Why You Should Pay Attention to Your Website’s Maintenance
- Care & Growth
- Marek Tyniec
- 4 min read
Having the website or app delivered by your software vendor is not the end of the journey. Now you have to not only focus on its business part. Your success also depends on the security, performance, and feature updates of your digital product.
Apparent savings
The first example is a company for which we’ve delivered a platform for booking local tours. The client was satisfied with the product; at the moment of delivery, it was what they needed.
Although they were satisfied with the work Xfive provided, after the deployment, the client decided to take care of their platform by themselves.
In theory, there’s nothing wrong with such an approach. Even small businesses usually have at least an “IT guy,” who takes care of the infrastructure, website updates, etc.
The platform was built with all the standards and best practices. It was also easy to administer. That’s why the client didn’t submit any issues for over two years.
But every industry grows, and to keep pace with one’s competitors, you have to improve both your business and your website all the time.
So the client came back to us one day with a bunch of updates and upgrades ideas that were justified by their business goals and the current situation on the market.
As their trusted partner, we’ve got access to their platform, and after several hours of analysis and discovery decided that the only possible way to implement the new features was to… build the app almost from scratch.
Because no updates were done during the last two years the libraries became outdated, and the PHP version lost its support. The lack of maintenance caused even small updates to require serious code refactoring.
Digital products get older much faster than physical ones.
At the end of the day, the saving on the maintenance cost turned out to be apparent.
Maintain to grow
And here comes the second example. For Club Oenologique, the luxury lifestyle magazine focusing on wines, we’ve built a complex WordPress website with a WooCommerce e-commerce module.
From the beginning, one of the client’s requirements was to have a maintenance package to enhance their website and grow their business continually.
Within the relatively small (which also means affordable) package of just 10 hours per month, Xfive’s developer takes care of updates of the WordPress core and its plugins, checks for potential issues that can occur and suggests small improvements on performance and security.
In addition to that, the client continually enhances their product. During the last few months, they introduced a newsletter, tested several ways to promote it, and they are introducing new analytics tools that can help with a better understanding of users’ behavior.
“The team at Xfive developed a web platform for a fine wine & spirits magazine. Their team performs regular maintenance on the site. They also completed a few design projects. The website was launched in November of last year. Since then, we’ve started a maintenance deal with them. Their team does several web updates for us each month. They always do work for us as soon as we ask or as quickly as possible. They come up with solutions to any of the problems we face.”
Rachel Swatman
Digital Marketing Specialist, Club Oenologique
Read the full case study on our Clutch profile
As a result, Club Oenologique’s website and e-commerce are always up-to-date, and the client can quickly introduce new features, tweaks, and improvements with a relatively low cost and effort.
Do’s and don’ts of maintaining your website or app
- Do take care of the software updates. You’ll avoid security and performance issues as well as keep the compatibility with constantly changing technology.
- Don’t leave your online product abandoned. Sooner than later, such an approach will end up with severe technological debt, security issues, data leaks, etc.
- Do think about the future of your online business. Introduce new features, test new ideas, and surprise your users with some novelties from time to time.
- Don’t be complacent. Always try to be one step ahead of your competitors.
- Do sleep peacefully. Entrust an experienced team who have proven their value during the delivery process.
- Don’t believe in magic. To keep safe, some time and effort are required.
- Do think in perspective. A small regular investment in maintenance is more comfortable to book in your budget than emergency spending on fire fighting.
