How DIY Website Maintenance Can Hurt Your Business

Recently updated on March 21st, 2023

As a small business owner, you likely find yourself acting as a jack-of-all-trades. You’re likely responsible for many things including accounting, marketing, and maybe even a website developer. As building websites has become easier than ever before, it can be tempting to save some cash and maintain your website yourself. However, your website is one of the biggest assets that you own as a business. It helps new potential customers discover your business but it also helps retain current customers. Without the right experience, you might find yourself creating more issues over time.

In this article, we’ll cover the basics of website maintenance and why it’s often best to leave site updates to the pros:

What is Website Maintenance?

Building a website doesn’t end after you hit publish. To keep your website fresh and safe, you must complete regular website maintenance.

WordPress website maintenance can include a lot of different things. Think of it as cleaning your home to give it a refresh. There are several nooks and crannies to get into and if you don’t know what you’re looking for – you might miss it. Some things that are part of regular website maintenance include:

• Maintaining content and copy
• Updating software and plugins
• Installing WordPress updates
• Fixing broken links and other glitches
• Backing up your website
• Optimizing page load speeds
• Completing security audits

Certain things need more regular maintenance, such as checking for broken links or other day-to-day issues. These should be tackled weekly if not even more frequently. You should be doing security checks, technical updates, and other optimizations monthly.

Why it’s important to maintain your WordPress site

Regularly maintaining your website can help ensure your customers have a great experience. A site in top shape will not only have better SEO potential but will perform better. Investing in regular maintenance for your WordPress site can have many benefits.

Better User Experience

A good website experience should guide your customer through your business story and lead to a conversion – this can be anything from purchase to reaching out to your business. Your content should be up-to-date and the website should be responsive. It should also incorporate website design elements that make your brand look professional.

Slow sites and other issues can be caused by simple issues such as poor web hosting or too many plugins. An experienced web designer can help determine the best web hosting solution for your business.

Stronger Search for Rankings

From refreshing content to improving your page speed, improving your site’s SEO is one of the top reasons to prioritize site maintenance.

Having a digital marketing team help design your site for  SEO means you’ll appear higher on the search engine result’s page (SERP). This will increase web traffic to your site and help you reach more new customers!

Sites that are slow and have poor quality content are unlikely to rank high in the SERP. If your site isn’t set up to index – it might not appear at all. Search engines like Google also look poorly upon sites that are stale and aren’t updated regularly.

Website Cost Savings

Regular maintenance means you’re constantly checking for potential improvements and any issues across your site. While this requires a bit more time and costs more regularly, this can save you from having to complete any major overhauls or expensive website redesigns.

Ways DIY Maintenance Can Hurt Your Business.

Regular maintenance is key to keeping your WordPress site up-to-date. While many maintenance tasks seem straightforward, doing it yourself can create more issues for your business long term.

Loss of Revenue

DIY-ing your website maintenance sounds like a great money-saving solution, but in many situations, it can cause you to lose money. Falling behind on website maintenance (or making mistakes) can result in a loss of revenue through:

• No new customers – Lack of proper SEO and other customer acquisition optimizations, means it will be difficult for new customers to find your website.
• Poor user experience – Unfortunately, customers aren’t that patient. Even if they do find your site, if they can’t find what they’re looking for quickly or they run into issues, they’re likely to leave.
• Outages – Severe maintenance issues can cause website outages. If your site is down, users won’t be able to contact you or complete their transactions – causing a direct loss in sales and revenue.

Plus, there are a lot of areas of your business that require your attention. Spending your own time trying to figure out the ins and outs of your website can cost you more money. Instead, bring in IT specialists who can make sure your website is maintained properly and regularly.

Security Vulnerability

Improper maintenance or lack of regular maintenance can cause major issues when it comes to the security of your site. Most DIY site users don’t have the experience when it comes to taking proper website security precautions.

There are many forms of security issues when it comes to websites:

• Data breaches – Data breaches can compromise your site but also result in sensitive business or customer data being leaked.
• Viruses – Viruses can damage or significantly slow down your site. They can also be flagged by browsers, making it difficult for users to access your website.

Not only can security challenges, such as data breaches, create issues with your website, but they can damage your small business reputation as well. Experienced IT and web maintenance teams are aware of what to look for when it comes to security vulnerabilities. They can perform regular sweeps for malware and other issues on your site.

Data Loss

Not having proper backups of your business website can leave your business vulnerable to losing data. From content to inventory information, a backup is how you can ensure you don’t lose the valuable information you host on your website. In the event of a security breach or other site issue, a backup can help you get your site up and running much faster. Without one, you could be without a website for days or even weeks, which could cause devastating losses in revenue for your business.

A professional IT and web development company can help guide you through creating complete backups of your site regularly. This way you can feel confident knowing that you’ll never

Final Thoughts: How DIY Website Maintenance Can Hurt Your Business

Websites are incredibly valuable assets for small businesses. While most owners understand the value of a website, maintenance tends to be put on the backburner. Do-it-yourself website maintenance might seem like a good solution, but it can compromise the integrity of your WordPress site. If you require expert support to help you create a custom maintenance plan for your website, reach out to the team at Next Horizon!