After hearing of a few clients struggles & worries post-launch, I’ve started offering my clients the option to take out maintenance contracts for their shiny new websites.
It made sense to do so, as honestly, your website isn’t a one and done job. Sure, it’s live & in the wild, but you want it to survive out there and take more than just it’s first few steps.
I advocate iterative design, which goes with the maintenance packages I offer my clients like bangers & mash! After your website has taken it’s first few steps into the wild, it’s regularly assessed to ensure that it’s performing well, and if for whatever reason you want to make some amendments to the site, then the design can be tweaked, re-coded and re-launched until any issue is ironed out.
So, without further ado here are my reasons why you should take out a maintenance contract on your website.
1) Your Website Is Never Really Finished
Once your website is live, the initial work may be completed but this isn’t the end of the process. In most cases, you’ve just gotten out of the starting gate! When my client’s websites go live, I encourage them to sign up to a maintenance contract; so that I can begin checking the website performance over time. If, for any reason, something on the site isn’t doing as well as it should be, then we can look at what can be done to refine it through iterative design.
2) Your Website Should Be As Secure As Possible
An un-hackable website is as much a myth as an impregnable fortress – anyone that promises you otherwise is selling you snake-oil; WordPress is no exception. Your web designer ought to be following the best website hardening practices for WordPress, these include:
- Deactivating the file & plugin editors
- Adding two-factor authentication for logins
- Limiting login access by IP addresses
- Setting up the .htaccess file correctly using the best hardening practices
- Ensuring your WordPress install and installed plugins are up-to-date
- Making use of a firewall
As part & parcel of my maintenance package, I make use of a firewall service that protects 1,000,000’s of WordPress sites every single day from malicious attacks.
To restrict avenues that a hacker could use to gain access to your site, I keep your site and it’s plugins up to date.
3) Your Website Should Be Backed Up
Another benefit of my maintenance contract is that I use the 3-2-1 backup system to create copies (backups) of my client website’s files & database every week, or every single day! So that in the case of the unexpected, we would be able to recover any lost data almost immediately, thus reducing any damage to both your business, your website and your reputation.
4) Your Website Should Be Monitored
With your website live it’s a good idea to keep track of any downtime (meaning that the site can’t be accessed), which is clearly a mammoth inconvenience not only to your users but also your business! So, I setup systems to scan each website on my maintenance roster every 5 minutes, checking if it’s online. If it goes dark for whatever reason I’m immediately informed allowing me to get on the case of trying to resolve the issue, fix it, and get your site fully functioning in no time.
5) You Shouldn’t Just Take Your Website And Run
More than just back-end website maintenance, I also maintain relationships with my clients. I believe in being good to my clients and providing after-sales care, this is the reason why any client of mine with a Gold or Platinum maintenance package with me has guaranteed access to one or two hours of my time each month – for any and all of the little things that they don’t have time for. Those on Platinum packages get 50% off of my normal rate for additional hours.
It’s a web designer’s responsibility to make sure that the sites they build perform well after launch, and if they’re not then to make suggestions on what action can be taken to improve it in order to help your business to grow. So, parting ways with your designer once the site has been launched means that you may not be getting the most out of it!
6) You Should Let Me Maintain Your WordPress Website
I work to ensure the cogs are spinning & in gear, the bells & whistles are running and the pipes & plumbing underneath your website are all in tip top condition & working order. The above are a sample of the reasons why you should take out a maintenance contract on your WordPress website.
If you’d like to know more check out the packages that I offer here, or for any other queries please reach out.