In parts one and two of this series, we covered the initial stages of web development and design. By this time, you already know that hiring a strong web designer is an important step in creating a site that meets your unique needs. You’ve also learned a little more about user experience and how intuitive design can drive conversions and optimize your return on investment. In our third installment, we want to help you understand how to protect your website investment, post development.
Whether you hire out to design and develop your website, or you use an internal team and resources, it takes time to do it right. Once you’ve made the investment, it’s just as important to maintain the site’s security and to host it on servers managed by a reputable hosting service. Maintaining the validity of your site’s security certificate and keeping it updated with the latest software versions are the best ways to protect you and your customers. Hosting your site with a reputable and reliable provider is also the safest way to eliminate downtime and ensure responsiveness.
Vulnerabilities can be found not only in website management systems, but with plugins and themes as well, so it is important to monitor for updates to all of your site software. There is a delicate balance between updating your platform software and updating your plugins and themes as they may no longer be compatible with each other after updates. It is important to turn to a seasoned web developer to ensure you are keeping your site both up to date and functional.
The speed of your site is also largely dependent on your hosting provider’s server configuration so take time to analyze the network bandwidth, hard drive speed, memory, and processors of the servers they use. Site load speed is a major variable to search engine ranking and a web host provider with slow servers can push your website lower in search rankings. If this feels overwhelming to you, reach out to a web developer for more information and to vet your web hosting candidates.

All in all, it takes a lot of resources, time, thought, and expertise to design, develop, and maintain a functional, beautiful, and effective website. If you are going to spend the time and resources creating or updating your website, be sure to protect your investment by using an agency well-versed and proven in web design and development. There is a growing need for better, faster, stronger websites as we push towards 2020 and there’s no time like the present to get your business ahead of the competition.
About Us
Ocreative is a Milwaukee marketing agency, with expertise and broad experience in developing digital marketing strategies, and growing their online presence, for their clients. The company’s core values include offering the highest level of customer service, award-worthy quality, and performance that surpasses client expectations. Ocreative is located just outside Milwaukee, and works with clients locally, nationally, and globally. Their clients have access to some of the most fun and knowledgeable professionals around – ones who inspire, educate, and problem solve. The agency provides marketing and brand strategy, advertising and design, website design and social media, and video expertise to their clients, fulfilling their desire for business growth, and their aspiration to make a mark on their industry.