What is the deal with all these maintenance tasks?
A quick Google search on the importance of WordPress maintenance returns over 18 million results. So, what’s the big deal with maintaining your site, and why does it matter? Properly maintaining your WordPress site keeps it running smoothly and provides a better experience for visitors.
There are several different types of maintenance tasks; none are less important than the other. The difference is what supports actual maintenance and what tasks support growth.
Consequences of Neglecting Maintenance
Failing to maintain your WordPress site properly can result in some issues that can negatively impact your business:
- Slow performance: Pages take forever to load when your site runs slowly. This results in high bounce rates and lost conversions as visitors lose patience and leave your site. Over time, poor performance can cause you to bleed customers.
- Security vulnerabilities: Outdated software, neglected security patches, and insecure plugins heighten the risk of your site getting hacked. The costs of cleaning up a hack, securing your site again, and regaining your site visitors’ trust can be substantial.
- Outdated design: An outdated-looking site reflects poorly on your business. In the worst cases, an outdated design completely alienates visitors and demolishes your credibility. Without ongoing design and UX updates, your site becomes less effective at converting and retaining visitors.
Neglected site maintenance threatens your business. The costs of cleanup and recovery down the road are frequently much higher than keeping your site proactively maintained.
Additional Consequences
On top of the issues already outlined, failing to maintain your WordPress site can also lead to the following:
- Plugin conflicts: As plugins update independently, they can develop compatibility issues and conflicts that break site functionality.
- Outdated themes: A theme that looked great three years ago likely appears dated today without updates. Outdated design damages credibility.
- Legacy plugins: Plugins without support often stop working properly as WordPress core evolves. They become security liabilities.
- Broken features: Forms, galleries, calendars, and others may stop working properly as plugins and themes fall outdated. This damages the user experience.
More Than Just Running Smoothly
Proper WordPress maintenance goes beyond just keeping your site online and protected. It also involves updating and improving features to create the best possible experience for visitors over time.
Outdated sites not only look unprofessional but also deliver a less-than-great user experience. Ongoing maintenance facilitates consistency and positive evolution across features and design.
What Kind of Help Do You Need?
When researching WordPress maintenance and care providers, you need to consider what level of support your site requires:
- Basic Maintenance: This is essential site care, like updates, backups, and security checks, to keep your site running smoothly.
- Premium Ongoing Support: This provides not only maintenance but also growth services like troubleshooting issues, improving and updating site design, optimizing performance, etc.
What Happens if You Go It Alone?
You have a few options if you forgo professional maintenance help:
- Do nothing: No monetary cost but extremely high risk of security issues, lost traffic, and revenue if (when) problems arise. This option can be very expensive to recover from a major failure.
- DIY maintenance: Less expensive than hiring out but very demanding on your time, especially if you’re inexperienced with WordPress care. It still carries high failure risks.
- Inexperienced contractor: Cheaper than an expert, but much more likely to make mistakes leading to other problems down the road.
- Experienced WordPress pro: More expensive, but greatly reduces the risk of failures and gives you the best shot at growing your traffic and revenue over time.
Doing WordPress maintenance fully in-house only makes sense if you have strong technical expertise and ample free time. For most site owners, partnering with a specialist maintenance firm provides major advantages for performance, security, and growth over time.
Ready to explore managed WordPress maintenance plans for your site? Let’s chat!