We’ve all heard the saying, “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.” This is especially true for websites, which need regular maintenance in order to stay up-to-date and secure. The good news is that website maintenance can be a relatively low-cost investment with many long-term benefits. Here are some of the reasons why it pays off:

Website maintenance is a worthwhile investment that pays off over time.

The benefits of regular website maintenance are numerous, and they can be divided into three categories:

• Cost-effective. Regularly maintaining your site will save you money in the long run. It’s not going to cost a lot to get started with maintenance—and once it becomes part of your routine, it will be less expensive than paying for an emergency fix or crisis!
• Easy on your schedule. Maintenance isn’t something that takes up hours upon hours of time every month; most companies can do basic tasks like updating links or fixing broken images without having to dedicate too much staff time or budget towards this goal.
• A good investment in growth and sustainability over time as well as short-term goals like traffic increases from search engine optimization (SEO).

Maintenance keeps your site secure, which helps your SEO.

You may not have given much thought to your website's security, but search engines and customers do. If you don't keep up with routine maintenance, you'll be letting down your users and putting their data at risk.

This is important for two reasons: firstly, it's critical that your site remains secure—and that means keeping up with maintenance tasks like updating WordPress core and plugins (not to mention removing unsecure plugins), monitoring your site for malware, or fixing any potential vulnerabilities in the code or design of the site itself — because a hacked website can harm both its reputation and its ranking in Google's SERP rankings by giving off a negative impression of quality control on behalf of the company behind it.

Secondly—and this is probably even more important than maintaining overall security—keeping up with regular updates will help ensure continued compliance with industry standards such as PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) which require companies dealing in financial transactions online to maintain an ongoing process of examining their systems for vulnerabilities that could lead to compromised data security (like credit card numbers). Failure on these fronts could result in fines from regulatory agencies like those mentioned above along with damage done to customer trust when they hear stories about other businesses being compromised by hackers who got access through outdated software installed on their computers.

Maintenance makes your site more attractive to customers and Google.

Regular website maintenance is an investment that improves your site’s aesthetics, content, usability, and search engine performance. These benefits have a direct impact on your site’s conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

In fact, one study found that companies who regularly update their websites see:

• An increase in customer satisfaction by 25%
• A 20% decrease in customer complaints

Maintenance makes changes easier for you once and for all.

When you regularly maintain your website, any changes that you make to it will be easier for you to do. This is because the maintenance process makes it easier for you to:

• Make changes once and have them take effect across the entire site instead of having to make the same change multiple times on each affected page.
• Test changes before rolling them out. Having a well-maintained site means that any new code will work as intended immediately after being added without needing testing first.
• Roll out updates quickly and easily when necessary, enabling users around the world who visit your site regularly not only get access to new features but also see their pages updated automatically with no downtime involved in order for this to happen (this is called "live updating").

Maintenance makes your site easier to edit and maintain on an ongoing basis.

Maintenance makes updates easier to implement. Once you've stuck with a maintenance plan, you'll have the tools and resources necessary to fix errors and make changes as they arise. This is especially important if your website is large or complex, but even if it's just a small blog or eCommerce site, regular website maintenance can help save time when something breaks later down the road.

In addition to making sure all of your content is up-to-date and relevant, routine maintenance also means that Google knows there's someone behind your site who isn't sitting idly by while pages of spam get indexed on their own accord. This helps keep them from penalizing you for having outdated content!

Maintenance protects you from hackers, malware, and other bad actors on the web.

Regular maintenance is the best way to ensure that your site is always up-to-date and secure. If you notice any problems with your website, call us immediately. Here are some common issues we've seen:

• Updates: Make sure you're running the latest version of WordPress or whatever platform you're using for your site. New versions often fix bugs or security vulnerabilities which might affect the performance of your site.
• Plugins: Check that all of your plugins are up-to-date and compatible with each other, as well as with the current version of WordPress (or whatever platform) you're using for your site. Some plugins may cause problems if they haven't been updated recently or aren't compatible with newer versions of WordPress—so make sure they're all current!
• Hosting/server configuration: Our web host can help if there's an issue with our server configuration settings or another aspect of our hosting account itself (such as outbound mail). If it turns out that our server was misconfigured somehow, then we can move all affected sites over to another one without needing them moved manually first--which would take much longer!

Maintenance helps eliminate legacy code (and legacy design) and replaces it with new code (and responsive design).

A new website is always better than an old one. It's more secure, easier to manage and maintain, and it can be designed in a way that will look amazing on any screen size—even your mobile phone!

This is because of responsive design: a web design technique that allows for websites to adjust their layout based on the browser size of each user. Responsive design has been around since about 2010 or so, but it has recently become increasingly popular as people use their phones more often than PCs. In fact, Google reports that mobile searches have increased by 55% from 2017 to 2018 (and this figure doesn't even count tablet searches). So if you're thinking about redesigning your site anyway—whether due to outdated coding or simply because you want something fresh—a responsive redesign might be worth considering as well.

Maintenance stops bugs from becoming expensive problems later.

It’s a fact of life that websites will break from time to time. Whether it’s an update or a problem with your hosting provider, computers can be tricky things! The question is not if you should expect malfunctions but rather when they will happen and how prepared you are to deal with them when they do occur.

If you don't have a website maintenance plan already set up (and most small businesses don't), then this might be the time to start one up. Even if you have an existing plan in place, be sure that whoever is managing it realizes how important regular website maintenance is for keeping your business online and secure.

You can’t afford the cost of NOT doing maintenance.

• You can’t afford the cost of NOT doing maintenance.
• Maintenance is an investment in your future, even if you think it’s just a cost right now.
• The cost of not doing maintenance is missed opportunities, lost customers and loss money - all which add up to create a very expensive problem down the road.

It's easy to put off maintenance but the benefits outweight the costs.

Website maintenance is an investment worth making. It's easy to put off maintenance but the benefits outweigh the costs.

Here are some reasons why:

• You're not a web developer or designer, so you don't have to be afraid of messing up! While it's important to learn as much as you can about website development, it's okay if not everything turns out perfectly on your first try. If something goes wrong, don't worry—fix it! Your site will be better for it in the long run.
• The longer you wait before making changes or adding new features, the more outdated your site will become and thus less attractive or useful to users (and potential customers).

Conclusion

The best way to summarize this is to paraphrase a quote by the famous writer George R.R. Martin: “A good website is like a good book—it takes time to write, and it’s worth the effort.”