Having a website or an online store is no longer enough to guarantee the sustainability of your activity.A website must live and evolve over time to meet user expectations but also and above all remain up to date by taking into account technological advances and security requirements. Unfortunately, many companies neglect a key element: the maintenance of their website, and not without risk...
Third Party Application Maintenance (TMA) is the essential solution to guarantee the good health and proper functioning of your website or e-commerce. In this article, we explain to you why subscribing to a TMA is an essential strategic step for any site owner, the risks run by an unmaintained site, as well as the many advantages of Smotly maintenance adapted to your specific needs.
The impact of lack of maintenance on an e-commerce site
Before getting to the heart of the matter, let's take a concrete (fictitious) example: EcoStyle, an e-commerce site for ecological products. Despite a good start, the team neglected the maintenance of its site under Prestashop thinking they could get around it.
Unfortunately, they encountered a set of problems very (too) quickly…
Reprenons point par point :
- 1Vulnerability to attacks: Without updating, the site suffered an SQL injection attack compromising customer data. Not great for brand image and loyalty relationships
- 2Slowness on the site: As the site is no longer optimized, the loading time has increased, causing cart abandonments and a notable drop in the conversion rate.
- 3Technological incompatibilities: While the customer experience had been carefully considered with advanced cross-selling functionalities, the lack of updating the Prestashop version prevented them from functioning.
- 4SEO Impact: Recurring technical problems have caused a gradual downgrading on search engines and a drastic drop in Ecostyle's authority rating. A lack of trust from Google reflects on customers & potential future customers.
- 5Major Crash: A bug linked to an outdated version of PHP caused a 48-hour outage, with no backups available, leading to lost sales and a collapse in reputation.
Le constat ?
Unsurprisingly, the disaster…. EcoStyle suffered a 30% drop in turnover, -40% in conversion rate, a loss of customer confidence and significant costs to restore the site. If a TMA had been in place, these problems could have been avoided. Ecostyle would certainly continue its early growth, penetrating the market ever further to surpass the competition.
What do we remember?
Regular maintenance is ESSENTIAL to avoid breakdowns, loss of revenue and damage to reputation. An unmaintained site becomes vulnerable, as EcoStyle learned the hard way.
1. What is TMA (Third Party Application Maintenance) or website maintenance?
Third Party Application Maintenance (TMA), also called website maintenance, is an essential service which ensures the monitoring, management and technical development of a website. Whether your site is a showcase site, a blog, or an online store, TMA is all the operations that guarantee its proper functioning in the long term. Their role is not limited to simple problem solving. It also encompasses the continuous improvement and adaptation of your site to technological developments and new user expectations.
Concretely, the maintenance of a website includes several types of interventions:
Maintenance CORRECTIVE
It consists of correcting bugs or malfunctions that may occur on the site: display errors, faulty functionalities, integration problems, etc. Corrective maintenance allows the stability of the site to be quickly restored.
EVOLUTIVE maintenance
In addition to maintaining the site as it is, evolving TMA aims to improve it by integrating new features or adapting it to the changing needs of your business. These developments may refer to the addition of modules, new pages, or the adaptation of the site to better meet user expectations.
PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE
This dimension of TMA consists of anticipating problems before they arise, through regular monitoring of site performance, security audits, technical tests and the regular application of updates recommended by the different solutions used. The aim is to prevent malfunctions, optimize performance and avoid unplanned service interruptions.
TMA is even more essential for e-commerce sites, where every minute of downtime can lead to a loss of revenue. Whether you use solutions such as Prestashop, Shopify, BigCommerce, Strapi or WordPress, the maintenance of your platform guarantees no only stability and security, but also continuous adaptation to developments on the web (new technologies, browser updates, UX/UI trends).
2. The 5 reasons to subscribe to a maintenance package (TMA)
Subscribing to a TMA for your website is not a simple luxury, but a real necessity to guarantee the sustainability and performance of your platform.
Maintenance for enhanced security
Safety is the first reason why it is essential to have regular maintenance. Cyberattacks are becoming more and more numerous and particularly target sites that are not regularly updated. If you manage an e-commerce site, protecting sensitive data (customer information, banking data, etc.) must be a priority. CMS like Prestashop, WordPress or Shopify frequently release security patches. If these updates are not applied quickly, your site can become an easy target for hackers.
By subscribing to a TMA, you ensure regular updating of the sensitive elements of your site and you protect your data against vulnerabilities and intrusion attempts.
Maintenance for optimized performance
A fast and efficient site is essential to provide a quality user experience. Users are increasingly demanding: a page that takes more than three seconds to load can scare away the majority of visitors and have a direct impact on your conversion rate.
With a TMA, the technical aspects of your site are constantly optimized: image compression, database management, code cleaning, etc. This regular process helps improve page loading speed and, therefore, build customer loyalty.
Maintenance for total availability of technological developments
The web is constantly changing. New browsers and operating systems are regularly introduced to the market. An unmaintained website quickly becomes obsolete and may no longer display correctly on certain platforms. The famous responsive! A website that is not responsive**, that is, one that does not automatically adapt to different screen sizes, risks becoming obsolete very quickly. Web design designed for a medium risks being completely ruined on mobile with illegible texts, poorly positioned buttons, disproportionate images, etc.
TMA guarantees that your site remains compatible with the latest technologies and web standards.
Maintenance for a site that is always accessible
Technical problems can arise at any time. Every minute your site is inaccessible can cost you dearly. By having a team dedicated to maintenance, you benefit from rapid support in the event of a breakdown or major bug. This minimizes downtime, allowing you to continue offering your services without interruption.
At Smotly, our technical teams are always available to ensure a rapid, effective and immediate response whatever the malfunction identified. Our intervention times are guaranteed depending on the degree of the dysfunction observed (blocking, major, minor).
Maintenance for increasing SEO performance
Google favors secure, fast and well-optimized sites in its search results. Regular maintenance, by improving the performance of the site and guaranteeing the correction of technical errors, helps to maintain or improve your SEO positioning. In addition, by adding new features and continuously updating your content, you show Google that your site is active and relevant, which directly promotes its display and position on search engines.
3. The risks of an unmaintained website
Failure to regularly maintain your website can lead to potentially disastrous consequences, both technically and financially.
Below are the main risks of an unmaintained site. Don't ignore them, they can have a major impact on your site and your business!
Vulnerability to cyberattacks
One of the biggest dangers of an unmaintained site is vulnerability to cyberattacks. Security vulnerabilities are common and, if not fixed quickly, can be exploited by hackers. Sensitive data, such as your customers' personal information or financial data, can be compromised. You not only risk a loss of trust on the part of your customers or Internet users but also legal sanctions if you do not comply with data protection regulations (such as the GDPR).
Good to know: In the event of non-compliance with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the fines can be heavy depending on the degree of the violation. There are two main levels of financial sanctions:
- 1Maximum fine of up to €10 million or 2% of global annual turnover (whichever is greater): This level applies to less serious breaches, such as failure to maintain a record of processing activities, failure to notify a data breach within the required time frame, or failure to put in place sufficient security measures.
- 2Maximum fine of up to 20 million euros or 4% of global annual turnover (whichever is greater): This level is reserved for the most serious offenses, such as non-compliance with data processing principles (illegal collection, processing not in accordance with the intended purpose), lack of explicit consent from users for the processing of their personal data, or non-compliance with individual rights (such as the right to be forgotten or to data portability).
Malfunctions and loss of functionality
Over time, an unmaintained website becomes less stable. Plugins or extensions may become outdated and conflict with newer versions of the CMS or server. This obsolescence can lead to display errors, functionalities that no longer work** or even the impossibility for customers to carry out crucial actions such as finalizing a purchase for example.
These dysfunctions can create frustration among your customers, leading to a loss of trust, a poor customer experience and brand image and a potential loss of turnover.
Negative impact on SEO
A poorly optimized, slow site or one that encounters regular technical errors will be penalized by search engines. Google places great importance on the quality of the user experience. If your site is slow or has frequent error pages (like broken links or pages not found), it will be considered a bad source for Google which will delay its display on search engines favoring more up-to-date sites.
And it's no longer a secret, bad referencing leads to a drop in visibility, therefore traffic, and, ultimately, a drop in sales for an online store or a drop in notoriety for a showcase site.
Extended downtime
Unanticipated outages can result in extended downtime during which your site is unavailable. Each minute of downtime on an online store represents a direct loss of revenue, but also a negative impact on the image of your brand. A site that is frequently down can cause customers to turn to more reliable competitors.
Unexpected costs
The bad idea: wanting to skip a TMA to reduce costs in the short term.
The savings made in the short term will prove to be much more costly in the long term, both financially and in marketing and experiential terms. Resolving an unanticipated technical problem, especially if it is a major breakdown, may require emergency intervention that is more expensive than regular interventions. Worse, if your site's critical data is not backed up regularly, recovering it may be impossible or extremely expensive.
4. The advantages of the TMA Smotly formula
The TMA formula offered by Smotly is designed to offer flexibility, responsiveness and adaptability according to the specific needs of each client and each site.
What does our TMA Smotly offer include?
Personalized and fast support
You benefit from immediate, personalized and adapted customer support. Our Smotly teams are available to respond to your urgent needs and to assist you with technical issues or specific questions.
Minor updates
TMA includes regular CMS updates to ensure your site remains secure, efficient and compatible with new versions of software and browsers.
Regular backups
Automatic backups are carried out to protect your data in the event of an outage or attack, ensuring rapid restoration of your site if necessary.
Adaptable formulas
Smotly offers flexible TMA plans that adapt to the size and needs of your business. Each customer can choose the formula that best suits their needs according to the evolution of their activity. Do not hesitate to contact us so that we can build your TMA formula together.
- Specific formula – time credit: with this package, you benefit from access to a dashboard and a ticket system to be used over a period of one year. The operation is simple: you submit your requirement in the form of a new ticket. Our team studies and analyzes the need to estimate a workload. Once you validate it, the team takes care of it with a count of the real time spent on the total time credit available. Each intervention is traced and managed from a common dashboard to allow you to monitor the progress of tasks in real time.
Choosing Smotly for the maintenance of your site means opting for a solution that is EXPERT, RELIABLE and PROACTIVE.
We share our recognized expertise on BigCommerce, Shopify, Strapi, WordPress and Prestashop. The team has perfect mastery of their technical specificities, thus offering targeted, rapid and optimized interventions to guarantee maximum performance for your site, whatever the environment chosen.
We make your emergencies our priority to allow you to benefit from flawless reactivity and continuous pro-activity. All of our clients' sites are under continuous and constant monitoring to identify potential problems before they disrupt your website. This will allow you to stay ahead of potential failures and ensure optimal availability.