You just got your website completed and it’s looking wonderful.  You’re thinking, “Now my website will just run itself.”  That’s not entirely true.  Or maybe you’re thinking, “Why are they charging so much for hosting and domains, I can do it at [insert company] for much less money.”  While that’s true, standard hosting does not provide the same level of service and updating as website maintenance and care plans can provide.  So what are care plans?

In this post, we’re going to go through why you should have a care plan to help take care of your website.

 Websites Don't Run Themselves

Your website is a big, if not the main, selling tool for your business.  Monthly maintenance is imperative to ensure your website stays up to date, secure and doesn’t experience any downtime.  If you have visitors coming to your site and links don’t work or load time takes to long then you will lose them.

Beyond that, your business won't stay the same forever.  As your business grows, so will the needs of your website.  You might need to add additional products, maybe eCommerce is now a necessity for you, photography might need to be updated, and on and on.  

The Benefits of Care and Maintenance

Your website performance, downtime, uptime, and load time are dependent on the software and plugins you use.  WordPress updates its software all the time, as well as plugins.  If you are doing simple hosting and not doing backups then these updates, or lack of updates, could negatively affect your website.

These issues are not only important for to create a great user experience, they are also important for SEO as they are ranking factors Google considers.  Staying on top of maintenance, along with monitoring analytics and generating new content are all important elements of your website growth.

Maintenance and care plans can also keep your website growing with the best practices and changes that Google and other search engines make.  

How we Help

Our sister company, H & E Marketing Solutions provides several solutions to business operating their websites on WordPress.  At the core of these products is off-site backups of your site.  This is extremely important as it allows us to get your website up and running quickly should anything happen.  We cannot control when WordPress makes updates, or how that affects the way your website functions.  What we do is minimize any effects that might have, and keep your website safe.

We manage the plugins that are on your site to ensure they are up to date.  If we built your website, we are also selective about the plugins used to ensure the safety of your site.  Plugins are updated monthly to minimize the impact on your website.

Security is extremely important so we are also monitoring the security of your site.  We have systems in place to avoid your site being hacked.

Why Can’t I Just Do it Myself?

Yes it is simple to just hit the “update” button on WordPress so why do you need someone to help you with it? 

Well, it’s more than just updating your plugins.  Do you know what to do if all of the sudden something isn’t playing nice and your website goes down?  Would you know what to do to get your website back up and running?  How much would that cost you if your website was down for a period of time, or worse, you lost all your content because it wasn’t backed up?

But our care plans are more than just that!  

It is More Expensive to Fix than Maintain

Yes, care plans are an additional monthly cost, and hopefully, you won’t need to utilize them to fix a broken site.  However, if you do not have monthly maintenance and something does go down, it is much more expensive to fix what broke.

Or, you may spend a lot of time and energy trying to fix it yourself.  Your time is valuable and much better spent working on your business than trying to fix your website.

Think about it this way, you wouldn’t wait until your car breaks down before you spend any money on it right?  Regular maintenance is key to its longevity, safety and performance.

Call in a Professional

H & E MarketingSolutions has experience in working with WordPress sites, hosting and domain registration.  We are up to date on the latest changes to Google and WordPress and bring that knowledge to your site to make sure it is the most competitive.

You are a business owner dealing with all sorts of things in your daily life.  Why add maintaining your website to that list? By securing an experienced web professional to update and maintain your site properly you are actually saving potential lost sales and visitors.

Learn more about our Website Care plans and contact us if you want to know more about how we can help your specific site.