It’s hard to overstate the importance of ecommerce website maintenance, especially in today’s highly competitive industry. It just passed $1 trillion in the US alone, so stores must stay pristine to attract customers. This means regular updates to the software you use and optimizing your site’s overall performance. Which inevitably leads to one thing—maintenance.
Despite its necessity, maintenance is seen as a problem by most. After all, it creates downtime, has a chance to break things, and takes up valuable resources. However, it’s still a necessity and, when done right, a huge positive. Drawing on GenovaWebArt’s experience, this guide will provide examples of effective maintenance steps to guarantee your business benefits from it.
The Importance of Proper Maintenance and Support of an E-commerce Site
As time goes by and your business grows, a few potential problems may occur with your site:
- An outdated look
- Lack of SEO optimization
- High load times
- Overly busy interface
Any of these can turn away customers, who will go looking for a prettier, more optimized website. With a cart abandonment rate at a whopping 84% on mobile and 72% on desktop, the danger of a suboptimal store looms heavy. Those who don’t want to be part of that statistic need to rely on updates and ecommerce website maintenance to improve their storefront.
Long-term support helps make the process less of a headache, in addition to simply keeping the quality up. Having a skilled team handle the technical intricacies of maintenance and regular updates is the way to go if you want to remove any associated stress.
The Benefits of Maintaining an eCommerce Website
While we laid out the theoretical issues that can happen when maintenance isn’t done, let’s look on the bright side. In this section, we’ll cover the positives that ecommerce website support and maintenance can bring.
Lowered Risk of Security Breaches
Keeping your software up-to-date and error-free is essential to protecting your website. Security breaches usually happen due to bugs, which are patched out once that vulnerability is known by the developers. That is why keeping everything updated to the latest version is essential.
Prevent Unexpected Issues
One of the main things that bother business owners about ecommerce store maintenance is downtime. But the reality is that a lack of support for your website will also lead to downtime. With maintenance, it will happen on your terms and your schedule.
Even if there is no downtime, a website that has not been properly updated with unnecessary bloat removed will suffer in terms of performance. Slower loading, buggy plugins, and general instability will put off customers. It’s best not to let things get too out of hand.
Better User Experience
No matter how good your site is now, there are areas that can be improved. After all, there are hundreds of plugins and widgets that can make the user experience smoother, with more unique features. Letting your store get stale is a costly mistake and an easily avoided one, too. Take a look at the newest offerings in the industry, there’ll surely be something that can fit your brand.
Plus, remember that a happier customer means more sales and return clients. Creating an environment where a user never gets frustrated or confused by your store is an all-around win.
Which Areas of Your Business Are Affected by eCommerce Store Maintenance?
There are a few different directions in which maintenance influences your store. These include marketing, security, and stability.
Marketing
Maintenance means removing and adding content, which will affect your site’s SEO rankings. Remember to take a look at recent data and get rid of excess or outdated keywords, optimizing meta titles and such. Once the maintenance is done, it’s important to confirm that re-indexing goes smoothly and you reap the benefits in terms of marketing.
Security
Maintenance can only be good for your security, provided it’s done by professionals. This is your chance to make a backup of your site and database, as well as apply any recent plugin patches. Regular ecommerce store maintenance should ensure you never risk a security breach.
Stability
While you’ll experience some downtime in the process, properly handled maintenance should guarantee more stability for your website. You’d be running the current software with lower chances of errors and bugs, which should increase overall performance. Similarly, making sure the database is intact will also go a long way toward having an error-free site.
How to Keep eCommerce Web Maintenance Easy and Quick
It wouldn’t be an e-commerce site maintenance guide without tips on making the process painless. Our suggestions, aside from getting help from GenovaWebArt, a team with years of expertise, are as follows.
Focus on data management
Your content needs to be well-organized and SEO-optimized, with no broken links. This should take up the bulk of your maintenance time, as coming out of it with any errors counters the whole point of maintenance.
Pursue Automation
Shopify has tons of plugins to make life easier. Make sure you’ve checked whether certain small tasks, such as redirect setup or media updating, can be automated with a new solution.
Improve UX Across the Board
Whenever you add or remove something, think of possible use cases from a buyer’s perspective. Anything from AI-powered recommendations to a currency conversion feature can help make their experience better.
eCommerce Website Maintenance Checklist Activities
Here is a quick and simple maintenance checklist that you can use to confirm you’ve covered every step.
1. Create a Backup
Before you make any major changes, do a full-site backup. Think of this as the main safety requirement for your maintenance.
2. Update Content
Make sure your content is in line with current SEO trends and that there are no outdated or unnecessary media on the site. Pay special attention to metadata if you want SEO optimization.
3. Security Check
Verify that all software, plugins, and firmware are up to date. Check to make sure your SSL certificate isn’t expired and that you’re hosting all data securely.
4. Link Verification
Take a look at your links and redirects to confirm they all lead where they should. Regular changes in your content may lead to some broken redirects, so this is a crucial step.
5. Chance for a Redesign
While it’s not one of the essential maintenance strategies, a redesign is a good extra to apply along with the regular tasks. Consider which elements of your site may appear outdated and take this opportunity to give them a facelift.
Success Stories from GenovaWebArt’s Clients
If you want an example of the benefits of maintenance for ecommerce, look no further than Ten Thousand. This is a sportswear store that has been collaborating with GenovaWebArt since 2017, receiving our support and maintenance services. We’ve helped the brand with a redesign as well as regular updates to keep the store powered by the latest plugins from Shopify Plus.
Similarly, there’s Winky Lux, who recognized the importance of Shopify Support & Maintenance and have been using our services since 2020. Using JSON templates and metafields, we’ve boosted Winky Lux’s online presence and SEO rankings. This, coupled with some design changes, has given Winky Lux a constant presence as a top e-commerce make-up store.
GenovaWebArt Experience in Ecommerce Website Maintenance
Based on these examples, you can see that GenovaWebArt takes special care of its clients. Some of our partnerships have been going on for over nine years, with our team handling maintenance and support the whole time. Even our average collaboration lasts around four years, during which we nurture and grow the client’s Shopify store.
This kind of long-term loyalty guarantees that GenovaWebArt understands the business inside and out, guiding new developments with a steady hand. Our Shopify support & maintenance services are available to any company seeking to increase its SEO ranking, gain customers, or simply improve as an e-commerce store. Contact us today to find a Shopify expert team.
Conclusion
As we’ve shown in this e-commerce site maintenance guide, there are many benefits to doing your due diligence. Yes, the process can get repetitive and has its downsides associated with downtime and unexpected consequences. However, as long as you go into it with a clear idea of what you want and a strong team handles the technical parts, it’s a must-do for any business.
On the other hand, properly done maintenance is sure to increase your SEO rankings, help convert more customers, and keep your store looking fresh in a constantly changing industry. There is no excuse to ignore these advantages, especially since everyone has to do maintenance. So let’s get to it and make sure you’re getting the best result possible.
For your maintenance needs, turn to our ecommerce support service. GenovaWebArt prides itself on long and fruitful collaborations with excellent support. We will work with you to ensure that any changes are in line with your brand’s image and ideas while delivering an updated and optimized website that boosts sales. Let’s get started now, just send us a message.
