The real cost of not maintaining your website

If you run a business, understandably, you’ll want to reduce outgoings wherever possible, not least given the current climate’s high prices. But, in some areas, cutting costs is just a false economy – and website upkeep is one of them.

Failing to maintain your site properly can lead to a number of hidden or indirect costs on top of financial ones, including legal liabilities and damage to your reputation, plus a negative impact on your overall online presence.

This isn’t just a technical necessity – web maintenance is a key investment in your business’s health. So don’t focus on building and launching your site at the expense of ongoing care, whatever your size and sector; it could lead to significant financial and reputational problems.

After all, you wouldn’t drive a new car away from the forecourt and expect the same performance months or years later. Here are just some of the potential issues:

Greater downtime

You’ll need to monitor your website frequently for technical niggles and keep a close eye on uptime. The costs of downtime per minute can be severe, for example, for e-commerce ventures during peak traffic periods. This issue costs money, harms your reputation, frustrates customers and potentially strains your relationships with them, while diminishing productivity. Proactive care addresses issues before they arise and keeps things stable and secure to ensure optimal performance.

Threats to security

Regular website maintenance is a proactive defence which helps pinpoint and patch potential vulnerabilities before anyone can take advantage of them.

If your website is poorly maintained, it’s at real risk from hackers. So you need to update plug-ins, themes and your WordPress core regularly to avoid having easily exploited vulnerabilities. Ignoring updates could weaken your website’s security, enable wrongful access or risk the safety of sensitive information.

A compromised site potentially means more downtime, lost data plus the financial costs of a hit reputation or lost sales. It’s also often more costly to rebuild a hacked site than to maintain it frequently.

The impact on SEO

Search juggernauts such as Google always prioritise websites offering a strong user experience. Those which have become outdated or pose a security threat may face penalties in the search engine results pages. Ensure optimal visibility in the rankings with the likes of Google through frequent maintenance, including WordPress and plug-in updates, which also ensure your site follows the latest SEO best practices.

Poor functionality

We’ve all experienced the frustration of visiting a website with sluggish load times, broken links and outdated information. This kind of broken functionality can result in higher ‘bounce’ rates and fewer conversions. If your website doesn’t meet someone’s expectations, they’re not going to hang around. And once they have left, it can be hard to win back their trust. On the other hand, a seamless experience encourages both confidence and return visits.

Website maintenance from SWSweb

Since 2012, we at SWSweb have helped all kinds of businesses with our cost-effective website support, including a suite of maintenance packages. We’ll keep your Joomla and WordPress sites current and performing at their best. Included as standard are:

• Fast UK hosting
• SSL certification
• Daily back-ups
• Round-the-clock uptime monitoring
• Systems updates
• Extra security features

Sign up for one of our deals now – or get in touch with any questions.