By Mary Gallant, Creative Director, IT 4 the Planet

So your new site is up and running? Congratulations!

A lot of moving parts are required to build a website – from coding to design to content. However, if you want to keep your website performing at an optimal level day in, day out, you can’t have a “set it and forget it” mentality once the site has gone live. You have to give your website constant love and support! Yes, we’re talking about on-going site maintenance.

Here are two main reasons why you should make it a priority to have a routine site maintenance plan in place.

It ensures a good user experience

Slow loading times, half-baked landing pages, broken links, 404 pages… do you think an average Internet user would want to stay at your website if everything looks outdated and neglected? Your website is the face of your business, and it pays to invest the time and energy into keeping it current. Site maintenance ensures that every glitch is gone, and every element of the site is updated, resulting in a smooth experience.

It keeps your site secure

As an online business owner, you’re responsible for not only keeping your own data protected but your visitors’ information as well. Staying on top of software updates can optimize your site’s security, protecting everything against DDoS attacks, data breaches, spam, malware and other malicious attempts.

Most of the big companies have their own in-house web maintenance team. However, for small and medium-sized enterprises, it’s not possible to afford a separate team, and it also may divert their attention from their core business. For these businesses, it’s a good idea to outsource their website maintenance task to professionals like us. At IT 4 the Planet, we provide monthly site maintenance to ensure that your website is updated, backed-up and has no security vulnerabilities!