The Importance of Website Maintenance in Custom Web Development

Having a custom web development plan means more than simply designing a website. Once the website design is finalized and goes live, we can’t just let it sit and expect it to work like magic. Website maintenance is a critical part of keeping a website not only up and running, but performing the functions it was designed to do, including:

• Driving traffic
• Compelling a customer to take an action
• Helping boost the bottom line.

If a website goes down, it affects business in significant ways. On average, website outages cost businesses $1.55 million each year, and while we’d love to be the master of every aspect of our businesses, it’s simply not possible.

This is why outsourcing website maintenance is an excellent choice when it comes to divvying out work for your custom web development.

6 of Reasons to Consider Outsourcing Website Maintenance

Outsourcing website maintenance can seem rather intimidating at first. After all, we’ve spent a lot of time and personal resources into building it and creating a tool that would serve not only our business’s needs but the needs of our visitors. So, simply handing over the reins to an outside source isn’t easy.

Rest assured, outsourcing website maintenance is a smart business move, and here are six reasons why.

1. Security for You and Your Visitors

When it comes to website security, we can’t think of only ourselves, but our customers as well. This involves more than securing your website with a hypertext transfer protocol secure connection (HTTPS). It also includes maintaining and updating software and third-party tools, upgrading technology as needed and monitoring the site’s security and updating it to prevent website hacking.

No website is 100% safe from hackers, and if a site becomes compromised, that can mean visitor’s information becomes compromised, and that simply isn’t good for anyone. There are other risks involved, including government regulation, something very few business owners have the time to understand fully.

2. Professionalism

A business’s website is often the first impression a person gets of a brand, so having a professional website that is well maintained is vital. This means that it not only has to be visually appealing but must be easy to navigate and provide visitors with the answers to their questions and more.

Outsourcing website maintenance allows the opportunity to have on-page performance management, off-page content and citation management, and custom website design and graphics made that help a site stand out amongst competitors.

3. Gain an SEO Expert

Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to the success of a website. While marketing teams usually take care of this area of the website content, smaller businesses may not have the team dedicated to the task.

Outsourcing website maintenance allows us to bring in someone that truly knows SEO and what is considered the best practices that go along with it. This includes not only knowing key terms, such as meta title, descriptions, and keywords, but also best practices when it comes to external and internal linking, image SEO, alt tags and creating a full proof content strategy.

An expert will not only help maintain the site’s current SEO standing but help improve on it, which will get the content seen by the right audience.

4. Proactive and Custom Web Development

Having the right content, an updated website and SEO strategy means nothing if we aren’t carefully monitoring it all. Outsourcing our website maintenance gives us the chance to bring in a fresh set of eyes that can reliably monitor key performance indicators and other metrics that determine just how well our custom web development is working for us.

A website is a tool that is meant to work for us, and if we don’t monitor it for its overall success, how do we know what is working and what isn’t’? During website maintenance, an outsourced team can carefully monitor these various factors and report back to us what isn’t working and what we can improve upon.

5. You Can Focus on Your Core Business

Having an outsourced website maintenance team allows business owners to focus on what matters most—business. No individual can handle every aspect of running a business, and that’s why asking for help is so vital.

Hiring a website maintenance team allows us to take our mind off of a good portion of the technical side of things and allows us to focus on other tasks that better suit our skills.

6. Your Peace of Mind

While it may not seem as vital as the other reasons, outsourcing website maintenance can play a significant role in our overall peace of mind. We may be business owners, and we may feel like we can conquer it all, but that doesn’t mean we can or have to.

Having the support of a website maintenance team not only allows us to focus on our core business, but it also helps us balance out our daily lives, which helps to bring down our overall stress levels. This, in turn, helps us be more proactive in running the other aspects of our business.

Owning a Business Comes with Many Challenges

Yes, owning a business comes with countless challenges, but our website maintenance doesn’t have to be one of them.

As an SEO company and web designer in Austin, I provide website maintenance services to businesses locally and across the nation. I firmly believe that website maintenance is a critical component to a robust, growing business, and I offer customized packages to each client’s needs.

My services begin with a monthly plan at $499/month and includes a consultation, along with tech support, software and technology upgrades, uptime website performance and monitoring and custom web design services and content updates. Want to learn more? Contact me for more details.