The Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce Website Maintenance

Guide to Ecommerce Website Maintenance

eCommerce has seen a steady incline over the years. In 2019 alone, it was recorded that 1.92 billion people engaged in online purchasing of goods and services. In addition, global e-retail sales went beyond USD 3.5 trillion.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic saw these numbers sharply rise in the second half of 2020. Furthermore, an eMarketer prediction indicates a steep rise in digital shoppers. This is not a marvel, after all, internet access is not limited and almost everything can be found online.

However, to keep your ecommerce website up, running and business growing, website maintenance is a necessity. This article is aimed at helping you on how to maintain your eCommerce website.

What is eCommerce Website Maintenance?

In the beginning, your eCommerce website was clean and elegant. It didn’t have any clutter and there was no data “disorganization”. Everything fell into place with ease.  However, as time went by, challenges began appearing.

Server downtimes, data corruption and unreliable responses pointed to much-needed maintenance. eCommerce maintenance ensures a good user experience both on your part and your customers. eCommerce website maintenance involves a lot of aspects ranging from content creation to site security.

Importance of eCommerce Website Maintenance

Ever visited an eCommerce website and felt uninvited?

Did you proceed to make a purchase and further discover the experience not worthwhile?

Perhaps you had difficulty in navigating through the site?

Or even couldn’t place items on the cart?

Worse yet, you made a purchase only to find the item is out of stock?

Quite annoying don’t you think? As a business owner, you have to ensure your customers don’t answer yes to these questions. Ensuring your online presence is smooth should be your top priority as an online entrepreneur.

However, before we can proceed on the how, we must first appreciate the need for eCommerce website maintenance. To ensure the sales remain constant and continual revenue in-flow, websites need to be “clean”.

Here are the benefits of having a maintained eCommerce website.

1. Optimization of Current Strategies and Realization of Business Goals

Once your website is launched, your current strategies take the front seat besides your business goals.

Business goals are the aspects that drive your website design, functionality and user experience.

While strategies are the methods employed in achieving or realizing these goals. Strategies employed include, but not limited to, landing pages, blog posts and surveys. Thus, proper eCommerce website management optimizes these strategies to ensure your goals are realized.

2. Regular Back-end Updates

Websites are generally divided into two aspects, front-end and back-end. The back-end bit is highly complex, embedded within layers of code. Here, you’ll require professional expertise.

Being the foundation of your website, poor back-end construction will end up losing your investment. Things like website plugins, hosting services and database security need to be regularly maintained to guarantee performance.

In addition, they also need to be backed-up in case restoration is imminent. Updates and back-ups ought to be timely and are made possible via website management.

3. Quick and Efficient Website Design and Edits

Website management allows for quick and efficient content designing and their subsequent editing. Certain attributes like page layout, logo, banner sizes, and menu positioning often need an update to provide a better user experience. All these edits are needed to be made skillfully without much resource wastage.

4. Fresh Content

For better user experience content needs to be fresh and relevant. You stand to lose potential customers and even current viewers if your eCommerce portal is not updated regularly.

Otherwise your customers may think the business is not going well or you are not attentive to their needs. Either of the two perceptions might bring a huge dent to your e-store’s reputation.  But website management keeps your content fresh.

5. Improve SEO

Un-updated and unmaintained websites are synonymous with broken links and webpages errors. This website malady is unappealing to search engines. The result is simple, you lose search engine rankings.

Losing search engine rankings means your eCommerce store won’t be easily found. You then cannot get your products and services out there. Website maintenance ensures you stay on top of your competition by improving your SEO.

eCommerce Website Maintenance Checklist

From the looks of things, we have delved into great length on the importance of website management. Dedicated website management is not an easy feat to accomplish. However, here is an eCommerce website maintenance checklist you can employ as a guideline.

1. Security

Website security should be your top priority. Advancement of the internet and its services saw an increase of forms of online maliciousness. Hackers never sleep, so shouldn’t you.

Sensitive information like customer details and financial information should not be easily accessed. This is the one golden rule for eCommerce websites. Regular eCommerce maintenance checks for vulnerabilities and loopholes that need plugging. 

In this section, website backups and security patches should be done as often as possible. The former ensures your data is not lost in an unforeseeable scenario. The latter limits the risk of cyber attack and plugs up hacking loopholes.

2. Digital Marketing

This is the next thing you need to focus on in eCommerce website management. Digital marketing work to the benefit of both your customers and you. It also keeps your website search engine friendly with top-notch analytics protocols.

Website management under this front involves fixing up broken links and your SEO score. Also, it involves creating new content that is creative and updated for your visitors. In addition, observe your social media interactions and manage it appropriately.

3. Visual Appeal

The third most important front is the face of your eCommerce store. Here, you deal with what the customer sees and their first impression of you. Consumer trust is often hard to come by and very easy to lose.

Therefore, your storefront face needs to send a strong message to the customer. It needs to assure the customer that you are providing solutions to their problems. It also needs to be visually appealing and inviting.

Storefront maintenance puts you ahead of your competitors while drawing new customers to you. At this front, you need to update your inventory, introduce or remove promotions and discounts and create landing pages.

There are many options out there on how to go about eCommerce maintenance. If your company is relatively new and you don’t yet have a maintenance crew at your disposal, you could:

• Hire a consultant

A consultant will train and even provide necessary assistance to your staff on website maintenance. A consultant is also ideal if you already have a technical team but lack the know-how on website maintenance. A consultant will work closely with your technical team, guiding and advising when needed.

• Hire a Team

eCommerce Website Maintenance services are provided by a select group of professionals. It is prudent that you get value for your money. It is also dependent on the size of your business; larger businesses tend to cost more than smaller businesses. Depending on the cost and wherever you are, eCommerce website maintenance services are worthy investments.

Conclusion

A poorly maintained website not only damages your business’ reputation but also directs a dissatisfied customer to your competitors. One should not afford to throw away potential sales over something you can easily take care of. Accurate websites with up-to-date information and ease of use drive customers to engage with your brand. Moreover, securing your website prevents potential infiltration threats and risk of data loss. Furthermore, a website face-uplift and appropriate marketing strategy build consumer trust.

Remember, the internet is closer to people and online purchasing is shooting through the roof. eCommerce website maintenance is crucial for online business success.

For more help please feel free to contact us.