dda
You wouldn’t dare dream about not having regular maintenance on your car, so why should you treat your website any differently?
In the same way that regular maintenance and servicing can identify & prevent any faults with your car, the same maintenance on your website can prevent a very expensive breakdown.
An out-of-date and unmaintained website is vulnerable to a host of issues, including malicious activity or hacks, something one of our clients found out recently…
The Cost Of Not Investing
Our client was making approximately £35k per month in online sales, and didn’t see the value in reinvesting a small fraction of that on regular maintenance of their website.
Their website was outdated, both in terms of the system & platform they use, and the range of plugins & extensions, leaving them vulnerable to malicious activity. This allowed hackers to gain access and compromise the website, something that could have easily been prevented with regular maintenance.
Finding out your site is hacked.
To prevent further damage from the hackers, the website was taken offline, resulting in all sales on the website stopping, with nobody able to access it.
Performing maintenance on your website isn’t a slow or arduous task; in many cases, it can be done and dusted within a few hours when performed often, and having your maintenance completed by an agency like DDA, you don’t need to worry about it, as we can take care of everything for you.
Compare the small cost & time spent on regular maintenance to the situation that then followed for our client, when their website was hacked.
Building a brand new website can take weeks, which can feel like months when your current website is down. During this period, it’s estimated our client lost out on around £25,000+ in revenue whilst their website was being rebuilt.
But when your new website’s up and running, your problems are far from over. You’ve got a brand new website, which means Google will recognise your website as brand new. All those organic rankings you’d worked so hard to build up will have disappeared in an instant, and you’ll be back to square one.
After all that, think about how much you’re losing. Are you losing thousands like our client did? Tens of thousands? Maybe you’re even missing out on Hundreds of thousands in revenue during this downtime period, on your new sales or contracts. It really doesn’t bare thinking about, considering the comparative cost of a maintenance package.
Not only will you be losing money, you’ll also be spending money on having your website rebuilt, plus any additional marketing spend including on SEO or PPC to get your website back into a competitive position.
In our client’s case, the cost of maintenance over a year for their online should would’ve cost approximately less than 5% of their yearly sales, which would have cost them less in yearly maintenance costs, than what they lost during their downtime due to the hack. Spread that cost over the course of a year, and it pales in comparison to the current & future lost revenue.
Hacks can affect all types and sizes of websites, not just online shops or big players. Whether you sell products online, generate leads or produce content to promote your services, you are vulnerable to being compromised if you don’t keep your website maintained and updated.
Get your website protected.
The Problems Hacking Present
There are a range of problems that can arise from having your site hacked, such as:
• Users on your website will see other pages rather than your own site pages – which are usually filled with foreign or even potentially malicious content you would never want on your site or near your brand
• User devices could be left vulnerable to spreading any malicious code from your hacked site which puts them at risk by visiting your hacked website
• Google will suspend your site from its servers and/or your page rankings will be lost due to content on your site being changed by the hack, with your site then being flagged as a compromised website to stop people going to it
• If you run any Google PPC or Shopping campaigns on your website, then any hack to your website is going to affect these and derail your advertising
• Your company image and reputation can be put at risk due to the above issues if your website gets hacked
• Depending on how bad, and how long the hack was online for before you noticed, it will be expensive to clear your site of all rogue content and files, if it can be fixed. Sometimes you need to do a complete rebuild of the site from scratch to ensure you have got rid of any deep hack content to give your site a clean start
• If you are hacked, then after your site is fixed and back online, you should definitely consider a maintenance package to ensure your site is less likely to be attacked again in the future
• While your site is hacked, your lack of sales/leads/enquires and costs to get everything back online again will far outweigh any additional spend you put towards trying to protect your site
Our experienced team are here to help you.
When having a new website created, we understand maintenance costs might be overlooked as an extraneous cost that doesn’t really form part of the bigger picture, however, it should be an essential consideration when building and running any website
With Domain Design Agency, our maintenance plans start from as little as £81 + VAT per month, depending on your site type and size, giving you an extra layer of protection and peace of mind, knowing your website is in the best possible condition.
This doesn’t mean your site is immune to hacking – you only need to take a look at news articles of recent years to see even the biggest players and governments sites too are susceptible to being hacked – however, having your site regularly maintained and updated gives you the best possible chance to stop the vast majority of hacks that outdated websites fall to.
Don’t get caught out – call 0800 118 2411 or email team@domaindesign.agency today to find out how we can help safeguard your website.
Website Maintenance Plans to keep you secure.
Before you go…
One way to make sure that your website’s admin usernames and passwords are kept safe is to always connect via a trusted, known network, instead of a shared or third party connection. Hackers can access your login details via an unsecured network, leaving your website, and indeed your personal details & accounts, vulnerable.
Always make sure you use strong passwords – a combination of upper and lower letters, numbers and symbols will make sure you have the most secure password. Never use common phrases or words, don’t use the same password for every account you have, and never share your password with anyone.