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Website Maintenance
Website maintenance is vital to the success of your website. There are literally hundreds of thousands of individuals and companies that offer website maintenance services. This can be overwhelming. The challenge is finding the right person at the right price. The goal of this article is to provide tips on choosing the right person, or company, to maintain your website, as well as inform you of the costs involved.
Who should maintain your website?
The most important piece of website maintenance is addressing who will be performing the maintenance. Should you maintain it? Should the original developer maintain it? Should you hire a 3rd party to maintain it?
First, you need to determine if the maintenance should, and can, be performed internally by you or someone who works for you. If you have no experience in programming and development then you should not touch the code…ever! You probably wouldn’t want a mechanic removing your tonsils, so if you’re not familiar with coding, don’t touch the code. This will only lead to severe headaches and an expense that could have potentially been avoided.
What if you are comfortable with programming and development? Should you maintain your website then? Only you can answer this question. You need to evaluate the type of maintenance needed on an ongoing basis and determine if you will have the time needed. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that if you maintain it yourself it won’t cost you anything. Well, it could be an indirect cost. Let’s just say your website requires approximately 10 hours of maintenance per month and you are performing your own maintenance. Could you take that 10 hours and devote the time to other areas in your business and it have a positive impact? For example, could you spend 10 hours per month focusing on areas that will lead to more revenue? Could you spend 10 hours per month addressing customer service needs? What about marketing? Cost savings tend to be at the forefront of business decisions, as it should be. Just remember that cost savings are not always a result of cutting costs or finding the cheapest route. Cost savings can occur in effective time management. Time is money.
If you decide not to maintain your own website you’ll have a very important decision to make. Who should you hire to perform the maintenance? Don’t go into this decision making process with dollars on your mind. Hiring a person because they are the cheapest could cost you more money in the long run. You also don’t necessarily need to hire the person with the most experience. Hire the person you trust the most, even if it costs you a little more. I recommend using the original developer of your website if they provide website maintenance services, and if you have had good experiences with your developer. This person will be familiar with the structure and code of your website. Think of your website like a child. You want to place it in the best hands possible.
How much should you pay for website maintenance?
Website maintenance costs are relatively inconsistent from developer to developer. You first need to determine the degree of maintenance needed for your website before agreeing to a maintenance price. If you only need slight content updates performed on a monthly basis then it would most likely be in your best interest to pay by the hour. The reason for this is that minimal content updates should take knowledgeable developers little time to implement. If you need regular maintenance performed (i.e. daily, weekly, etc.) then it would be in your best interest to pay a monthly maintenance fee. This will enable you to accurately budget for your website costs on a monthly basis. Plus there will be no surprises.
Quotes for maintenance will be strictly dependent on the type of updates and maintenance needed for your website. Be honest with your developer and tell them exactly what you anticipate needing. You will get fired by your developer if you start adding things to the to-do list after you have already reached an agreement. That’s right. Developers do fire their clients, but we will discuss this in another post. Its okay if your needs change but you need to be okay with the fluctuation in costs if your needs do in fact change.
Expect a quote of $50 per hour or more if you are being quoted hourly maintenance rates. Monthly maintenance packages may range from $50 per month to $500 per month, or more depending on your needs. Most developers will offer a variety of packages in order to find the right fit for you based on your needs and budget.
What is actually involved with website maintenance?
You may think we, developers, have lost our mind once you receive a quote for maintenance. The challenge for developers is conveying what all goes into maintenance and development. We do a whole lot behind the scenes that you may never notice, or even see. Let me just list a few things developers do, or should be doing, when they are performing maintenance. Keep in mind these are things that you did not request but we still do it to ensure everything goes according to plan:
- Back up data and anything that may be affected by the modifications
- Analyze changes requested to determine how they will impact the website as a whole
- Document the modifications being made
- Test modifications in multiple browsers to ensure website remains cross-browser compatible
These are just a few of the key components of website maintenance. Each component is extremely important. You might consider them to be part of preventative maintenance, which developers consider to be just as important as ongoing maintenance. The point here is that work performed by developers may not always be visible to you the client.
Conclusion
You have probably realized after reading this article that there are many questions that need to be answered when you are planning maintenance for your website. The most important factor with website maintenance is trust. You should have complete confidence and trust in the person you’ve chosen to maintain your website. It may seem that you are paying more for their services but they may actually be saving you money by helping you avoid tragedy.
I would love to hear your point of view. Leave me a comment below and let me know what your experiences have been.
