Just like computers, phones, and other technology, website platforms need to be updated over time. Continuing to run your website on an outdated platform can create security concerns, performance issues, compatibility problems, and unnecessary headaches for your business.

Here are some of the biggest dangers of keeping your website on an outdated platform.

1. Increased Security Risks

An outdated platform, may mean outdated security measures.

As technology evolves, new security vulnerabilities are discovered. Modern platforms regularly release updates and security patches to address these issues. When a platform reaches its end of life, those security updates may become less and less frequent, which can leave your website more vulnerable to security threats.

2. Potentially Slower Speeds

Website performance plays an important role in the experience you provide to visitors. People expect websites to load quickly and respond smoothly across desktop or any other device they are using to visit your site.

Older platforms may not be designed to take advantage of newer technologies and performance improvements that mordern, up to date platforms use. Over time, this can make it more difficult to maintain a fast and efficient website. Slow loading times on a website is one of the primary reasons that someone will leave a website, and go somewhere else.  Making sure your site load quickly isn't just for the convienence of the visitors, it can help create more sales.

3. Compatibility Problems

Your website does not operate in isolation. It relies on browsers, hosting environments, plugins, integrations, payment systems, analytics tools, and other technologies As those technologies advance, it can become more difficult for your site to stay easily compatible with them.

You may eventually discover that an important tool no longer works properly with your website or that to get the benefits of new features of said technology, you'll be required to update your platform. What once took a simple update can turn into a much larger development project.

4. Maintainance Difficulty

Outdated platforms can also make routine website maintenance more complicated and time consuming.

Developers may have fewer resources available for older technologies, and finding people with experience working with unsupported platforms can become more difficult. Even simple or formerly quick changes may now take more time, and effort to implement.  This can also impact how expensive your website is to maintain and keep up to date month after month.

5. Missing Out on New Features

Modern website platforms are built to provide businesses with better tools for managing and improving their digital presence.

Newer platforms may offer improvements to content management, personalization, analytics, search engine optimization, accessibility, security, integrations, and overall website performance.

When your website remains on an older platform, you may be missing opportunities to use these features to provide a better experience for your customers.

6. Waiting Too Long Can Make Migration More Difficult

With the speed that technology is advancing, you'll likely eventually need to update your sites platform. The longer you wait, however, the more complicated that process can become.

Over the years, websites accumulate content, integrations, custom functionality, and other components. Keeping all of this content properly preserved needs to be planned out, and ideally handled by a professional website development business. Starting the migration process before your existing platform becomes completely unsupported gives your team more time to plan, test, and make improvements along the way.

Your Website Platform Should Support Your Business

If your website is running on an outdated platform, now is the perfect time to consider more modern options! Moving to a newer, more supported platform can help improve security, performance, flexibility, and the overall experience you provide to your customers.

Technology will continue to change, let's keep your website up to speed together! If you're looking to update your site, or migrate it to a new platform, we would love to chat, talk about your goals, and see how we can help you.  

Keeping Business Personal, one site at a time.