What are the real costs of running, maintaining and updating your website that are often unseen or unknown?
Managing your business website can be a rewarding endeavour. Allowing you creative control and independence to build your online platform the way you want it. It can be seen as a great cost-saving method and one that can be controlled without the need for hundreds of emails or hours of meetings with designers and developers. It can’t be denied, that with the hundreds of options out there, building and maintaining a website yourself can certainly be achieved, but at what cost?
Like most things, you kinda get what you pay for. On the face of things, that small monthly fee of a SquareSpace or Wix templated website offers an affordable solution. One thing it never takes into consideration is your time and maybe your own design skills. While these templates are designed, they often require further input to get exactly what you want and need. Then writing your content to be useful for your audience, finding imagery and video to make it sing can even be hard for a designer.
Let’s face it, managing your own website means you have to wear many hats. From design and layout to having an in-depth knowledge level to really make your website work for you.
Understanding the challenges and complexities in an ever-evolving landscape is hard. Here are 10 common pain points associated with self-managing a website we believe are well worth taking into consideration if you are about to embark on a website journey:
- Technical Complexity: Website management often involves domain registration, web hosting, server configurations, and software updates. These technical aspects can be daunting, especially for those without a technical background. Yet all of these components are vital to your website.
- Time-Consuming: Maintaining a website can be a time-intensive task. Activities like designing user-friendly layouts, content creation, troubleshooting issues, and even SEO optimisation can demand a significant amount of your time, which you can’t bill for.
- Security Concerns: Websites are now vulnerable to security threats more than ever. This includes hacking and malware problems that are ever-evolving in their methods to cheat you. Ensuring your website’s security requires continuous monitoring and protective measures at the bare minimum each month, week and even daily.
- Software Updates: Content management systems (CMS) and plugins need regular updates for bug fixes, security enhancements, and new features. Keeping everything up to date without causing issues can be challenging and can you really afford to have your website go down at any point?
- Backup and Recovery: Regular backups are essential to safeguard your website’s data. Ensuring that backups are performed correctly and can be efficiently restored is critical.
- Compatibility Issues: Websites must work smoothly on various devices, browsers, and screen sizes. Ensuring compatibility can be complex, particularly if you have limited resources.
- Performance Optimisation: Slow-loading websites can deter visitors and harm search engine rankings. Optimising performance through image compression, code minimisation, and caching can be time-consuming even for those highly skilled.
- Content Management: Consistently producing high-quality content and keeping it organised is a significant task. This includes creating, designing, editing, scheduling posts, and managing media files. Just this area alone can become a full-time role within any business, big or small.
- SEO Management: Effective search engine optimisation (SEO) is vital for visibility and traffic. This involves keyword research, on-page optimisation, and backlink building, which can be complex and time-consuming. If you lack the skills and knowledge of these intricacies, it’s almost an impossible task.
- Legal and Compliance Issues: Websites must adhere to various laws and regulations, accessibility standards, and copyright laws. Ensuring compliance can be intricate and requires careful attention.
In summary, self-managing a website provides creative freedom and possible cost savings, but it can also be challenging due to the technical, security, and time-related complexities. If you lack the expertise or find these challenges overwhelming, consider professional web development services or managed hosting to address these pain points, allowing you to focus on your business and your website to be working for you, rather than vice versa.
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