Website Maintenance & Security Tips

06 December 2017

Your company website is important to not only you, but your clients. Not having a stable and up to date company website means you may not be successfully engaging with potential and existing clients, which could lead to loss of business and reputation.

It’s important you try and ensure your website is reliable, working correctly, up to date, and meets an acceptable level of security.

Here are a few things to think about and discuss with your web development company to decrease the likelihood of your website causing you problems:

Keep your site up to date and patched

Keeping your systems and CMS updated is vital to ensure stability and protection against vulnerabilities that hackers will exploit.

Patching and updating is time consuming and can sometimes be technically challenging (especially when something goes wrong) which is a reason many people ignore updates. If you are unsure what and when to do this you are better using a web development company who not only develops and helps manage your site, but also has the technical and security backgrounds to do the patching and updating for you.

Ask your web development company to supply you with more information about where and how they host your website and data – you don’t want to end up finding out you have been breaking data protection laws with antiquated security and systems.

Protect your information (and your clients)

Your site is likely to have a login to allow you to update varies parts of the site. It’s therefore important to make sure your logins have strong passwords, and that you know who has access to your site.

There have been cases where ex-employees have defaced company websites when they have left – so it’s always worth changing passwords when staff and contractors leave.

Know what to do and when

It’s important your web development company are on hand to help when you have issues, this is why solo contractors can cause you difficulties when they are on holiday.

Therefore, make sure you know how to use your website to its fullest. It’s important you engage your clients by using news, blogs, event promotion and social media. Your web development company should be able to not only show you how to use your CMS but should be able to offer advice on the type of content you should be using to promote your business.

It’s worth also checking with your web development company that they are correctly and securely storing the website data. With the UK data protection law changes its vital you know where and what you are storing - failure to do this correctly could lead to loss of business and reputation over time.