What NOT to Do in the Website Maintenance Industry
So, you just invested a sizeable chunk of resources in building a mobile responsive website to draw in traffic for your website. With this in place, you need not worry about website maintenance for the next couple of years.
Get this thought out of your mind right away.
Your website is the foundational base of your online business presence. Without a functional and up to date website, your business will suffer. In today’s business world, the website is the first point of call for anyone interested in learning about your business, purchasing your product, or looking for your business contact information.
This is more reason why you need to pay ample attention to website maintenance. While there are routines, there are also what not to do when carrying out website maintenance.
In this post, the focus will be on the issues to avoid when carrying out website maintenance.
1. NOT Scheduling Regular Maintenance
We are not talking about backups here but website maintenance, which cannot be largely automated. Maintenance of a website requires time, technical know-how, and discipline. Interestingly, website maintenance may not consume more than a quarter of an hour.
However, find yourself skipping regular website maintenance. You’ll find yourself having to squash bugs and deal with other unforeseen issues.
The happiness of your customers is hinged on the functionality and bug-free performance of your website.
2. NOT Backing Up Enough
If all you got is one copy of your data, then you don’t have data. There is a possibility that you can lose the data in an instant. What now happens when you lose the single copy of data, and there’s no backup?
Yes, your host is likely to keep a backup of your website; what stops you from having your won backup rather than relying on someone else to bail your out in the event of data loss?
It’s wrong for you not to set up automatic back-ups and keep them in different versions. Back up weekly and keep three months worth of back-ups.
3. Trying To Reinvent The Wheel
Regardless of how sure you are of your skills, don’t try to build anything from scratch in solving a problem. Yes, you think whoever wrote the initial code must be an idiot, and you can come up with something better before the close of work, don’t do it.
Rather than being overwhelmed by the problem, take a breather by walking away from your keyword. A custom-coded solution is not always what you need for every problem thrown your way.
Let’s even say you can do it better. The question is, are you being made to come up with a solution from scratch?
4. Keeping Outdated Contents
While there may be plenty of reasons why you should not skip website maintenance, keeping outdated content on your website should be one of the biggest. Never at any point, should you leave outdated information on your website.
You will be doing your website great disfavor if visitors cannot find the right information. Not to forget that search engines will penalize you if you don’t refresh your content often.
By keeping outdated content, your conversion rate will take a hit for it.
5. Skipping Analytics
It’s about being able to identify problems with your website, including the opportunities. When you now decide to skip reviewing your analytics, how will you be able to identify these?
With the analytics, you’ll see areas of improvement for your website. When you notice dwindling traffic, the analytics could offer an inkling into what’s wrong.
There’s no one size fit all approach to understanding analytics but never skip the data.
Final Thoughts
After investing in a functional website, you should not neglect the importance of website maintenance. It’s the only way to keep your website running and driving more customers to your business.
It’s not about maintaining your website every day, but don’t leave your website susceptible to hacks, bugs, and crashes.