Considering the huge amounts of data that an ecommerce website can hold, it is no wonder that it’s absolutely necessary for these websites to follow a regular maintenance program.
What happens if an ecommerce website is not maintained?
Every website runs into problems now and again, but when it happens to an ecommerce website, it can be devastating. The loss of new visitors to your site is one thing, but when a returning customer loses trust in your company because of website malfunctions, you are not only losing them as customers, you are losing sales and profits as well. You’re also losing your ranking on Google Search and making it hard for new customers to find you.
Here are some of the things we consider when we perform regular maintenance for our ecommerce clients:
1. Website Back-ups:
Back-up is important and must be done regularly. You do not want to lose valuable data; customer related data, data on sales, or user credentials. We back up your database daily and do a FULL weekly backup. We perform secure off-site backups of your database and file system so your website can function normally while we work on it. If something goes wrong with the technology, your site can be restored to the most recent backup and you will never lose your valuable work to server or database crashes again!
2. Optimize SEO:
Search engine optimization is vital to ecommerce websites; it determines your websites online presence and visibility. Our SEO experts review your google analytics. Data from Google analytics as well as Google Search Console gives us valuable information that we use in deciding what actions are necessary to improve your SEO. Meta title, descriptions, tags and keywords also need to be updated periodically.
Keeping everything up-to-date and optimized gives you a competitive edge in your company’s field.
3. Fix Broken Links:
These need to be fixed right away! Getting a 404, page not found message, is frustrating for a user; they may bounce and find another site to look at. It can also cause Google to downgrade your website. We make sure all internal and external links are working properly.
4. Security Update:
As more and more people shop online; it is of the utmost importance to make sure your customers data is safe. The National Retail Federation reported online sales grew three times faster in 2017 than the retail industry. By backing up your site, and testing and reviewing your site for any security issues, we make sure that your ecommerce site is safe.
5. Load Speed:
A website that takes too long to load will drive away potential customers. We want your customers to have a great user experience, so we do a thorough housecleaning on the unused plugins and oversized images that can increase your load speed. A higher load speed will also decrease your ranking and we definitely don’t want that!
6. Functionality Additions:
Plugins can expand the functionality of your website. They are necessary in some content management services, like WordPress, to get your ecommerce store to function. Plugins can, however, stop working or you may have unused plugins that need removing.
7. Design Refresh and Content Review:
It is important for ecommerce websites to keep their overall design and content refreshed and up-to-date. We offer website redesign services, so your site is refreshed and mobile friendly. Clients can also collaborate with our team or take advantage of our copywriting services to keep content up-to-date.
How often should maintenance be done on an ecommerce website?
How often maintenance is done will depend on the type of business you have and how much traffic your site sees. We recommend weekly updates for most maintenance tasks; however, as mentioned earlier, some things are done more often like backing up your database.
Our clients enjoy the convenience of having our web experts available via phone or email.