Why Website Maintenance is So Important for Leads

You made the BIG decision to create a new (or refreshed) website. Woo hoo! You’ve compiled the photos, pulled together copy and positioning statements, and either sent it off to a website designer/developer OR handled it in-house.

You make that website live, post about it on social media, email your list and take the deepest breath you’ve had in a while as you watch the traffic roll in. You did it!!

Now what?

Well, if you want that website to continue to work for you, the next step is maintenance. Let me break down a few reasons why a fancy website is not a set-it-and-forget-it approach to marketing and lead generation in particular.

A website is a living thing.

Ok maybe not literally, but you should really think of it that way if you want all the time, energy, and money you put into creating the new site to pay off.

You can make the most gorgeous website and announce it to the world, but if you are not continuing to create new content, keep design fresh, add new things and ensure plugins are updated, then you aren’t really getting the ROI on the investment into making the website.

User experience is paramount to all content.

I know that statement may throw you off, especially if you’ve been reading up on your marketing education and have seen a lot of “Content is king” messaging.

It’s true that content is king. However, you can have the BEST content marketing that is so smart, SEO-optimized and perfect for creating inbound leads, but it won’t matter in the least if people have a hard time actually reading it. Clearly, if they can’t read it, they can’t convert into a new lead and potential customer.

That means you need to ensure your user experience is optimal before you even think about creating content. In this case, I am talking about:

1. Plugins remaining up to date
2. Clean designs for easy reading across devices
3. Headings and subheadings throughout all content for easy skimming
4. Compressed images for fast page loads
5. Links to related content within all content marketing

Don’t get so focused on creating new content and loading it into your site that you forget about these maintenance tasks that should be done every single month.

Photos and video add to your storytelling and I am so glad you realize that! But the more you add without proper optimization prior, the more they can slow your site down. That affects the coveted user experience.

Bad user experience = higher bounce rates

When that happens, it doesn’t matter how great your content is because no one is sticking around to read it. (For more fuel on this fire, check out this short video on Instagram addressing one of the biggest complaints I get about websites.)

Website maintenance has a direct effect on leads.

Let’s continue riding the “user experience is more important than content train” and remember the flow we are ideally going for with a website:

1. Third-party (search, social, email et) brings a user to read content on website
2. Content is on-point and the user thinks, “Oh yes, they totally get it. I need what this company is offering.” 🙌🏻
3. User fills out a lead form or clicks a linked phone number to call company
4. Company rep qualifies lead on the call and either moves to proposal stage or refers out the work

Now if your user experience is impacted by a poor website maintenance (i.e. out of date plugins, broken forms, slow site) that funnel will look more like this:

1. Third-party (search, social, email etc) brings a user to read content on website
2. Content is on-point, BUT the user has a hard time reading it due a slow load time, images that won’t load and broken pop-ups

#funnelends 👎🏻

Hopefully now you can see that a lack of website maintenance killed that user experience having a direct effect on them being able to become a lead and potentially a customer.

So do yourself a favor and keep your website healthy. Update plugins, backup your content, optimize your images and while you’re at it, review those website analytics every single month to see how your traffic and user experience is affected.