Why Your Website isn't a Set it and Forget it Tool

Have you ever thought of your website like a car? 🚗

Just like a vehicle needs regular maintenance, tune-ups, and the occasional upgrade to keep running smoothly, your website needs the same care to keep delivering results. Ignoring it can lead to slow performance, outdated content, and missed opportunities. But with the right care, your website can be a powerful engine driving your business forward.

Today, I’ll walk you through the life cycle of a website—what to expect at each stage, the essential maintenance you need to stay competitive, and when it might be time to invest in an upgrade. So buckle up—this episode will keep your website running at peak performance!


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Chapters

• 0:00 Website Maintenance Like Car Care
• 3:18 Website Startup and Break-In Period
• 7:04 Essential Maintenance Phase Tasks
• 10:00 When It's Time for an Upgrade
• 12:03 Long-Term Success Strategies
• 15:16 Episode Wrap-Up and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:52

Have you ever thought of your website like a car? Just like a vehicle needs regular maintenance, tune-ups and occasional upgrades to keep you running smoothly. Your website needs the same care to keep delivering the results. Ignoring it can lead to slow performance, outdated content and missed opportunities for you, but with the right care, your website can be a powerful engine driving your business forward. Your website can be a powerful engine driving your business forward. Today, I'll walk you through the life cycle of a website what to expect at each stage so you're not surprised, the essential maintenance you should do to stay competitive, and when it might be time to invest in an upgrade so that you keep growing your business. So let's get started.

Speaker 1: 1:34

Welcome to the eCommerce Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, keri Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine month old my main goal To help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 1: 2:07

Today, we're comparing our websites to a car. I know recently I have had to put tires on two different cars, so it made me think about how our website is kind of like a car, and we need to be regularly maintaining it and improving it. So let's get started off, though, with our stages of our website, and the first stage is our startup stage. This is when you've built your website, is you're going to be building the foundation here, and you may have already done this, or maybe you haven't built your website yet. But just like buying a new car, building a website is exciting many times, and you pick the design, you add the content you want into it and you launch it into the world. So this is just the beginning of your website, and like the beginning of getting a new to your car. So some elements we want to get right, though, in the beginning is we want to make sure, as we talk on the episodes, a lot here on this podcast is we want to make sure we have a mobile friendly design, we want to make sure it loads fast and we want to make sure we're having a clear navigation. There are also some essential plugins you might want for performance, some things you might want to help to even further make your SEO even better, and also for security reasons. Depending upon what you have, especially if you have WordPress, you're going to want some plugins to help you with security there. And then we're also going to want clear call to actions. We want to make sure we're guiding our visitors towards the conversion and towards the actions we want them to do.

Speaker 1: 3:33

So some of the mistakes you might make in the startup phase is you might think that you're done once your site is live, and this is where many businesses fail and fall into this set it and forget it trap. A website is not a set it and forget it. It's just like our cars we need to change the oil, we need to put gas in them. Sometimes we need to change the tires, like I've had to recently. I even have one car that's going to need some new spark plugs soon, because it's that time for new spark plugs. So we need to be thinking about our websites and that we need to continually improve them to make sure they're still serving our customers, because business is never stagnant as far as who our customers are and how we're serving them. So we want to make sure we're adjusting our website to match what our business is doing too, and then, right after you've built your website, we're going to have what would be if you've ever brought a brand brand new car. You know there's a break-in period. It's a period where you're supposed to be a bit more gentle on the engine and you're going to want to, you know, run it at normal RPMs for a certain amount of time until it's broken and if anybody listening is also a car nerd and loves cards. So what we want to make sure to do with our websites is we want to have a break-in period for it. It's going to need some testing out there before it's running at its best. It's going to need some customers going to it and giving you some feedback. You're going to want to collect data on it and you're going to want to optimize it as we're getting it up to speed and getting it moving.

Speaker 1: 5:12

So some key tasks in this stage is we want to be sure that we're using Google Analytics and that we're monitoring our site analytics. We want to track our visitor behavior, like bounce rates and page performance. How long are they staying on your pages? Are they scrolling on your pages? We're going to want to look at search engine optimization. We want to make sure that the keywords, meta tags, alternate texts and your body are working effectively on each of your pages, because you know you might find that you need to change some of the wording as you go along. We also want to gather some customer feedback. Ask some peers, see what they think. Ask them if there's anything that's confusing or unclear. So some warning signs of trouble in this tune-up stage is you have slow load of page times, you might have broken links, you might have confusing navigation. You want to make sure you address these issues before they really drive visitors away and before it becomes a bit unruly to fix Now.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Next we're going to go into the maintenance phase. So this is after your website's been up and going and you have some momentum with it, just like you know, after you've had your car for a bit and you know all you really need to do is oil changes and get some gas, and nothing major at this moment. So we want to make sure we keep things running smoothly with our website too, and regular maintenance is essential to prevent issues that can slow your site down or hurt its performance or hurt its search engine rankings. So some essential maintenance tasks are we want to make sure we keep our plugins, themes and core software updated regularly. This is essential if you're running WordPress, a downloadable e-commerce store. This isn't really something you generally need to do with software as a service type of things like ShowIt, gohighlevel, kajabi and Squarespace, although I have seen that some clients do fall behind on even the SaaS software, the software as a solution versions, because sometimes they will have different versions too. So you want to make sure you're staying up to date on that as soon as possible.

Speaker 1: 7:22

When those new versions come out. I don't recommend going to them right away. Give it a few months. One of those people was like yeah, jump on it right away. There might be mistakes. There might be mistakes, there might be bugs. You know we're software developers here. We understand how that can happen. So give it some time to be a little bit stable. But again, but don't put it off too far. Make sure it's only a few months, like maybe two to six months after a new version is released. Then you're going to want to make sure you're backing up your website frequently if you have the ability to do that, or making sure that whatever service you're with that they make sure they have good backups of your website.

Speaker 1: 8:00

We're also going to want to make sure that you're optimizing your images and cleaning up your database. That's a little bit more techie, but if you have access to your database and you're a bit more tech savvy, you might want to clean up your database, which could mean deleting old stuff that's unnecessary anymore, like out of WordPress or out of an e-commerce store. We want to make sure we don't have it bogged down with old data that we don't use anymore, which could slow down the website. And then you're going to want to make sure that you're just keeping on top of it and making sure everything's running smoothly. You know, make sure customers are able to do the things that they need to do. So keeping your content fresh is also great. Here. We want to make sure we're updating blog posts. We're updating product pages or service pages. We want to regularly be reviewing your search engine optimization strategy to make sure you're staying competitive.

Speaker 1: 8:53

It's a lot easier to make minor tweaks as you go. Then, you know, put off looking at search engine optimization for months and then trying to fix anything that's there. It's much easier to adjust as you go. And then there's a stage and point in time when you might need to upgrade. Maybe maybe your car is too old now it's got too many miles on it. Maybe it doesn't serve your family well. It's kind of similar to your website. You know it could be too old, it could not be serving your audience anymore. Maybe it's too small and needs to expand. Or maybe it's too big and you need to. You know, narrow it down to what you're truly working on now. So big and you need to. You know, narrow it down to what you're truly working on now.

Speaker 1: 9:32

So, even with regular maintenance, there is a time when your website needs a more significant overhaul or upgrade. So there are some signs for when it's time for an upgrade. For one, your website looks out of date and it's not as up to date as competitors. For example, it's also maybe not delivering the results you need. You may be getting fewer leads, fewer sales, not as many conversions anymore, and it doesn't function as well on mobile devices or browsers like the newer versions of them devices or browsers like the newer versions of them and then, potentially, when load times are slow, that could be meaning that you need to get an update or an upgrade for your website.

Speaker 1: 10:10

So there's some options for upgrading that can be not quite so daunting that we can look at. It could simply, you just need a design refresh. It could even be some simple things that you need to make it look a bit more modern and more up-to-date. It may not require a complete overhaul, but it is something I want to make sure you're addressing occasionally. You might want to look at adding new features like online booking, so that they can book a call easily. You might want to have a new e-commerce capabilities. If you have an e-commerce store, you might want to add some new you know more modern features to it, and you might want to add some advanced analytics just to see if things are going as smoothly as you hope and think they are. You could also maybe need to move to a larger or better hosting platform if your website's too slow, or a more robust customer management system. If you're starting to get bogged down in the current one, it doesn't fit your needs. You've grown too big. You might need a bigger CMS.

Speaker 1: 11:09

So with our website, there's a long-term journey here. We want to make sure we're doing continuous improvement, and this might seem like, oh, it's something else to do, carrie, I get that, but if you don't do continual improvement, there's gonna else to do, carrie, I get that, but if you don't do, you know, continual improvement, there's going to come a day I see this all the time with our clients where their eyes are like wide open because they're like holy cow, I have to. I need to do this to survive in my business. You know they need to have a whole website upgrade, overhaul, and it's a big job if you're not, you know, taking those baby steps along the way, and so I want to try and help you prevent getting the deer in the headlights, look, because you realize, oh my goodness, I need to really overhaul my website. This is going to be so overwhelming If you're doing these steps as you go that overhaul when it does come because there may be a time that it does come you know we need a better, bigger website. It won't be quite so daunting because you've been continually tweaking the current one you have. So there's some best practices for long-term success that I'd recommend.

Speaker 1: 12:14

I want to make sure that you're scheduling monthly or quarterly maintenance reviews. Make sure that you put this on your calendar. If you have a service provider that helps you, make sure that they're doing this monthly or quarterly, it kind of depends upon how big your website is. And then I want you to make sure that you're regularly updating your content and keeping it relevant and engaging. So don't just sit and forget the content on your website. You know, once a week, every other week, pick a page on your website and take a look at it, see if it needs updated or refreshed. Usually, this could take like only like 15 or 30 minutes, especially if you're doing this regularly.

Speaker 1: 12:51

Stay informed about the latest web design trends and technology. Listening to those podcasts is a great way to do that. Try to keep up to date, because when these new trends come out, that could set you behind if you're not on top of them. Now, I'm not saying we should be a trend chaser, but the ones that tend to stick and that customers actually find useful. It's good to get on and jump on and do those things when those come out. And then I want to make sure that you're continually testing and optimizing to improve conversion rates and user experience. You know, regularly look at Google Analytics, regularly look at Google Search Console and make sure that your website's performing like you need it, to Make sure your visitors aren't trending downwards. Make sure they're at least steady or trending upwards. Just these regular checks can help you prevent these surprise maintenance problems or updates that you might need in the future if you're keeping up with what's going on on your website. So, just like your car, your website requires care and attention, and sometimes investment, to keep delivering the performance you want that makes sure that your customers turn into visitors. Ignoring it won't just hurt your user experience. It can actually cost you leads and sales, and potentially, your business. I've seen this happen before, where people have ignored their websites, and it actually costs their business because their growth and their sales were just continually going downwards and they can never get it turned around because they reacted too late. So with the right maintenance routine, though, and the willingness to upgrade when needed, your website can continue to drive your business forward and help you grow for years to come.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of the Ecommerce Made Easy podcast. I hope you thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope this made you think about you know how do I want to look at these tasks and how do I want to make sure that I stay on top of my website so I don't end up in that surprise state where I need to do a complete overhaul. That's going to cost me a lot of money. So make sure you look at these tasks after this episode, you know, go to our show notes at ecommercemadeeasypodcastcom so you can get you know a summary of what we talked about today to remind you about the tasks that you should be looking at adding to your calendar, that we don't want to overwhelm you with them, but we want to make sure they're simple but easy for you to do, to make sure you stay on top of your website. And if you love this episode, be sure to rate or review us.