Website Maintenance
Vital Support To Help You Get Results
Business websites are not fire-and-forget projects. They need regular website maintenance and support from a professional web designer. Because the web changes fast.
Search engines change algorithms. Web technologies evolve. Hackers devise new ways to attack you, and your site’s users — often invisibly. Many sites unknowingly spread malware. Market trends, prices and products also change, and competitors find new ways to compete. Without regular website maintenance, these external changes can break any site.
Updating non-editable (“static”) websites requires coding skills and editable websites need regular maintenance to keep them stable and secure. Site performance also directly affects SEO.
Your website is a marketing vehicle. You need to keep it operating at peak performance. So regular website maintenance is crucial.
Website Maintenance Options
Basic Website Maintenance & Support Plan
Get decades of tech, design & business experience on tap! My “Basic Maintenance” Support Plan covers up to an hour of fixes, content edits or phone/email consultation each month for just £50 per month, or less for sites on my web hosting plans. Further support can then be provided at a discount if needed.
The Basic Maintenance Plan has a three month minimum contract, then renews monthly. Unused time expires after 30 days.
Using my managed website hosting services? Contact me for your discount code.
One-off Website Updates, Fixes & Advice
Most website issues and updates require discussion, analysis, design, implementation and testing. These tasks can’t be predicted precisely. So prepaid Credits simplify billing for occasional help like site fixes, content edits and other support.
Each Credit covers an hour of work or consultation. Credits are non-refundable and must be used within 12 months of purchase.
Got a Support Plan? Contact me for your discount code and save £15 per Credit.
Need more than a few hours’ work? Contact me for project rates.
WordPress Maintenance Plan
Got a WordPress website? Then you should know it needs regular updates to stay secure. You may also know some updates can be automated, but unattended updates can go very wrong.
Sometimes they just show a blank “maintenance mode” page. Sometimes they break other parts of your site. Or they may auto-update before other plugins or themes that depend on them have had a chance to adapt. Fixing such problems can get tricky.
That may be fine for personal websites. It isn’t fine for business websites. Managing WordPress updates is vital. So my Pro Hosting Plus and Simple Website plans already cover those. This WordPress Maintenance Plan is for sites using other hosting.
Unlike most “Managed WordPress Hosting” services, this covers plugin and theme updates as well as the core WP software updates (worth £180/month on average) for just £45 per month (three month minimum contract, then renews monthly).
Please note that I’d need server access to do this properly, not just a WordPress login. If you aren’t sure you can provide that, please contact me before signing up to this plan.
Quarterly Digital Marketing Strategy Review
Whilst the Basic Maintenance Plan covers quick questions and minor site edits, reviewing digital marketing strategies is more involved. It’s also easy to forget when you’re busy.
So a little friendly accountability and expert research can help you to keep up with the fast-evolving world of digital marketing. That’s why I offer a quarterly digital marketing strategy review for just £75 per month
What does that involve? Typically, a quarterly video meeting for up to an hour, plus some research to identify trends, opportunities and concerns. We’ll check your website stats through several reporting tools, review strategies and discuss any problems or digital marketing developments.
These reviews are on three month terms, with a £300 setup fee. They should be suitable for most microbusinesses (under 10 employees). The full, multi-channel analysis needed to fine-tune existing campaigns would be more involved.
Website Maintenance FAQS
Can a Website Care Plan Boost My Sales?
How can I help to keep costs down?
- Provide as much info as possible up-front. This includes content, details of the problem, and (if it’s the first time I’m working on your site) the following login details:
- An admin login for your CMS, if applicable
- An (S)FTP account login (including the server name and any other relevant details)
- Book early. My time is in demand. If you have a deadline, don’t leave it until the last minute — or even the last day, week or month! If I have to work overtime to meet your deadline, every two hours (or) part of that overtime will cost an extra credit.
- Batch small edits — as long as that doesn’t cause a big delay. It’s more efficient to address several small jobs in one go than separately.
- Details really matter — including precise URLs and error messages for troubleshooting. Please try to list the steps needed to reproduce the problem — it’s hard to fix stuff unless I can see it happening.
- Be ready to provide prompt feedback, especially for work on deadlines (or let me know when you will be available for this). Developing solutions involves testing them, getting your feedback, and reworking them as necessary. Unexpected delays in responses make scheduling harder and repeating requests for info takes time.
- Trust my experience. Naturally, I’ll outline what you really need to know from a business perspective and answer a few questions, but detailed discussions do take billable time.
- Use a password manager and secure passwords. Really. They save time and reduce hacking. I recommend KeePass because it’s free and multi-platform, but some paid ones may be a little more user-friendly.
What if my credits run out before my work is complete?
I’ll let you know in advance if this seems likely, so that you can purchase more. If you are on a Support Plan, these “top up” hours will be at the effective rate shown for your current plan. Otherwise, the Block rates will apply.
Can you do X? How long will it take?
Most things can be done with enough skill, time and resources. With 20 years of building websites and 40 years of programming behind me, I can provide the skill, if you can provide the resources.
Unless X is a common task though, even I can’t provide very precise (e.g. hourly) time estimates. Very few tasks are common, and there are too many variables and possible knock-on effects in a massively-networked system like a website.
Usually though, such detailed time estimates shouldn’t be a concern. The real question is “How much is it worth to get this done?” Will it make — or save — you £500? Or £5000? Either way, tell me. If I can do it for less (ideally a lot less), it’s worth doing.
What platforms do you work with?
I’ve worked with many different technologies, but these days, mostly:
- HTML, CSS — the most basic “markup languages” of the web, used to construct and style page layouts
- JavaScript, jQuery — these make pages do more than just displaying text, links, images and forms
- WordPress, WooCommerce, OpenCart, PrestaShop — among the most popular “open source” CMS and ecommerce systems. WordPress alone runs over 25% of all websites. I do occasionally work with other “LAMP stack” systems though (including bespoke-coded web applications), so feel free to ask
It’s worth noting that I’m unlikely to be able to help with:
- Sites built on cheap DIY platforms like Wix, as those have built in limitations
- Sites whose pages end in “.asp”, “.aspx” or “.jsp”. These use ASP/.NET (Microsoft) and Java technologies that are often proprietary and/or encrypted