Website maintenance is the act of making a positive change to your website, such as upgrading your CMS platform, adding a new web page, changing out images, scanning for malware, or tweaking the design.

Not really, it generally costs around $100/hour to have a website maintenance company perform work on your website. If you need a specialty service, such as custom programming or mobile app development, the hourly rate is often higher.

If your website was built in a content management system, such as WordPress, then it should be possible for you to handle basic website updates on your own. If you run into trouble, just reach out to a web maintenance company for help.

Here are some of the most common web maintenance services we get asked to perform:

• Simple Content Changes
• Page Speed Improvements
• Platform Upgrades
• Plugin / Extension Updates
• Coverage Issue Fixes
• Structured Data Additions
• Open Graph Tags Implementation
• Google Tag Manager Setup
• Conversion Tracking Setup
• Image Optimization
• Live Chat Integration
• Error Log Fixes
• Contact Form Spam Fixes
• Caching Plugin Configuration
• SMTP Email Setup
• IP Address Restrictions
• Creation of Website Backups
• Creation of Development / Staging Websites
• A/B or Multivariate Testing
• 301 Redirect Setup
• Website Training / Support

If you are making simple changes to your website, it isn’t often necessary to place your website into a maintenance mode. This will have the negative effect of turning away search engines and website visitors. Instead, we recommend making changes on the live site, or testing them on a development / staging website first if they are more impactful.

We recommend applying platform and extension updates monthly. For the content on your website, we recommend revising website copy at least once per year to ensure information is accurate. It is also a good idea to test your website on mobile devices every few months to ensure recent changes hasn’t had a negative impact on mobile usability.

Website maintenance is the process of ensuring that your site is running as smoothly and efficiently as possible. There are many tasks involved in this process, such as checking for broken links, monitoring how quickly pages load, and making sure that all plug-ins are activated and working.

1. Most customers conduct research online
When buying a product, 87% of people research it online. That means they’ll most likely end up on your website before making a purchase. A lack of web maintenance can lead to a website that contains incorrect information, which results in disgruntled visitors – oops!

2. Your website performance promotes your sales growth
If your website is too slow, people will bounce out of the site and never come back. Your online store’s functionality has a significant impact on purchases both in terms of quantity (how many), as well as quality (how satisfied they are).

3. Site visitors value user experience
A poor user experience on a site can hurt the reputation of your business. In fact, most visitors will leave in favor of your competition.

Maintaining a website on a regular basis can protect against poor user experience and increases the chances of making a sale.

4. Website maintenance supports your SEO strategy
If you want your site to rank high on Google and other search engines, it’s crucial that you keep up with technology. There are many ways in which technological changes can affect how well a website ranks, whether that’s security issues, outdated content, or slow load times.

1. Domain name renewal
When you create your website, it is common to purchase a domain or web address. A domain name can be thought of as the website’s identification and physical address. If you pay annually, you will likely be spending $15/year.

While domain names are affordable, it’s vital to maintain your payments so that you’re the one who maintains ownership.

2. SSL certificate
You will also want to purchase a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate for your website. This signifies how safe the site is and notifies people that they are on an encrypted connection when they visit them. An SSL certificate will also ensure your site meets security standards as dictated by Google and Mozilla, as well as business regulations like HIPAA. It is common to receive a free SSL certificate with most web hosting services, but paid SSL certificates might cost $95/year or more.

3. Website hosting
Hosting your website is only way to keep it up and running.

The cost for hosting a site can be quite expensive, depending on how much space you need or the amount of bandwidth necessary to run smoothly at peak hours (especially with an e-commerce site).

Website hosting providers offer different options, but they all provide a way to keep your website up and running:

With a shared hosting service, your website is hosted on a server with many other websites. This will typically cost anywhere from $249year to $500/year for 10GB of storage space.
You can use the free version of a website builder, like wordpress.com, which is user-friendly and has no hosting costs.

If you choose a virtual private server (VPS), your site shares the server but has more resources than if it were on shared hosting. VPSs cost $50 to $200/month (or more) depending on your service level and support requirements.

A dedicated server includes complete access to the server. This is a great option if you need dedicated server resources, but it can cost you $500 to $1,500/month for the server lease, server support, and software subscriptions.