You can just forget about it and it’ll be completely self sufficient until you decide to add some new pictures? Well, kind of..
We always say that your website should be an ongoing process, meaning that the job doesn’t end when the site is launched. What is the sound of a falling tree if nobody is around to hear it? Who knows. What’s the point of a website if nobody ever sees it. Following the launch of a new site it makes sense to have the following things in place:
- Launch strategy – tell people about your new site
- Have a clear marketing plan – how will you attract visitors?
- Support the site with social media
- Build traffic to your site with SEO
These are the obvious things, which you’ve hopefully got in order. But what about the ongoing maintenance of the site? There are two obvious options here:
- Maintain it yourself, or have a go
- Let an agency do it for you
Although there are obvious cost benefits to doing it yourself, should you?
Ongoing maintenance includes things like:
- Checking site uptime, is the site always available?
- Monitoring response times, does the site continue to load quickly?
- Software updates
- Pre-update software testing
- Technical changes
- Security scans
If you’re happy doing these, then it’s one less thing you need to pay for each month. If not, it’s worth considering letting an agency take care of it for you. A neglected site could go offline and be turning away potential customers. If the site software is outdated it also opens you up to security breaches, you could risk losing your data, having customer data stolen, or even your e-commerce store hijacked. A poorly maintained site is a potentially dangerous site.
Worth some thought if you don’t already have a provision in place to look after your interests online, especially if this is part of your core business model.