Why Ecommerce Website Maintenance is Crucial?

What Is Ecommerce Website Maintenance?

Simply put, eCommerce website maintenance is the process of checking and inspecting whether or not an eCommerce website is performing well and is healthy. It is done to pace with the upgraded security levels, unique and fresh content, increasing traffic growth, higher conversions, and making sure your customers are getting an exceptional shopping experience.

ECommerce website maintenance & support services are the key ingredients for ensuring the success of your online business, by strengthening your search engine ranking, SEO as well as some other important factors.

Whether you’re the owner of a small digital store or a huge eCommerce platform, you need to take care of your website maintenance otherwise your business will suffer – sooner or later!

For this reason, we have compared your website with a car that needs to be oiled regularly. Your expensive car will soon become junk if not maintained properly.

You’ve invested your time, money, efforts and not to mention your dreams to set up this business and build an attractive website. You’ve worked hard for launching and selling high-quality products to your clients and might have earned a good profit as well. But an eCommerce website is not something that is created once and functions on its own for a lifetime. To keep your business in the best light, you need to pay attention to the performance of your platform – and this is exactly what an eCommerce website maintenance is!

How ECommerce Website Maintenance Can Accelerate Your Growth?

A website is like the heart of a business, so if your heart doesn’t perform well, your business will die!

This is especially true if your entire business is online and there are no signs of brick and mortar stores.

When customers and search engines land on your eCommerce website, they want to make sure that you’re a legit and professional business. A business that offers valuable services that customers are looking for. With the help of regular maintenance, repairs and updates, you will be able to attract more visitors and turn them into your customers and also boosts your search engine rankings.

Let’s take a look at the most important benefits of servicing your eCommerce website in detail!

1. Better Customer Experience

Think like a customer for a few seconds and suppose you visit a website. As soon as you land on this website, it starts spamming you with annoying greeting messages and is taking forever to load. Also, there are poor graphics and broken links everywhere. What will you do? Will you shop from this site? No. Instead, you will leave that site out of frustration.

Now, imagine that you’ve landed on a sleek and elegant website that is properly maintained. You see an attractive design, proper layout, super-fast loading speed and better navigation. You’ll be highly impressed and will shop as much as you want from this site. This is not enough, you’ll recommend this eCommerce website to your friends and family too.

In today’s scenario, more than 89% of online businesses compete on the grounds of customer experience. This percentage was limited to only 36% in 2010 and is likely to go beyond 89% in the near future. So, it is crystal clear: if you want to provide your customers with a top-notch shopping experience, you better start working on your site maintenance.

Not only will it help you to impress and satisfy your customers, but you’ll be able to see massive growth in your revenue. Customers will be encouraged to make regular purchases due to the positive impression of your site. What’s even better? They’ll become your free promoters, you’ll enjoy word-of-mouth benefits!

2. Stronger SEO

Customers aren’t the only ones visiting your eCommerce site. Things like website crawlers and search engines also add to the list of your visitors. These website crawlers can either promote or destroy your business completely. But how? And why is it linked with SEO? (Search Engine Optimisation)

In essence, Google analyse your website with the help of the website crawlers called the Googlebots. These crawlers on visiting your site look for the key information and use it to signal Google about the value of your online site. Google in turn analyses the key metrics including your keyword optimisation, site errors, the overall layout and structure of your site and also its loading speed.

For instance, if Googlebot crawls your site and finds unnecessary redirects, error pages, duplicacy, broken links, then it will signal Google about the poor quality of your site. Google, in turn, will drop your SEO ranking to a great extent. It doesn’t matter if you’ve ranked on the first page of Google once, if your site is not maintained properly, you’ll come down to the 4th or 5th page real quick!

3. Enhanced Business Reputation

Customers all around the world shop from a brand or business they are familiar with. Undoubtedly, a professionally maintained eCommerce website acts as a customer magnet. However, a poorly maintained site with multiple error pages, broken links, ugly & outdated layout and a slow loading time can become a customer repellant.

On visiting such online stores, customers start assuming that your business is unprofessional, outdated, insecure and irrelevant. We understand that’s too heavy for your ears but that’s how the online marketplace works!

So, if you want to establish yourself as a highly reputed, secure, innovative and reliable business, take good care of your website by performing regular checks.

4. Cost-Effectiveness

A simple problem when go unaddressed can become a disaster before you can even realise it. The same goes for an eCommerce website. If you don’t pay attention to its health for a long time, it can result in bigger and worse issues that can bury your business to the ground.

The main problem is, when you take this completely shattered site for a repair, it leads to hefty expenses that add to your negative profits.

So, if you want to save yourself from spending thousands of bucks, look for the best eCommerce maintenance & support service and let them fix and prevent the issues from turning worse. Alternatively, you can come to us at RVS Media. We help you keep your eCommerce store up and running in the most efficient way.

3 Parts of Ecommerce Website Maintenance

We’ve discussed in detail why maintaining a website is crucial for your eCommerce business. Now, let’s throw some light on the ways you can maintain your website. So, there are three types of ecommerce website maintenance segments every business owner should focus on. These are as follows :

1. Storefront Maintenance

Similar to a brick and mortar store, where you paint and design your shop to impress your customers, online storefront maintenance aims at the same thing. When a customer lands on your digital store, they look at the overall design and layout of your store. And if it’s not up to their expectation level, they leave before even exploring your products.

So, if you want to make a lasting impression on your customers and other stakeholders, you should work on your virtual storefront maintenance. This service includes enhancing the layout, structure, colours, design, graphics and other decorative items of your site to make it look more put-together and professional.

Not only that, but this service also improves the mobile responsiveness and user-friendliness of your site. The right website maintenance service helps you by making your site easy to use and navigate. It looks more organised and displays the purpose and story of your brand in a better way.

2. Security Maintenance

Security is the topmost reason behind the need for regular website maintenance. Cybercriminals and fraudsters are always waiting for the opportunity to break into online websites. ECommerce websites are more prone to security breaches because they make an excellent way for hackers to access confidential information about the customers including their financial details. Statistically speaking, more than 46% of businesses in the UK have reported having cybersecurity breaches in the last year.

It doesn’t matter how well you’ve developed your site or how excellent your developer is. You have to pay utmost attention to the security aspects of your site, it should be tighter than required.

Regular security checks will help you identify the weak areas and vulnerabilities of your store and also allow you to tackle them before anything wrong happens.

3. Marketing Maintenance

Now comes the most important part, digital marketing. It not only drives customers to your website but also keeps it shining on the search engines. Obviously, when your site ranks higher on Google, more and more people will land on it. So, it’s very important to take care of your marketing maintenance to make sure everything is fresh and updated.

This is usually done by checking your marketing campaigns and launching new and powerful ones with respect to the latest market trends. The marketing teams use powerful tools and software to promote your business in the most efficient ways.

So, these are the 3 segments of eCommerce website maintenance. We have discussed everything about website maintenance and its importance in depth.

Still confused whether or not you need a site maintenance service? Let us make it clear for you. Below are the powerful signs that your website is dying and you need to tune it up ASAP!

Signs That Your Ecommerce Website Needs a Fine-tuned Maintenance

1. Your Site Is Struggling to Rank on Google

What happened to your site that once used to rank on the top pages of Google?

The first and perhaps the biggest sign that your eCommerce website is unhealthy is its dropped rank. No matter how exceptional your products are and how efficient your customer service is, your business will never be able to grow and thrive if there are no customers. No customer wants to explore on the 4th or 5th page of Google, they prefer what’s present on the top pages. So, if your ranking has dropped, hire the best website maintenance service before things get worse.

2. Your Site Is Mobile-Unfriendly

The majority of customers today prefer shopping via their mobile phones. So, if your site is behaving oddly on mobiles, there is a problem.

To check it, open your site from any smartphone and look at the way it appears. If some text or layout is missing or disappeared from the screen or causing inconvenience while navigating, your website is in trouble.

3. Broken Links Everywhere

It’s easy to pick up and fix a broken link when you check your website regularly. However, when no attention is paid to its maintenance, the broken links get accumulated and start eating your site slowly till it hits the rock bottom. So, if the broken links on your site have increased significantly, consider it as a RED flag and run for a website maintenance service.

4. Poor Layout, Ugly Images & Graphics

“A picture is worth a thousand words” – we all have heard this saying. It means, the images you display on your site speaks volumes about your services and products. If your pictures are outdated, poorly formatted and have become irrelevant to your business, then it’s a sign of poor maintenance.

The purpose of images and graphics on a website is not only limited to its aesthetics, but they also illustrate the motive of your company and products. For example: Suppose you’ve added a Christmas layout during the season and haven’t removed it till now, it will leave a poor impression on your customers. They will assume that your site is outdated and highly unprofessional.

To prevent this from happening, you need to rework your website front.

5. Your Site is Having Speed Issues

If your website is experiencing speed issues, it is likely to be diseased. You can easily check this by using the Google Page Speed Test feature. If the speed score is below 90, then there are many issues that need to be fixed as soon as possible.

Okay, we have discussed the signs of a poorly maintained eCommerce website as well. Now what? Are you planning to schedule your site maintenance project or thinking about ignoring everything you’ve just read? If the latter is the case, let us warn you – website maintenance is not optional, it is CRUCIAL for each and every ecommerce business!

Still don’t believe us? Then, check out the section below!

Why Neglecting Website Maintenance Can be a Costly Mistake?

Ignoring website maintenance can result in the biggest failures of your eCommerce business. Below are a handful of losses you might have to deal with :

1. Poor Visibility of Business

Ignoring the valuable advice we have shared regarding eCommerce site maintenance can be harmful for your brand and business. If you don’t check the health of your website regularly, your business will soon become a forgotten memory.

2. Missed Opportunities

Suppose if your contact form is broken and went unnoticed for a long time, you will lose golden opportunities of selling your products or services or collaborating with other businesses.

3. Decreased Customer Base

Poor loading speed, complicated user interface, lack of advanced features and security aspects will force your existing customers to visit your competitors’ site. In this way, your customer base will drop significantly.

4. Increased Cart Abandonment Rate

If there are problems with your website, mainly in terms of speed and complicated checkout process, it would lead to an increased cart abandonment rate. This phenomenon occurs when the customers put the products in their carts but leave the site without making any purchase. No matter how great your products are, you’ll never be able to sell them if your site is not running up to the desired levels.

5. Slow Traffic

Customer drop off isn’t the only problem you will have to suffer, slowed down traffic will also push the future of your business into the dark. When site elements like pages, graphics, links etc. don’t work well, they get noticed by your visitors and the search engine as well. The former will start ignoring your site, and the latter will hinder your ranking.

A decreased traffic volume can be poisonous to your eCommerce site. Even the best tools and software can’t replace your organic traffic. The only way to break this vicious cycle is by hiring a trusted eCommerce website maintenance & support service.

6. Security Breaches

We have discussed a thousand times that security is the topmost priority for an eCommerce business. However, if you make the mistake of ignoring your site maintenance, you may end up handing over your confidential data, financial information and other important digital assets to hackers and cybercriminals. If your site’s security is not up to the mark, it can lead to the destruction of your business.

7. Negative Profit & Decreased Return of Investment (ROI)

When all of the above-mentioned things become prevalent, they will cease the overall growth of your business. Your ROI, revenue generation and profits will soon become negative.

As you can see, ignoring the health of your website can harm your business in ways you can’t imagine. But the good thing is, timely measures can prevent all of these issues and will also ensure your success and prosperity. To help you get started, we have compiled a quick website maintenance checklist, as a bonus. Check this out and thank us later!

BONUS – FREE Ecommerce Website Maintenance Checklist

Here is a list of weekly, monthly and annual tasks that you should perform to keep your eCommerce website running with full efficiency:

Weekly Checks

• Inspect for 404 and other page errors and fix them.
• Update the software, plugins and other features of your website.
• Keep an eye on your layout and add fresh content.
• Identify and fix the broken links.

Monthly Checks

• Check the loading speed of your site. If it is going below average, talk to your web development agency.
• Perform security scans and if there are any weak areas, resolve them.
• Have a look at the analytics and stats.
• Check the visibility of your site.

Quarterly Checks

• Check the overall layout of your store and see if it needs any improvement.
• Update your images, graphics and other media according to the market trends.
• Check your product catalogues, price lists and make sure they’re updated.
• Check the user interface and mobile responsiveness of your site. If there is any issue, talk to your eCommerce development agency.
• Check for the CTAs, contact forms and other pop-ups.
• Backup your site.

Annual Checks

• Renew your hosting and domain name.
• Think about updating the layout and design.
• Check all the pages of your site and make sure they’re error-free.
• Update your blogs and other site elements.

We understand that maintaining a website is not easy as it sounds. It takes a lot of time, efforts and expertise to keep up an eCommerce website. Hence, the best idea is to leave things in the hands of the best website maintenance services. And this is exactly where RVS Media got your back!

Conclusion

Maintaining an eCommerce website is far more important than building a new one from scratch. That’s why having the expert help by your side is the safest decision.

At RVS Media, we understand that you’ve worked hard to make your business a hit. Hence, we provide you with the best website maintenance services to help you accelerate your growth and success.

Our eCommerce experts make sure that your website is healthy and running in its best form. If you need any assistance, drop a mail or have us on call, we’ll discuss and develop the best website maintenance strategy for you!