Our Website Maintenance Services
We view website maintenance to be a reactive support service, but we also offer website management as a more proactive solution. If you have a question or concern about your website, just reach out for help. Our web developers can solve nearly any website problem you encounter.
Here are several examples of website maintenance services we’ve been asked to perform in the past and would be more than happy to provide to you!
Examples of Website Maintenance
Simple Website Changes
A simple change to your website might include updating a paragraph on a page, swapping out an image, or adding a new page. These are just normal, routine web maintenance tasks to keep content fresh for search engines and visitors.
Page Speed Improvements
If your website isn’t running as fast as it once was, we can review your website for hosting issues, caching issues, unoptimized images, console errors, broken links, poor database queries, and other problems. This will help improve page load times, which are beneficial to UX and SEO.
Platform Upgrades / Security Patches
If your website is running on a content management system, like WordPress, it is important to keep the platform updated. This helps improve security and bring in new functionality. The updates are often quick to perform and rarely break a website, which is a win-win!
Plugin / Extension Updates
If your website has functionality developed and maintained by a third-party, it is important to update those plugins and extensions to include the latest changes by the developers. This is similar to the idea of updating the CMS platform since it helps patch security issues and add new features.
Google Search Console Fixes
Did you get a report from Google Search Console informing you of a coverage issue? We can review the coverage issues, fix the problems, and update you on the results. This will help your search engine rankings by making Google happy!
Setup Structured Data
Have you ever noticed information like reviews or product prices in the listing of a Google organic search result? This is brought to you by structured data, which is a standardized way of describing the content on the web page, whether it be of a local business, ecommerce product, or some other data type.
Add Open Graph Tags
Adding Open Graph Tags to your website will help search engines better understand your page content and improve the appearance of your website in social media platforms when people share links to your website.
Setup Google Tag Manager
Are you interested in adding Google Tag Manager to your website to help you manage custom scripts more easily? No problem! We can add Google Tag Manager to your website and even give you a crash course in using GTM.
A Few of Our Website Support Specialists
Implement Conversion Tracking
If you are interested in understanding the benefit of an online advertising campaign, it is important to set up conversion tracking. This will help you understand where your conversions are coming from, such as a Google search or social media campaign.
Optimize Images
Are large images slowing down your website? No problem! We can run all your images through our image compression tools to speed up your website! Another option is to set up recurring image compression for newly added images!
Switch to GA4
If your website is still running Universal Analytics, we can help you make the switch to GA4! This is often a simple change, but you will need to get accustomed to the new interface and conversion tracking methods.
Setup Live Chat
Do you want to try live chat on your website? We can recommend live chat systems, install the tracking code, and configure the chat widget to match your branding!
Review Error Logs
Have you noticed large error_log files on your hosting account? Maybe errors are being outputted on your website? Our web developers can fix broken websites and recommend other site improvements.
Add reCaptcha to Forms
If spambots are attacking your contact forms, we can set up a checkbox or invisible reCaptcha to help minimize unwanted submissions on your lead generation forms.
Setup a Caching Plugin
Are you interested in installing a caching plugin on your website, but not sure how to properly configure the settings for the best website performance? Let us make recommendations and configure your caching systems!
Setup SMTP Email
To help improve email deliverability, we can configure your contact form and website platform to send emails through an SMTP account instead of PHP mail.
Restrict IP Addresses
Are you being bombarded with fake orders, contact submissions or live chats from a specific IP address or network? We can help configure IP restrictions to prevent malicious traffic from interacting with your website.
Create Website Backups
Do you want to create a backup of your website? We can help you create one-time or scheduled backups that are stored locally or at an offsite location.
Create Development / Staging Sites
It is often recommended that you use a development or staging website before proceeding with a major upgrade or extension installation. If you’d like help creating and managing that dev environments, just let us know!
Setup A/B or Multivariate Testing
Do you prefer to make data-driven web design changes? If so, we can help you use A/B testing procedures to collect user-data that supports potential website changes.
Create 301 Redirects
Are you launching a new website or removing pages from your website? You should create 301 redirects. We’ve seen businesses lose significant organic traffic due to widespread broken pages. We can help you create 301 redirects within .htaccess files, nginx templates, or CMS platforms.
Provide Website Training
Do you need help learning how to make changes to your website? If your site was developed in a platform we work within, such as WordPress or Shopify, we’ll be happy to help!
The previously mentioned tasks are just a glimpse of what we view as possible website maintenance services. In fact, website maintenance is really anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website to improve it.
60+ Reviews
Clutch
15+ Reviews
Upcity
50+ Reviews
Cost of Web Maintenance
The starting price for our website maintenance services is $119.50/hour, but we offer discounts for pre-purchased blocks of time that bring the rate as low as $99.95/hour.
If you purchase a website maintenance retainer, there are no contracts, hidden fees, expirations, or minimum deductions.
Please keep in mind we rarely see tasks take less than 10 minutes, since the process of reviewing an email or taking a phone call, working on the request, providing feedback, and logging the task usually takes at least 10 minutes of time.
To keep you informed of the time usage on your pre-purchased web maintenance retainer, you’ll receive a monthly update letting you know how much time remains on your account.
Pre-Purchased Block of Time
- Dedicated Account Manager
- No Contracts, Auto-Renewals, or Expirations
- Time Use Summary Reports
- No Outsourcing
- Service Availability of M-F, 8AM-5PM CST, No Holidays
Invoiced Monthly
- Existing Clients Only
- Any Time Spent Billed Monthly
- Time Use Summary Reports
- No Outsourcing
- Service Availability of M-F, 8AM-5PM CST, No Holidays
The Website Platforms We Maintain
We have a diverse team of web designers and ecommerce developers who have been immersed in multiple website platforms over the years. That said, it is better to become a master of a few website and ecommerce platforms rather than try to working in them all.
For that reason, our website maintenance agency specializes in the most popular website platforms:
In the past, we provided website maintenance services for Joomla, Laravel, BigCommerce, and Magento platforms. Unfortunately, we decided to move away from those platforms to allow our website maintenance experts to focus more on training and support within the other more common website systems. We do still help out with those platforms on a limited basis, though.
Sample Website Maintenance Plan
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, reviewing your website’s performance, monitoring uptime, and verifying plugins are activated and working.
We are often asked for a website maintenance plan by larger companies looking to establish routines and procedures within their IT department.
We are happy to help you develop a web maintenance plan to ensure all aspects of your website, hosting, and domain name are routinely checked to ensure optimum performance and uptime.
Annual website maintenance tasks to review:
- Ask your web hosting company if they have newer servers you can migrate to.
- Check if your website platform has a new major release that will require an extensive website migration.
- Attempt to restore a website backup to ensure the data being stored is sufficient for full recovery.
- Look at competitor websites to see if you are missing out on new functionality for your own customers.
- Perform a full security review of your website to ensure nothing has been compromised or left vulnerable.
- Verify structured data, open graph, and social links are all working properly.
- Verify the necessity of any 3rd party tracking, live chat, or heat map scripts that are installed.
- Remove any unnecessary development or staging websites.
Semi-annual website maintenance tasks to review:
- Ensure you have access to your domain name and that it isn’t expiring soon. This will be helpful when you have to process a domain name renewal.
- Ensure you have access to your hosting account and that it isn’t expiring soon.
- Ensure you have access to your DNS in case you need to change anything.
- Check if your SSL certificate will be expiring in the near future.
- Verify your website backup schedule is working properly.
- Check if you have an automated image optimization service running.
- Check if the website is throwing any console errors.
Monthly website maintenance tasks to review:
- Check for broken links on your website, which negatively impact user experience and SEO.
- Check for website performance issues from recent updates or changes on the website.
- Check Google Search Console for any coverage issues.
- Provide some kind of update to your content to keep your website fresh.
- Check if there are available platform or extension updates.
Website Maintenance FAQs
What questions should I ask a website maintenance company?
Before signing up for a website maintenance package, it is important to ask the web maintenance company some questions about how their services work.
This will help you get a better idea of the relationship you will have with their website maintenance team before you make a payment and hand over website access.
Let’s go over some simple questions to ask:
- How do you handle website security? Do you run security scans of websites?
- What is the turnaround time for website maintenance requests?
- Do you outsource your website maintenance services?
- What do your best website maintenance services cost?
- Do you have minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for website updates?
- What are your normal hours of operation? What if my website breaks on a weekend?
- Will you keep me informed about new updates within my platform?
We find it beneficial to run these questions by any website services company before purchasing their website maintenance packages.
This practice will provide you with a much better understanding of the future relationship, the security of your website, and the expected turnaround time for important maintenance requests.
Why is regular website maintenance important for my small business?
Regular website maintenance ensures that your site stays current, functional, and secure. By keeping your website updated, you’ll provide a smooth user experience, maintain search engine rankings, and ensure that any potential vulnerabilities are addressed promptly.
How often will you update my website?
If you are a website management client, our standard practice is to perform monthly or quarterly check-ups for security patches, plugin updates, and other essential maintenance tasks. If you are a website maintenance client, we typically don’t update your website until you ask us to perform a change for you.
Will I have a dedicated manager for my website?
Yes, our agency provides a dedicated website manager for each client. This manager will understand your website’s unique needs, ensure timely updates, discuss your needs with our development team, and be your point of contact for any questions or concerns.
What if my website goes down or there’s a technical glitch?
If you are a website management client, we will have uptime monitoring configured to alert us of downtime. If you are only a website maintenance client, we will need you to reach out to let us know your website is experiencing an issue.
Do you handle security improvements as part of your services?
Absolutely! As part of our website management services, we routinely implement security patches, conduct malware scans, and ensure that all protective measures are up-to-date to safeguard your website from potential threats. For maintenance-only clients, we are generally more reactive than proactive, so we will likely need you to request such services.
How do you handle backups?
For web hosting clients, we perform automated daily and weekly backups. For website management clients, we perform on-demand backups prior to installing updates. For website maintenance clients, we often do not have recent backups and rely on you or your web hosting service to have fresh backups in-place. The ultimately responsibility for website backups falls on you, the business owner. If you take the time to read the terms of service of your web hosting provider, you will likely notice several disclaimers regarding data loss. We recommend you learn how to generate your own backups, regardless of who you hire for website maintenance, management, or hosting.
Can you make content updates or changes as part of the maintenance plan?
Yes, content updates are a part of our maintenance services. Whether you need to add new pages, update existing content, or post blog articles, our team can assist in ensuring your content remains fresh and relevant.
What happens if I want to add a new feature or tool to my website?
We’re here to support any enhancements or additions you’d like to make. Whether you’re considering integrating a new tool, adding a shopping cart, or any other website feature, we’ll guide you through the process and handle the implementation.
How is pricing determined for your website maintenance services?
All website maintenance services are billed on a time-and-materials basis. You can pre-pay for a website maintenance block and receive a discounted hourly rate, or as an existing client you can opt for monthly invoices at a slightly higher hourly rate.
What do I do if my website faces an issue outside of routine maintenance hours?
If the issue is related to our web hosting services, we’ll have server administrators alerted to begin resolving the issue immediately. However, we do not have web developers on-call on nights and weekends. We recommend you refrain from modifying your website outside of our normal business hours.
What platforms or CMS applications do you support?
Our team is skilled in a variety of platforms and content management systems, including WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, Laravel and more. However, we are currently only able to onboard new clients in WordPress, Shopify, and Magento.
What do you consider billable time?
When talking with prospective website maintenance clients, we are often asked what is considered billable time. You will find the answers vary greatly within the website support industry.
In some situations, you may find a website maintenance company to charge a much higher hourly rate, but not bill out for client communication or task organization. Likewise, there are website support companies like us, who charge a more affordable hourly rate, but also bill out for most communication and organization.
To help provide clarification, let’s go over some examples of what we consider billable time when it comes to maintaining and supporting your website.
Website maintenance services we do consider billable time:
- Reading through lengthy emails to understand what is being requested.
- Preparing responses to lengthy or complex email messages.
- Helping you figure out your domain name or web hosting provider credentials.
- Scheduling your website maintenance to be completed by the best team member.
- Talking with you on the phone about new ideas or potential website changes.
- Reviewing completed work for quality control purposes.
- Providing you with training on how to handle administrative tasks.
- Researching unique solutions to difficult questions you present our team.
- Providing detailed time usage reports, beyond the automated monthly update email.
- Helping you figure out email client issues within Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.
- Almost any other task that you request for your website or company.
Website maintenance services we do not consider billable time:
- We do not charge you to talk about personal matters, such as the weather, a recent vacation, or a sporting event.
- We do not charge you to respond to simple email messages that don’t require research or lengthy feedback.
- We do not charge you to handle accounting-related tasks, such as invoice generation, payment confirmations, etc.
Hear what our customers are saying
Jeff Ring
This company is just a thrill to work with. Everyone is so friendly and eager to help even with the smallest items. They are always very accommodating when you stop by to look at the magnificent fish tank and will greet you with a warm cappuccino.
Rummeles Fine Jewelry
Great company to deal with! They have a great team of people and are always there to answer any questions we have!
Sarah Grantham
Corey was absolutely amazing in helping me with my issue. He was encouraging as we worked through things that to me were huge, but he made them seem small. Will definitely use WebCitz again!!!
Tara Candland
Incredibly responsive, fast, and professional. They quickly understood the issue we were having with our site, which was fairly complicated, and were able to resolve it. They kept us updated in lay terms along the way so that we could understand how the issue was progressing.
C. Vicki Gold, PT, MA
I couldn’t be much happier with WebCitz than I am today. Compared to previous web services I have experienced, the WebCitz team has been the most responsive and effective. They were patient as they helped me develop my current website, and they are always available when I have questions or want to make changes. Having that kind of personal service is extremely valuable and appreciated when you’re a small business owner like me. 🙂
Jen Ollanketo
WebCitz helped the Oshkosh Area Humane Society with our new website and they were great to work with. Responsive, professional and affordable. I think the biggest perk for us was having someone local we could talk to for assistance instead of long wait times. Definitely would recommend to anyone looking to start up or revamp their website.
