Why You Need a WordPress Support and Maintenance Plan

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, running more than 33% of all websites. Whether you run an online shop, a Montessori School, or a personal blog, WordPress can cater to anyone. However, many businesses that use WordPress on their website often make the same mistake: they don’t plan beyond the installation. Keeping your WordPress website updated is not a piece of cake. A slight mistake or any of the latest cyber threats might infect your website.

Here’s why it’s important to have a WordPress Support and Maintenance plan:

1.  Manage Updates

WordPress receives minor updates at regular intervals, while at least two major updates are released every year.  Theme and plugin creators also adapt to these updates and release their updated versions.

How do you keep up with all this?

Ignoring these updates is not catastrophic in the beginning. But, after some time, your website will eventually stop running. This downtime will cause significant reputation and financial damage.

In addition, if you update your live site without having a tech background and select the wrong option, then your running website could come to a halt. This means that unless you identify which plugin or update caused the failure, there is no going back.

A professional WordPress support and maintenance plan accounts for experts performing updates regularly. In addition, the experts clone your website and update its copy in an isolated development environment. All the experimentation and configurations are done here. This way, even if something goes wrong, your actual website will continue to work.

2.  Back Up Your Data

Do you have a defined disaster recovery plan?

As a business owner, you should always consider the possibility of a cyber breach – it can cause you to lose your website resources. These days, cybercriminals are creating mayhem, especially against small businesses.

On the other hand, if you don’t pay charges to your hosting provider on time, your subscription could be terminated, and your files might get deleted too.

To battle both scenarios, you need a strong disaster recovery solution, and for that, a WordPress support and maintenance plan can help with the following:

  • Restore files with one click
  • Provide off-site storage
  • Schedule backup on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis
  • Migrate website
  • Transfer backups to a number of devices and locations

3.  Prevent Threats

ZDNet found that 90% of all the hacked CMS were using WordPress. The Internet is rife with malware strains, with some of them becoming too sophisticated to be dealt with by the average business owner. These cybercriminals target small businesses with worms, spyware, ransomware, and social engineering attacks.  Bear in mind that WordPress is open-source, which makes it easy to learn. However, cybercriminals exploit this benefit by working on WordPress’s code and finding ways to break-in.

A WordPress support and maintenance plan can implement security measures to ramp up your website security. This can include limiting access to specific files, installing SSL certifications, restricting the number of login attempts to neutralize brute force attacks, and running malware scans to identify hidden threats.

4.  Enhance User Experience

The importance of a fast website is not known to many. Just look into your own behavior: how long can you wait for a website to load? Modern users simply don’t like to wait. According to a study, 53% of users leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. That means that if you are a second late, then you can lose a large chunk of your target audience.  Even Google ranks websites in terms of website speed.

The bottom line is that speed is a crucial factor. It shapes your site’s user experience, sales, and conversion rate. A WordPress support and maintenance plan comes with a UX checklist that helps optimize and monitor your website regularly. This way, your speed is increased and maintained, making your brand more appealing to users.

5.  Improve SEO

Small businesses can’t match their bigger, more established competitors whose hefty marketing budgets allow them to feature on the first page of Google via paid campaigns. A WordPress support and maintenance plan comprises the best SEO practices that allow businesses to improve their ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs). This way, they can rank higher without relying on any paid campaign.

6.  Help with Customization

WordPress websites can vary a lot based on appearance, configuration, and setup. Most businesses don’t use the generic setup. Instead, they use third-party themes, plugins, and different configurations, customizing their website to meet their unique needs.

Although WordPress is user-friendly when it comes to updating press releases, events, blog posts, and other page content, there are times when you need a WordPress consultant. For instance, sometimes, you are required to make modifications in the contact form or input fields or customize a page template or theme – tasks that require you to add, edit, and remove source code. With a WordPress support and maintenance plan, you can have an expert make these changes in no time.

Final Thoughts

Similar to how homeowners perform DIY repairs on their electrical and plumbing issues, some business owners maintain their WordPress sites on their own. However, the latter is tied directly to your business’s future and unlike plumbing; a lot can go wrong with DIY WordPress maintenance.

A better approach is to outsource your WordPress website maintenance to the professionals.

Looking for a WordPress Support and Maintenance plan for your website?

Visit our WordPress Support & Maintenance page to learn more about how we can help you maintain your website so you can focus on more important things.

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