18 Jul 4 Important Reasons Your Website Needs Web Maintenance

Updated: 26 August 2025 

Your car needs a regular service to ensure it remains in tip-top shape, and the same goes for your website. In order to keep up with all those technological demands and to provide a seamless experience for your users, investing in regular website maintenance is a must.

Not convinced? Here are a few reasons why:

Maintain your website’s security

Technology is constantly changing, and so are content management systems. This means that new updates are rolling out daily with the aim of optimising security and performance, and your website needs to keep up. Regular website maintenance helps your website stay ahead of the curve, but most importantly, it helps keep it safe from cyber security breaches. Remember, a secure website protects the information of your customers and your reputation.

Optimise website performance

No one likes a slow website, especially consumers. This is important, as around 88% of customers won’t return if they’ve had a negative experience with a business or website. Website maintenance is a great way to keep customers coming back as it helps optimise your website’s performance and monitor certain aspects that will help you avoid costly performance issues in the future.

Pay now, save in the long run

If you’re avoiding website maintenance simply because you’re trying to save a buck right now, it may actually cost you more in the long run. Choosing to disregard website maintenance may result in your website running slow, crashing or experiencing a cyber break – all very bad things that will impact your reputation and pocket. Regular website maintenance will give your peace of mind and avoid costly issues in the future.

To answer this question on why regular maintenance is more cost effective, we went straight to our web developer, Darren, who had this to say:

“It’s cheaper for two reasons. Firstly, outdated WordPress Core, themes and plugins can have compatibility issues with newer versions of PHP. If your host forces a PHP upgrade, this will break your website. The severity can range from a broken frontend to the White Screen of Death. Trying to revive a site that is dead can take a long time, and only top-tier developers will be able to do it. 

Secondly, outdated themes and plugins are known to have security holes, regular updates will patch these holes, but if you are not keeping them up to date, then a hacker can easily gain access to very sensitive information that is stored in your database. If a hacker is able to gain access to your backend they are able to redirect your domain to a different website, send emails from your website, deface your website or even in the most severe cases – hold your site for ransom. There are a ton of reasons why you don’t want to be hacked – but one that a lot of people don’t consider is that you will be delisted by Google. This can take months of effort to undo. Once a hack ha occurred it is extremely difficult to effectively get rid of it.” 

Take advantage of new features

As mentioned before, technology is always evolving, and businesses should keep up. To improve customer experience, adding certain features to improve user experience has become so important.

Integrated social media is just one example that can put a smile on your customer’s face, which can be achieved through regular website maintenance.

“WordPress plugin updates are released at different times and websites need to be updated regularly to keep up,” Darren explains.

The Who…

Website maintenance plays a big role in growing your business, and if maintained correctly, it can be an asset to establishing credibility, building trust and keeping customers coming back. However, it’s easy to push web maintenance aside when running the day-to-day of your business, which makes getting a digital partner such a great idea.

SOMS is a Digital Marketing Company in South Africa that offers a range of services which includes developing sound digital strategies and regular web maintenance. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team to find out how we can help improve your website’s performance and the growth of your business.