Every website needs some sort of website maintenance and basic looking after and at this time of year with Christmas around the corner, clients get excited about the holidays and also about what the New Year might bring. E-commerce clients also learn a lot during the run-up to Christmas as their sales surge. Not only is there a bit more money around, but all the gaps in the service become more apparent.
So, what does website maintenance entail? Here at NCompass, we pride ourselves on the longevity of many of our websites, we’ve had clients for over 20 years in more than a few cases. In days gone by there was always a need to revitalise a website and the common approach was to either revamp or get a new one.
I think it was affordable back then.
Today the recommendation is to constantly re-iterate the website, add, modify and renew, this is after all what Google likes most. Not a whole new structure to understand, but a constantly growing eco-sphere around your business, organisation or website.
Platforms
This agile approach makes sense from a cost perspective too. Gone are the weeks of development time on special development servers. Instead, the website is always Live, up and running.
Reliability was also always an issue, hosting issues, code issues and all sorts of things could slow down the development of a new website.
The converse side of all this is Platforms. Examples of Platforms would be WordPress, Shopify, Wix, SquareSpace, Type3, Magento, BigCommerce and many many more.
In terms of website development, the world has zeroed in on a few reliable, well made and versatile systems. it’s still possible to develop your own website and the documentation exists to configure your credit card payment system onto your website manually. but it is an awful lot easier to click a few buttons and connect all these difficult parts up.
Literally, this is what has happened, we now depend on a handful of very big and well-resourced Platforms.
And they are growing and constantly upgrading, which is where our newish friend Website Maintenance comes in. Essentially Website Maintenance is looking after of the website and catering for all the various upgrades.
Website Maintenance Services
WordPress runs about 30% of the world’s websites one way or another, every hobbyist or blogger had had a WordPress website at some point, but looking at how many people might install the E-commerce functionality (around 1 million) gives a good indication of how many websites are regularly maintained on WordPress alone.
WordPress is relatively easy to maintain, visit the Admin area and with a few clicks, most things can be upgraded. NCompass runs a website maintenance service for WordPress for a simple £30 per month. It’s the price of a few beers, but it should give a piece of mind to clients, their website is monitored and looked after.
Shopify is more interesting, underneath it’s more reliable than WordPress, but it is still regularly updated and any Themes or Apps that might have been installed over the year need updating and changing. Shopify however, makes this quite difficult to complete in a Live environment. Most tasks are done in Preview made and then pushed live later.
Magento and some of the bigger e-commerce platforms such as BigCommerce, need a developer with good knowledge to run all the website maintenance tasks as needed, things can become quite complicated especially if run on private servers.
Advantages of Good Maintenance
There are always advantages to running the latest version of something. Also, occasionally a big disadvantage – which is why it is important to back up first.
Performance and Security are cited most often. Hackers learn a particular platform and then can access or attack the weak points. If the website is fully up to date the chances of being hacked are significantly reduced.
But the second reason is equally important. Speed and Performance, most upgrades include enhancements around SEO. As new features are added the developer of the platform are conscious of bloatware and making their platform impossible to use, so they refine their code, and often reduce overheads, making the whole platform more efficient.
The argument goes, the better the code, the more Google will like the website and the more likely it will climb the search engine rankings.
A win-win.
Conclusion
Very simply, keeping up to date with website maintenance is important for the longevity of the website, rather than renewing a website every 2 or 3 years, NCompass has some websites getting on for 12 years old. The secret of this was always to use the latest methods to make the websites and to maintain and look after them.
Website reliability is also dealt with, hackers are less likely to gain access and Google is boosted with a better quality website.
Our website maintenance plans start at around £25 per month. There isn’t a lot to do, but it needs to be done frequently and is best done as often as possible.
Comments
comments