Your website is one of the biggest keys to your success. Your website is your #1 marketing tool. It is how potential customers will find you and judge your business. If you do not have a professional looking website, customers will presume your business is not professional or trustworthy. Investing in your website is something that you have to do to continue to grow and elevate your business.

Some businesses do not have a website yet, or even worse, one that drives customers away because it looks shabby or outdated. The quality of your website will reflect how customers perceive the quality of your business. Not having a website at all sends off warning signals to people searching for your business. Why doesn’t this business have a website? Are they even legitimate? Having a site that looks outdated also makes your business lose credibility with customers. Business is all about trust, and customers who trust you are more likely to do business with you.

Does this mean you should settle for a website made quickly and without regard to what your business offers? There will always be people or companies willing to build you a website for next to nothing. The problem with hiring a code mercenary is that no research or planning goes into building your site. Hiring your nephew or niece to build your site might save a few dollars up front, but the result is lost sales down the line. A professional web designer will always research your business goals, your competition, and your unique offerings before ever touching a line of code. A quality site looks modern, communicates a cohesive message, and inspires the customer to take action.

Facebook Pages are great, BUT an inadequate solution if you only rely on it. Social media platforms should be used as a complement to your website, not the main platform. Facebook constantly adjusts your Page visibility to your followers. Only a certain percentage of your Facebook followers will even see what you post (unless you pay for Facebook Ads). Facebook also owns everything you post there; they consider it their property. Anything that you post on your website is your own copyrighted material, and each page on your site has the potential to rank highly in Google and be found by potential customers.

Your website is the face of your business. People will judge you by it and spend their time and money accordingly. Once you have a site built and deployed, you should budget to have it refreshed every few years. Many things change as time goes on, such as coding best practices, design conventions, social media platforms, and the needs of a business as it grows. Investing in your web presence is investing in the infrastructure of your business. It is a necessary cost, because your website is important to the survival and growth of your business.

Other than the cost of developing your website, there are other services that go with keeping it up. These services are in the least:

1. Hosting: Hosting is a recurring annual or monthly cost. Depending on the complexity of your website and how much bandwidth you are using, your website hosting costs could range from $5 a month to $250+ a month for personal to a small business website.
2. Domain Name: your domain name (or URL or website address) cost can start at about $15 a year.
3. Website Maintenance, Security, Monitoring and Backup (optional): This is for a service where someone will regularly scan your website, detect any malicious activity, update the framework, do monthly backups, etc. This is very important for your investment, and this is why it is recommended.

Once you build your website, you’re done, and it takes care of itself, right?  WRONG! Website owners also have to face the cost of maintenance.

Although not a requirement to make your website work, we recommend maintaining your website, which is like maintaining anything else of value you have.

• You wouldn’t drive your car when the oil is bone dry — or when the brakes are grinding metal on metal — or when your tires are balding and the wires are poking out…would you?
• You wouldn’t buy a house without having a termite inspection or without fire insurance…would you?
• How much does it cost to maintain your place to live, or your means of transportation each month?

Your website is your main marketing asset, the hub of your online presence, and in some cases the means by which you make money. Regular website maintenance is crucial to achieving and maintaining online health and success. We enjoy having long term relationships with our clients, and are therefore committed to maintaining your website after the initial website design is completed.

Websites and Website Frameworks are like any other software you may use, Microsoft Windows or Word, Adobe Acrobat, etc., in that they have versions and updates and each adds features, or fixes security flaws, etc. If you don’t upgrade your application then you can’t take advantage of new features and hackers could gain access to your website through some “backdoor”. This is why it’s always advisable to keep your website version up to date.

Plugins and extensions are mini-applications that are added onto to your website to increase the features, like having a slideshow on the home page, a video player, a photo gallery, a social media integration, e-commerce, etc. These mini-applications also routinely expire and need to be upgraded or they can become the backdoor that hackers can use to access your website or destroy it.

You have to ask yourself, how much does it cost to maintain your business each month? Wise Business Owners Protect Their Investments and smart businesses understand this. Enterprise level businesses do not skimp on upkeep and maintenance. They understand what a vital difference these things make to website security and site performance.

Unfortunately, many small business owners forget about their website. Maintenance becomes something that falls by the wayside. If these business owners do want to make changes to their site, or get some good advice, or update their site without fear of breaking things — then they have to start their quest for a developer all over again. Most of the time, this cycle doesn’t end. Sometimes it ends badly, when they have to scramble to find someone to fix a compromised site — or make critical changes for a deadline. Having to shift gears and deal with their website on top of dealing with their business, payroll, and finding customers, is a burden that many business owners really don’t want.

One of the biggest misconceptions regarding web development is that after your website launches, there is no more need for ongoing work. But your website runs on software, and software is continuously being updated, to improve user experience, to deploy security fixes, and to introduce new features. In other words, website maintenance is something you have to budget time and money for.

Your car needs regular oil changes, tire rotations and tune-ups. Your house requires regular maintenance on the heating and cooling system, plumbing, repainting and lawn care. In the same fashion, your website also needs routine maintenance to keep it healthy and performing well. For starters, regular site maintenance can keep your from crashing or getting hacked. Continual maintenance keeps things working smoothly.

The main causes of compromised and hacked sites:

• Framework version not updated
• Plugins or themes not updated
• Weak passwords
• Brute force attacks
• Hosting environment not updated or maintained properly
• Malware on personal computer infects site

Keeping your site updated also improves user experience, as you continue to make improvements. This helps you retain and grow your customer base. You will also need to add pages or blogs content to your site. This will show search engines and especially your customers, that your business is active and not dormant. 

Your website is never truly finished. It is a constantly evolving business and marketing tool. At the very least, you will need the framework that powers your website to be updated. New versions of the framework and the plugins that help power your site are continually released. We can make sure these are safely updated, and ensure your site stays functioning correctly.

Again, it is highly recommended that you add new content to your site on a regular basis. This shows both your customers and the search engines that your site is still active, and helps attract new prospects about your business. Small websites can expect the need of 1 to 4 hours of maintenance per month

We offer pay as you go maintenance for websites that infrequently needs changing, or website maintenance plans to provide regular framework updates, security, backups and even content to your website. These plans enable our clients to update and refresh their sites without having to hire or train a staff employee in website design techniques, making it more affordable to maintain your website.

We also offer custom web maintenance plans to best fit your business needs.

ESSENTIAL PLAN

• Updating Framework Version
• Updating Plugins / Themes
• Security monitoring and protection
• Malware monitoring and protection
• Protect sensitive folders and directories
• Enable automatic lock-out IPs that brute force attacks
• Add Blacklist IPs and lockouts to banned user list
• Enforce strong user passwords
• Addition of Google’s REcaptcha for login
• Bi-monthly backup of your website, off site. Website backups are cheap insurance, no matter the size of your website. If you get hacked or infected with malware, you could have to completely rebuild your website from scratch.

*** No site is ever 100% safe from malicious attacks, but these steps deter the vast majority of automated attacks. Malicious hackers look for easy wins. Having a website security system in place will prevent dissuade most attackers from expending their personal resources on cracking your site.

BASIC PLAN

1. Everything in the ESSENTIAL PLAN
2. Basic Website Hosting
3. Up to 1 hour each month of support or website updates to do whatever tasks need doing, which can include:

• Content changes or additions
• Website maintenance
• Website restoration
• SEO
• Graphic Design
• Review and delete spam comments
• Feature or plugin suggestions
• Scan for broken links
• Site content evaluation and suggestions
• Update old information, add new pages, etc.

Each month you will receive a monthly stipend of hourly billing that is recorded in 1/4 hour increments. The billing cycle begins on the 1st and ends on the last day of the month. Any unused time is not cycled into the next calendar month. $110 per hour rate after included hour, recorded in 1/3 hour increments.

Fast, Convenient Turnaround Time: For small website changes, whenever you want content changed or added to your website, you simply email us. All you need to do is decide what you want updated, email us the details and we’ll do the rest. If the changes are minor, we can usually have the updates completed within one or two business days.

SMALL BUSINESS PLAN

• Everything in the ESSENTIAL PLAN
• Everything in the BASIC PLAN, with up to 2 hours each month of support or website updates to do whatever tasks need doing.

Each month you will receive a monthly stipend of hourly billing that is recorded in 1/4 hour increments. The billing cycle begins on the 1st and ends on the last day of the month. Any unused time is not cycled into the next calendar month. $100 per hour rate after included 2 hours, recorded in 1/3 hour increments.

Fast, Convenient Turnaround Time: For small website changes, whenever you want content changed or added to your website, you simply email us. All you need to do is decide what you want updated, email us the details and we’ll do the rest. If the changes are minor, we can usually have the updates completed within one or two business days.

Need more work done each month? No problem. Contact us for custom sized monthly packages.

PAY AS YOU GO SERVICES

• Basic website maintenance
• Graphic design
• Updating of graphics, text, email newsletter campaigns, SEO, etc
• Basic Security Update, Installation, Calibration
• Off site backup

Hourly Pay-as-you-go maintenance is capped every 20 minutes. 

Most small updates are completed within 1-3 business days. Larger updates may take slightly longer.