What your website and your car have in common

Believe it or not, your website and your car are a lot alike. I remember watching my Dad do oil changes every 3,000 miles back in the day. New tires, tune-ups, and car washes kept us rollin’ down the highway.

Your website needs maintenance, too, to keep it rolling down the information superhighway! Avoiding website maintenance is likely going to leave you running on empty. Failure to update your software, meaning your WordPress installation, themes, and plugins, increases the odds that your website end up broken or even worse, hacked.

The days of “Set and Forget” websites are OVER.

If you don’t pay regular attention to your website, you may actually be turning it into a “lemon”, not to mention wasting money. A website that isn’t working is a website that visitors “bounce” from. Many website owners don’t review their websites to see how they are performing. Ignoring website issues or downtime can make a bad impression on website visitors, who, after all, are potential clients.

Maintenance pays off!

Many website owners don’t understand the advantages of regular maintenance.

Your website performance, the time it takes to load, hosting downtime, and up-time, depends on how well the WordPress software, themes, and plugins installed are performing. If they aren’t the most recent versions, there could also be holes in your website security.

A website’s growth, new content, SEO monitoring, and design changes, all benefit from having someone make sure that updates to the website are done in a timely, technically efficient and routine manner.

Maintenance Process

WebCami Site Design takes great care to first back up a website, and check the website after updates for any issues. I also use a trusted system to keep a record of all updates so if there is ever an issue we see what was changed and can also revert a website to an earlier time. Also included in my Basic monthly maintenance reports are security scans and web optimization. The Deluxe option has even more reporting that includes, uptime monitoring, speed performance, and SEO tracking.

Do It Yourself Maintenance Pitfalls

Maintaining your website on your own could cost you more than you may think. Often a client will believe they were creating backups only to find out they weren’t actually working. If you have a backup, you have to know how to properly restore it. This might involve FTP (file transfer protocol) and other techniques only a professional should do. If you didn’t notice your site was hacked, you might not have a backup that goes back far enough in history to find a clean version, and Google may mark your website as “may be hacked“. Sometimes a plugin can go too long without an update and cause a PHP error when you do update it. If you have your site on autopilot for updates, you won’t have a complete record of when an update occurred. I could go on and on here.

“Fixing it” costs more than “Maintaining it”

Lack of experience with updates and neglect can damage the look and functionality of your website. When that occurs, you have a choice to make. First, you can try to fix it yourself. This will most likely require a lot of research and maybe some coding or FTP (file transfer protocol). Or two, you can then pay the cost for someone experienced to fix it. Just like taking your car to the shop, it will definitely cost more to fix after it’s completely broken down than it would have cost you to have maintained it properly over time. Regular tune-ups help keep your car running smoothly. Regular website tune-ups help keep your web site running, too.

Rely on a Professional

Why not deal with what you know best and let WebCami deal with what she knows best? Would you try to replace a clutch or fan belt on your own without a reliable mechanic? Then why try to maintain your own website if you’re not a web professional? By hiring WebCami Site Design to update and maintain your website properly you are actually protecting your investment and taking the worry away from your already busy job of running your business.

If you’re interested in securing a care plan for your website, contact WebCami to learn how we can keep your website in top working condition for you!