There are a lot of things that can go wrong with a WordPress website, and some of those things could be absolutely disastrous to your business.

Temporary Issues

If you’re lucky (and by lucky, I’m referring to the best-case-scenario if you are hacked), you will only experience minor, temporary issues due to the hacking. These issues can still lead to big problems if you don’t notice them in time, but as far as hacking goes, this is about as benign as it gets.

Temporary issues are simple things such as having your password changed and being locked out of your website for a few hours until you can get help getting back into it, or having your WordPress website temporarily redirected to another site until you get in and fix it.

Losing Content

Much worse than having temporary issues, you could have a hacker log into your account and delete all of your articles. If you don’t have a backup, that could mean countless hours of hard work would be gone! Even if you back up regularly, you could still lose content added in between backups, along with comments, responses, new user information, and more. You could even lose a backup because your web server is too full to perform the backup, and you might not realize this until it’s too late!

Losing Product

If you store virtual products on your servers like videos, eBooks, graphics, or other content you are selling, those products could be stolen. Not only that, but hackers could then distribute that content widely, costing you potentially thousands of dollars in lost revenue!

Don’t think it matters when your content is distributed? Well, think about this. Many people have admitted that when they find a digital product they want badly, they will first check pirate sites to see if that product is available for free. If, and only if, it is not, then they will buy the product.

If you’re selling physical products, the damage could be even worse. A hacker could log into your site and create an order, making it look as though the order has been paid for, and you could unwittingly ship the items before you realize the money isn’t in your account.

Losing Money

If a hacker takes your site down for a significant period of time, you could lose a significant amount of money in lost revenue. If your site makes, for example, $2,400 per day, being down for 12 hours would potentially cost you $1,200. Being down for 10 days could cost you $24,000!

Of course, the temporary monetary hit could lead to a larger one. Imagine if a few of your regular customers came by to order that day and saw the site was down. They might assume you’ve gone out of business and never return. That could mean a very significant loss over what would have been the lives of those customers.

In the event people have already bought and paid for the merchandise, they may ask for refunds or even seek chargebacks through their credit card companies. This can negatively affect your standing with your merchant account!

Losing Personal Data

If you store any sensitive personal information on your server, that information could be stolen and used by hackers. Emails, passwords, financial information, and other sensitive information could all be targeted.

Additionally, if your WordPress password happens to be the same as your email passwords, banking passwords, or other critical passwords, you could be facing financial loss, identity theft, or other catastrophic events.

Losing Reputation

Your reputation is everything in business. Once it’s damaged, it can take years to repair. In fact, it may never recover to its former status.

You may be wondering how your reputation could be damaged so badly by something so seemingly benign. Well, there are many ways, such as:

1. If your site is down, people may think you’ve disappeared, or your company is fly-by-night. This is especially true if they’ve placed and paid for an order that has not yet been delivered.
2. If your site is defaced, it could seem as though you did it. Hackers could lace your site with pornographic content or malicious software that could harm visitors’ computers or steal their data. It may be hard to convince people you had nothing to do with it, especially if your reputation isn’t yet well established in your industry.
3. User data could be stolen. If you have people register to post on your site, or if you store their financial information on your site after purchases, hackers could steal and use that information. This could be extremely detrimental to your reputation.

These are just a few of the ways you could be negatively impacted in the event of a hacking attempt. There are many more! Sign up to our newsletter to receive the latest tips and tricks to secure your WordPress website. We also offer WordPress website maintenance services and keep your websites maintained, updated, and secured.