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Keeping a website well maintained and attractive is important Singapore businesses in order to engage and retain customers. The corporate website is important as it is the first impression for any small business.
Website maintenance is the act of regularly checking your website for issues and mistakes and keeping it updated and relevant. This should be done on a consistent basis in order to keep your website healthy, encourage continued traffic growth, and strengthen your SEO and Google rankings.
Website maintenance is very important if you are sending your customers or prospects to your website. It is even more crucial or a basic item if you are running digital marketing and getting leads online.
What Are The Items To Be Done In Website Maintenance
There is always a checklist of items to be done to ensure the website is running smoothly. Here are some of the items that we do for our customer on our hosting and maintenance packages.
To be done weekly
- Check that all of your pages are loading without errors
- Run a backup and make sure a previous version of your site is stored
- Make updates to website software and plugins
- Check that all of your forms are running properly
- Remove any spam comments from pages and posts
- Check your pages to see if there are any broken links
- Search for 404 errors and fix or redirect
- Write one or more blog posts to keep your community engaged and encourage SEO traffic.
To be done monthly
- Check the load speed of your website and ensure that nothing is bogging it down
- Review your security scans and make sure nothing is out of place
- Analyze website statistics from the previous month
- Check your local search visibility.
- Check your blog to see if there are any articles that could be updated
To be done quarterly
- Review your website design and structure – can be it improved?
- Check graphics and images – should anything be updated?
- Review SEO and meta titles and descriptions to ensure they are as effective as possible
- Test and tweak popups, forms, and calls to action
- Review your workload for efficiencies to see if anything can be automated
- Test your website on all devices and browsers to see if it displays correctly
- Review advertising and marketing campaigns to see if anything needs to be changed or updated.
- Restore a previous version of the website to check your backup health
To be done yearly
- Update any reference to the current year
- Check your website for 404 errors and if there are any, fix or 301 redirect them.
- Review each page for content accuracy, grammar, typos, and relevancy
- Check any active email addresses and see if any are excessive and can be deleted
- Ensure that your website domain name is renewed
- Consider whether a website design update is due
- Review all of your top performing blog articles and see if they can be updated with new content
This are the things that needs to be done to ensure your website stays up to date.
Want to improve your website? Take a look at our Website design package for small business or ecommerce solution for small business in Singapore.
So Why Do You Need Website Maintenance?
The majority of customers or prospects will look for your website
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 your competitor’s site, and you could miss out on a sale.
It’s Your Corporate Image
It’s becoming more and more simple to create a website that looks well-designed and professional. There is an expectation for a professional website from professional companies. If your website doesn’t deliver on the promise of professionalism, your customers will often go elsewhere.
In this post covid19 world, people are making decisions based on what they see or read online. Hence, having a fast and up to date website is more important.
Piece Of Mind & Focus On Running The Business
Ever heard or experience the time when a website got hacked? Website Maintenance packages will prevent the likelihood of this and should it happen, there is always a team of professionals that can assist you with this. This is one of the main reasons our customer sign the website maintenance package with us.
Avoid Losing Revenue
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.
So What Else Do I Need Beside Website Maintenance?
Additional Website Cost To Consider
Here are 3 more things to consider for your website. The cost of website is relatively cheap nowadays but almost every player in the industry has it. Thus, it is even more important to be investing into digital marketing efforts such Search Engine Optimization or Facebook Ads or Google Pay Per Click.
Domain Name Renewal
When you created your website, you purchased a domain name, which is your website’s address. For example, our domain is Webdelegate.com
You might pay for your domain name on a monthly or yearly basis. Domain name typically cost between $20-$30/year.
It is important to pay on time as a late payment will cause the website to crash and be offline. This might affect your sales.
Website Hosting
Website hosting is another website maintenance cost to consider. It is usually paid on a monthly or yearly plan. There is no market rate when it comes to hosting. It all depends on the features and for companies without a tech team, it is better to have a team of professional looking after your website.
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 but it is also the least recommended one.
- Website builders like Wix or Squarespace are user-friendly and cost between $60 and $180 per year. However, the cost balloons with each year and you have no control over the source code.
- 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.
- With a dedicated server, you get full access to your own server. This option costs between $1200 and $24,000 per year.
The prices above are just a gauge and it differs from vendor to vendor. If you are looking for a hassle free solution, you can get one of our hosting/maintenance packages on Webdelegate.com
What Are My Website Maintenance Options?
There are a couple of ways you can do your website maintenance:
Do It Yourself
There is nothing stopping from learning web development and from there you can do it on your own.
Hire A Variety Of Freelancers
If you are looking to build your business, you can get freelancers to help you maintain your website. The up side is that the price could be cheaper but the stability might not be there.
Hire A Website Maintenance Company
This will be the most common way for SMEs in Singapore. Most companies will delegate this work to their web development company. Prices varies from vendor to vendor but it is typically in the range of a few hundred dollars per month inclusive of the hosting cost.
Web Delegate Maintenance Services
Web Delegate has our very own hosting and maintenance packages. This is something we offer to our customers. If you are not hosted with us, you can also contact us and we will do a free porting over of your website to our servers should you sign up.
Still Thinking About Digitalisaing Your Business?
You can looking into our Web Delegate Products for a start if you are a small business.
If you are looking for an agency to support you and maintain your website, check out our Web Delegate Maintenance Package
Are you looking for a web design and development company that can take your website global? If so, contact us today to get started.
