Help me with my WordPress website!

“Help I broke my WordPress site!” That is a call our web design team often receives from small businesses who have a site developed on the WordPress platform. While there can be many reasons for the issue the underlying cause is generally the same: the technology is constantly changing which means your WordPress themes and plugins need to change as well, and updating them (or not updating them!) can cause problems. Without a true partner in the web business you could be left with a website that doesn’t function properly leading to a wasted investment.

There are a number of reasons why an existing WordPress website may need to be updated. Let’s dive into some of the primary reasons below:

Outdated Plugins

Most WordPress websites use plugins to add extra features and functionality. These plugins need to be manually updated as newer versions are released, to remain compatible with the evolving WordPress software, and to patch any security risks that come up.

While clicking “Update” might seem like an easy task, plugin updates can conflict with other plugins, leading to broken features on your site or even crashing the site. A developer can ensure that updates are performed regularly, as well as troubleshoot any version conflicts or errors that might arise from an update.

Just not good plugins

Plugins are built by third-party developers, which means the quality of plugins is not always consistent. While a plugin might seem to work well initially, it may be poorly programmed and either break later on, or open your site up to security vulnerabilities.

Our team has experience and knowledge of the most well-regarded WordPress plugins, for contact forms, ecommerce, social media integration, site performance, security, and more. We can help identify if a site issue is due to a bad plugin, and recommend and set up a more reliable plugin to perform the same task.

Broken Themes

Like plugins, themes are another component of the site where issues can come up. Since a theme controls the look and layout of your entire site, it must stay up-to-date and compatible with the WordPress core software. In 2018, WordPress overhauled its page editing interface. Any older themes that did not update to be compatible with the new editor would render their sites impossible to edit moving forward. Our developers can debug minor issues with an outdated theme, or migrate a site’s content to a new, more modern theme.

Business and Trends are Constantly Changing

Even if your website was state-of-the-art when it first went live, both web technologies and design trends are constantly changing. A design that seemed modern even a few years ago can feel dated today. Google search result criteria, social media platforms, and web conversion tools keep evolving. In addition, your business may have changed, grown, or refocused on bigger and better clients. Your site should be reassessed and adjusted at least every couple years to stay relevant.

Responsiveness

Now 50% of web traffic is conducted on mobile devices, not desktop computers. New smartphone and tablet models are introduced onto the market each year, bringing with them an array of different screen sizes. Additionally, Google has announced that mobile responsiveness is now a ranking factor in its search results. An outdated website designed for only one or two screen sizes can provide a poor user experience to mobile users, increase your website bounce rate, and drop your search rankings. Our designers can update an old design to make it responsive, or provide a new mobile-first design.

Migration to Another Hosting Platform

A website’s hosting service can have a huge impact on your site’s speed and security. The general rule of thumb is you get what you pay for. Cheap hosting is typically slow and low on support features when you need assistance. We often recommend clients switch to WPEngine, a managed WordPress hosting platform that delivers premium performance and security tailored specifically to WordPress websites. To avoid redundant features and optimize performance, WPEngine bans the use of some caching, backup, and database-intensive plugins. By making this switch, it may expose some of these plugins, causing issues with your site. Our team can identify those plugins and find alternatives if needed.

Just Plain Not Effective

Sometimes a small business owner will come to us because their website is just not as effective as they expected. The site is not converting visitors or isn’t ranking in Google search results as desired. Our user experience and analytics team can evaluate your website content, structure, and performance, identify factors contributing to poor conversions or rankings, and work with you to get the results you want.

The primary issue we see with the WordPress platform is that web designers create a website and then hand it off to the client with no ongoing maintenance or updates. While this may seem cheap it ends up costing a customer more in the long run in lost revenue and sales due to website issues. A successful website is a frequently changing marketing tool.

The internet landscape is constantly evolving. From business changes to recent developments and critical technology changes having a partner in marketing for your website will not only keep your site up to date it will make your marketing investment dollars go farther.

Related Articles