Spring is here, and it’s time to dust off your website and clear any clutter that might be harming your bottom line. If you aren’t currently subscribed to a proactive web maintenance service, it’s probably time to consider signing up for one. From slow loading times affecting conversion rates to out-of-date plugins causing poor user experiences, there are a handful of ways that web maintenance issues could be costing you money.
Website Speed
This one should be a no-brainer, but in case it’s not, there is data to back up this recommendation: YOUR SLOW WEBSITE IS COSTING YOU MONEY.
The modern web searcher is impatient and often desires instant gratification. A slow website will turn them away faster than almost anything, especially when searching on their mobile phone. You’ve probably done this yourself. Went to Google, completed a search, clicked on a result and then immediately went back to the search after the website took forever to load.
Unbounce’s 2019 Page Speed Report found that:
- 45.4% of people are less likely to make a purchase on a slow website
- 36.8% less likely to return to that website
- 11.9% were likely to tell a friend about the poor experience
Though Google recommends a 5 second page load time, most SEO and SEM experts would urge business owners to aim for somewhere in the 2-3 second range.
Out-of-Date Plugins
If you’re unsure as to why websites break, understanding plugin updates is a good place to start. The web world is constantly changing and in a variety of ways. Your hosting company is updating its servers on a regular basis and CMS’s like WordPress are consistently making updates for security purposes.
Because of these aforementioned changes, plugin developers need to release updates to keep their offering up-to-date and functional. Many do, and others do not, but either way it’s important to make sure your plugins stay updated or you replace outdated plugins with a newer option.
Many websites rely on plugins to handle their forms or other web features. If one of those plugins is out-of-date, you might be setting a website visitor up for failure when they attempt to contact you.
Downtown vs Uptime
Not all hosting providers or hosting relationships are built the same. If you own a website with a large amount of traffic it’s important to make sure that your web maintenance provider or hosting company has an approach to managing website downtime and uptime.
Both concepts are fairly straightforward. Server downtime is the amount of time your server is down after it is hacked or crashes. Server uptime is the amount of time a server remains functioning properly.
More ambitious web maintenance services offer monitoring that allows the web team to address downtime incidents as soon as they pop up. Taking this approach can reduce losses in revenue from your website being unavailable.