Once you have your website up and running you need it to work for you. Website maintenance keeps your website up-to-date and running efficiently and effectively. Here are our top 5 reasons for taking care of your online assets and how regular maintenance can do this…
Checking Pages and Broken Links
Your website will have gone through numerous testing stages before being made ‘live’ – however changes to one place in your site can often cause problems elsewhere. Slow page loads, broken links and error messages are just some of the elements that can interfere with the user’s experience and put them off using your site, or even from using your products or services. Regular site maintenance can help to highlight these issues and correct them, keeping your site running smoothly.
Back up of Information and Data
Rule 1 of Internet usage: make sure you have all files, images and data for your online presence stored offline or at least on a different server. If, for any reason, your website breaks, you could lose data. This loss could cause you endless hours of inconvenience if you do not have it backed up elsewhere.
Data from your website can be backed up on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis, depending on your preferences, as part of a website maintenance plan. So, if the worst happens and you do lose information, you can get back to normality pretty quickly.
Updating Website Tools
The nature of the modern, interactive internet means that most sites need updating at some point; when this happens, certain elements on your site may no longer work or may themselves need updating. It’s the same principle as when you have software packages on your computer that need to download and install updates. The software that runs your website needs to be regularly updated too.
Perhaps the biggest updates that will affect your website are browser updates – each browser (whether it be Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari) displays your site slightly differently in terms of design and layout. When an updated version is made public, your site may need to be slightly altered in order to display properly in the browser.
Traffic Reports
Understanding how users interact with your website is a fundamental online marketing tool. Traffic reports can provide you with information such as which pages users ‘landed on’, which pages they exited on, how long they spent on your site, which country they are from, and much, much more.
You can then use this data to tailor your website and content to provide improved user experiences.
Health Check
Much like people and cars, websites should also have regular ‘health checks’. A complete, in-depth analysis of your site will highlight any issues from both a ‘front end’ (what users see) and ‘back end’ (what powers the site) perspective, allowing these issues to be fixed and keeping your site running like clockwork!
What can you expect from a Website Maintenance Package?
Website maintenance packages come in all shapes and sizes. At Skills on Toast, we offer a number of different packages designed to fit your needs and budget. All of our packages can be tailored to your individual needs, ensuring you get the most from your website.
Our website maintenance packages include:
- Designated support time
- Regular scheduled site backups
- Regular scheduled website health checks
- Regular scheduled website traffic reports
- Website content changes
- Software installation and updates
- Security checks
Give us a call on 0117 230 3322 for your obligation-free quote today.
