What is Website Maintenance ?

[Beginner’s Guide]

Your website is the foundation of your business’s online presence. People visit it to learn about your company, find your contact information, and purchase your products.

If your website isn’t working properly or is out of date, you may lose out on significant opportunities, such as new leads and sales.

Since 94% of first impressions relate to web design, people may come away with a poor first impression of your business if your site isn’t up-to-date and functional. Additionally, if you’re an eCommerce business and your eCommerce functionality fails, people won’t be able to purchase your products.

Regular website maintenance helps prevent these website issues.

In this post, we’ll explore what website maintenance is, what it includes, and why it’s so essential for your business.

What is website maintenance?

Website maintenance refers to the tasks required to keep your website functioning properly and up to date. It involves regularly checking your website for issues, correcting any issues, and making updates.

Why is a website maintenance plan important?
Why is a website maintenance plan crucial for your business? Here are some of the top reasons.

1. The majority of customers conduct online research
Before making a purchase online, 87% of people conduct online research. People that are considering buying a product from you will likely end up on your website.
If your website gives them a negative impression of your company, they’ll likely continue their research on a competitor’s site, and you could miss out on a sale.

2. Your website informs users’ first impressions
Customers will often click away if your website doesn’t work properly or looks outdated. It will set a negative first impression of your business. If your website looks unprofessional, customers may also think that your business is.

3. Your website helps grow your sales
Your website plays a crucial role in guiding users toward making a purchase. In the case of eCommerce, your site facilitates purchases. You'll miss out on potential sales if your site doesn’t work properly.

4. Site visitors value user experience
Among consumers who have a poor user experience on a site, 89% will shop with a competitor instead. Regular maintenance prevents these poor user experiences and encourages potential customers to stay on your site, increasing your chances of making a sale.

5. A website maintenance plan improves security
Cyberattacks cost U.S. companies $15.4 million per year. Repairing the damage caused by cyberattacks is often costly, plus you may lose customers who no longer trust your company with their personal information.

Note: This is also why we do not do WordPress Sites.
We REPLACE THEM with a professional site that takes less billable time to maintain.
Much Less *Billable Time!
Using *WebFX as an example, a security plan for WordPress costs $300 /month.
Website Maintenance, Site Infrastructure & UX Improvements cost $2,400 /month, and After-Hours Maintenance $10,000 /month. That’s the reality of maintaining a proper WordPress Site!

Regular maintenance helps protect your site from cyber threats by keeping your security systems up to date.

When you maintain your security protections, customers will feel more comfortable making purchases on your site.

6. Website maintenance supports your SEO/tSEO ADA Compliance strategy
If users frequently leave your website shortly after arriving at it, Google may view this as a sign that your site isn’t relevant. This increase in bounce rate can lead to lower rankings in search results, which means you’ll drive less traffic to your site.

Persistent technical issues, security issues, and outdated website design, structure, or content all contribute to diminishing your search engine rankings.

How much does website maintenance cost?

Website maintenance costs may vary depending on the type of site. Here are a few examples of potential website maintenance costs for various types of websites:

• A personal website will have low maintenance costs, typically from $5 to $25 per month

• Small business website maintenance may cost $150 per month. Newer stat's from 2022-23 show dramatic price increases!
Our Tier1 Package is only $95.00 per month.

On average, small businesses will spend $2000 to $10,000 to build a site. This has been holding steady but edging up from 2022.

• A corporate website may have maintenance costs of $200 to $3500.  This has been holding steady but edging up from 2022.

• Ecommerce website maintenance costs may range from $1500 to $2500.  This has been holding steady but edging up from 2022.

Additional website maintenance costs

Some website maintenance costs to keep in mind include:

1. Domain name renewal
When you created your website, you purchased a domain name, which is your website’s address. For example, Google’s domain name is google.com. You might pay for your domain name on a monthly or yearly basis.
Domain names typically cost from $0.08 to $1 per month or $2 to $20 per year.
While a domain name typically isn’t too expensive, it’s essential to keep up with the payments so that someone else doesn’t buy your domain name.

2. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate
You’ll also want to ensure that your website has an SSL certificate, which helps keep your site secure. An SSL certificate enables your site to receive and transfer sensitive information securely.
Sites that have an active SSL certificate have HTTPS, instead of HTTP, in their URL. They also have a padlock image next to the URL in many browsers.
Sometimes you can get an SSL certificate for free if you’re using a hosting website, but generally, you’ll pay for an SSL certificate. SSL certificates typically include features, such as higher encryption rates, which can be beneficial for businesses. Their costs range from $0.80 to $125 per month or $10 to $1500 per year. Note: ReaWis.com Sites Hosts with Partners Hosting Service they include the SSL certificate for Free.

Be sure to keep up with your SSL payments so that your certificate stays active, and your site stays secure.  Or Host with Us!

3. Website hosting
Website hosting is another website maintenance cost to consider. You can either host your website yourself or hire a hosting provider. (We use Partners Website Hosting Service)

When it comes to website hosting providers, you have several options.

• With a shared host, your website shares a server with several other websites. It’s the least expensive option at $80 to $120 per year. (Partners Web Hosting is $80 /yr)

• Please Note: © RealWis.com associates/programmers use Bootstrap.
Bootstrap is is considered the most secure and fastest loading HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

• If you choose a virtual private server (VPS), you still share a server with other sites.

However, the provider divides the server up into several VPSs, giving your site a dedicated amount of server space. VPSs cost $240 to $600 per year. (This information is from 2021)

• With a dedicated server, you get full access to your own server. This option costs between $1200 and $24,000 per year.  (This information is from 2021)

• We feature Edge Caching Technology on our servers.  This feature is not available thru many other hosting providers. 
• Global Edge Caching.  We automatically cache static content at our edge, ensuring rapid delivery of Images, JavaScript and CSS files to all your visitors around the world. You can control how long we store this content for below. If you've updated your website and want to ensure all users are seeing the latest content before the cache expires, you can also run an instant Cache Purge below. The more content you cache, the faster your website will load.

• Dynamic Cache.  Enabling our Dynamic Cache provides the ability to cache any resource at our edge by using public Cache-Control and Expires headers. Once enabled, you can start storing content in this cache by configuring your application to emit those headers. Please note that for security reasons, any responses that contain a cookie will not be cached. Combined with StackCache, this gives you full page dynamic content caching ensuring rapid TTFB times for all resources regardless of visitor location. Advanced users can check the output of the X-CDN-Cache-Status header to see whether a resource was cached.

• Custom Cache Settings.  Image Cache, CSS Cache, JavaScript Cache.


What does website maintenance include?
So, how do you do website maintenance?

Here are some of the most important tasks involved in website maintenance.

• Testing your whole website annually: Test your whole website at least once a year and after making updates. Check that all features work, look for broken links, and watch for outdated or incorrect information. Bring in someone not associated with your company to get a fresh perspective on your site’s usability.

• Testing browser compatibility: Test whether your website works correctly in several versions of mainstream browsers at least once a year.

• Testing your forms and checkout process quarterly: At least once a quarter, make sure all your forms and your checkout process are working properly.

• Checking for software updates monthly: Check for software updates from your hosting provider, security provider, and other third parties monthly.

These updates help ensure proper functionality and security. Even better, install patches as they’re released, if possible.

• Backing up your website: Backing up your website can save you from losing a huge amount of time and money if something goes wrong with your site. If you have an automatic backup feature, check that it’s working each month.

If you don’t have automatic backups, complete a manual backup at least once a month.

• Review key metrics weekly: Using tools like Google Analytics, review your website’s performance at least once a week. Check your key performance indicators (KPIs)and make sure your site is helping you meet your goals. If it’s not, make updates and check whether they improve your site’s performance the next time you review your key metrics.

This website maintenance services list includes the most essential website maintenance tasks, but it isn’t a comprehensive list of all the maintenance work you can complete.

You may choose to create a more extensive website maintenance plan or work with a professional website maintenance company to meet your goals.

Real Wisconsin Website Design gives you the most value for your investment.