The Real Cost of Skipping Website Maintenance
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You’ve poured your heart, soul and budget into a beautiful Squarespace website. It’s your brand, your presence, your first impression. But here’s the truth: without regular website maintenance, even the best-designed site will start to slow down, glitch, or lose visibility.
Just like your car needs a service and your home needs upkeep, your website requires ongoing care too — whether you call it site upkeep, web care, or maintenance.
What happens after launch is what really determines whether your site remains a thriving business asset or turns into a liability.
In this post, I’ll guide you through:
The costs (hidden and obvious) of neglecting web maintenance and upkeep
Real risks for small business owners
How a regular maintenance strategy (aka a VIP web care day) saves you money, stress and reputation
A roadmap to set up site maintenance (Squarespace site care, site support) that’s accessible, not overwhelming
Why Website Maintenance Isn’t Optional
Let’s start with what we mean by web maintenance (or site upkeep):
Regular tasks: updating content, fixing broken links, and refreshing images
Technical tasks: security patches, backups, performance optimisation (thankfully, security is taken care of with Squarespace)
Functional checks: forms, integrations, website tools
SEO and accessibility checks: optimising content, metadata, mobile responsiveness, browser compatibility
According to Mailchimp, web care maintenance includes tasks like keeping content fresh, ensuring site security, and monitoring performance. (Mailchimp)
FlowMatters puts it well: your website needs constant care to stay healthy, support traffic growth and reinforce SEO. (Flowmatters)
Without this ongoing care, your fabulous website can turn into a glitchy, slow, perhaps broken shopfront.
The True Cost of Neglect (What’s at Stake)
When we talk about “costs”, we’re not just talking pounds out of pocket. Here’s what you risk.
Lost revenue, leads and opportunity
Even a few minutes of downtime or broken functionality can cost you leads or clients you’ll never get back.
Some studies estimate that average downtime can cost $5,600 per minute for larger organisations. (Convergine Corp.) wowza!
In broader terms, the Oxford Economics–cited data puts downtime at $9,000 per minute / $540,000 per hour for many firms. (TechTarget) double wowza!
Even if your site isn’t e-commerce, every visitor you fail to convert is a missed chance, especially for consultants, coaches or personal brands whose “product” is trust, content or exposure.
“For smaller businesses, $427/minute is a cited benchmark for lost revenue, leads and opportunities.”
2. Damage to brand reputation & trust
Visitors expect your site to work, end of.
A broken page, slow loading, an error message, or design glitches look pretty amateurish. It undermines your authority. And if it happens when someone is on the verge of working with you? That could be, thanks, but no thanks.
Get my Free resource: Is Your Website Holding You Back?
3. SEO penalty & traffic loss
Search engines really like sites that are fast, secure, stable, updated and free of errors. Neglected sites are crawled less often, can be inundated with 404s and duplicate content issues, or flagged for poor user experience.
Result: Your rankings can slip, I’m sorry to say.
4. Security risk & costly recovery
Outdated software, unchecked integrations or expired SSL certificates (no need to worry on this score with Squarespace), are open doors to hackers (very unlikely with a Squarespace site, not including third-party integrations).
Unfortunately, breaches cost in data cleanup, legal risk, downtime, and loss of trust.
The hidden recovery, remediation, legal and reputational costs often dwarf the cost of preventive upkeep. (Contentful)
5. Operational drag & staff time
When your site misbehaves, every fix takes your attention — or you have to pay someone (often at higher rates) to troubleshoot. That’s time stolen from your core business.
6. Compounded issues
Broken links that accumulate, outdated content that stagnates, integrations that gradually fail — small issues often compound into a major rebuild or migration if left unchecked.
Here’s a relevant stat: Over 90% of SME and large enterprises report that hourly downtime exceeds $300,000 in cost. (Trilio)
And while your small creative business won’t face six-figure downtime per hour (thank goodness), the principle holds: costs scale with audience, conversion and dependence on your site.
How to Avoid the Web Maintenance Trap (Your Path to Peace of Mind)
Now for the good news: You can protect your website — and your sanity — with a simple, sustainable maintenance plan. Here’s how I approach it (and how you can too):
1. Set a rhythm: Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Seasonally
Frequency Tasks & Focus
Weekly: Check for design glitches, broken links, forms, and sign-ups; monitor uptime or alerts. Catch issues early before they grow.
Monthly: Security patches and updates, backup verification, speed tests, mobile checks, SEO audit.
Keep your site technically sound, Quarterly (or seasonal): Content refresh, redirect audits, user experience review, integration reviews, and keep user experience strong.
Some tasks may be possible to handle via tools or automation, but human oversight (design, QA, and content updates) is essential to check for.
2. Use monitoring & alerts
Set up Notion, Asana to remind you to check your site, or automated alerts, so you’re notified immediately if your site goes offline.
Also monitor performance metrics (page load, core web vitals).
3. Make backups non-negotiable
Automated, versioned backups are your safety net. If ever things go wrong — hacking, human error, malicious code — you can restore quickly with minimal damage.
4. Prioritise updates & compatibility
When Squarespace (or any platform) releases updates or when third-party integrations evolve, staying current reduces conflicts. Compatibility issues are a common source of broken layouts or missing functions.
5. Document & prioritise tasks
I always recommend keeping a “website to-do/wishlist/bug list” that you or your web partner refer to. When quiet moments come, tick off small improvements. Don’t wait until “everything is broken” to act.
6. Plan a periodic review / audit
Every 6–12 months, step back and review your site’s usability, accessibility, and SEO health with a web audit service. This is a brilliant chance to refine, streamline, and prune.
Further reading: Why Your Small Business Needs a Professional Website Audit — helpful before investing in maintenance.
How My Squarespace Web Maintenance (VIP Care Day) Fixes That
Ok, here’s how my Web Maintenance / VIP Care Day (based in Harrogate, UK, but working globally) tackles those risks:
One dedicated day, or two half days (approx 8 hours) to focus entirely on your site (no distractions).
You send me your priorities (content updates, tweaks, fixes, integrations) in advance so we hit the ground running.
I handle content updates, design tweaks, functional fixes, SEO optimisations, broken-link fixes, integration checks, troubleshooting, and more.
After the day, you get a summary of what was done and post-day support for any small follow-ups.
It’s not a full redesign; it’s for improvements, fixes, updates, and maintenance tasks that can be scoped.
Price: £698 (option for two instalments)
In short: one focused, prepped day = months of website stress averted.
If your website needs transformation, we’ll talk about a full redesign (which I also offer). But if what you need is upkeep, polish, repair — this is perfect.
A Quick Note (Because I Know What It’s Like)
As someone based near Harrogate, Yorkshire, and speaking to midlife creative business owners, when I say “I get it”, I really do. There are only so many hours in your day, only so many creative decisions you can make before your brain feels frazzled. Your website shouldn’t add to that overwhelm; it should be working quietly (but diligently), in the background for you.
Remember: neglecting your website is like letting your shopfront crumble while you’re outdoors working with clients. You’d never neglect your studio/office or your branding — your site deserves the same loving care.
🌟 Tired of living with website niggles, broken pages, or that uneasy feeling that "something's wrong, but I don’t know what": let’s chat.
Book a free 15-minute discovery call with me. We’ll map out exactly what your website needs (fixes, care, growth) and see whether a VIP Care Day or ongoing site maintenance plan is right for you.
If you like, I can also send you a simple “Website Health Checklist” PDF so you can check now whether your site is safe or at risk.
Thanks 🌟 for being here, and if you’d like more tips, tools, and tricks [without the overwhelm], to help YOU grow your small business, I’d love to have you join my twice-monthly HeartBiz 💌 Letter.
Subscribe here for my Free downloads:
1. 5-Step Web Design Checklist PDF
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3. Ideal Customer editable Canva Template
4. SEO Checklist for all platforms (including Squarespace)
5. Is Your Website Holding You Back? A brand identity checklist.
