There is nothing worse than having a website with a bunch of outdated information on it. Most people have the mentality of “build it and forget it” syndrome for websites. They spent so much money and effort working with a web design company to make their website looks beautiful and interactive, but after they are done, they move on and never revisit their website.
When you stop updating or maintaining your website, it will slowly lose its purpose, which is to draw the attention of your audience to your website to engage your services. As you should know by now, high traffic generally leads to high conversions, which in return will provide success to your business. Below are a few reasons why you should maintain your website.
Your clients want to see your updates
There is nothing wrong with having website updates and letting your clients know your latest products or showcase your latest projects. If you do not update your website regularly, your clients might think that your company is not improving or value-adding to stay competitive with your competitors. Eventually, your existing clients will be attracted by your competitors’ offers because they are actively updating their websites with the latest promotions.
First impression counts
This might seem minor to most people but having the footer copyright text dated in 2000 makes a bad first impression. Likewise having the latest blog post that is dated many years ago. You get the idea. Your clients want to do business with the company that perceive to be the best. Having a bunch of outdated product catalogue, staff profiles who no longer work there anymore and outdated news section, makes a very bad first impression. Your audience will be too busy looking at the “stain” and ignore your message.
Maintain your Google rankings
When you have an updated website, Google will give your website a higher ranking because they want to present fresh content to their search engine users. With a high ranking on Google search engine result page, you will most likely get more enquiries through your website and help you get more businesses.
Prevent website from being hacked
From a security standpoint, if you are using any open-source CMS like WordPress or Joomla, you will need to make sure all the core CMS and its plugins have been updated to the latest version. Once a website got hacked, restoring the backup site will not solve the problem. The vulnerability is still there or the malicious script has already installed onto your system. The cost to fix all the damage caused by the malicious script and to patch back all the vulnerability will not be cheap. Furthermore, you will lose out on all your potential customers that might land on your website.
The Takeaway
Website is not a final product to be put somewhere and forgotten about it. It is always a work-in-progress to constantly improving and updating. It should be treated as an evolving entity residing within a fast paced environment. You need to pay attention to both the content and the technical part of it.