Go the WebCare Way to Protect Your Website and Business

Why Opt for WebCare?

Just like any other major expense, building a website requires an investment of capital and sweat. For many businesses, a website is the primary means of communicating with existing customers and attracting new clients. As a new car requires frequent oil changes and tune-ups to efficiently transport its owner across town, a website needs the same tender loving care.

Although many professional website designers develop their websites with top-notch security programs and SSL certificates, threats still exist. A compromised website that develops a bug or virus will develop symptoms much like a car struggling with a mechanical problem. Some of the common symptoms of a compromised website include:

• Slower site access
• Increased page loading times
• Lower security
• Identity theft concerns
• Lower search engine ranking
• Possibility of being hacked

To protect their business or personal websites from these threats, smart businesses employ a team of WebCare experts. These dedicated online professionals monitor, update, and provide routine maintenance to websites. They also provide monthly reports, create client dashboards, and communicate with clients about potential security threats. WebCare professionals stay on top of growing trends in cyber security and have access to the latest technology to keep websites running as they should.

The Importance of WebCare

Making use of the right web management methods ensures that your website is ready to scale as per changing needs, and this helps prepare your business for the future. Most business websites continue to evolve with time and adding new content is fairly commonplace. If you don’t rely on effective WebCare technologies and WebCare software, the process might become challenging and you may also need to spend more money.

Poor WebCare may also result in your website experiencing problems, and not addressing them in a timely manner might have a snowball effect. Besides, effective website management can help streamline critical processes and actually save money in the long run.

Effective WebCare also plays a role in ensuring that your website is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and provides a good user experience.  This helps increase engagement levels and bodes well for conversion rates.

What May You Expect From a WebCare Package?

There are several specific services that are included in most WebCare packages offered by professional digital marketing companies. What you should opt for depends on your specific requirements.

Priority Website Support

When a business hires a WebCare specialist to keep its sites running strong, it typically receives priority and dedicated website support. This means that the company employs multiple online security experts who receive alerts as soon as a threat is recognized. When the client has a question for the WebCare provider, it should ideally be able to provide solutions quickly. Consider this as having a personal mechanic on call to keep your car running smoothly.

Software Updates

Website development is essentially an amalgamation of software or a series of web-coded platforms that are strategically placed together to produce a visually stunning and easy-to-navigate website. However, like a car needs frequent oil and filter changes to extend engine life and efficiency, a website also needs frequent software updates. By updating software to meet evolving security standards, a website stays one step ahead of the cyber thieves who live off finding and exploiting vulnerable websites.

Security Monitoring

If you wouldn’t leave your car unlocked in New York City, why would you leave your website unprotected when thousands of online hackers are looking to steal your private information? Security monitoring is the process of setting up multiple security protocols that alert your WebCare team if a threat is recognized. This permits it to instantly shut down the threat to ensure the website remains secure.

Essentially, this is like having a home security system that not only instantly calls the police, but would also beam the police (like in Star Trek) to the house within a few minutes of the alarm going off.

Performance Optimization

As technology advances, so do the tools that allow a website to maintain performance optimization. Today’s mobile phones are much smaller than the bricks of the 1980s. The same thing applies to new website optimization tools.  Software developers are continually upgrading their web-based tools to let WebCare experts update their clients’ websites. This way, your website keeps running in a safe manner and it continues ranking well on search engines. Most WebCare packages include performance optimization programs.

Daily Site Backups

There is nothing worse than having a website crash. However, if you choose to host your own account, you can’t be 100% certain that your website is updated daily and saved to a redundant server or hard files that can be accessible in case your website crashes. Most WebCare companies offer daily, weekly, and bi-monthly site backups that keep up-to-date file information on your website so that it can be quickly uploaded if needed.

Detailed Monthly Reports

When you have a professional HVAC contractor come to your home to tune up your AC or heating system, you typically get a report of the provided services. This not only informs you of how much you need to pay, it also lets you know what services were completed, so if something comes up, you have a record on file.

Consider WebCare professionals as having your own IT department on call. They will provide you with monthly reports on your website performance, potential security threats, site visitation, and areas that could use improvements such as website load time or customer experience.

Email Support and Consulting Calls

When you work with a professional online marketing company, it will help you with troublesome email support issues that tend to pop up when you least expect. There is no denying the fact that every business depends on emails to stay in contact with customers, suppliers, and vendors, and to maintain effective communication within the organization. By trusting a WebCare specialist to help you with email support and provide consulting calls when needed, you’ll have peace of mind knowing your company’s online communication is in safe hands.

What About DIY Website Management?

Ensuring that your website is secure and provides good user experiences is crucial for it to deliver desired results. If you plan to handle your website’s management on your own, you need to pay attention to different factors.

Website Backup

Backing up your website can save a lot of heartache in case it experiences problems. This requires copying all its database and files and storing them in a different location. While a backed-up website would help if your website crashes completely, it can also be of assistance if you wish to revert to an older version or need to make large-scale changes.

Ideally, you should perform backups every day, and you may do so by using different online tools. ManageWP, for example, gives you easy means to schedule incremental backups. With it, you may choose to backup your website to external destinations like Google Drive or Dropbox, or simply download the backup to your hard drive. Alternatively, you could carry out a manual backup, use the backup service your web hosting company provides, or use a suitable plugin.

Website Security

If you fail to manage your website regularly, you face increased security risks. Problems might come in the form of hackers stealing sensitive information or infecting your website with malicious code, malware, viruses, or bugs. More often than not, website hosts play an important role in website security, so you need to select a dependable hosting provider. Good hosting companies tend to offer free SSL certificates. They use multiple firewall layers to monitor web traffic, detect malware, and keep data safe from DDoS attacks.  They also have secure data centers and provide round-the-clock support

Website Monitoring

Monitoring your website’s performance and health is an important aspect of website management. This step helps you identify existing and potential problems, and it also aids in determining which tasks require your attention first. Fortunately, monitoring your website is not as complicated as it might seem and requires following a few simple steps.

• Use web monitoring tools like Sematext or Uptime Robot to monitor your site’s performance, availability, functionality, and traffic.
• Keep visiting all the pages of your website to check if they’re working in the right manner.
• Check and update plugins regularly.
• Keep tabs on page loading speeds.

Reviewing Analytics

Reviewing website analytics is an important step because it gives you the means to take a close look at your website’s performance and user behavior. In doing so, you get to track the source of the traffic coming your website’s way, know your visitors, and measure the success of your other digital marketing endeavors. You also get to find out how to optimize your website and enhance user experience.

Reviewing analytics gives you the means to identify the content that’s working best for you. You may then focus on the same, keep track of top referrals, and work on strategies to gain more leads. You may look upon your top outbound links as partnership opportunities. If you sell products or services online, you get to track your eCommerce metrics and use them to increase sales.

Not all website analytics tools work in the same manner, and it’s ideal that you use more than one based on your specific requirements. Some of the best ones out there include:

• Traditional analytics – Google Analytics
• Behavior analytics – Hotjar
• Customer journey analytics – Woopra
• Content analytics – Chartbeat
• SEO analytics – Semrush

Rethink Your Website’s Design

There are several reasons why you might need to redesign your website. Some of the most common ones include:

• Outdated design. If your website looks outdated or unprofessional, there’s a good chance it will have a negative impact on your brand image and credibility. A redesign can make your website look professional and deliver a better user experience. Your web design company can also ensure that it serves as an accurate representation of your brand and appeals to your target audience.
• Poor user experience. If your website’s visitors find it problematic to navigate or use, you may expect most to leave quickly and never return. With a redesign, you get to offer a much better user experience than before. This makes it easy for your audience to find what it’s looking for and take suitable action.
• Mobile responsiveness. If your website does not work well on mobile devices, there’s a likelihood that you’re missing out on a large portion of the pie. If this is the case, work on ensuring that you get a responsive website as quickly as possible. Bear in mind, though, that this might mean waiting for at least a few months, because you can’t rebuild Rome in a day.
• Slow loading times. If your website takes too long to load, visitors are likely to become frustrated and leave. A redesign can help you optimize your website’s performance and improve loading times.

Conclusion

A website is a major investment that takes time to design, develop, and continually modify. In many ways, building a website is no different than building a new home. Like with most major purchases, investing a fraction of the cost of the website in routine service and maintenance or WebCare is a commonsense investment.

Digital agencies that provide effective WebCare packages always customize their services to meet the needs of each customer. While there are several options from which to choose, the best way to protect your online presence is to contact a WebCare specialist, discuss your specific requirements, inquire about the services on offer, ask for suggestions, and then make a decision.