Your company website is the heart of your business. It communicates who you are and serves as a way for customers to communicate with you. And in most cases, it drives people to your business or to buy directly from your business.
You have workers comp insurance, liability insurance, and property insurance. But what steps are you taking to protect the health of one of your most important owned properties—your website?
Are you protecting the health of your website?
Performing regular website maintenance can avoid security, data, or technology issues, but it’s rarely something organizations think of or factor into their budgets. The assumption is your website is working great and is with a secure hosting provider, so it must be safe. Unfortunately, there is malware out there constantly looking for vulnerabilities to attack. Plus, code changes daily, so what was up-to-date can quickly become out-of-date.
We recently had a situation where a client hired us to build a new website to better showcase their branding and also to be more of a lead-generation tool. Once the site launched, they did not include any ongoing site maintenance. However, about a year later, they asked us for assistance when their website went down.
Upon inspection, we determined their website was hacked via an outdated piece of software causing a security vulnerability. We replaced core site files, updated the software, and removed the malware. However, this resulted in costs to fix the website as well as potential lost business with customers unable to access the website. If this client had an agreement for regular site maintenance, our monitoring service would have notified us of the malicious code and we would have immediately reacted.
Think of it as website insurance.
Here at Envisionit, we recommend that clients budget for performing regular maintenance to avoid situations like the above. This is your website insurance, and ensures your website stays healthy along with continuing to drive business for years to come. For more information on what is included in our website maintenance program, please reach out to your Envisionit Client Experience Manager or submit an inquiry.
