When it’s time to make yourself a website, or when it’s time for a face lift, one key
element to the build most people miss is a maintenance plan. Yes that’s right. Not a favicon,
not an SEO plan, not even marketing, it’s maintenance. A common misconception is that you
just need to get the website built and the work is over, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Once you’ve launched your site, it’s ready to go for that moment and for maybe some time to
come however, there will be a day when things need to be changed, like your SEO, or your
plugins that might now be outdated. Websites require routine maintenance, anything made by a
person needs to be maintained by a person. Building your website and neglecting to perform
routine maintenance can lead to a list of problems and to make matters worse, those problems
can arise without you ever knowing. In this article, we will cover the kinds of problems one
might face from not performing routine maintenance, what maintenance consists of exactly and
the resources to complete them.

PROBLEMS RESULTING FROM LITTLE TO NO WEBSITE MAINTENANCE

The list of problems a website could face from lacking maintenance is very long so we’ll cover
the commonly seen ones.

EXPIRED HTTPS protocol

Websites must be secure and safe for users to use. If your website is not secure when a user
lands on your website they will be greeted with this warning.

MY CONNECTION IS NOT PRIVATE?

Have you ever seen this warning?  Do you know what it means?  This warning is used to notify people that the website you are visiting is not secure and that their computer could be at risk should they decide to enter the site or interact with features on the site.  The thing is though, not all sites with this warning pose this threat, but what does that mean?  That means, you’re losing visitors even though your site poses no threat.  A site that is unsecure is also less likely to appear on a search engine result like Google when a user is searching for it.  So, if your site is unsecure, google is less likely to present it to the user.

WEBSITE FEATURES STOP WORKING

What happens when the plugins and features on your website stop working.  Today, websites are rarely built using just coding or a web content management system like WordPress. They are made up of multiple programs and features, and these features need maintenance and updates. If you fail to update or clear a cache the problems you could face include but not limited to:

• Contact form stops working correctly so you could miss out on leads
• Reservation system stops working so customers are unable to make reservations
• File downloads could be corrupted so users could try to download something, and it won’t work
• Videos may not play
• E Commerce transaction systems could fail at a specific step, and you’d never know it
• And much more 

One of the biggest issues website owners can experience when they ignore standard maintenance and upkeep is not knowing there’s anything out of date, not working or about to stop working at all.  The biggest problem with these kinds of failures is that they can exist for a long time before you even notice. Users rarely take the next step of contacting website owners via other means to complete their goals and notify them that they were unable to do what they wanted on the website.

WEBSITE DOWN

A large majority of the websites that go down, do so due to the lack of regular maintenance and checkups.   The last thing you would want is to miss out on an enormous amount of business because your checkout process had a glitch, and you didn’t find out till months later.  A website can stop functioning due to multiple reasons:

• Major CMS update
• Traffic surge
• Software update to plugins that are connected to multiple sections of the website
• Service provider error
• Domain DNS
• And much more

Routing website maintenance, tracking updates, and studying website traffic keeps a website running.  The lack there of is the perfect recipe for disaster.  And though these issues can happen unexpectedly many of them can be prevented by routine website maintenance.  Without regular upkeep, a business tends to be blind to an issue until something catastrophic happens. 

HAVE A DEV ON STAFF OR HIRE EXPERTS

Website building platforms have advanced since the days of their creation, making it much easier to build a website.  Though these building platforms are easier to use, they do still require expert knowledge and understanding.  This is where a professional comes into play and helps with not only your buildout but your maintenance.  Maintenance and repairs are often more difficult than initial builds themselves, so it is highly recommended to have developers on staff in order to tackle these sorts of problems or hiring a third-party website maintenance company.

GLIFFEN PROVIDES WEBSITE MAINTENANCE

At Gliffen, we provide professional website building and maintenance services, graphic design and more.  Website maintenance is a service that we routinely perform for our clients and are happy to provide to you as well.

Click to learn more about our website Maintenance Services or Contact us about other services