What is Website Support and Maintenance?

Many web developers setup their clients with some sort of monthly support and maintenance program. Occasionally, some clients will adamantly demand that they don’t need this. This decision to opt out of a monthly website support and maintenance plan can be costly.

First, let’s see what might be included in a typical support and maintenance plan. First is the technical support. Websites are susceptible to hacks and exploits. Keeping up with patches for the server, CMS core software and any 3rd plug-ins or extensions are necessary to help keep a site secure.

Having a good Backup plan is essential. Verifying backups periodically will reduce the change of looking for a backup when needed only to find out that the backup database is corrupt, or the backup job stopped running 2 months ago.

Performance monitoring and improvements are an important factor in having a website used properly. Also, Google will reward websites that perform better than those that don’t. Fast is good. Like a computer, websites can get slower with each passing day.

Tracking and measuring activity and performance is an important maintenance function. Analytics can show how many visitors have come to your site, and more importantly, what search terms they used to find you.

Online reviews and reputation management can mean the difference between having a new prospect pass you over for a competitor. Handling online reviews, both negative and positive can establish trust and credibility. It may compel the prospect to pick up the phone and call you.

These are just a few of the most common website support and maintenance functions that we provide at i360 Group.