website hosting services do offer updates, backups, and security facilities. But there is more to a good website than just these three simple maintenances. When you have a beautifully coded site with great features, it is also necessary to keep working on those codes to improve them further.

And, assuming you are a geeky website owner who can code by himself, it can be really time-consuming. So, whatever your site is about, it is better for you to focus on the content and let the professionals take care of the maintenance.

Should You Pay for Website Maintenance?

Your business site needs maintenance, that is certain. But does it need paid services for doing the maintenance? Well, the answer lies in where you want to see your business in the near future.

If you have a rapidly growing business or want your firm to see the light quickly, you better level up your online presence. The most important weapon in your arsenal, your website, should keep up with the pace of your business growth.

And the larger your business becomes, the more visitors your website gets. So, naturally, that requires additional attention to the site. And, in case of any problems, it needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible. Because every minute your site is down, you are losing potential customers.

It is always good to have some experience in website maintenance. But it is better to hire an agency that does the job. Hiring a third party helps you to concentrate more on your business and less on other things.

I have often seen people trying to update their sites on their own. And it is pretty common to forget to back up. In those cases, a tiny mistake can cause the removal of your precious website from existence. A professional will take these responsibilities more seriously and minimize such accidents.

By hiring an outside agency, you hire a team of experts who will dedicate their time to perform maintenance tasks on your site daily. This experienced team knows what problems can occur, where to look for them, and how to solve them in a fast and effective way.

With daily maintenance in action, you can kiss goodbye to the fear of being “out-of-date.” Your content, features, graphics, and everything is updated based on your needs and the type of package you get.

Does your website have bugs in the coding? It will be dealt with as the team of geniuses take control of the situation. They look for bugs, broken links, and pages, malfunctioning buttons on the site, and they fix them immediately.

Concluding Words

Your website should be a tool that supports and aids the growth of your business. It is a living, breathing entity that requires your time and attention to reach its full potential.

I think it’d be best to make a checklist of your own, where you note down everything your site has and everything you want your site to have. From there, decide what needs work and what needs maintenance.

By going through this simple list, you’ll find places where you want to invest some money for efficiency. Asking yourself some of the fundamental questions listed above will help determine if you should pay for website maintenance.