Top 8 Reasons to Perform Website Maintenance and Update Your Website

In today’s highly competitive online market, updating your website regularly isn’t even an option – it’s a necessity! And no, just updating your product listings isn’t enough.

Whatever the size and scope of your website might be, in order to stay on top of your competition, your site needs to keep up with the changing times, both in terms of looks and functionality. An updated website helps in growing your business among many other benefits.

Let’s look at a few reasons why you must opt for website maintenance regularly

Advanced technology

With the help of internet technology constantly developing and changing, websites become faster, simpler, lighter and more secure. A website that welcomes new technologies enables its users to experience the best and user-friendly service. Of course a good reputation and profits are a part of the deal too.

Rebranding

Whatever changes you make to your brand, no matter how minor they may be, your website must reflect those changes (especially if they are strategy related). Among other factors, this will attract the visitor’s attention to the changes.

Your website represents your brand and is the first impression the customers get – it’s important this face of your brand is in sync with the business.

Keep up with design trends

You could lose customers or won’t attract new ones if you aren’t following design trends. Apart from color themes and shapes, website design also encompasses the overall feel and impression you want to convey to the users.

Un-cluttering has been a major part of our lives in the recent years and thus websites have become cleaner and straightforward too. Motion UI attracts a lot of people. Adopt a smart approach of following these trends and you’ll soon see an influx of visitors.

Website loading speed

No one has extra time nowadays and a slow loading website is a complete turn-off for users. It’s the most important reason for a website’s high bounce rate.

The things that can affect the loading speed of a website include the technology used, old themes, cluttered UIs, heavy image and video files.

The use of new technology lowers bounce rate and improves your website’s Google Ranking.

Data Safety

If your website has an outdated security system, it can easily fall prey to modern hacking attacks. This means losing personal and financial information of users stored on website servers. Hence data safety should be your number one concern.

Sometimes even a year old technology can be outdated. You need to update your content management system (CMS) regularly and make sure your custom-built security is compliant with the latest standards. Try to keep up with all new forms of data protection.

Optimize your website for mobile phones

More than half of your website traffic is mobile-generated. Yes, that’s how important it is for your website to adapt to mobile screens. In fact the trend of ‘mobile-first website development’ is increasing i.e. websites are created for mobiles first and later adapted to desktop browsers.

You could lose potential customers if your website isn’t displayed correctly on mobile devices. Also note that even if you have a separate mobile application, you need to still optimize your website for mobile screens.

Search engine rankings

Every half a year, major changes occur to Google search engine algorithms so track those and update your website’s SEO settings. However smaller changes can occur anytime.

These changes affect your website’s ranking in search results. In order for your website to rank higher than your competition, you must update your website regularly and this can’t be done if you’re using old technology.

Coming to the content of the website – search engines rank those websites higher that have updated and fresh content frequently. Of course the quality of content and SEO strategy matters too. Puffing up the website with an overload of keywords and poor content can actually backfire.

In fact Google’s algorithms are very particular about the quality of content and direct the companies to use the following principles if they wish to rank higher:

  • The users’ interests should be given priority when websites are created.
  • Websites should be trustworthy, content and website should present expertise.
  • Life-changing content (medical, financial, legal etc) should be written by professional of the relevant field.

Integrations

Website performance and user engagement is enhanced by plugins and third-party web apps. Updating your website means integrating these plugins every year for example banners, social media, ecommerce plugins, Google analytics and so on.

To add plugins you sometimes also need to update the design, code and technology to make the website work. It will definitely give you an edge over competition.

If you’re wondering whether or not your website needs to be updated, look out for the following indicators:

  • High bounce rate
  • Slow page loading speed
  • Low on-site time of visitors
  • Drop in leads and conversions
  • No mobile version of your website
  • If your website still uses HTTP (move to HTTPS)
  • Broken or dead links
  • Old looking website

Being on top of organic search rankings, retaining customers through modern looks, earning trust and being secure through latest technology are the main motivation factors for you to update your website – so dive right into it!

Want to know where to begin and how to go about it? We are here to offer you all the website maintenance and support you need!