5 Terrifying Outcomes of An Unmaintained Website
As the spooky season descends upon us, and people prepare their costumes and treats, some businesses are facing their own set of digital horrors – and it’s all down to their online strategy.
A website plays a pivotal role in digital marketing strategy and neglecting it can lead to petrifying problems. Now more than ever, it’s crucial to so many businesses that their websites are kept up to date, protected and maintained to avoid the dire consequences of abandoning them online.
In the spirit of Halloween, we will explore five truly frightening outcomes that can befall an unmaintained WordPress website.
From hacking and software constraints to separation from your business identity, we uncover why keeping your website alive and well via regular maintenance is crucial in the competitive realm of digital marketing.
1. A Hacking Nightmare
Imagine discovering one day that scary monsters in the shape of sinister hackers have infiltrated your website. Your content has been defaced, sensitive user data stolen, or even worse, your website now serves as a platform for spreading malware. Terrifying, right?
Data protection and online security are so important in every industry, that they need to be taken seriously. If your customer trusts you with their personal information, honour that trust with a secure website that is protected from online threats. In the modern digital industry, security has never been more important, for businesses as well as their customers.
Neglecting website security updates and failing to maintain strong passwords can open the door to these digital ghouls, putting all a business’ hard work at risk. Protect your website from this horrifying fate by regularly updating CMS, plugins, and themes, and by implementing strong security measures. You can do this manually, or through a trusted agency.
A secure website is essential for maintaining customer trust and protecting your brand’s reputation in the competitive world of digital marketing. Keep those scary monsters out!
2. The Curse of Dead Software
How can dead software impact a website’s success? Old, unmaintained software versions turn a website into the living dead. The website might be still visible but can’t be said to be truly alive and thriving. Outdated software can expose a series of vulnerabilities that could damage the customer experience and overall website effectiveness.
These vulnerabilities can impact on the following:
- Compatibility – As technology evolves, outdated software may not be compatible with newer technologies, browsers, or devices. This can result in a poor user experience, including broken functionality or rendering issues on different platforms.
- Performance – Dead software can lead to performance issues. It may slow down page loading times, causing frustration for visitors and negatively impacting a site’s SEO ranking. Slow-loading websites are also more likely to have high bounce rates.
- Functionality – Some features and functionalities of a website may rely on specific software components. When those components become outdated or unsupported, these features can break, leaving the website with reduced capabilities.
- Outages and Crashes – Dead software can lead to unexpected outages and crashes. When a website crashes, it can result in downtime. This can be both inconvenient and lead to lost revenue and damage to your reputation.
Outdated software also can’t take advantage of new features, improvements, or enhancements offered by the latest software versions. This can hinder the ability of your website to compete and be up-to-date with the latest trends and user expectations.
Regularly updating website software ensures that a website remains in the realm of the live and kicking, free from the ghostly grip of dead, obsolete code. This is vital to ensure smooth functionality – essential for providing a seamless user experience and keeping visitors engaged.
3. The Lost Souls of Customers
Websites are not just digital brochures; they are the lifeblood of a business. As a digital brochure, they are often the first place an online visitor will look to discover products or services that meet their expectations and requirements. Capturing the attention of our target audience must be a priority when designing and developing any website.
Neglecting website maintenance can result in sluggish performance, broken links, or outdated content. Visitors may be frightened away by an empty user experience and causing a plummet to SEO ranking. As a result, a once-thriving business could lose customers, leading to a chilling drain of revenue.
This could be particularly dangerous to an e-commerce website, or a business whose main source of income is their online space.
The customer journey through a website can strongly dictate how people see a business, and how it measures up to the competition. No website visitor wants to face the horror of broken page links or zombie-paced loading times.
Keeping a website up-to-date and user-friendly is essential to retaining the trust and souls of existing customers and attracting new ones in a competitive digital marketing landscape. It’s no trick, it really works!
4. A Descent into the Abyss of Search Engine Despair
Search engines act like benevolent spirits, guiding users to relevant websites that meet their, often specific, requirements. However, they are also quick to penalize websites that fall into disrepair.
Search engines like Google will rank a website based on a range of factors. One of those factors is how regularly the site is updated. An unmaintained website can have a detrimental impact on its search engine ranking in several ways. On an unmaintained website, a search engine will see broken links, slower page loading, content stagnation, security faults, compatibility with mobile devices and many more, all of which tells it that the business is inactive and inattentive, damaging search engine optimisation.
This can lead to any website disappearing into the depth of search engine results, fading away without ever being noticed by visitors. This not only reduces a business’ visibility but enhances the competitors and likely drives business elsewhere.
Checking for updates regularly and maintaining a website, whether it be the business owner or an agency carrying out the work, can prevent some of these issues. Staying seen is key, don’t become invisible like a vampire in a mirror.
5. Scary Separation from your Business Reality
Websites are integral to modern businesses, presenting a digital face that enables people to see who we are and what we can offer them. There is no greater representation of a brand than the hub for all marketing activities, a well-kept and up-to-date website.
Neglecting a website can result in a haunting separation from the reality of the business identity. If a website becomes outdated, irrelevant, or simply ineffective, it can leave customers with a disjointed and distorted impression of our brand.
A business and website should be seamlessly connected, and neglecting the online presence can lead to a painful, nightmarish divorce of reality and digital identity. Maintaining a consistent and compelling online presence is essential for building and reinforcing a brand image in the world of digital marketing.
Act now to bring your website back from the dead!
This Halloween season, let the tales of these five website horrors be a chilling reminder of the importance of regular website maintenance in your digital marketing strategy. Don’t let your online presence become a haunted house for hackers, a graveyard of dead software, mourning the lost souls of your customers in the dark abyss in search engine rankings, separated from the reality of your business.
Instead, ensure that your website remains a welcoming, well-maintained haven in the digital world, free from the terrors that can befall the neglected. Your digital marketing strategy and website success depends on it.
Beech Web Services offers different levels of maintenance packages and website services. Feel free to get in touch with us to handle all your website worries.
