Why Your Website Needs Professional Support

Are you maintaining your website yourself or do you let professionals do the work?

When visiting a website, it looks fairly simple and quiet and most users do not realize what the system looks like behind the scenes and that what appears simple and easy-to-use has several aspects to it that need regular attention. Most users are unaware of the maintenance effort required to keep everything up to date and running smoothly. Website visitor just expect things to work well and fast, but for a website owner, maintenance is definitely something that needs attention. Irrespective of whether you do it yourself or have a professional company manage your website for you, it does need to get done. If not, bad things happen.

Does your website need support and who should do it?

It does not matter what kind of website you have, small or big; every website needs maintenance. Maintaining your website yourself can be done if you understand the technical details and have the time to find and analyze errors that might have a negative impact on the performance of your website. You can also do it if you are able to fix glitches that may be introduced when a website theme, content management system, or plugin gets updated, or able to step in quickly when a security patch is required at very short notice.

However, even if you have the necessary skills yourself, most business owners do not have the time to do it because they are busy running their business which is really what they should be doing! It is therefore a lot more convenient and effective to have someone else who is familiar with these tasks taking care of your website support. This saves you time, ensures thing get done and lets you focus on core business activities.

When a website is not maintained regularly, it can become glitch or not work outright, performance can be affected and left unattended could easily become vulnerable to attacks leading to a negative chain of events. Slower websites and errors in turn can result in lower Google ranking and visitors leaving your website early because pages take too long to load or just don’t work properly. Unpatched software used by your website may result in your website becoming an easier target for hackers, with big performance issues, possibly becoming a malware or ransomware distribution point and risking complete removal from Google’s search index.

Updates and maintenance

There are several aspects that need constant updates and maintenance to ensure your website performs properly and stays error-free. Let’s go over some important aspects that need regular maintenance below.

Website software updates – Keeping your website software and plugins up-to-date at all times can prevent your site from getting hacked. Think about security updates, and updates to plugins and other software your website may be using.

Website monitoring and troubleshooting – By monitoring your website regularly, you will detect problems on your website quicker. This gives you the opportunity to troubleshoot and fix problems in their early stages, before things get worse.

Web server administration and backups – The server hosting your website also needs attention. The operating system and software components needed for your website to run also need to be kept up to date. Backups are also essential in case of a more critical failure or if things do not go as planned after a software update. Being able to restore your website to a previous working state is an important aspect.

Web server migration – Over time, your website may need to migrate to a different server. One reason is that the server will become outdated and reach an End of Life stage. Another is that more resources are required that cannot be satisfied by the current server. Migrating to a new server can be quite complex. Hiring a professional to do this avoids unnecessary downtime and makes sure your website is fully functional on the new server with minimal impact to your business.

SEO – Regularly updating your website with SEO-friendly content increases the chance of your website ranking higher on Google. It also keeps people interested and keeps your business present in their minds.

Mailing list management and newsletters – Making sure your mailing lists are up-to-date will enable you to effectively send out emails to your most receptive subscribers. Keeping in touch with clients and potential ones this way can generate good returns for your business.

Malware detection and removal – Malware can be extremely damaging to your website, and therefore your company. Most of the time you will not even notice that malware is installed on your website, collecting personal and sensitive data. Protecting a website from malware and removal when found has become an almost constant area of attention.

Tracking website performance (e.g. using Google Search Console) – Monitoring your website’s performance with Google Search Console gives you information about search traffic, crawl data and search appearance. It helps to identify bottlenecks and issues.

Firewall implementation and management – By implementing a firewall, you ensure your website has the best chance of blocking hackers so that they do not exploit vulnerabilities. This is something that is very important to every website. Additionally, a firewall will also make your website faster by cutting out unwanted, malicious traffic.

Support – no shortcuts!

As you can see, there are no real shortcuts to website support which involves quite a lot of work to fit into your daily schedule. Of course you can do it all in-house, but if you do not have the time to dedicate to constant support and maintenance; your best bet would be to let someone else take over. Having a company cover your website support makes sure things get done and done on time. This will keep your website up and running with optimized functionality and safety. It also lets you dedicate more time to your business, and what is more valuable than your time?

If you need any help with supporting your website, we would be glad to help you! Please contact us for more information.