eCommerce Website Maintenance: The Ultimate Guide

Remember when you launched your eCommerce website? You must have used the latest technology stack and spent well to ensure the experience is smooth for your users. It probably worked well for the next few years but, this does not last forever. If you really want to keep at par with the users’ wants and needs, your website must keep upgrading!  A great part of keeping up with the times involves changing the visual and non-visual components of your website. Just because your website is using a multi-vendor marketplace built with Magento, it doesn’t mean that you can rely on them and skip maintenance. You have to undertake it.  Consider this blog as a guide to eCommerce website maintenance. Let us start off by evaluating why you would want to undertake regular housekeeping tasks. 

What Does eCommerce Website Maintenance Accomplish?

To an investor, eCommerce website maintenance might just sound like more stress and expenses. But, this is actually the opposite of what it means! Just as you would actively practice maintaining your physical store, you should also maintain your eCommerce website. Doing so helps your business in the long run.  

1. Reduces Chances of Cart Abandonment

You would be surprised by the high percentage of carts that are abandoned due to performance bugs. It is 2021 and users no longer need to have the patience to buy items online anymore. Another second longer or one extra contact detail request and they will ditch!  For this exact reason, you have to stay ahead of the competition and identify and fix problems. You have to maintain your eCommerce website to give users a better user experience than your competitors. Common instances that would lead to cart abandonment are:

• • A bug that empties the cart without consent
  • Lack of shipping details and delivery estimates 
  • Unsupported payment method
  • Bug in the payment gateway which results in payment failure

 

2. Creates Better Brand Awareness (Possibly Higher Sales)

The landing page of your website is the most important part of your eCommerce website and your brand. When users arrive at your website, the landing page is the first thing they will see.   Imagine if people were to land on the website page but still have no clue who your company is or what you sell! Luckily it is easy to correct this and a good reason why it is important to maintain an eCommerce website.   Landing pages popularly have products, company branding, and contact details clearly visible. It’s important to keep updating your landing page to suit customer requirements and still keep in sync with company strategies.   

3. Enhances Site Security and User Safety 

Maintaining an eCommerce website becomes imperative to maintain the safety of both your website and your users. It’s no secret that outdated websites pose an easy target for hackers and scammers.   There is a long road to recovery if user data is stolen or leaked! It is better to be safe than sorry, especially when there is a way to prevent this calamity. Keeping your website maintained usually means that it is protected and benefitting from in-built security features.   Some security features you should keep in line with are firewalls, SSL certificates, and secure data backup. 

4. Improves Search Engine Rankings 

If users access your website and are not impressed by what they see, they will talk! Before you know it there will be a drop in traffic and sales. This affects your popularity on search engines as well.  Failure to keep up to date and keep users happy can have dire repercussions for your eCommerce website! Search engines will not prioritize your website and you will find your website slipping down the rankings. This makes it harder for internet users to find your website. 

Keeps Website Performance Up 

All technology needs constant updating to keep abreast with current-day user requirements. Not to mention keeping in sync with data safety and privacy practices that have been the focus of late. All this applies to your eCommerce website as well!    eCommerce website maintenance may even help to achieve goals associated with website performance. Technology stacks become outdated after some time. You don’t have to use the latest technology but you can choose one more recent than the one you’ve used.  [caption id="attachment_9930" align="alignnone" width="1000"] eCommerce-Website-Maintenance_The-Ultimate-Guide[/caption]

Types of eCommerce Website Maintenance

By now you should be convinced that your eCommerce website really needs regular upkeep. But another question is looming in your mind. How can I maintain my eCommerce website?  To answer your question, there are a few types of eCommerce website maintenance. Let’s discuss them one by one. 

Marketing Maintenance 

This type of maintenance deals with keeping in the good books with search engines. But there is another advantage of marketing maintenance since it correlates to traffic. Ranking high in search engines can very well increase traffic since your website will be easier to discover. 

Storefront Maintenance

This type of maintenance deals with making a good first impression on your users when they visit your store. Part of an effective eCommerce website comes from having a simple but efficient page layout. This may mean changing the colors and pictures on your homepage to attract users. But what you should focus on is improving navigation and providing users with whatever information they need on that page. That is without making the page cluttered or confusing.  

Security Maintenance

Hackers target websites that have access to sensitive information like addresses, personal user data, and financial details. All eCommerce websites fall into this category of having lucrative data that scammers and hackers would want.  Regardless of the eCommerce website development services you choose, regular fixing should be undertaken and prioritized by every website owner. 

Conclusion

Whether you have an in-house development team or have used an eCommerce website development company, maintenance is an unavoidable topic! You will have to do it and sooner is better than later. Poor website performance, security risks, lack of company branding all lead to a decrease in traffic and sales.  Website maintenance would not be too expensive and stressful if done regularly as opposed to once in ten years! If you don’t want to struggle with this important task yourself, hiring a development company is a faster and more efficient option. Whatever you do, don’t avoid eCommerce website maintenance.