Have you ever seen a car that was left to sit unattended? Given some time, the condition of the car would probably degrade. Tires become flat, steel parts become rusty, paint starts to peel, and many other detrimental effects. When it comes the time for you to use the car, it won’t be functional at 100% capacity. Worst, you may even need to buy a new car completely because it isn’t worth the cost to repair everything. All because of lack of maintenance. The same is true for digital products. An unattended website for example, will gradually fall apart. An image may look outdated, plugins may need updates and won’t work properly otherwise, links can be outdated, and worse pages may even break.
To avoid these problems, we require regular website maintenance through proper IT support. Proper maintenance helps to prevent issues from occurring, while IT support helps to quickly resolve issues that do arise. Website maintenance usually focuses specifically on the website itself, while IT support may include tasks within a broader range of technologies and systems. Should we really invest some amount of time regularly for maintenance and IT support though? The issues that come from lack of maintenance may be trivial at first but will become a big issue when left unattended, and big issues may translate into large cost and time. Let’s look at reasons why maintenance and IT support are important:
- Improved performance: Proper maintenance can help equipment and systems run more efficiently, resulting in improved performance and productivity. Consider a situation where a page is broken, which causes your admin users unable to login. They can’t work without access to the data inside the website.
- Cost savings: Regular maintenance can help to extend the life of equipment and systems, which can help to reduce the overall cost of ownership. According to estimates, the average cost of creating a new website can range from a few thousand dollars for a basic website to tens of thousands of dollars for a more complex website. By contrast, the cost of maintaining a website through IT support may be much lower, potentially in the range of a few hundred dollars per year or less, depending on the specifics of the website.
- Reduced downtime: IT support can help to quickly resolve any issues that arise, which can help to minimize downtime and minimize the impact on business operations. During a downtime, users won’t be able to access the website at all. A customer who was about to checkout a product may cancel their purchase, a potential new customer may look at other competitor websites that are functioning instead of a website that is down, overall user experience would be lower, which causes your website traffic to be lower as well.
- Increased security: IT support can help to ensure that systems and devices are secure and up-to-date with the latest security patches and updates. Neglecting this may leave your website vulnerable to cyber threats such as malware and data breaches, which can have serious consequences for a business. Big companies such as Shopee, Grab, Google, Facebook, and many other companies have faced this issue before that came at a great cost for them.
The importance of website maintenance and IT support cannot be overstated. By properly maintaining a website and providing timely IT support, a business can save cost in the long run, improve website performance, enhance security, and increase overall business productivity.
