Keeping your website up to date, backed up and secure is an ongoing process. It’s not a one-time event that occurs only when the site is launched. In other words, it’s not a “set it and forget” deal. Updating your WordPress site regularly is crucial. However, you might find doing it yourself time consuming, intimidating or frustrating. But it doesn’t have to be! Here are 7 ways WordPress support can benefit your organization.
1. Financial Savings
You might think that you will save money if you and your staff maintain the site yourselves (if you don’t have a developer on staff, that is). But website maintenance is similar to car maintenance. It costs you more to repair a car that hasn’t been properly maintained. Furthermore, major issues—and therefore higher costs—can result from not maintaining it.
Having a developer maintain and back up your site on a regular basis provides you reassurance and peace of mind.
You also need to consider the costs of any additional software that may be required for your website, such as any paid backup, form, security, membership or e-commerce plugins. For some of these, many developers have already paid for and obtained a developer’s license. That saves you the cost of having to pay for them.
2. Time Savings
Updating your site yourselves will take you longer than it takes a developer. That just keeps you from doing more important tasks that require your time and focus.
Your site could go down or not function properly as a result of a hosting issue, an unintentional error made by your staff or other issue. If not resolved quickly, this results in missed opportunities to reach prospective clients, members or customers. Those are opportunities you can’t get back. You would need the help of a developer to get things up and running again. Do you have one on hand in case that happens? Do you have hours to spend on the phone or live chat to try to resolve these issues?
3. Peace of Mind
Having an expert take care of your site on a monthly basis gives you peace of mind that things are running smoothly and lets you get back to more important tasks. You don’t have to worry about losing content or important data if something were to happen to your site.
You also have reassurance that the site is secure, online and looking presentable.
4. Technical Support
If you don’t have the time or desire to edit or add content to your website, you don’t have to. An expert can do it for you and be available to help with any questions you may have, so that you can edit your website with confidence.
5. Better Visitor Experience
Having broken hyperlinks or images not showing on your site is a poor user experience. That means that donors, members or clients could become frustrated and leave your site. It also reflects poorly on your organization. It will look unprofessional, messy, like you are neglecting your website or that you just don’t care. You definitely don’t want to make a bad first impression.
If your site becomes slow from lack of proper maintenance, visitors will leave and go to a competitor’s site. Plus, the slow load time can affect your page rank with the search engines. This means less visibility in search results, resulting in fewer donations, memberships or clients.
With a professional keeping an eye out for these issues, they can be addressed right away.
6. Increased Online Visibility
Publishing fresh content and having a fast-loading site not only keep your audience interested and on your site. They also help with your site’s search engine rank—where your site appears in search results pages.
Appearing higher in search results than your competitors gives you an edge. That could result in more donations, memberships or clients without any additional effort on your part!
7. Security
If you don’t keep your website updated, it becomes more prone to being hacked. If that happens, your web host will probably take it down. That means that donors, members or clients won’t be able to access it, resulting in missed opportunities for donations, new memberships or renewals, or promoting your services. If they know your organization well, they might come back; if they don’t, they likely won’t remember your name or return.
Can you afford for that to happen?