When it comes to having a website for your business, nonprofit, or church, the launch process is just the beginning. Unfortunately, for those who may be unfamiliar with the technical aspects of owning a website, websites can’t just be set up and then forgotten.
Websites require ongoing maintenance in order to stay operational and effective to support your business goals. This can become problematic for people who are unfamiliar with what is needed to keep their website up to date or those who try to do it all on their own.
The maintenance needed on a website falls into 6 general categories. These categories include Security, Content, Design, Technical SEO, Functionality, and Performance.
Website Security Maintenance
In today’s day and age website security is one of the most important things for a business, especially if you take any form of payment or customer information through your website. If you have to pick and choose how to spend your maintenance budget for your website, security should likely be your top priority.
Keeping a website secure will include protecting domain registrations, keeping your hosting account clean, keeping files and coding clean, and keeping software up to date. Ultimately you want to be sure those who should have access to your website can do so safely and those who should not have access cannot.
Tools can be implemented to help keep your website secure including monitoring services and daily, weekly, and monthly website security checks.
Website Content Maintenance
While it would be nice to create a website and forget about it, chances are that’s not realistic for most businesses or churches. As things change, ebb, and flow within your business they should change and flow on your website as well. Keeping up-to-date information on your website is essential in your website successfully communicating your business to your audience and customers.
New products, staff changes, working hours, contact information, and more should always be up to date otherwise you jeopardize your credibility.
Outdated content can also affect how your website runs. Website maintenance should always include regular content reviews to make sure everything is relevant and up to date.
The good news is, this is free to do. If you are working with Torrch for your website we can help you update content if needed, as well.
Website Design Maintenance
The overall look and branding of your website really shouldnt change much, however, what is changing is the way people access your website. From desktop, to tablets, to mobile phones you want to make sure your design is compatible with the changing devices. This could be staying up to date with device software updates.
Website SEO Maintenance
Search engine optimization or SEO is all about making sure Google can access or “crawl” your website pages. If Google cannot access your website then you won’t show up in search engine results for your customers or clients.
Google Search Console is an incredibly helpful tool in identifying what might be “wrong” with your website in terms of technical SEO. This platform performs weekly checks to help you boost your website SEO and keep it maintained for the best SEO results.
Functional Website Maintenance
There’s nothing more frustrating than going to a website with pages that won’t load, forms that don’t send, or links that don’t click. Functional website maintenance is all about making your website as user-friendly as possible and curbing your customer frustration by fixing any broken things.
Website Performance Maintenance
How do you measure whether your website is effective or successful in helping you achieve your business goals? You monitor the metrics of your website performance. Doing this can help you see where improvements or maintenance needs to be done.
Areas of performance to look at would be speed, technical SEO and organic search, Content Performance, Mobile Compatibility, Lead Generation or Conversion, User-Experience, and Accessibility.
Website Maintenance Support
Now we know, all this maintenance sounds a little overwhelming. Some of these tasks must be done weekly, while some can be done monthly, or even yearly. How do you keep up?
The truth is, most people can’t keep up with website maintenance and support on their own. That’s where Torrch comes in. When we help small businesses, nonprofits, and churches launch beautifully designed websites, we don’t just leave it at that. We also offer our ongoing support and website maintenance services as part of your affordable monthly payment. With our support, most of your security, functionality, design, and technical maintenance will be automatically monitored and taken care of by our experienced team.
If website maintenance help is something that sounds beneficial to your business, contact our team at Torrch today.